Fairweather

Good point. I guess I was thinking only of higher-order mammals.

It seems that if anyone can appreciate the beauty of the wolf, it's gotta be a soldier. Beside Orcas, there aren't too many creatures that demonstrate a coordinated and flexible pattern of attack.

I've been up and down Cooper Spur too many times to count, but I'm not sure descending Sunshine is any safer. Sliding 400 feet off Cathedral Ridge into The Coe would probably produce the same result as bouncing 1800 feet off the top of Cooper Spur to the Eliot Glacier. Heading down the south side and hitchhiking back to Tilly Jane is probably the smartest option--which is probably why I 've never done it. Good call re Sherpa. I've never been in there, but I've always wanted to combine a climb of Sherpa Glacier with the West Ridge of Sherpa Peak.

Mount Hood - Sunshine Route

I would guess that absent wolves, the deer population exploded and began eating most of the Aspen saplings--the famous Trophic Cascade that Aldo Leopold describes in A Sand County Almanac's "Thinking Like a Mountain".

All the work and money put into restoring some balance for naught? I can't believe Obama is going forward with the delisting of Wolves as an endangered species. Idaho has already announced a hunt. I was once against these reintroduction efforts--and I was wrong. Wolves bring life to mountains and their presence has been missing for far too long. Pay the fucking cattlemen for any losses on their private property--then hand them a bill for the destruction of public lands caused by overgrazing. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wolves7-2009mar07,0,3909363.story "After reversing President Bush on a pack of environmental rules in its first month, the Obama administration let one of Bush's last-minute changes stand Friday: removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list in the Upper Midwest, Idaho and Montana. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, announcing the decision at a news conference, said the finding by the Fish and Wildlife Service under Bush was "a supportable one. . . . Scientists have concluded that recovery has occurred. He also agreed with the Bush administration's decision to keep the wolf on the endangered species list in Wyoming, calling that state's wolf recovery plan insufficient. Salazar praised efforts by Idaho and Montana to restore and manage wolf populations and said, "I do not believe we should hold those states hostage to the inadequacy we've seen in Wyoming." The delisting of the gray wolf was the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between the federal government and environmental groups, which successfully sued to keep the animal on the endangered list. Bush's Interior Department announced the delisting in the final days of his term, and it wasn't finalized by the time President Obama took office and froze all pending rule changes. Salazar's announcement Friday almost assuredly means environmentalists will sue again to keep the wolf under federal protection, continuing the saga of an animal that rouses fierce debate among ranchers and conservationists in the West. "This delisting rule is bad for wolves," said Jenny Harbine, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice in Bozeman, Mont. "Wolves aren't recovered biologically, and they still need the protection of the Endangered Species Act." Harbine said Earthjustice will formally ask the Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider the decision. "If they don't," she said, "we'll take this unlawful and unsound rule to court." Wolves once roamed most of the nation, but dwindled to near-extinction before the Clinton administration reintroduced them in Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. Populations grew quickly enough that a decade after reintroduction, Bush officials tried to remove the wolf from the endangered list, only to be blocked by courts. Salazar, who grew up on a ranch in rural Colorado, made the announcement on Friday, traditionally the day for an administration to dump news it knows could stir controversy. The news also came after a string of Obama administration moves to freeze or roll back Bush-era environmental decisions, including Salazar's moves to slow efforts to increase oil and gas development offshore and in Rocky Mountain shale. "

Good Job. Wish I could have joined you!

Perception is reality--for some.

If they do, I'll crank my mountain bike all the way to Dutch Miller Gap, take pictures, and post them here.

It's gonna be a mountain bike access summer.

Somewhere between 20 and fifty million died in the global pandemic that started near the end of world war I, and lasted until about 1920. The next pandemic (much smaller scale) wasn't until 1957. What is scary about this Mexico outbreak is that it has killed 20-40 year olds with healthy immune systems almost exclusively--just like the Spanish Flu outbreak--indicating that a cytokine storm may be killing its victims. Scary shit. I'm curious, though, why you would refer to the possibility of a pandemic as a "cleansing"?

Let's see if your recipe applies to Osama Bin Laden... 1.) Nope. Wealthy Family. 2.) Nope. Just Islam. Again. 3.) Nope. A family of despot ass-kissers. 4.) No shaking required. Just an ass-backward religion and a few American apologists. 5.) Even the 110th floor wasn't high enough.

Is it possible they were taken by Aliens®?

Secret access code to that account...

"The one thing we could do for a country like Mexico, for example, is to stop every illegal immigrant at the border, give him a good rifle and a case of ammunition, and send him home. Let the Mexicans solve their customary problems in their customary manner." --Ed Abbey

meanwhile... http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2009/04/09/moves_against_chavez_foes_denounced_in_venezuela/

Branson paid a handsome ransom to keep his grandson from being pushed off the transom.

Any tracks coming up the Easton Glacier side? (Snow machine or otherwise?)

Black muslim teenage boys killed on the high seas under direct orders of the war criminal Obama. I predict an apology.

Lib testosterone smells just like spoiled tofu.

Are you sure that diesel car is really "green"? (see link) Also, I have yet to see the input energy of the hybrid's battery production (and disposal/recycle processes) plugged into any net vehicle life/energy use equation. Just a thought: Did upwind diesel particulate help darken and kill the White Chuck Glacier? http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0233.html American Geophysical Union/Stanford University/National Science Foundation Joint Release WASHINGTON - Laws that favor the use of diesel, rather than gasoline, engines in cars may actually encourage global warming, according to a new study. Although diesel cars obtain 25 to 35 percent better mileage and emit less carbon dioxide than similar gasoline cars, they can emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter ("soot") per kilometer [mile]. The warming due to soot may more than offset the cooling due to reduced carbon dioxide emissions over several decades, according to Mark Z. Jacobson, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, Jacobson describes computer simulations leading to the conclusion that control of fossil-fuel black carbon and organic matter may be the most effective method of slowing global warming, in terms of the speed and magnitude of its effect on climate. Not only does soot warm the air to a much greater extent than does carbon dioxide per unit mass, but the lifetime of soot in the air (weeks to months) is much less than is that of carbon dioxide (50 to 200 years). As such, removing soot emissions may have a faster effect on slowing global warming than removing carbon dioxide emissions. The model Jacobson used tested 12 identifiable effects of airborne particles, known as aerosols, on climate, eight of which had not previously been described in scientific literature. Jacobson notes that it is not currently possible to quantify each of these effects individually, only the net effect of all of them operating simultaneously. "Since 1896, when Svante Arrhenius first postulated the theory of global warming due to carbon dioxide, control of carbon dioxide has been considered the most effective method of slowing warming," Jacobson says in an interview. "Whereas carbon dioxide clearly causes most global warming, control of shorter-lived warming constituents, such as black carbon, should have a faster effect on slowing warming, which is the conclusion I have drawn from this study. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 does not even consider black carbon as a pollutant to control with respect to global warming." The reason the issue of diesel versus gasoline is important, says Jacobson, is that, in Europe, one of the major strategies for satisfying the Kyoto Protocol is to promote further the use of diesel vehicles and specifically to provide a greater tax advantage for diesel. Tax laws in all European Union countries, except the United Kingdom, currently favor diesel, thereby inadvertently promoting global warming, Jacobson says. Further, some countries, including Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands, also tax fuels based on their carbon content. These taxes also favor diesel, he notes, since diesel releases less carbon per kilometer [mile] than does gasoline. Nevertheless, the small amount of black carbon and organic matter emitted by diesel may warm the atmosphere more over 100 years than the additional carbon dioxide emitted by gasoline. In Europe and the U.S., particulate emissions from vehicles are expected to decline over the next decade. For example, by 2005, the European Union will introduce more stringent standards for particulate emissions from light duty vehicles of 0.025 grams per kilometer [0.04 grams per mile]. Even under these standards, diesel powered cars may still warm the climate more over the next 100 years than may gasoline powered cars, according to the study. The state of California is implementing an even more restrictive standard in 2004, allowing only 0.006 grams per kilometer [0.01 grams per mile] of particulate emissions. Even if the California standard were introduced worldwide, says Jacobson, diesel cars may still warm the climate more than gasoline cars over 13 to 54 years. In an interview, Jacobson said that new particle traps being introduced by some European automobile manufacturers in their diesel cars appear to reduce black carbon emissions to 0.003 grams per kilometer [0.005 grams per mile], even below the California standard. "I think this is great, and it is an indication that tough environmental laws encourage industry to change. But," he said, "diesel vehicles emitting at this level may still warm the climate more than gasoline over a 10 to 50 year period, not only because of black carbon emissions, but also because the traps themselves require addition fuel use. Gasoline/battery hybrid vehicles now available not only get better mileage than the newest diesels but also emit less black carbon." In practice, less than 0.1 percent of light vehicles in the United States run on diesel fuel, whereas more than 25 percent do in Europe. (Almost a third of new European cars in 2000 were diesel powered.) In both the United States and Europe, virtually all heavy trucks and buses are diesel powered, and American diesel consumption rates for all modes of ground transportation combined are about 75 to 80 percent of those in Europe. Control of fossil fuel black carbon and organic matter will not by itself eliminate long term global warming, says Jacobson. This would require reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, in addition to reduction of particles. Other strategies to be considered for reducing black carbon and organic matter from the atmosphere could include the phasing out of indoor biomass and coal burning and improved particle collection from jet fuel and coal burning, he says. This reduction would provide the additional benefit of reducing the 2.7 million people who die annually from air pollution, as estimated by the World Health Organization. The health costs of particulate pollution range, in industrial countries, from $200,000 to $2.75 million per ton, Jacobson notes. The research was supported by NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Hewlett-Packard Company. **********

True. But none of the ones I voted for were elected.

I just love it when populism trips all over itself... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/18/sen-dodd-admits-adding-bonus-provision-stimulus-package/

Funny how congress just saw fit to vote themselves a big raise the other night despite their terrible management of the economy.