willstrickland

C'mon Pete, Look at some statistics buddy...war has historically boosted the economy. Now do you think that the $300 rebate check you got has kick-started the economy (personally, I used mine to pay a stafford loan payment, and offset the money I lost in an index fund holding Enron as part of assets)...or the countless billions spent on the war(s). Check out this site Cost of War With all the loot being pumped into Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, United Tech, Litton, etc...we should have a big recovery. The question is: Are the lives of our servicemen worth it? I'm a DOD employee, I'm around alot of soliders and airmen on a daily basis and I workout with some of the Arctic Warriors...alot of these guys are not happy with BushCo..in fact I heard one Cpt who was citing Carol Mosely Braun (threw me for a loop) and some stats on budget cuts for VA services (I can't elaborate because I didn't see the speech he was citing). If you've ever been around a VA hospital, you know how understaffed and underfunded they are already...not everyone buys into the hype...including those who are willing to put their lives on the line for this nation. It's not about Clinton, it's not about the left or the right...it's about deceiving the populus into supporting what is rapidly turning into a quagmire the likes of which we haven't seen since, oh, about 1964-1975.

The buddhists say that we need to free ourselves from samsara (suffering) which is caused by our illusion that we exist as a discrete entity in the universe (ego). Understanding that we are one with everything and nothing exists apart from anything else is the basis of enlightenment. Reaching this understanding doesn't imply mentally/cognitively understanding the concept, but understanding it with your entire being. Most descriptions of the moment of satori involve a feeling of a dissolving of self and melting into the universe. Brings to mind a groaner of a joke: What did the buddhist say to the hotdog vendor? Make me one with everything.

Mr Bunny says Pegmatite is the shizz

Granite is pretty much tops but I still think the best rock I've climbed on is the Gneiss in North Carolina (which is just metamorphized granite anyway). Tennessee sandstone is pretty damn sweet, it's bomber too...stuff has such a high iron content it's bullet. My personal pref is desert sandstone...but that's more for the setting and the nature of the cracks. That tuff is just a petrified volcano fart

I've used Toucans and Auks (the beak sized version of the toucans, which is what I think your asking about) They are sweet, particularly in sandstone. I've hand-placed the toucans a few times, but only in a seam in a dihedral and on a couple of angling cracks where the camming action of the bent stem really cams hard. They don't seem quite as durable as regular (BD) blades though. In general on normal placements they seemed to shift less than regular blades or beaks in soft rock, but then again, maybe I was just more experienced by the time I added those to the rack. A blade shifting after you've been on it for a while is a pants-loading experience, especially when it keeps happening. I own the leeper cam hooks in the smallest through the next to largest size. The medium ones seem to see the most use, and I have pairs of that size. I do find all the sizes to be useful though. I've never seen the Pika camhooks so can't comment.

First point...yeah, we had plenty of help carrying loads to the base, 3 helpers to be exact. I didn't climb pitches 1-2 either as my partner and his original partner had already fixed them. Second, I don't know how you figure I didn't carry my gear down? I made two trips up the ledges to get stuff. One trip two days after we topped out(incapaciated partner required coming back for the gear) when you were topping out. On that trip I went up with an Irish climber from camp (because my partner was still incapacitated) and we carried down just about everything. Unfortunately, I had to leave the shit bucket because my haul bag was full of ropes and hardwear and Johnny refused to carry it. I went back up three days later to retrieve the shit bucket, which someone had apparently already carried down becasue I couldn't find it. I spent about two hours up there collecting random trash and empty water bottles and carried it down, I also made a sweep of the base and picked up almost a full backpack's worth of trash from the west-side two days after that. As for the anytime, any place and we'll see who gets pasted shithead. You'll be able to find me in C4 just about any fall in late Sept early Oct.

I got issues alright, and that issue is that you were clearly unprepared (experience wise). I don't deny that you had great determination to see it through, and that it was a formidable goal. I've soloed and it's hard and lonely fuckin work. But your whole statement of how it wouldn't have been possible for you to continue (without all the nailing) kind of exemplifies the mindset I abhor...summit at all costs. Did it ever occur to you that "hey the party ahead of me wasn't nailing this" Luckily granite does not take quite the beating that sandstone does. If I'd been nailing on clean routes I've done in Zion, there would have been an angry posse waiting on the ground.

Likely the nut on 7 was the one we left fixed, differential temperature expansion can loosen pieces, or maybe I spaced it and went right by it. Red camalot was definitely not ours since I own no reds with non-original sling, if it was on 15 and you mean had a runner-sling attached to the cam's own sling, partner might have left it without telling me when lowering out, I don't know since I led 15 at sunset and didn't watch him clean the pitch.. Sorry it was so much trouble for you to haul all that weight of booty gear to the summit, must have been grueling to transport your trophies so far. Prick.

Yeah, I'm sure you would have, especially after you told your bro how you were just gonna keep it instead Dude, as I said in my initial post...it was rightfully yours as booty. I've bootied plenty of gear, but I also don't offer it back of my own accord and then recant and gloat about it on the radio to my buddies like some punk ass bitch.

Red camalot was not ours, partner apparently left a couple of biners at belay 3 where our fixed lines went. We left one nut fixed Red Camalot must have belonged to the Hubers.

George Carlin in Dogma...too funny

But there's a caveat Necro...Zodiac depends on heaps of fixed gear to go clean, so depending on what shape it is in, it might require nailing. However, since we were the party directly in front of this guy, I KNOW what shape the route was in...it was fully capable of going clean at a C3F NTB rating. Even the C3 sections that didn't rely on fixed gear to go clean, sections that I cam hooked, offset aliened, two cam aliened, or hooked through, this guy was nailing. Also sounds like he was using gear the Hubers left in place while working on the Nipple after we passed...I distincly remember one inverted cam hook move as well as placing several pieces before the tit.

Re: the Draft Board This is not exactly new...it's been going on since 2001, here's a link to a Houston Chronicle Article that addresses the same thing...notice this article ran in Sept '01. I don't think the administration is dumb enough to use the draft. It'd be politcal suicide, especially since the core voters (boomers) saw Vietnam draft era firsthand.

While we were on Zodiac there was a soloist below us who was doing the route for his first wall. I thought that was pretty ballsy, soloing El Cap for your first wall route. My first wall route was also a solo, but not quite in the same league (Prodigal Son) . Well after seeing and hearing (ping-ping-ping) the guy climb pitches 5-8 my admiration began to dissipate. We placed one pin on the whole route on pitch 7 (and could have gotten by without that one). By the time he'd finished pitch 8, he'd probably placed 15 pins. In my mind, he was clearly in over his head and had no business being on the route. We didn't clean any fixed gear, and I know he had a comprehensive rack (I passed the rack hangin off the p2 anchors when we jugged our fixed lines). He claimed to have done a couple of practice routes (first two pitches of a couple of El Cap routes that start clean) and admitted to me when he go to belay 6 that he'd never placed any pins prior to that. After that was the bootied cam incident where he cleaned a cam I had to leave under a roof...a cam I absolutely expected him to booty. Well, when we went back to the summit to retrieve our gear a couple of days after finishing, he was topping out. We hooked him up with some food and a little water . He mentioned the cam and said he would get it back to me in camp. I thought that was cool because by all rights it was his cam. Later that night I heard him on the radio talking to the soloist on South Seas. He said he'd bootied this #2 and was going to give it back, but now thought he'd keep it. Needless to say, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I came very, very close to drilling him in the grill when I found him on the ground , but got the cam back first while acting friendly then told him I'd heard him on the radio and he was a phucking prick. He made a hasty exit. So I don't want to name the guy, but if you're curious go over to rc.com and you'll see him getting props for his "ballsy" solo. You might look in the Aid Climbing Forum over there. So aside from being a prick liar, whadya think...hero for El Cap solo for a first wall, or zero for being in over his head and nailing the shit out of everything?

Last few times in the gym I've jumped in the steam room for a while before working out to try to combat residual soreness. Is there any reason (besides dehydration from sweating) not to use steam/hot tub/sauna as a warm-up method before a workout? It seems most people use these after a workout.

Two pitches up Touchstone: Somehow both our .75s were clipper onto the same biner. I was rearranging the rack and dropped the two cams ...they straddled my left foot, one hanging on each side. I gingerly scraped my foot up the wall and grabbed them before my partner could see my dumb-ass. Half a pitch later it started to rain, then sleet, then snow....we were in the Bit and Spur drinking weak stout within two hours.

Yosemite Free Climbs - Don Reid Yosemite Climbs: Big Walls - Don Reid Yosemite Big Walls - Supertopos - Chris McNamara Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rock Climber - Steve Roper Crystal Horizon - Reinhold Messner The Breach - Rob Taylor (just read this last week) On "The Breach"- Anyone know why Taylor used a fake name for his partner? He called him Harley Warner in the book when it was clearly Henry Barber from the description. Mt. Analogue - Rene' Daumal (finally got ahold of this after two years of looking through the local library)

Sorry Dru, but I'm still further north!! North Pole, Alaska is about 15 miles southeast of Fairbanks. This is the town where the volunteers answer letters to Santa and where the PO will postmark your x-mas cards. Three of my co-workers commute from North Pole.

I didn't vote for either of the jokers (I voted for Nader), but get your facts straight man...mainstream America didn't vote for Gore? Seeing how MORE PEOPLE VOTED FOR GORE THAN VOTED FOR BUSH, how do you back up that statement? I may be wrong, but hadn't that only happened once before in US Presidential elections? As for Clark...only time will tell. I don't think any of the dems have a snowball chance in hell with the possible exception of Dean (but I don't think he can pull it off either).

RAW POWER!!

"I'd like to cut your head off, so I can weigh it, whadya say?? Five pounds....six pounds....seven pounds" -from "Weigh" by Phish

Actually, Katie started climbing again.....

Subway is rad , but in March a wetsuit might be advisable as it can be a wee bit COLD

The Narrows in Zion is a classic (and crowded in season) hike that's really cool. There's a couple of rim hikes in Zion that are nice and give you plenty of options for mileage. These are way less crowded than the std hikes. The stuff in the Kolob section of Zion is usually deviod of people too. Most people at Bryce stay at the car-pullout viewpoints so if you hike down, especially that time of year, you're likely to be alone. Escalante/Grand Staircase is also really close and it's serious wilderness. Even in peak season there aren't many foks down there.