klenke

They just shook hands. They should have continued from there and gone down for a game of thumb wrestling. They missed their chance. Dammit! Neither of them can lead.

Settle it with arm wrestling?

Doug, I'm a moderate; not a republican, not a democrat, not nuthin'. I often sound like a republican on this site cuz I'm trying to get liberals' goats. All liberals think anyone farther right than them has to be conservative (republican). All non-liberals are not necessarily conservatives. I don't really care who wins the Presidential election.

There's a debate going on??!! Where have I been?

Congratulations! (I think)

I stand corrected in what he, Kerry, voted for (not for war itself, but for the ability for the President to declare war with congressional approval). That is obvious and his speech at the time confirms his reservations. --Parrot

I must admit I was a bit surprised at the following event: I was at my parents' house doing a puzzle with my mother the moment Bush came on for a press conference (or it might have been on the news later) where he said, "Saddam, you've got 48 hours to leave Iraq or else." One bully bullying another. Kind of playgroundish.

Who's the girl on the left? What a cutey!

I figured that's where Tang was. Your wall I was referring to in my last post was the one in your, "There is a prominent spire on the south side of valley you can see from the Static Point approach. It's backside, facing northeast, is an incredible wall. Looks excellent and near impossible to get too" and Gene's, "The peak that Darin is asking about is at the end of the valley that static point slabs lay in." The pano shows the end of that valley (S. Fk Sultan R.). Is the mystery "impossible to get to wall" visible in the panorama?

Gee thanks Dru. So enlighteni...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Could we manage to lock up the World Wide Web if we started a thread about Google? You could search for "Google" in Google and get an infinite recursion thing going on, kind of like taking video of a TV screen and then feeding that video into the very same TV. Yeah baby! Okay, so maybe not.

Only 4th in the list. What a shame! We're slipping here at CC, the ultimate world blog.

That is one thing that bugs me about Kerry, that he voted for the Iraq war then, in the present (with his 20-20 hindsight), says the war was a bad idea. One thing that amused me in the last debate was, when asked about his voting for the money expenditure for the military then voting against it, that he had changed the way he "talks about the war." WTF bullshit talk your way out of your ass comment was that? His talk and the actual action seem to be two incongruent things. The action carries more weight than the talk. Always has. Kerry will say a lot of things depending on his audience. That's why track record speaks bigger volumes. That said, Bush is an idiot. Couldn't the dems have come up with someone better. It shouldn't have been that hard.

Yeah, it's known as the copy-paste method.

Darin, perhaps you can spot the wall in the following panorama looking ESE from Static Peak. Frostbite-Weber at far left, Ragged Ridge across the valley (S. Fk Sultan River), Mt. Stickney at far right: On that triangular wall left of center we spied a nice double-barreled ice climb (very top of Static Point in the foreground):

Ah, now I see why the repubelicans were bitching about it. They have a case, albeit a very weak one. What type of demographic would go to a Moore rally? Why the oath with "Kerry" spoken in it? Is this not a veiled attempt to A) get people to vote, and B) get them to vote for Kerry. I mean, this is obviously why Moore is doing the slacker rallies. He wants Bush to lose. He's doing what he can to ensure that.

The democrats whine about what the republicans are doing and the republicans whine about what the democrats are doing. The moderates just do this: Ohhhhh, the wheels on the bus go round and round round and round round and round....

At first I found the fact that the law exists kind of quizzical. I think it's there in the event someone tries to bribe (with money, gifts, whatever) a certain voting demographic that, as a whole, would be apt to vote as the briber wanted (either by their own admission or by some other data). In this case, if it could be proved the targeted students were of a DNP bent, then it could be construed Moore was doing something illegal. However, I don't think you could prove it, so no case. Furthermore, this new block of student votes would be a mere drop in the bucket for the total votes cast for the Presidential election. The law is probably more concerned with those who would illegally curry favor for votes where the total number of votes cast will be much less, as for rural races, etc. In this case, targeting a certain demographic (like offering a group of non-voting rednecks free guns if they vote, expecting full well they'll gun for the briber's wanted candidate).

That's your recommendation? You must not successfully summit much. I'd say something like: When in doubt, concentrate, think things through, take a deep breath, try (with a self-belay in case you should fall ). If still in doubt, don't.

He says at the end, "...but it's nice to have a safety net." I was assuming he's talking about unforeseen sketchy terrain that he would like to cross. He's just wondering about processes people have developed to mitigate the hazards of falling. He doesn't really talk about the difficulty of the climbing itself, only the security he'd like for it.

I don't understand why it should be a mistake--cut and dry. We've all gone climbing where we find ourselves in an unintended tough spot and have to innovate to persevere. Choosing to self-belay across any terrain--be it Class 4/5/6/12/56/88--is just a way of reducing the risk in case a fall should occur. Your Squamish example is different (to me at least) because it implies the climber knows ahead of time he'll be cheating his way past something he can't climb. In Blakej's case, I am guessing he's referring to sketchy terrain not foreseen in advance. It is improbable one could blindy go someplace new and not come across terrain that pushes your ability envelope. Blakej is just looking for a methodology to surmount these difficulties. Forget for a second the legitimacy of him being there in the first place. It's beside the point of his initial post (as least as I see it). It was you, Dru, who instigated the "he shouldn't even be there" comment.

Oh probably. He is a neocon in a vast sea of libs, after all.

By the way, this TR belongs in the North Cascades Forum.

Hmmm, now you're all ready for the North Wall of Buck. The West Basin of Buck was one of the prettiest places I remember going (have to do it in late-season to enjoy the colors more). I like the picture of the guy (of Kyle, I'm thinking, if the mustache is still the giveaway) straddling the notch. Why do you call it a chimney? Looks like a notch to me.

Your red line to LL is the same as Robert's and Ralph's. Beckey says 5.5 but you know Beckey. Robert said 5.7ish. Your red line from LL to HAR is the first variation listed by Beckey. From Beckey: "From the belay at the traverse [not Lunch Ledge but 50 ft to right], climb a chimney and crack system for one pitch; the lower portion overhangs slightly (5.8)." Or, this might be the route done by Thayer and Williams in 1974: "From the Lunch Ledge, climb up and right 65 ft [this gets one to ledge below larger overhang], then from a belay ledge continue up and right of a large roof into a broken, dirty chimney; climb this to the large ramp. Two leads; class 5.6 (hard to protect at times)." Middle yellow line may be the one done by Risse and Dent in 1979: "A two-pitch variation off Lunch Ledge...The first of two pitches is an overhanging hand crack (5.8), then a chimney-gully (loose) meets the traverse route [presumably Beckey means the high-angle ramp]." Far left yellow line I have no information on.