JayB

Change "all" to "the overwhelming majority" if you want to engage in semantics, and I suppose you can qualify towns like Butte as "urban" if you want, but it doesn't really change the picture in a meaningful way. As far as mining wages go, you can check them out here: http://www.nma.org/pdf/m_wages.pdf. As far as the risk premium goes, that's an established economic fact. There should be at least two-centuries worth of data out there for you to Google your way through if you want proof.

Dang Gary - I can't think of a worse situation to make your point with. All mining occurs in areas are that are a ways from population centers, and the wages that they pay are often substantially higher than those available in any other line of work in those areas. Mining companies, like most other entities that require people to do things that are dirty and dangerous, generally have to pay a premium in order to attract and keep workers. Same deal as the oil-platform workers, undersea welders, crab fishermen on the Bering-sea, etc.

The Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge is Dope.

The "proficiency in English and Mongolian" and the "five years experience working in field conservation in Mongolia" should narrow the field to about two candidates. You own it Luke.

Those look pretty sweet - I'm not in the market for a pack at the moment, but I'd definitely consider them if I was. The pricing is pretty amazing too given the amount of work required to produce them.

They are coming for all of you. You had fair warning, you could have left well enough alone, but you just had to keep pushing - didn't you. Now you know too much, and it's time to lock the doors and load the ammo. Love this movement. Toss the "Potlucks for Peace" crew in with the residue of the early 90's survivalist/millitia movement and voila - Le Paranoid Souffle.

It was clearly caused by the third bullet fired from the grassy knoll.

Yeah - he's clearly got some serious park skills. That rail sequence in the intro was insane.

Well, look who's working on a sassy attitude just in time for the new year! WHOOOOO!!! Look who's coopting the gay lexicon just in time for the New Year. Fabulous. Really.

Next thing you know all of the glaciers in Colorado will be gone.

Interesting. I'd agree that it's hard to beat the DAS for a full-on belay jacket, but I've been pretty happy with the Enclosure. Plus the form fit really flatters my figure...

I'll vouch for the Scratch's being a great ski. I've got a pair of Scratch FS that I use for inbounds, and would definitely consider this set-up for BC if I still lived someplace where that was actually an option.

Why did they rate the enclosure poorly?

I think it's worth considering whether or not the workers in question would have any wages at without their job at Walmart, and what effect that would have on their standard of living. I also think it's also reasonable to compare the wages that Walmart pays to the aggregate retail average for a given job-category, and the benefits that normally come along with jobs in the same category. Are the people manning the till at Walgreens really making $18/hour with full benefits? I think the differential is highest between people who are essentially grocery-workers at Walmart and the people who are performing the same jobs at grocery stores. The fact that such a gap can exist for a couple of decades suggests that there's a gap between what the folks stocking the shelves are paid and what their skills are worth on the market, and even if Walmart were to magically dissapear there'd be someone there who would be more than happy to exploit that differential, and consumers, especially those who have limited incomes themselves, who would be happy to save the money. For those interested in doing some reading, there's a 64 page PDF on "The Economic Impact of Walmart" here: http://www.globalinsight.com/publicDownload/genericContent/11-03-05_walmart.pdf And there's a discussion of the paper and other papers presented at a conference with the same theme here: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051026_8916_db016.htm

Stick to replacing the original bolts, do a good job, and use good hardware and I can't see you getting anything but a positive response. Maybe take Joesph up on the free advice, or have someone else who's done the work before if this is your first time taking a crack at it.

And why high DIN settings are good.

Video Here The luckiest man on a pair of twin-tips. Mt. Hood area? Great last lines. "That last drop was dope though, huh" "Yeah"

Cool - another thanks is in order. Anyone have any insights on car rentals down there? Any cheap-but-reliable outfits that you'd have to endure a Google Marathon to dig-up? The last time I was in the market for a rental car was when I was in Maui for a couple of weeks for a friends wedding, and found a place called "Maui Cruisers." The office was an old shipping container, the staff included a one-eyed mechanic and an attack dog, and the premises were littered with the carcases of several dozen early-80's to mid-90's imports that were being gutted to keep the rest of the fleet running - and I was able to rent a car for about $20 a day. Best deal of the trip by far.

Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to share all of the great information. Guatamala sounds like a great place, and we may try to head down there to check things out if time allows, but it sounds like we could easily burn a couple of weeks just checking out 1/4 of the places that Ryland mentioned. I don't think we're looking to drink umbrella drinks inside a gated resort the whole time, but my wife has been spending 60-80 hours a week cleaning the abcesses out of junkies and sewing up stab/gunshot wounds, etc so something that will provide an escape from that kind of reality is also on the agenda.

Never used them, but when I was in the market it looked like they had some of the same design problems that made the Switchblade on of the worst crampons of all time, most notably secondary points that are so recessed that you have to drop your heel 60 degrees below vertical before they'll engage the ice.

I thought this might be refering to a feeling that one is about to be ground to a pulp by a massive serac fall....

Climb: Mt. Washington-Damnation Gulley Date of Climb: 12/10/2005 Trip Report: This is a cc.com success story. Back in August I went trolling for East Coast partners in a most unlikely place, the cc.com partners forum. My PM box didn't exactly get flooded with responses, but there was one from a guy named Al in New York, who had just lost a longtime climbing partner after the said individual succumbed to the temptations of the mountains out West. It took a while for my e-mail to surmount the mighty firewall that his employer's IT department had errected to weed-out spam messages from purveyors of Nigerian investments and herbal viagra and such, and once things started to cool off out here we started trying to figure out dates and destinations. We chose Mt. Washington as Al has tons of water-ice within a half-hours drive, but not much of the alpine variety. The snowstorm that hit the Northeast the night before didn't make the driving to Mt. Washington especially easy or fast, but I managed to roll into the parking lot at Pinkham Notch before he gave up on me, and then it was off to the Harvard Hut, which had a startling number of vacancies - it looked like we might even have the place to our selves, as at least a dozen hearty souls chose to eschew the comforts of the hut and sleep outside in tents. Both Al and I had already spent a fair number of nights in cold-ass tents, and neither understood nor shared the compulsion that drove these folks to endure gratuituous hardships, but were glad to have the room in the hut. After dropping off the overnight gear, we were off to the gulley, and headed towards a narrow-looking gulley with what looked like a mixture of easy ice and a few rocky-patches that might provide some easy mixed ground to play on which, as luck would have it, is more or less what we found. We climbed unroped up the firm neve until we were within about 20 meters of the first ice step, at which point Al lead until we were out of screws. I followed up and found that the ice was neither terribly difficult, nor terribly good, consisting of an inch-or-two of water ice over faceted snow. Al set a belay, I took the rack, and we set-off on our second running belay, which would take us all the way to the top. The climbing was a mixture of the odd ice-step, easy mixed ground, and a fair amount of turf - most of which provided much better sticks than the ice. I had just enough gear to get to the top, and briefly clambered to the top of the ridge and into sustained winds that, while evidently gentle for Mt. Washington, were nonetheless unpleasant enough to persuade me to retreat a few feet below the rim before setting a quick "belay" and yarding in rope while Al climbed the last stretch below the top. I think our total climbing time was something like two-hours. By this point it was well after dark, but Al had done the descent(s) quite a few times, thus keeping any prospect of an epic nice and remote. The nearly-full moon also helped. In early season conditions the descent seemed to combine the best elements of the trail to the rambles and Asgaard Pass, and by 1/2 of the way down I had tweaked a knee pretty well and was working on a couple of purple toenails, neither of which made for a quick descent on my part. Thankfully Al is a patient guy - or at least he was doing a good impression of one on the descent. After reaching the bottom of the Lions Head trail, we endured an hour-long mini-cluster while trying to find the right trail back to the hut - and then enjoyed good company and tropical conditions in the Harvard Hut. Mt. Washington The Route - I think. Gear Notes: Early season conditions were fun, but the descent would have been faster and more pleasant if the escape-hatch were in condition. Gear - a few screws, supplemented by some nuts and a couple of pins. One sixty-meter half-rope should suffice.

So the climb must be named for the big 'ol mouth just below Marcus's left foot?

Sweet pic of Shark Attack. Impressive stuff.

I had zero climbing goals for 2005 and am on track to accomplish all of them.