JayB

You know you love that shit. Face it - you are just pissed off because you registered under your real name and don't get to bask in the glory of revealing that you are, in fact, the man behind the "CLIMBATRON4000" or "CAMMINATOR" or "CRANKENSTEIN" handle....

The routes on Lane Peak in the Tatoosh might be worth checking out.

Any data on what caused the variation in carbon loading back before the internal combustion engine? I can see cooler temps leading to less abundant plant life/algal proliferation and carbon fixation dropping in response - but its not clear to me what would cause an increase in CO2 emissions over time cycles like that. The trough-to-trough interval seems like about 100,000 years. Interesting data though.

Wasn't 2002 also the driest, hottest summer in history in the PNW? Or was that 2003? Alzheimer's is taking its toll -already... Anyhow - agreed. It'd be just as valid to show a photo of a snowman built in February 1985 and February 2002, and contrast these shots with photos of the said snowman a month after completion. But then again - I feel the same way about the retards who chime in every there's a new single temperature/weather data point that deviates significantly from the mean and uses that to argue for or against climate change. Nothing like a hot day in January or a snowstorm in late June to asses long term, global cycles...

One question worth asking is - why did the small stores go out of business? Seems like the stores that would be at greatest risk are those that make the bulk of their money selling mid-to-upper-mid range soft goods that also carry some gear on the side - and I can see this sort of operation getting crushed by REI. Then again - maybe this is an essential part of any outdoor retailer's income stream and it's simply impossible to get by on high-end gear alone. My hunch is that small stores that focus on selling higher-end gear, and combine a solid selection of hardgoods with put folks on the floor that are friendly, helpful, and know the area - and take care of their customers with great service - are less susceptible to competition from REI - and might even benefit from it. This might be the reason that Feathered Friends moved right across the street from REI when they opened their flagship store - they sensed an opportunity to serve a market that REI couldn't. In Colorado springs the more REIesque gear store went out of business a couple of years after REI opened a store there, and the higher end shop is still going strong.

Squid - if you were the Left incarnate, something roughly akin to the ideological equivalent of the Dali Lama - then my argument would certainly fall flat. However personally flattering this notion might be, your identity as such was hardly the foundation that my argument was constructed upon. I propose that there were plenty of Leftists alive before you were born - that many of these same people are still alive, and that the smany of the said people who were waving the pompoms for Mao, Kruschev, Fidel, Che et al back in the day are the same ones who consider corporations to be one of the more dire threats to humanity at the moment. Given the respective death toll that one can attribute to A) Corporations and B) Collectivist regimes this stance seems rather odd, especially when contrasted with the blithe indifference with which many of the older folks whom you presumably share a common ideology with greeted the news that the states that they looked upon so fondly - had actually extinguished three times more of their people than all of the world wars combined had killed off. Given the present array of dangers that humanity is confronting at the moment, this fixation on corporations as a leading threat to mankind seems equally odd. The fact that every single person who has adopted this ethos either directly or indirectly owes their health and material well-being to corporations in some fashion or another represents puzzling evasion of reality - but that's a rant for another time.

As opposed to those great rulers of the right? Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, various African dictators - it's ok to imprison and bully minorities, not to mention the populace at large, as long as it's in the name of law and order, right? I could compare the popular support that say, Hitler and Mussolini enjoyed on the American right after 1940 to the present, and the idelogical cheerleading that the various men at the helms of the aforementioned regimes have received from the American left since then - not to mention their comrades in Europe and elsewhere - and proceed on and on and on - but that would be a digression from my intended point earlier, which was to point out that for those of us who were never waving the pompoms for economic collectivism - which has been the foundation that every totalitarian regime has been built upon - it is rather puzzling to see people who didn't bat an eyelid during the Terror Famine, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, et all get worked up over....corporations.

The only thing that has preserved the North Korean regime all of these years are the 20,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul. One collective yank on the lanyards and Seoul and all of its inhabitants are toast. They have very litttle, if any capacity to hit the US at this point, and when and if they ever get it, they are not about to go mano-y-mano with the US with nukes. I think our doctrine calls for an immediate 100-fold retaliation on any state that launches an ICBM at us.

Like I've said at least twice before: If Gore had won the election in 2000 and had been in office when 9/11 happened, and had he done exactly what Bush did in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, all roles would be reversed: The Repubes would be anti-war and the Democrasses would be pro-war. And before all you liberal hippies make that smug comment that Gore would have never, let me just tell you ahead of time to save it and STFU. Too bad we missed out on the spectacle of the usual suspects pontificating about Bob Dole's imperial designs on Kosovo, how it was all about the oil, etc, etc. That would have been killer..

"...with such willing swallowers." I think that the Clinton administration actually set the standard for this one. Bdump-chink.

Lefties managed to kill off a good 80-100 million third world peasants in the various workers manifestations of a "Worker's Paradise" that they established around the globe last century. Lenin/Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al - remember those guys? Terror Famine, Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward - never aquainted oneself with these Great Moments in Leftism? Such innocence... I guess the message is that it's okay to eliminate 80-100 million people so long as the slaughter is accompanied by the appropriate rhetoric. Amazing stuff - it's still okay to talk fondly about Mao et all, but the CEO of Walmart is the devil incarnate.

Oh Jesus Christ. If I weren't an agnostic I'd be praying that the Democratic leadership continues to espouse the frightened-inbred-retards-in-jesusland rationale quite vocally until the next elections roll around.

Climb: Out-of-Date TR Gunn Peak -- OutGunned-Worthless Gulley Failure Route Date of Climb: 4/24/2004 Trip Report: As befits the best ski-season I can remember, I have decided to tell the tale of one of the most incredible days I've ever logged on a pair of skis. As-per the usual protocol, HappyCamper (Scott) and I arrived at Bronco's (Ryan's) house right on time - if not a bit early , and after transfering the mass of impeccably packed gear into Ryan's subcompact Toyata Prius hybrid, we set off for the trailhead and Gunn Peak. I had logged at least 10 hours of sleep the night before and had all of my gear packed and ready to go a week beforehand, so I was alert and extremely engergetic during the drive. Things looked promising through the windshield, with plentiful snow, and no sign of loose rock, moss, gullies, and and/or an infinity of slide alder. Because of my assiduous packing in advance of the trip, I was ready to go in just under 10 seconds.So we packed up, and headed for the goods approximately 45 seconds after turning off the ignigition. We effortlessly crossed the river and in so doing displayed balance and grace that would have - literally - made the every last member Romanian Oympic Gymnastics team weep with envy. Shortly thereafer, we made good time and carefully skirted the patches of slide alder and made sure to give all of the choss filled gullies a wide berth, because lugging 185's and through that kind of shit would have sucked in a major way. We turned around and took at look at the North Face of Baring, dismissively chuckled at the legions of posers who hyped up their weak-ass routes on what had to be one of the more trivial looking faces in the Cascades, and continued up without ever complaining about the conditions or castigating ourselves for engaging in the manifest futility of such an endeavor. When we arrived at the snowline, we were all pissed off because the approach hadn't even begun to make us breathe hard, let alone tap into our energy reserves - so we put the skins on and crushed the remaining approach in record time -scrupulously avoiding all breaks and maintaining a serious demeanor so as to insure success on our chosen objective. Despite the fact that we had already eclipsed our turnaround time by time the descent route on Gunn was in site - the real reason we turned around was because the line just looked way to gay for us to bother with. So we chose a suitable objective - the daunting 36 foot west face of the unnamed subpeak above us. We eschewed protection and soloed the perilous 25 degree snow face to the summit. I wanted to savor the day's accomplishments for a moment or two atop the summit, but Ryan, being the sensible one, turned towards me with a wild look in his eye and screamed "THERE'S NO TIME!!!!!!!!!!" He was right of course - we still had the daunting 250 vertical foot descent to the top of the gulley waiting for us. The tension was high as we began the descent - as one false move would virtually guarantee a turn that was not competely satisfying - and none of us wanted to risk that. After surviving the daunting descent, part of which required a pole plant - we returned to the descent route, once again using superior routefinding to avoid all loose rock, sludge, lichen, underbrush, minor-waterfalls, slide alder, and all of the other elemental nuisances that might have led lesser beings into the throes of mild-cluster on the descent. We returned directly to the truck long before any concern about thrutching through slide debris in the dark had even begun to manifest itself in our head, and upon returning home I rode 10 miles to the gym and did 80 sets of powercleans with 225 pounds on the bar so that I would actually feel fatigued. Gear Notes: Should have borrowed some 225 downhill boards and old-school yellow Lange's for the approach/desent. One-piece ski-suit with neon-accents may have also been useful.

Nice to see that the cc.com dogpile is still in full effect after all of these years. I bet that Dan Larson is getting all misty-eyed recalling his glory days as the epicenter of abuse while perusing this one...

I think that Carl's view is consistent with the historical consensus concerning the court packing episode.

Argh. How about once every year or so we have an occaision when someone can actually post something where they are honest about what they were feeling and thinking without you reflexively whipping out the chestbeat card - Eh? Mike - thanks for taking the time to post that stuff and share the stories. I sort of knew in a vague, offhand sort of way that both of those experiences had to suck - but I don't think that my imagination did them justice. I especially liked the unwashed-surly-bearded guy amongst the schoolkids bit. I remember being in a similar state - except in this case I was just very sick rather than injured - after a few days out in the desert near Escalante Utah; dirty, bearded, and looking generally dishevelled while moaning to myself occaisionally, and in the process causing the migratory-mini-van set to look on in perplexed disgust while giving me a wide berth. On one level I was amused, but it didn't take long (like 1/2 hour) before the experience started to have a Stanford-Prison-Experimentesque feel to it - and I began to look forward to a shave, a shower, and a look that would not cause people to clutch their children and scuttle in the opposite direction...

There is actually a book out there called "The Sexual Politics of Meat" which supposedly argues that white males used consumption of animal protein to fortify themselves for the conquest and continual subordination of women and minorities -- or something like that. Must be high on the vegan reading list. Just in case you thought I was joking... Here It Is "I first read THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT in 1990. I had just become a vegetarian. This book connected my feminist politics with my vegetarian politics. This book was a groundbreaking work in ecofeminist theory. Ms. Adams shows how a patriarchal society oppresses animals, women and the very planet Earth itself. She shows us how our dietary choices can be a resistance to the oppressive patriarchal status quo. This book continues to empower me. In 2004 this book is more relevant than ever" "I could go on & on about this book. It is one the most inspiring and thought-provoking books I've ever read. I first read this book around the time I became a Vegan, developed a serious interest in Sociology, and earned a greater respect for Feminism. To truly appreciate and understand this book, one has to read it with an open mind. Some of the concepts and theories may seem extreme or abstract at first, but I suggest that people give Adams's text time to marinate." "Engaging overview, from a post-structuralist/postmodern vantage point, of the linkage between meat-eating and patriarchy and feminism and vegetarianism. One of the purposes of the book is to emphasize the role of the "absent referent" as an essential influence on cultural and social discourse. In doing so, Adams calls attention to the ways in which acceptable modes of thinking and behaving are structured within the cultural framework. All in all, a very readable, well-researched, and engrossing examination of the integral connections (oppression) between vegetarianism and feminism." "I was so moved by this extraordinary text. Interrogating the assumptions of white male Women beaters/meat eaters, this important work examines how the white dominating and oppressive culture dictates that the eating of meat is 'good' and even 'necessary', subject Peoples of Color to dietary regimes alien to their own subjectivities. As the writer notes, there is considerable resistance among patriarchal-dominated discourses to vegetarianism. This resistance is a form of textual rape, to be combatted by a 'taste of their own medicine': "A vegetarian writer may express feelings about textual violation by referring to images of butchered animals and raising the issue of dismemberment." A wonderful book, highly recommended." Surely a wonderful companion to "The Sexual Politics of K2 Ascents"...

There is actually a book out there called "The Sexual Politics of Meat" which supposedly argues that white males used consumption of animal protein to fortify themselves for the conquest and continual subordination of women and minorities -- or something like that. Must be high on the vegan reading list.

Big Gnarly Unclimed (east face?) on Whitehorse. North face of Baring in winter...

If you eat, drink, and even smoke in moderation you'll live just as long as everyone else, and enjoy life a hell of a lot more. If people want to eat a certain way for ethical reasons then I applaud them for walking the talk, but the pseudoscientific ramblings that often go along with them get old quickly. After having the misfortune of sitting next to some chick espouse the wonders of eating only raw foods for an entire airplane ride, I wonder how long anyone who wasn't also drinking the coolaid would have found her sexy - even though she was fairly attractive otherwise. If nothing else - if you are a vegetarian you are less likely to be a fatass, which might even be enough of a plus to override the shrill/dogmatic/self-righteous persona that often accompanies the practice....

Wow. Even more vapid that I had imagined. Interesting observation when contrasted with the effervescent individualism that flourished in China and the Eastern Bloc this past century....

What was No Logo's central argument again? Something like brands are bad because they use advertising to promote a naive consumerism amongst the populace? The pillars of capitalism will surely buckle under the weight of that argument....

Sweet. Must have been inspired by my photo of "Sloan"...

The chickens will come home to roost in a big way when Celine puts on a free Canada Day concert on a barge moored near Squamish. The foundations of your little hamlet will crumble when the sub-woofers kick in during the Titanic Theme dance mix.... BTW - you guys can definitely hang onto Naomi Klein...

I would just like to point out that while Celine may have originated in this country, she'd be working at a Tim Horton's in Chicoutimi if it weren't for all her adoring AMERICAN fans throwing fist-fulls of money at her every time she opens her mouth. I mean, sure, we let her get out in the first place, and that's clearly our bad, but if you honestly want her to go home, then for God's sake STOP FEEDING HER!! She desperately needs to feel adored by someone, anyone, and in the US she's found vast throngs of the pathetic, fawning idolators that sustain her. As far as I can tell, she's there because you people want her there, and you're welcome to her. Let's face it - you Americans can't get enough of that dreck (or "dreque", in Celine's case). Not only do you keep all the Celine Dion's and Kenny G's and Yianni's of the world on artificial life support in order to satisfy your pathological craving for schlock, but you're actively scouring the country hoping to find more. This "American Idol" thing you're all addicted to is the pop music equivalent of drilling for oil in ANWR. Instead of constantly trying to increase your supply, maybe you should start weaning yourselves from that crap before it kills you. And I, for one, can remember when Bryan Adams played Rock & Roll - Gawd, how old does that make me? You are not gettting off of the hook that easily Murray. The citizens of Canada need to realize that they cannot inflict this kind of aesthetic crimes on the rest of humanity indefinitely and expect to be insulated in your little northern citadel when the rest of the world gets fed up and decides to retaliate. The first step in preventing the US from engaging in its own "unprovoked" attacks on your sensibilities is to look deep inside your Canadian souls and yourselves "why do they innundate us?" Maybe then, and only then, will you begin to understand the changes you be capable of constructing an entertainment policy that makes your entertainers and programs less despised abroad, and keeps you safe in your barcoloungers..