JayB

"Our ascents get nominated for Piolet D'Or, I think we are doing pretty good job at this moment." Hell - you've got the west face of Gasherbrum IV from 20 years ago. I can think of anything that has bettered that effort since then. Anyhow - I still think Bertulius should be given the B.O.D. until he has a chance to respond. The discrepancy between the cash output (10,000 USD) and the monetary value of the prize (3,000CP) suggests that a misunderstanding of the facts (copies of the film were available for $60) than intentional malice was the root cause of the problem, for me anyway.

Sucks. I know tons of people who have done things quite a bit more foolish than this guy who have lived. Including myself...

The only place where snowshoers are consistently as fast or faster than skiers is in steep, heavily wooded terrain.

Doesn't this thing have to pass the Senate as well? That might allow time to contact Senators before the bill is written into law.

Bob: I'm glad that you and others drew attention to this situation so that the original film-maker gets the credits and the awards that are due to him for this effort. However - I don't think that someone like Alex Bertulius is out to cheat anyone here. He' been around the climbing world long enough to establish his character, and if he was the kind of guy who was into lying, cheating, and stealing I think those elements of his character would have revealed themselves long ago. AFAIK he's widely respected in the community, and has been for a long time, so perhaps everyone following the situation should give the guy the benefit of the doubt until he has a chance to respond. I can't imagine that Mr. Bertulius, being a rational fellow, would intentionally shell out $10,000 of his own cash so that he could win prize money that amounts to less than one-third of that total. It sounds to me like he made an honest - and in hindsight probably somewhat embarassing - mistake that could have been rather easily prevented by contacting the Polish Mountaineering Community. I think in the end both sides will benefit. Alex Bertulius will see his investment pay off in that a movie that he thought highly enough of to spend $10,000 restoring will get the worldwide audience that he obviously though it deserved, and the filmmaker will see a major upsurge in interest in this work, and any others that he may have made - and, in all likelihood - credit, recognition, and prizes from the BMFF . When there's a committee involved, things move slowly, so I think everyone should just chill out for a bit before letting the recriminations fly. On a somewhat related topic, Bob, I've seen you write elsewhere that you think that Polish climbers have historically received much less recognition than they deserve for their ascents (relative to other countries). Is this a true reflection of your feelings, and does this episode bother you in its own right or because its another example of Polish climbers getting the international shaft?

The purple ascensions are still the way to go. No one has improved on them IMO.

This is an excellent tip. My only other comment on this matter is that you really have to practice this - in a realistic manner - to become proficient enough to use it effectively in the mountains, where your difficulties may be compounded by darkness, wind, snow, etc. Once you've got the three person drill dialed, set something up (with the appropriate backups) where you'll feel the full force of a person's weight pulling on you, and you have to establish an anchor/escape the belay/rig and tend a pulley system. Each step has unique challenges and complications that you have to experience and overcome first hand. It took me about three repetions before I felt like I'd actually be able to execute it on my own in a real situation. Oddly enough, I felt that transferring the load to the anchor was the least complicated part, and only ran into real problems when trying to set-up a pulley system. After I pulled some rope through the system by moving away from the anchors, I would have to move back towards the anchors to move the prusiks a few feet further down the loaded strand, and when I did so all of the rope that I had moved through the system got pulled back out by the load on the rope, and I ended up just yo-yoing the guy on the end of the rope up and down. The next time, I affixed a Tibloc in front of the first pulley in the place of a prusik, which essentially made this pully into a one way system - I pulled the rope through the pulley and it ran freely through the Tibloc, but when I stopped hauling the and a few inches of rope moved backwards in the direction of the load, theTibloc caught it and this enabled me to tend the elements of the pulley system more freely (the tibloc and the anchor were holding the load strand in place, rather than tension supplied by me), and haul the load on the end of the rope more efficiently. Essentially this worked like having a mini-traxion as the loaded pulley. As I am sure others will note, there are some hazards associated with having a hauling system that is not reversible (for at least a few feet) and may suggest ways to deal with this problem via some cordalette sized cord, a munter-mule, etc.

I am confused as to why anyone believes that a hand-count of correctly marked ballots would be more accurate than optical scanning. Toss a small box full of confetti on the floor, have 20 different people count the pieces, and you are virtually certain to get 20 different results. Amplify the number to 2.8 million, hand the counting over to people with varying degrees of mental acuity and thoroughness and it's hard to believe the results would be more more valid than an automated process. The only argument that can be made for a manual recount is on those ballots where the marking, and hence, the voter intent, is unclear. Haven't they already done this though?

Don: Can you pre-order the guide through the publisher?

Word. Good to have FW Back. Please put your pictures back up in the gallery as well!

I think Lee pretty well covered it - the only other things that stood out about the experience were the sunset over Stuart and Sherpa, the sheer oddity of the marine-mammalesque sounds that the lake was croaking out for the duration of our stay, and how much the hike out sucked in tennis shoes. I can add some photos to Lee's description though, so here you go... Mark enjoying the highlight of any early season route in the Colchuck Cirque... The Bivy - an oasis in a sea of talus. The drip more or less directly over Mark's head looked like it would make for a cool early season route with a bit more snow/ice coverage. Any info out there? The route - we traversed in from the right, past the hibernating larches and into the couloir above the first bare step. Looking directly up the route. We headed for the mungy ice on the left. Mark and Lee hanging out at the belay while we test the integrity of the snow (hence the belay) in the lower portion of the couloir. Close-up of the step. Grade wise, it was on the interesting side of trivial. Maybe AI/WI2+ as a result of the thin, friable ice. Lee clearing the last of the steps, midway up the couloir. Looking back at Mark and Lee at the start of the infinite running belay... Typical terrain en route to the summit. The majestic sunset. The view of Stuart and Sherpa was so striking it almost made me forget the fact that we had yet to summit, and there was still a bit of climbing to be done. Mark and Lee on the summit. The Cast of Gapers... Yours Truly AlpineDreamer (Mark) LeeJams (Lee)

No time to type up the TR and sort through the photos just yet, but here's a visual update on conditions. Lots of nasty clouds moving in just as we were leaving the summit on Sunday night, so there may be more snow up there now. I would say that just about all of the routes need a considerable amount of snowfall, followed by a solid melt-freeze cycle before it's worth investing the time and energy required to make the trip up there. Also - the big early season snowfall that hit in September (?) was a one off event, and the dry cool conditions have morphed most of what fell into faceted crystals topped off by a melt-freeze crust. Take that into account when you are sizing up condititions this winter.

Your best bet is to pick up a copy of Alex and Jason's "Washington Ice: A Climber's Guide" or something like that. It should be in stock at all the local climbing shops and/or Amazon. There's usually some ice around, but the TRable stuff is pretty limited.

Colchuck.

For most conspiracy theorists, the presence or absence of any conclusive evidence to support their pet theory is entirely secondary to the non-rational motivations that govern their belief systems. "The have fooled the masses, but I am too clever and have seen through their plan, I have special knowledge that renders me part of a select group..." etc, etc, etc. A quick survey of the groups that dispute the fact that humans have set foot on the moon should be instructive in this regard. Interesting from a psychological perspective, but I can't believe anyone outside of the compound actually takes their claims seriously.

On a related topic - I have witnessed a couple of relationships where women ditched dudes that they were outclimbing, outskiing, or whatever and swapped them out for men who were able to ski/climb/etc harder than they could. That made me wonder if some women, despite protests to the contrary, are more comfortable being with a man that's a bit "manlier" than they are. In this day and age, that would certainly be a cause for internal shame and self-flagellation worth of the priest in the Scarlet Letter - being more comfortable in a relationship where the traditionaly gender roles are intact. This could very well be the only love that dare not speak its name these days...

I had a female climbing partner for a couple of years, and she was always climbing at least a number grade harder on sport and a couple of number grades higher on trad, and was, all in all the toughest person I've climbed with. She fell of of her bike and had a puking fit in the Leadville 100 (mile) mountain bike race, got pissed off, and finished 2nd out of all the women - including pros. She would also do two routes on the Diamond in a single push, etc. When climbing with her - more than anything, I felt inspired by what she was able to do. In general when a woman is competent and has attributes that aren't all that common - knows how to work on a car, etc - that's attractive, not a threat. When I see climbers that I feel like I should be outperforming (whether male or female) - a dude that's sporting 50lbs of extra weight, someone who hasn't been climbing very long, just starting to lead trad, etc - and they succeed at something that I elected not to climb for some reason or another - that definitely makes me reappraise my thinking and brings on the "If he/she can do it..." type thinking.

I am going to have to work late to compensate for arriving at the crack of 1:15 to start the workday, but can summarize the outing. -The morraine sucks. Big time. We had breakable crust on top of faceted depth hoar all the way up. -The Northeast Buttress Couloir (we climbed the NE Couloir described in the second edition of Nelsons book) looked like it has zero snow on the lower 2/3 of the route. If you are into infinite drytooling, this may be the time to hit it. The NE couloir, on the climber's right, had a bit of everything. The very bottom of the couloir has a thin-ice flow on the left side, above which is a bare rock step. We bypassed this on the right, then broke left into the couloir just above the dry step. There were some brief steps covered with thin ice that we encountered about 1/3 of the way up, which we belayed and protected with pins, a bad screw, and a girth hitched refrozen snow-thingy. We climbed the remainder of the couloir with a running belay, using rock pro (mostly pins) and a picket. We encountered more of the breakable crust over faceted snow here, as well as some world class crawl-stroke-through-waist-deep-spindrift-over-ice action as well. -Above the couloir, the going was mostly easy. We continued with the running belay until the snow ran out, then did some 4th class-ish scrambling on choss (getting dark), then broke out the rope again for a 100 foot section featuring more of the faceted snow over slabs and choss (fully dark by this time), which I surmounted with a combination of profanity and some dirt-tooling, then continued on through the secret notch on the left that puts you on the summit. -We topped out well after dark, but I think this was my fourth time doing the descent, and the second time on the route, so I more or less had it memorized, but if there wasn't at least one person in the group who knew the route it could have definitely turned into an epic (we would most likely have rapped the couloir if I hadn't done the route before). We made it back to the cars by 2:30AM. Final thoughts - classic alpine smorgasboard, quite a bit more involved on the way up and down than in April (big suprise there), and probably not the best outing to introduce the girlfriend to the joys of alpine climbing on. Will try to post photos and TR tomorrow. Lee - feel free to post some of your photos if you are still awake..

Where in the Hell is Gaston Lagoffe? Our very own 6 foot 6 Icelander. I was surprised to learn from him that Icelanders are way into supermodified American 4x4 diesel rigs that run up to $100K, the ultimate being a mega-modified Ford Econoline that can rip up the glaciers. They are working on the hydrogen thing but for now at least some of them dig the American horsepower. Guilty pleasure perhaps. Anyway - Iceland does sound pretty cool, and we may all benefit from the fact that they've licensed out their genome for research...

Erecting regulations to prevent consumers from obtaining the goods they need from the least expensive vendor is hardly a policy that represents the interests of the people that the arguments for greater regulation of commerce are supposedly intended to benefit. What you actually end up doing is creating a local set of tarriffs that protect business owners and force local consumers - a great many of whom are lower income in rural areas - to pay a higher price for the things that they need. This more or less amounts to a direct tax on the poor, which suppresses commerce when they are deprived of the resources that they could elect to spend on other wants or needs, the gratification of which would provide business for other local contractors, businesses, etc. The notion that Walmart destroys local economies is an economic fallacy cherished by the same sort of people who believe that forcing employers to pay a "living wage" will actually reduce poverty, when an incontestable body of emperical data and theory have proven otherwise for decades. By artifically increasing wages beyond the range that the market will support you inflate away any increase in purchasing power that folks on the low end gain from mandatory wage increases, and increase unemployment directly by inducing layoffs and suppressing hiring - all of which make things materially worse for those on the low end of the earnings scale.

Am I wrong or are all Subarus built on a box-welded frame?

There was also that little accord between Molotov and Ribbentrop in 1939 that might have had something do to with Poland's political fortunes...

Chile would definitely be tops in SA. They seem to have gotten away from the "Let's have a revolution and impoverish ourselves to spite the gringo." ethos that has permeated the rest of the continent for the last 90 years or so. Carlo's Rangel's "The Latin Americans" is a great primer on the above topic.

But back to the subject at hand - I would probably opt for Australia, New Zealand, and Canada in that order. I suppose England would rank a distant fourth.

Check into the Van Gogh murder and the subsequent response by the state and the citizenry. Any place with a small population, that's essentially homogeneous in racial composition, ancestry, and language can boast some pretty impressive stats. I think that Minnesota, if it were a country, would rank right up there with Scandanavia in all of the relevant stats. Once they have to contend with the problems that they have been insulated from for most of their recent history, things change in a hurry. Again - check the Van Gogh situation for portents of things to come.