JayB

I like the 5.10 ascent on slab climbs. You can get them for cheap on www.sportextreme.com.

Sorry to hear about this. I've been enjoying the kayak.

Have you convinced yourself that bolts haven't brought crowds to Vantage and I-90? It's too bad mental gymnastics is not an Olympic sport. From what I'm reading, local land managers and conservation groups have the opinion that climbers' impacts can be noticed in both the horizontal AND the vertical. Bolts are sometimes sufficient to cause increased climber traffic. They are not always necessary to cause increased climber traffic. There's a difference. There's not a hell of a lot of traffic to the base of the routes that Krakauer and Co established on that ridge in the vicinity of Index, despite the presence of a few dozen bolts in the rock. There was one bolt on all of OS the last time that I climbed it, yet the descent gully was hardly pristine. If you want to preserve access, you have to mitigate impact, and it's just not as simple as eliminating bolts from the equation. Why you chose to pretend otherwise is beyond me. If you are concerned about preserving access to the rocks, there's quite a few more constructive things you can do besides reminding the world how much you dislike bolts. I put in time and money every year to restore routes, remove trash, etc - as have many others. You'd have a lot more credibilty on this one if you walked the talk.

This notion that eliminating sport routes will eliminate crowds, and thereby eliminate or mitigate climbers' impact on the land surrounding the said climbs on its own cannot be sustained in the face of experience. Ever been to Eldo? The Gunks? The Valley? RMNP? Indian Creek?J-Tree? Hardly bastions of sport climbing, and at most of these places, the sport routes that do exist are neglected in favor of moderate trad-routes that are within the range of the average weekend climber. Climber impact tends to be greatest where - surprise - the good climbing is, be it sport, trad, bouldering or any combination thereof. The bottom line is that there are more people out there climbing today than ever before, that's not going to change - and while I am in favor of preserving routes in the manner that they were originally lead, not bolting next to cracks, etc, etc, etc - pining for a return to the days of yore and cursing the realities of the present will do nothing to limit the numbers of climbers out there. The name of the game is working together in an organized fashion so that we are an effective constituency that land managers will listen to, and working with land managers towards common goals whenever possible. That usually means taking concrete actions to mitigate our impact on the landscape surrounding the rock. And this business about the number of climbers increasing solely because bolts has lowered the bar is another tired old canard that should be put to rest. There's no denying that trad climbing is a different game, but we are deluding ourselves if we think that anyone who is reasonably fit and intelligent enough to figure out how to put blocks together couldn't make it to the top of GNS if they wanted to. It's just not that hard. I've seen it happen. For most people, the most daunting aspect of trad climbing isn't using the gear, its coughing up the dough necessary to get their hands on a reasonable rack. As such, it's hardly the preserve of the few and the bold. Another reality which undercuts the notion that the only thing driving increased climber numbers is the bolt-assisted lowering of the bar is the steady increase in the number of ice climbers. Yeah - the equipment's become better, but the essential nature of the activity hasn't changed, and if anything - the trend has been towards higher standards rather than lower ones. Direct aid was a staple of most first ascents in the 70s, but quickly fell out of favor, as have tethers, and now the climbers at the leading edge are even eschewing leashes altogether. Hardly evidence of declining boldness brought on by the hoards of soft, risk averse sods who sought out climbing because they had no appetite for risk.

I would just like to take a moment to point out that here, on cc.com, we have an issue in which Carl and I agree with one another, and Jim and Carl disagree with one another. The end is nigh. Other Observations: -Not one of the signs that the end is nigh, but I think Will was right on in his analysis of when it makes sense to buy a home and when it does not. -The housing price boom ends precisely when the Fed raises rates and takes away the punch-bowl.

"In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us." Yes. Horrible man.

I am of the "Give them enough rope to hang themselves" school of thought with regards to folks like Moore. I can't wait to see what his next "documentary" is, and what - exactly - it will take for the guy to discredit himself in the eyes of his fan base. My guess is the guy could show footage of himself engaged in cannabilistic pedophelia and his fans would write it off as a minor character flaw so long as it was coupled with enough intemperate criticism of corporations, Bush, etc.

Did you get back in on the 25th? I waiting for my girlfriend to come through customs after her trip to Africa and saw someone that looked like a millitary type sporting an altimeter watch get off the escalator at about 5:30 or so and wondered if this was someone returning from Iraq. Looked sort of like the guy in the photo.

Headed down to Lincoln City to spend some time with my best friend, his wife/kids, and extended family before he returns to Iraq for his second tour...and took the kayak out in the surf with a bunch of seals playing in close proximity. Very good weekend.

If only I had that much hair Seriously - if that's all the hostility that I get after that post I will count myself lucky. If someone really wanted to get hostile they would dig up a real photo.

I am not sure that there are actually all that many real relationships destroyed because a guy can't handle his girlfriend climbing harder than him and/or compensating with snide remarks. The primary reason for this is - very few women climb harder than their male partners. This is because on average men are better climbers than women.* I have come across at least a couple of hundred climbing couples in practice, and have yet to ever witness a pair in which the woman obviously outclasses her boyfriend, much less a situation in which the said boyfriend is a dour, doughy, emasculated husk of a man who has to compensate by sending up snide comments from the weak end of the rope. Does it happen - certainly. Is it common? No. Is it common enough to be elevated to "classic relationship killer" status for most women that climb? No. I would venture that in this situation a guy is just as likely to be psyched about latching onto such a badass chick as he is to feel bitter and threatened by it. I have a suspicion that part of this is also due to the fact that for every guy that feels threatened by a female climber of superior abilities there's a woman who isn't comfortable dating a guy that's weaker than she is on the rock, probably for the same reason that very few women are attracted to men that are shorter and/or weaker than they are. Some examples that come to mind are Steph Davis/Dean Potter, Jason/Tiffany Campbell, Beth Rodden/Tommy Caldwell. I have no idea what brought them together or what the nature of the attraction was but it is curious that these ladies - who would absolutely lay waste to 99.99999999999999% percent of the male climbing population chose from amongst the miniscule pool of men who actually climb harder than they do. *Thankfully I am not in need of dates at the moment so I could honestly care less if incite an everlasting hatred in the women that read this board. **I learned to climb trad by following a woman, and she remains one of the boldest, toughest climbers I've ever tied in with. But there's a reason why she had to climb with guys (who climb a hell of a lot harder than I do) when she wanted to hit a route with someone of equal ability.

"Diddler on the Roof" "The Load Warrior" "The Field of Reams" "Lawrence of Alabia" "Roger in Me"

That's a nice synopsis about the reasons people currently oppose the occupation of Iraq - but I was talking about why people opposed the war - as in before it commenced - rather than why people currently object to our presence there. It is clear to anyone who honestly appraises the arguments employed by those who opposed removing Hussein by force prior to the invastion, that the current problems to claim vindiction for an opposition that was based on an entirely different set of arguments. Very few people based their opposition to the war on the grounds that Hussein had no WMD. Didn't see many "Take Saddam's Word for it! There are no WMD in Iraq!" placards on display at the marches, or dangling from the overpasses on Highway 99. The arguments were "No Blood for Oil," the "Dark Cabal of Texas Oilmen" subverting the world's democracies for their own benefit theory (a personal favorite, no?), the tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties that would be a direct result of the offensive, etc, etc, etc - none of which has been validated by events there. Per the current opposition - there's a bunch of nice sentiment there - but I am left wondering how people who hold those sentiments would translate them into any constructive measures on the ground, and how any of them would benefit the Iraqis, whose welfare was -ironically enough - one of the reasons why people supposedly opposed overthrowing Saddam by force. The fact that the welfare of the Iraqi people had nothing whatsoever to do with opposition to the war has been laid bare by the anti-occupation crowds desire to withdraw our forces without any consideration whatsoever on the impact that this would have upon the Iraqis themselves. My prediction is that such a move would lead inexorably to a massive civil war, the implosion of the Iraqi state, and widespread instability in the ME that would generate casualties at least two orders of magnitude greater than those sustained during the war and the subsequent occupation. I am at a loss to understand how advocating the wholesale abandonment of Iraq to its fate constitutes the moral position here.

You are asking the wrong person about what motivated opposition to the war, but the general vibe emmanating from the "Potlucks for Peace" crew and their soulmates on the board here seemed to be that it was purely a strategic gambit to get our hands on Iraq's oil, and that the said gambit would result in the anhiliation of 10s of thousands of Iraqis during the offensive. The consensus also seemed to be that taking a round of inspections followed by ? (you tell me) would be the best way to insure that Hussein and co were deprived of any current stock of WMD in the present and denied access to them in the future. A related theme that seems to have emerged in the wake of the war is that because we found no WMD, any talk about the risks posed by terrorist groups like Al-Queda and their ilk working in conjunction with rogue states was, is, and always will be nothing more than a neocon tactic to enlist support for their agenda. Should this conclusion ever become the operating consensus that governs the behavior of future governments, I suspect that the world will have the opportunity to lament such blindness. This will be especially true if Iraq implodes while the rest of the world does nothing to avert such an outcome.

Not what the people were chanting on the street, kemosabe. A few articles does not equal a mass movement. Doubts about WMD are not what animated opposition to the war. End of story.

"how many major news outlet were critical of the wmd justification, while progressives were crying foul from the get go?" Maybe one in 10,000 - because this was the consensus opinion of every major intelligence agency in the world, there were major stocks unaccounted for, and the regime's conduct gave every reason to believe that they were engaged in an effort to conceal them. This is the reason that no one involved the movement(s) that would have left Saddam in power was going to stake their argument on this issue. An honest appraisal of the arguments set forth for leaving Saddam in power centered around the argument that the US and England were intent on seizing Iraqi oil by force as doing so would result in a net economic gain for both, and that any attempts to remove Hussein would immediately result in tens of thousands of civilian casualties, mass-starvation, etc. Any attempt to claim otherwise is simply not credible.

"If a reporter wants to report on war, the DoD has to be the primary source. If you report stock prices, you get the info from the NYSE. Are they supposed to call Noam Chomsky for the body count of the latest action in Fajullah or the last earnings report for GE?" Exactly. You are faltering, Evil Homonym. That business about "progressive sources" is your weakest point/rebuttal in quite a while, which is really saying something.

I feel your pain. Someone was selling a Werner Freestyle 200cm (not sure if its a RHC or LHC) on the message board at Feathered Friends for $100 a couple of days ago. I bet if you call the shop they'll give you the dude's number.

These would be easy questions to answer if we could look into our future and see the consequences of our decisions and how they influenced our fates. One one hand I am in agreement with Bug, inasmuch as you could conceivably eliminate all risk from your life, hole yourself up Howard Hughes style and still die at an early age. However, if one looks at the probabilities involved, it is clear that the more risk you expose yourself too, the greater the probability that you will die as a consequence of the said risks. So, in the end, I think that most people strike a balance between the risk that they will shorten their lives engaging in the activities that they love and the risk that they will squander their lives, forsake their passions, and suffocate their spirits in an effort to reduce the probability that they will lose their lives doing some of the very things that define what living means to them. I suspect that these competing imperatives are constantly in flux for most people, as is the level of risk that they voluntarily adopt. Tough call.

Sorry to intrude on the collective delerium that prompted this thread, but in the specific context of Nick Berg's death, any assertion that this was the work of the United States Government is nothing more than paranoid speculation with no factual basis whatsoever to support it, and as such is on par with the theories normally issuing forth from the folks dodging the black-helicopters, arming themselves against a UN invasion of the US, and/or feverishly awaiting the moment when they are "raptured" out of the double-wide per Jenkins and Lahaye. Good company to be in.

Two words. Occam's. Razor.

"That two of Littleton's children decided to engineer their own mass killing is what these guys and the Internet crazies don't want to discuss." This was a telling moment in "Bowling for Columbine," as it illustrated two of the film's major weaknesses, the first and most nauseating of which is Moore's shameless attempt to exploit the slaughter at Columbine for personal gain. The second of which is the deliberate distortion of the facts and the horrendously flawed logic that he employed in an effort to lay responsibility for the massacre of the students at Raytheon's feet rather than where it belonged, with the two sick, sorry-ass, dickless pieces of shit who constituted the "Trenchcoat Mafia." Yeah - if it weren't for the corrosive effect which Raytheon's presence had on the town's morals, these two hapless victims of the said corrosion might have known that the serial execution of their classmates was wrong. Right - these two individuals weren't responsible for what happened, the blame doesn't rest squarely on their shoulders - they were just two more victims of that horrible corporation. Jesus Fucking Christ.

Yea. Seven >

Always been good for me as well. Free shipping and no tax are two major factors that have earned them my orders.

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm thinking late July.