JayB

Or maybe just this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_That_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs Time will tell.

Agreed - but it's easier to do that when the number of Sherpas willing to risk everything for the pay on offer goes down, or the number of wealthy foreigners willing to pay them for the service goes up. If there were throngs of Sherpas clamoring for the privilege of hauling loads over crevasses descending on every expedition I don't think their efforts to keep other Sherpas out of the guiding/portering workforce would be terribly effective.

As far as the Sherpas are concerned, I think the question is not why wealthy first world climbers have been willing to spend a relative pittance to have Sherpas do all of the most dangerous and grueling work for them, but why Sherpas have been willing to accept a relative pittance for doing so for as long as foreigners have been coming to the Himalaya to climb the mountains there. IMO obvious answer is that the Sherpas live in a region where material poverty is endemic and desolating, there are few if any ways to make anything like the money they can by guiding, and there have always been more than enough Sherpas willing to risk their lives guiding in exchange for the opportunity make enough money to significantly reduce the level of material hardship that they or their families will have to endure. Unless and until the majority of Sherpas have opportunities to make a comparable living doing something less risky than chaperoning wealthy foreigners up their mountains, that'll continue to be the case. Ironically enough, the fact that Sherpas are finally starting to demand more pay for the incredible risks that they take is the one and only bit of good news that I could glean from this story. To me that says that perhaps the Sherpa's economic situation has improved enough that 1) they are no longer willing to risk so much for so little, and 2) that they are relatively confident that they can do so without significantly crimping the demand for their services and undermining the primary driver of their increased incomes. I sincerely hope that's the case.

Words to live by....

"Misunderstanding The CPS has decided to take no further action in four other cases of alleged FGM. In one of those cases it was alleged that two parents had arranged for their daughter to undergo female genital mutilation while abroad. In another, a suspect contacted an FGM helpline to request the procedure for his two daughters after misunderstanding the purpose of the service for victims." http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26681364

Thanks for the input - I always liked to have a full-suspension helmet for alpine/chossy routes where I was mostly worried about taking a hard-hit from above, and a foam helmet where I was mostly worried about the impact from a lead-fall. I haven't shopped for a new climbing helmet since ~2008, but it looks like just about all of the old war-horse models have been discontinued, and that only CAMP is selling an old-style suspension helmet. They must have data that supports the ~100% shift to rigid-outer-shell+compressible-foam designs but I'd also like to see it. It's also interesting to compare the price-points for climbing helmets vs other sports. The industry-standard kayaking helmet retails for ~$250-$350 depending on whether you get the full face option or not, and I see them on tons of boaters, but I'm guessing that no one would buy a $350 climbing helmet even if it offered significantly better protection/performance, despite the fact that the risk of a lethal blow is roughly in the same ballpark (though minor shots to the noggin are way more likely in kayaking).

I'd strongly suggest making a set of back-up plans. You might luck out and get great weather, but the typical weather pattern will be working against you. I'd scope out alpine options east of the cascade crest if the forecast looks terrible (like in the Mt. Stuart/Enchantments area or possibly east of the crest on Highway 20 if it's open), smaller objectives in the immediate area (Tatoosh range), or Oregon volcanoes to avoid getting totally shut down and spending all or your time tent-bound, or pursuing an ascent in conditions that would send you packing if you were a local and not under pressure to tick a summit in the short time window allowed by your vacation. A significant chunk of the rescues/accidents/fatalities on Rainier seem to involve non-local folks who are on a tight timeline and have been planning, packing, and training for the climb for so long that they are (understandably) more reluctant to abandon a climb or turn around than they would be if they didn't feel like they had quite so much at stake. Anyhow - here's to hoping that you have good weather and the climb works out. Post a TR here when your done.

I think that you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned weather. The weather normally doesn't stabilize until about the 10th-15th of July, and until that time you've got the potential for sustained storms. Other than weather, the only factor that I would add to the list of concerns would be snowpack stability on some portions of the route in the periods between storms. Otherwise - might be a great time to fire up the route and notch a ski descent.

With very impressive results, I might add!

All very convincing and compelling gents, but what to do about the folks at "UNITE HERE [which] represents members across North America who work in the hospitality industry, airports, food service, gaming, laundry, textile, manufacturing, and Transportation" industries. Very puzzling.

"Ironically, the Administration's own signature healthcare victory poses one of the most immediate challenges to redressing inequality. Yes, the Affordable Care Act will help many more Americans gain some health insurance coverage, a significant step forward for equality. At the same time, without smart fixes, the ACA threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage." Et tu, "Unite here?" http://www.unitehere.org/ http://www.unitehere.org/files/unitehere-obamacare-report.pdf

Interesting. I took a hit in an old Petzl Ecrin that felt like getting walloped by a Louiseville-slugger right across the forehead. I never saw the rock - I just heard a click above me, glanced up, saw a dark streak heading towards me, dropped my head, and got knocked clean off my feet and onto my back. I had bruise on my head in the pattern of the helmet-suspension for about a week. It was always my hunch that at least part of what saved me, and part of how the helmet worked, was the rock skipping/deflecting off of the rigid surface and thereby imparting less force to my head. Intuitively at least, it seems like a soft/easily-deformable helmet would "catch" the rock more than a rigid/slick helmet like the Ecrin Roc and allow the rock to transfer more of the force to your head upon impact. This is probably just speculative internet wankery that has little or no practical bearing on actual climbing situations, and once you cross a certain threshold every impact will be lethal - but even if I'd simply been knocked unconscious for a significant length of time or impaired in some other way, it would have been a very bad scene as it was getting late in the day, it was something like -25C, and there was not a heck of a lot my wife could have done to get me down 2-300 vertical feet of talus and across a semi-frozen river on her own. Could be wrong but I can't help but wonder if a soft-foam helmet would have protected me as well in that situation. All of which is a long way of asking whether there are still situations where a rigid helmet with a suspension is likely to perform better, or if are they totally outmoded now?

http://www.kirotv.com/ap/ap/washington/avalanche-hits-crystal-mountain-resort-chairlift/nd9nC/

I have a pair (Fischer S-Bound112) that I've been using for a couple of years to tow my daughter up and down stuff like Amabilis or Gold Creek road in a chariot ski carrier, and the occasional tour Here's my take: -Great for rolling terrain. Also potentially useful (when paired with skins)when you heading to/from an objective with a ton of gentle ups-and-downs on the (long) approach. -Grip is best on heavy/wet or spring snow. -The advice to commit to keeping the skins unless you know that you'll only be encountering mild ups and downs is spot on. -The texture significantly slows you down on mild descents - like longish logging roads with a packed-down surface that only have a slight pitch. Your friends with regular skis will quickly/effortlessly glide out of view while you are striding away a long ways behind them. Not an issue if you won't be using them on that sort of surface. If you spend a lot of time touring super-mellow terrain and want to minimize the hassle/weight associated with skins then they might be worth picking up. They could also work out if you want to make some turns on super-mellow terrain, and might be handy for accessing/exiting side-country stuff from the lifts and want to save yourself some skating/booting.

IMO skis that are good for the BC (light) are a bit skittish on groomers, tracked out powder, etc. I haven't followed BC ski lineups in quite a while, but it might be worth searching the "freshiezone" forum for "One ski quiver" threads. Anything modern, about 100-105 underfoot, 170-180cm with a bit of tip-rocker will probably serve you well. The first ski that come to mind is something like the DPS Wailer - but like I said - do some searching or post your question in the "Freshiezone" and you'll probably get some more up-to-date responses. I'd also add that you should really consider starting out with Dynafit bindings right out of the gate if you're learning to ski with the objective of eventually logging lots of days in the BC.

"But is there any harm in buying boots and skis/bindings now and trying them out in the resort before the season ends?" Zero. I know lots of people who ride inbounds with their AT gear, and it works perfectly for what they want to do - which generally doesn't include ripping mogul lines, hitting drops, etc. If your goal is to log mileage and vert so that you can build your skill up to a level where your BC outings are more enjoyable, then buy now and start lapping the resort in them. Get enough time in and you'll be all set to enjoy all of the spring BC skiing, which can easily stretch into July.

Nice Jay, I hope there is some video or at least photographic evidence. Aleve is all you could get your hands on? None by anyone that I was skiing eith, but I think there's a reasonably good chance that the whole episode was captured and simulstreamed on some social media site that I'm too old and lame to be aware of under the heading "#GAPERDADHUCKFAILLOLLOLOL!!"

Interesting. I think I was simultaneously having a middle-age/midlife-crisis moment at Crystal. There's a drop to the skier's left of the High Campbell chair that I'd been fantasizing about pulling a superman front-flip off of since 1987. I can't even remember why, other than it was something that we'd occasionally work into powder days back in junior high. Pretty lame as skiing fantasies go, and the drop itself is not the least bit impressive, but for some reason it was hard to shake. I was looking at the telemetry reports the night before, started mulling things over, and decided that I wasn't getting any younger so tomorrow would be the day. High time to get that monkey off of my back and put it to rest so that I could finally start focusing on this whole "soul skiing" thing that I'd been hearing middle age guys carry-on about for the past 30 years. The snow was bottomless, the time had come, and I duly set the rotation at the edge. My first thought was. "Hey - I think I might pull this off!" The next was "I have no idea what I'm doing in the air, or if I'm looking at sky or snow." That was followed by "Well....this won't be so bad. I hope." Landing flat on my back didn't seem so bad, and the three days of whiplash that ensued seemed like a small price to pay for checking that box and moving on. Except that I hadn't. As soon as the last dose of Aleve wore off I found myself wondering why I had made such a big deal out of such a silly milepost, and venturing back into the past to berate the 18 year-old version of myself for holding back too much and not getting after it when the potential physical consequences were much lower, and my ability to ponder them was much less developed. Hopefully when I get old I'll just be happy to skiing, and not looking back thinking "I really should have gotten more out of that whole "Soul Skiing" phase.

and for pretty similar to reasons to what fdr stated - The People already have your best interests in mind, so what do you need to organize for? for my part, i don't think the union should be all powerful in the education world. it's one governmental entity that needs balancing by others. we advocate for our interests, the admins for theirs and the politicians in theory for everybody else. it's hard to have faith that The People (through their representatives) will look after all my interests since a decent number of them aren't really supportive of public education to begin with and would be perfectly happy to drown the baby. If you were born into the profession and forever condemned to serve at the public's mercy then this argument would be more compelling, but teachers, like everyone else, voluntarily choose to enter the profession and can exit the profession whenever they choose. That's usually the answer I get (you choose to teach and you can quit if you don't like how you are treated) when I point out that there's no guarantee that a given *union* will adequately represent an individual union member's interests, either. The finest teacher I ever had left the field after being pushed out of her position by an incompetent and un-motivated lifer who had lots of seniority and union connections on his side. That was nothing short of a travesty and every kid at the school with an ounce of drive, talent, and interest in the subject was materially worse for it. Having said that, I'd be quite happy to have teachers organize and advocate for their interests however they see fit, so long as parents have control over which school gets their money. For some reason even advocates of balance between the various parties with a stake in public education never like the final equilibrium where that set of incentives takes you. That's kind of surprising given the claims about what a great job the current unionized monopoly is doing educating the kids (seriously). From what I have seen, when you disaggregate the data and compare apples to apples (kids in the US who come from non-underclass environments to kids in other countries who come from similar environments)there's actually quite a bit of support for the idea that most public schools in the US are doing a good job relative to the rest of the world. Who knows - under a regime where the parents had control over where there kid's money went, you could end up with a situation with unionized teachers that spend significantly less money on administrative overhead, allow for more professional freedom, and pay teachers more. Too bad we'll never get to see whether or not that's the case.

"Medicaid Expansion Drives Up Visits to ER Study Finding Increased Use Contradicts View of Health-Overhaul Backers" http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303640604579296580732297854 "Emergency Visits Seen Increasing With Health Law" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/health/access-to-health-care-may-increase-er-visits-study-suggests.html?_r=0 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/01/02/science.1246183

I think you are selling yourself short. Waaay short. For the past few years my baseline assumption has been that the stuff you write here is a kind of long-form performance art piece (a la' Joaquin Phoenix's digression into hip-hop) where the goal is to achieve a score of "infinity" in a ratio where the numerator is (Bombast*Grandiosity*Certainty) and the denominator is (Knowledge*Accuracy*AnalyticalQuality). The bit about millions of people losing their insurance simply because they became ill that was seemingly posted without knowledge of the word "rescission," let alone any of the actual regulations that govern the practice was one of the better installations, but the last post I read positing an empirical association between single-payer and employment growth, and a few others I've forgotten, can potentially take you marginally closer to infinity on the performance-index if you apply yourself. The odds are high that some of your best work is ahead of you, and I'll check back in a few days to see how the latest pieces stack up.

Thanks for the first-person report on Asbestos Creek Falls. Good to have some idea just how long and severe a cold snap will need to be to bring that into condition. Can you remember if it actually came in during the last big cold-snap (I think it was either 2009 or 2010)?

Probably a repost, but worth sharing anyway. http://unofficialnetworks.com/cell-phones-interfere-avalanche-beacons-126467/

I've seen the laundry list of articles of faith commingled with debatable points and sprinkled with tedious insults before. Yawn.

I was kayaking the Sauk (very poor choice on my part) during the last sustained November cold snap, and heard a rumor that Asbestos Creek Falls got climbed. I can't recall the details - but it sounded like infinite/steppy grade II-III climbing. There's zero chance I'll get out there to check it out myself during this cold snap - but if someone is in the vicinity - it might be worth a look. "Asbestos Creek Falls is one of the tallest front country waterfalls in the state of Washington, but it's not highly regarded due to its seasonal nature, and "off the beaten path" locale. The long series of falls lie just upstream of Clear Creek Road # 2060, which the creek flows both over and under, thanks to a washed out concrete slab. Prior to the floods of 2003, one could drive past the falls without noticing due to the significant recent growth in front of the falls. However, since the road has been washed out - and may close permanently about a mile before the falls, it'll be much harder to pass by without seeing anything. The height of the falls is a big question mark. While they likely stand close to 1000 feet tall, only about 500 feet of falls can be seen from the road. The odd shape of the gorge further up prevents viewing of the rest of the falls. The only truly full views of the falls would be from across the valley or from the air. The falls become much less impressive later in the year due to the small drainage area of Asbestos Creek." http://www.waterfallsnorthwest.com/nws/falls.php?num=4661