fern

awesome. Everytime I drive out to Manning I peer through the gap at it. Super cool you got in there!

Michael Layton, I wish you the best for your future and your happiness in a new place. I think you are a super person and I hope you believe that about yourself too sickie . Thank you for climbing with me a few times around here. I hope we will climb again sometime around there.

pushit ... pushit good ... pushit real good will you be ready portlyer? will you???????

IKEA has some good cheap mattresses. When I was looking, it ended up better value than buying from a custom foam shop. Zip-off washable cover, variety of stiffnesses and thicknesses etc. Just buying straight raw foam was surprisingly expensive.

wow ... sunday spray makes people all serious and shit! you are all SUPER. group hug. Bug, the one rope-up when our attendance coincided, you dropped in with your kids briefly. We haven't met properly. But you're cool. Hi five!!

I am heartened that the "rare" and "NEVER"s are leading the poll. I think what is happening to my right foot big toe is revolting. My lesson taken to heart is: "Overweight baggage be damned! Bring the big sturdy boots for long alpine ice routes, not the fruity lightweight ice craggers" Despite many thin crack toe crushing pitches I have never had such a violation to my delicate and beautiful lower extrema. I look forward to the day that this nascent grey bloom forms into a proper and righteous toenail and the nightmare is behind.

I am going through a traumatizing experience for the first time in my life. I need community support here. Please respond to my poll.

I think I met archenemy in the dairy section once. But I'd meet her again. I'd like to meet CJ00if. I've met lots of jerks who post on this stupid website. Mostly you are all cool even though some of you are boorish loudmouths. Oregonians (that includes Layton honorarily) are better at the campfire partying than the Washingtonititises.

fun. I spent my 30th birthday in Vegas. congrats to your mom on the jackpots

cornice collapse under them on the descent. Victim was a friend of my cubicle neighbour. Sad.

encyclopedias are good. Nice and heavy. Put 4 or 5 in a pack and go climbing.

carpool? partner?

it has. by a long measure. but now I get to fly business class to my climbing spots

here is a photo topo. Red is the Barber route. Yellow is the Lowe route. Blue is the descent route down the upper Barber route (ice face) and lower Andreeva route (rock buttress)

death by frontpoint. I could barely walk the next 4 days.

speck is smoked pork fat. so the recipe is probably something like: 1) kill pig, 2) hang over smoky fire no immediate plans to go back soon, though I will likely be over there again in 2008.

Trip: Kyrgyzstan - Ak Sai Glacier - Peak Free Korea - North Face - Barber Route Date: 10/14/2007 Trip Report: Here's some photos from a short climbing adventure in Kyrgyzstan: The trail to the Ak Sai glacier looks like most trails. Above Ratsek hut the path follows the moraine beside the spilling ice fall of the Ak Sai, and Peak Free Korea starts to come into view. Like all civilized alpine venues, cell-phone reception is excellent. "Food is Power" ... "Speck is the first food of all Russian Climbers". Even at midday the North Face gets no sun. We spend a day busting a trail through the heavy powder and fixing a rope across the bergschrund. 700m of climbing below us, we approach the crux exit ice ribbon to reach the summit ridge. The summit at last, a quick photo of Dima. A quick photo of me. The sun sets across the Tien Shan. Time for a dark and long descent. Tired out now. Time to pack up the teapot and head back to Bishkek.

Montbell does not fit broad shoulders well. If you get "Beyond" gear for ice-climbing make them add like 4" to the sleeves. I specified extra long sleeve from the start, still had to return it to add 2", and they STILL came out too short.

GIFT CERTIFICATE!

didn't he die because he couldn't self arrest a slide on steep snow because he had a technical tool rather than an ice axe? ... more summer snow in 1970?

It depends how many raps you want to do. We had a 70 and downscrambled off the ends 2 or 3 times to big ledges. Would be sketchier with a 60 and you would want to not skip stations like we did. It also looks equipped with off-route rap chains to climbers left to rap in FULL 60m ropes (i.e. doubles). There are so many rap anchors it is confusing.

We climbed Restless Native yesterday. It is the best route I have done on the Goat Wall. Quite peculiar climbing on mostly solid rock. All the calcite will fuzz up your rope like crazy, but you have never placed feet on such good friction. You will feel like a fly.

another ploy ... try as you might you will not escape ... all your pushup are belong to me

zigged when you shoulda zagged I think from your slingy flake you traverse farther right, even maybe going down a bit in a deep corner until you can do a tricky mantle right out of the corner onto a face and follow blocks and crack pretty much straight up from there to the "fixed pin" pitch. Anyways you did the best pitches (1&2) no great loss to skip the rest IMO.

Petzl Recall cracking of welds near front points.