jeffers

30 November: 54 Iraqi insurgents killed, 18 wounded, 11 taken prisoner. Just getting started.

I don't need an assault rifle for hunting, because I don't hunt. I need one for home defense. Two actually, and a thumper as well. When the terrorists get smarter than the computer operator that dropped the grid in the NE this summer, and the farmers around here start getting hungry, I want fire superiority from the git go. Don't think it'll happen? Swing by and I'll introduce you to my neighbors. They have a plywood tank in the woods behind their house, frequently a driveway full of sheriff cars and a bunch of guys attacking the "tank" wearing BDUs and they just built a two story pole barn with windows upstairs. I've never met them as I don't want to be up on their radar screens, but hey, maybe they'll invite you in for fresh pie. Does the Brady Act cover beehive rounds?

Real painters don't drink except when not painting. It spoils the paint fume buzz.

2000 Chevy Tracker, and I've got 87k on it already. It's been up the divide 8 or 9 times now, off-road, with never a snort or a whimper. Both front seats recline fully, and they're wider and softer than a ridge rest. Plenty of head and leg room for even the tallest people, and you can cram 3 kids in the back seat, or fold them down to make room for a week's gear for 2. The roof rack adds a third. Power everything, 'cept you have to load your CD's one at a time, and it gets 26 mpg on blacktop. Zippy too. The cruise control is kinda bogus, it'll snap your neck and grind along at 4k rpm on slight grades, and the steering is tight, tight, tight. Four wheel low got me up Schaffer Gulch without dropping under 1000 rpm, and the factory skid plates mean the infrequent (8" clearance under the diffs) kisses with rocks don't take anything vital out from under you. It'll go forever thru 3 foot drifts as long as you don't slow enough to pizza cutter down onto the frame, but 4 footers will stop it cold after 150' or so. For $16k, new, it's worth a long look.

Take a look at the Olympus C4000Z. 4.0 MP, 3x optical, and your PC sees it as another drive. You can read from or write to the camera from Windows Explorer just like a Zip drive. Lists around $500, but you can get it online for $350. It goes full auto, aperature priority, shutter priority, and full manual. No audio when shooting video clips. You can set up 4 of your own preset modes too, with variable exposure comp, flash comp, etc., and it'll focus down to 2 cm in super macro mode. You can zoom and pan when viewing stored images, and it comes with a cable to output to a TV, so you can save battery power by not using the LCD screen. The image/glass quality is good, color balance is great, 3 white balance modes plus custom white balance modes you can set up too. http://www.in-motion.net/~jefft/mountains/cat.jpg This is about 3/4 (cropped) of a 2280 x 1200 tiff converted to a jpeg, untweaked. I have a pair of 128 MB cards, plus the 16 MB it came with, but I wouldn't buy more than that. It holds 130 2280 x 1200 jpeg images on a 128, or 11 tiffs. You can buy a 5 GB battery powered HD to download the images to, that also runs off 12v from your lighter or a wall socket for $330. 10 GB for $430, and 20 GB for $530. The camera uses two of the twin AA lithiums, about $20 a set. Look into NiMH rechargables instead. Got a 120v/12v charger with 4 NiMH's for $30, and 4 more NiMH's for $10. They won't last but about half as long as the Lithiums, but at half the price and rechargable, you will be better off in the long run. I carry both kinds with me while out, and use the Lithiums last, if needed. The 'use by' date on them is good till 2011. [ 10-18-2002, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: jeffers ]

If you plan on changing somebody's mind, remember the most effective technique, carrot and stick. Pain if you don't, pleasure if you do. Politicians have hard heads, and something that makes you wince doesn't even get their attention. You have to think like them. They already have their hand deep in your pocket, and hoping a thief is going to feel pain from a petition is pretty naive. If they can get away with it, and they think they can or else they wouldn't already be stealing your money, they will try. You have to make the attempt cost them, and you have to provide them with something THEY want if they do things your way. First place to start is to obtain the list of names, who voted for the original bill. Then you have to hurt them the only real way you can hurt a politician, by costing them a lot of votes, and therefore another free ride on the gravy train where they get to spend your money instead of working. Once you have the names, you have to put those names on TV, associated with the idea that these people are stealing OUR forests and selling them to the highest bidder. Now you and I know that nobody pays attention to politics on TV, but here the idea of perception works for you instead of against you. Politicians think that mass media really does get them votes, use that faulty perception against them. The options for recieving airtime fall into one of two broad categories. If you privately, want to get your message on TV you have to somehow make more entertaining news than everybody else who's up for consideration that day. As an individual that translates to either making some SERIOUS noise, like throngs of thousands throwing tomatoes against the honorable Senator from Bumfork's office while waving signs that say Senator (blank) is a TREE THIEF, short, simple, and inflammatory, or else you have to establish a one on one relationship with the people (editor's) who decide what gets airtime, and use their suggestions as to how to package your message effectively. The attacks have to be PERSONAL, using real names of congressmen and senators for those thickheaded "leaders" to get the point. As a side benefit, Congressman X watching Senator ZZ get the shaft for trying to sell the mountains might just get the point and save us the effort of having to go after him, specifically, as well. Collectively, the groups who are supposed to be hearing your message, and who are taking your money to fight for your access, the AAC, Sierra, Access Fund, etc, need to be organized and presenting a common front on this issue. They need to be naming names and taking steps to create some real pain for the people who voted this abomination into tenative law. The opposite holds true too. The politicians who didn't vote for this need to understand, loud and long, that YOUR vote, and a WHOLE LOT of OTHER VOTES are riding on how they vote on THIS ONE ISSUE. The access groups aren't going to do this unless they hear from YOU. They need to know that they are competing for your access dollars and that you expect RESULTS, not just talk, or else you are taking your dollars to their competitor. You aren't going to like hearing this, but I can just hear some pork barrel senator with jowls down to his nuts laughing his ass off about the idea that "voting" against his thievery (not buying a pass) is somehow going to convince him not to steal from you anymore. Petitions may be nice, and may well have some influence, but a single spot on the local 5 o'clock news will reach a quarter million ears...so who do you think Senator Billy Bleujobe is going to pay the most attention to? If you're one of those who think $35 isn't enough to worry about, just remember that a serious player never hits the mark fat on the first dip. He'll snag a token on the first pass just to see if you're dumb enough to let him get away with it. If you are, (and once the "Demo" gets dropped from the legislation) you'll be thinking back to the good old days when $35 actually got you a day or so in the wilderness. It takes some serious scratch to buy a yacht, or learjet, or even to maintain and trailer a pair of wetbikes, but all you need (currently) to cruise world class mountains is balls. If they can find a way to equate access to cash instead of brass, you're out, unless you can match the big boys. The powers that be are seriously OFFENDED that you aren't playing by the rules and letting them steal from you. While normal people spend their leisure time jumping into the SUX-3000 and heading down to the googleplex (fuel and tire excise taxes, license plate fees, mandatory insurance and the taxes they collect on that, sales tax on the gas, the tires, the truck, the movie, etc. etc. etc. etc.) you low-life free thinking radicals are cheating them out of their just due, getting away with the arch crime of enjoying yourself without paying them a dime. As a matter of fact, one of the prime reasons there are so many cattle trails through YOUR favorite stretch of wilderness is because it's FREE, or used to be, and all those people are just as tired of all the hidden taxes as you are. So not only are you costing the good Senator YOUR taxes, but a lot of his other taxes are withering on the vine as well and he's FEELING the squeeze. You can take this issue head on, or you can play ostrich, but what's at stake here is the fundamental mechanism affecting how outdoor recreation is taxed in this country. If you don't believe this is one big scam, go ask the honorable senator just how much tax they have REFUNDED to the people who don't use the wilderness, and when he laughs in your face, you might just understand that it really doesn't have anything to do with fair use principles, it has to do with scum who think they can take your money, and the sheeple won't notice that they are ALSO paying for the exact same line items in the budget. let them win now, and within two decades, it'll cost just as much to backpack or climb for a week as it does to take a cruise. Or more. [ 09-04-2002, 04:32 AM: Message edited by: jeffers ]

Most 'crete trucks carry around 7 cubic yards...if you're packing a 6 yard wheel barrow around the homestead, you must have arms of STEEL!

I use the summit. You can go to Garmin and update the firmware, which gives you more routes with less waypoionts each. You can get the coordinates from www.topozone.com, the cursor reads out the coordinates if you have the accessory bar turned on in your browser. The new firmware also improves the opening page/signal acquisition screen. Instead of the basically worthless one that shows only how many signals you've aquired, the new screen shows the direction and relative position of all satellites above the visible horizon, and their signal strength. Instead of just saying "not enough sats to plot position" now you know which direction you need to move to get a good fix. The altimiter is worth the extra money, although not as handy as a wrist altimeter. When I plug in my waypoints, I always include their elevation and then can use these to both calibrate the altimeter, and to get a solid feel for the barometric trend/weather prognosis.

You don't say if you're doing Worm Flows or Monitor Ridge. The road to the Worm Flows trailhead is plowed, Monitor Ridge isn't. Assuming Worm Flows, the last tree is about 4800', a good 3500' below the summit. Just set a good anchor on that last tree and then run it out, per Lambones' advice. Don't forget to note where you exit treeline. Many problems with this in the past. Just after treeline you hook a left across an improbable wadi, then a right back up towards the north. Mark the wadi crossing well, because if you miss it coming down you get into some ugly convex surfaces with lots of deep cracks in the pack. When you get to the steep part around 6k, bypass it to the left, follow the base of the loose boulder slope and regain the route above the electric antenna deal thing. Even with points or kicking steps the top section of the steep stretch is chewed up, loose, and iffy. Grind it out from there to the top. Expect wind. Don't fall in the hole at the top. Significant cornice overhang. Crater entry expressly forbidden. 2k drop and big fines if you survive. Jack's is cool, opens at 7, good coffee, no stove fuel except what others leave behind. The ranger at the TH seems pretty uppity about "proper" display of your sno-park permit. He didn't seem to care about the free "mandatory" climbing permit. Lots-o-sleds at the TH. Have fun. :-) [ 02-07-2002: Message edited by: jeffers ]

I think that was earlier than 1996. Remember the title "Sagermatha Environmental Expedition" and the fact that they removed 5000 pounds of trash.

"Fuzzy Undercling" in the Red has some depth to it.

Take the time to really *understand* how your partner's harness works, and make sure they do the same with you. Visually trace the web all the way through each piece of the buckle. Then do it again. When you're done in and ready to turn back, take a break, if you can spare the time. Get some water and calories in you. Re-examine your options and you might find an edge that you missed, one that will get you to the top. If not, use the rest of the time to get your headspace right for the descent. [ 01-22-2002: Message edited by: jeffers ]

JayB, catch the back side of the lows to avoid the lightning...watch the pressure rise and go when it first starts to level off, otherwise you're in the high wind zone. Look upstream for dark areas on the satellite vapor images. No water in the air, no lightning. Since it is at least theoretically possible for an airmass to pick up some moisture from snowpack, lakes, dense forests, etc, keep watch in the am. On a good day, you may not see clouds at all until 11 or noon. Significant cloud cover before 9am or vertical development by 10 or 11 and you're at risk. Cheers, and good climbing.

...folks I know of who know the area well enough to cruise in with no more gear than plastic in the wallet, are headed to Nepal instead, even those with local projects...maybe just coincidence, maybe more arty flung over from India, maybe just that many folks over there aren't happy with Americans this year.

Rodchester wrote: How pissed would you be if your spouse died and some jackass on this site said that you were the cause of or at least contributed to your spouses death? Same general order of magnitude as when someone suggested my friend was responsible for her husband turning gay, in a different climbing forum. The flamefest that ensued followed the same script as this one is, repetion of the same point on one side, and digression and trivial semantics on the other side. Best advice: Don't try to change a website. State your point once, clearly, and then ignore the resultant drivel. If a given website, taken as is, brings you more or less of a given quality than makes you happy, exercise the alternatives. [ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: jeffers ]