sayjay

Yvon Chouinard? (only cause you said we'd be surprised...)

hopin' to be there for a week or two myself... unless i'm in jail with erik. LET'S CLIMB!

quote: Somebody take a digital camera along and shoot video of Dwayner and pope getting hugged by Peter Puget ... and of the drool coming out of Dwayner's mouth if Icegirl shows up

dang, and i thought that was just a twinkle in his eyes...

nope, not hurt. luckily landed flat on my feet and just had a sore ankle for a couple of days. thanks, cavey.

btw, i've seen the offending bolt and, while i haven't done the climb, i thought it looked kind of odd from the ground, what with cracks to use for pro, and on what *is* a crack climb, no less... to add to the "odd bolts at pearly gates" category: we did do another climb to the right of the one you're referring to and one pitch higher. a sporto route. about half way up, you come to a ledge, and from the ledge you can clip a bolt that becomes essentially useless as soon as you step up onto the face. the next bolt up is well past the crux move, and so when you fall (which i did) you hit the deck (which i did). a single bolt about 1/2 or 2/3 of the way between the two bolts would be much more sensible. one less bolt, and better pro. not trying to whine here...just throwing in my 0.02...

??? BORED women. ??? care to explain this non-sequitur?

now *that's* funny!!!!

Bbetter: go to N 45th St and 15th Ave NE (one block east of Univ Way) and catch the #48 bus on the northeast corner (on 15th). (Actually you can catch it anywhere along 15th). Ride it to the end of the line at 85th and 32nd Ave NW. (~40 min ride). There's a long flight of stairs that leads down from the intersection of 85th and 32nd (and two other streets; it's kinda an odd 4-way intersection). You'll cross a road then into a parking lot/dog park part way down; go straight and you'll see more stairs; keep going down. At the bottom of the steps you'll actually hit a road, go right <1block; the road switchbacks left, you go right on a cobblestone path down and under the railroad tracks. That'll land you right in the picnic area, probably within a stone's throw of where everyone will converge. Look for Allison's tent! you can access bus timetables/maps at: http://transit.metrokc.gov/bus/timetables.html Oh, and I'd put $$ down you'll be able to hitch a ride home w/ someone.

story is here: mt hood helicopter crash

Ah, yes, gotta love the "Live free (of demo fees) or die" state....

TG, Sorry to hear about losing your daughter -- I can't even begin to imagine how hard that was -- and I can understand how hearing of these climbers deaths gives you a heavy heart. But please do not feel guilty about not being there to help them or for posting your TR. In the conditions you faced, the most responsible thing you could do was what you did: keep yourself safe so that you do not put others at risk by ending up in need of a rescue. As for the TR you posted... There are lessons to be learned from the tragic stories of deaths on a mountain, but if that is all we hear then where does that leave us? I feel it is important that we be reminded of the risks that we are taking, that we pause to recognize and be sad about the loss of fellow climbers, and ultimately that we try to learn something from their loss. But it is equally important that we celebrate the joy and exhilaration of climbing -- perhaps especially at times when fellow climbers are lost. There's a quote I saw recently in a book written by a smoke-jumper: "What we're all really seeking is an experience where we can feel the rapture of being alive." I'd imagine that this is what you were doing on Rainier, and no doubt this is what these others were there doing as well. Your TR shared that rapture and is a tribute not only to what you experienced but to what those who lost thier lives were seeking -- which, to me, allows us to reflect on how they lived their lives, not just how they died.

HEY, AND HOW APPROPRIATE: TODAY IS ALPINE K'S BIRTHDAY! . : : : : _I_I_I_I_ |.........| |.........| ---------- (my lame-ass attempt at a bday cake...) here's to ya, man [ 05-29-2002, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: sayjay ]

ah, a day of hardy souls. now that's something to celebrate! thanks for the trivia, bronco.

hikerwa-- i think those folks headed for lworth (that is, if i'm correct about who you're thinking of ...)

fortunately don't have any first-hand nightmare belay stories... but i've observed two that scared the crap out of me just to watch: 1) woman sitting at the top of a vertical cliff, 3 pitches up from ground, at Cathedral Ledge in New Hampshire, belaying her partner -- who outweighed her by a good 100lbs or so -- sitting on her butt, feet nearly over the edge, completely unanchored. multiple other climbers approached her to sugguest kindly that she might want to anchor herself to something but she just flipped them off. think maybe she was pissed at her partner AND suicidal?? 2) on the glacier leading up to Sloan Peak corkscrew, watched a guy leading a rope with his girlfriend on it across the glacier. there was a tentative snow bridge we were all crossing, and when we were across it and had traversed above it we looked down to see the guy carefully stepping across the snowbridge as his girlfriend walked up behind him, coiling the rope into her arms as she went -- so she was right behind him at the edge of the bridge with a wad of rope in her armsby the time he got across. when we were all taking off our crampons at the edge of the glacier i gently tried to tell her why what she'd done was unsafe and was, well, ripped into. i think her boyfriend was at a loss as to whether to be more horrified by what she'd done or by how she'd reacted to my advice... what i wanna know is which comes first: incompetence or bullheadedness???

Lamb is right -- lighten up! I go to VW and am glad to know that the people working there find some of the lunacy as laughable as I do. And to the degree that I am part of "the scene" it's good to be reminded to laugh at myself...

sure! but you only get half a gold star...

12 mi R.T., but I always make sure to drive on bike-to-work-day

I'm away at a meeting all next week, so Matt I'm going to leave this free-for-all to you! Good luck! I have the utmost faith that you will have this one solved in no time--

ERIK! ... and of course Heidi the stellar waitress! [ 05-15-2002, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: sayjay ]

I'm with E. I'm willing to put up with (and even find funny) a lot of crude stuff that makes it on this site, but MountainBoy this is just pure fucking tasteless. I'll buy a beer for any moderator who rids us of that poster clip.

Jay: I agree with the minimum contribution idea. Erik: Ouch, good point. Maybe if it wasn't obvious to an outsider. Like, have the donation thermometer be how far we are up the infamous Brittney Spears climb. Only problem is the boys would lose motivation to donate once we reached certain certain, um, ledges.

I like JayB's ideas, with the possible exception of color-coding people's names according to the amount they donate -- simply because there's a wide range of incomes on this site. I do think that having a single color for anyone who's donated anything would be motivational, and I would hope that people's concience would keep them from sending in $1... I think the "thermometer" idea is a great one, though maybe having it as something more appropriately corny like a climb? (How far up the Nose/Town Crier!/pickaclimb are we?) I know that I for one would be happy to donate $$ to keep this site going and think it's wrong that the guys putting all the work into it are also currently putting all the $$! If implementing Jay's idea would be fairly simple, how about using that as a starting point and seeing if it works, in an effort to leave corporate sponsorship as a last resort. THANKS JON & TIM! UNTIL I CAN BUY ONE FOR YOU IN PERSON, HERE'S TO YA!

freeclimb: i agree that we can't link this specific event to global warming -- nor can we link the record high temps in any given month, or the change in some species' habitat, or any one of a myriad of other events definitively to global warming. however, the calving of this large of an ice sheet is consistent with what we would expect with global warming and adds to the body of evidence pointing in the direction of a rapidly changing climate. fern: thanks for the correction -- guess that's why i usually stick to the atmosphere