glen

TG: I think that your post is well written. Let's follow how this might play out though... In a court, it would seem that there would have to be some sort of way of determination of judgement and/or experience of the climbers. What criteria do you use? Does a person who is a clear thinker and naturally able and has climbed a fair amount on their own less 'certifiable' as experienced than a person who has graduated from a WAC or Mounties course? This seems to promote a slippery slope towards regulation in the face of mounting liability. On the other hand, personal responsibility is a vague concept that means something slighty different to each person. It could be said that climbers below were personally responsible for evalulating the hazard of climing in the fall line of those above. It could also mean that the climbers above should have been aware of the consequences to others of a fall by their party. Does personal responsibilitty to others end at the end of your rope team? Is an 'every man(woman) for themself' credo appropriate either? I wasn't there and because of that, I just simply don't know about the particulars of the incident. I have no real opinion on culpability here because I don't know. I do think that blanket statements about liability, culpability and the like are difficult to make about the mountain environment. I also think that they make the mountains conducive to regulation, which I don't think is good. Laws don't stop at NFS boundaries, so lawyers and law enforcement have equal access to lawsuits in the mountains and in cities.

Beer Boarding?

Anyone been out to climb Snafflehound Spire yet? Snafflehound Spire Map Just SE of the Malloy Hut.

If a person had a biner break on them, they probably wouldn't be posting here, unless they are really, really lucky. Most of us have had biners work quite well as a brake, though I prefer ovals for that. That being said, a number of body recoveries in Yos were accompanied by halves of biners left on pro where they had failed due to cross loading, etc... Didn't Petzl do some high speed photography of gate flutter upon rope bounce? I think they saw that the gate tends to open after the rope has passed the gate, reducing the possibility of the rope actually popping out during flutter. That means keep the open end of the gate on the low side of the draw/runner (depending on if you are trad or sporto). bottom line is that they are lighter, just as strong when normally loaded, more reliable in non-deal situations (ie, cross loading , getting iced up, and snap/flutter), but do cost a bit more. Gear is cheap, your life is not. This thread reminds me of a time I was at Really Egregious Incompetence (REI). I head the salesperson explaining that most people just buy wire gates biners for style, and that there was no other functional benefit.

Bummer! Galen Rowell was definitely one of my role models both as a climber (no reason to list his resume) and a photographer in my younger years. His presence will be missed in both the climbing and photograhy world. A to a great career out of the office.

Was in Teton three weeks ago. That place is amazing. I second rylands comment on Dornans. Get a pizza while you are at it. If you can't get a permit to camp, you could plan on a looong day and hike up to the base of your climb in the morning. We made it to the saddle south of middle teton in 3 hours, for reference. If you are at all into geology, the rocks up Garnet Canyon will blow your mind. Bring your camera. Super-photogenic. G

I'd like to see that guy try and do one of the descents in the mountain stages with nothing more 'than pumping your legs..' What would they use to clean his noggin off the pavement? I guess that's why Lemond was Sportsman of the year after he won the Tour. Do you think the author read that article, or does he get that mag 'just for the articles'? Lance is a bad mofo.

Right on Eric. TM is awesome. Great Circle on Daff dome. Sure, it's only a 10a slab climb, but it sure is nice. For extra fun, link it all into one ptich. Needle Spoon... Battle of the Bulge... and about hundred others. 2 weeks and counting...

"I'm on my bike 8 hours a day. What are you on?" The dude is inspirational. From his bio, he explains that he realized that he is simply capable of putting up with more pain than anyone else.

Catch 22?

I'm gonna be in Dillon for the next 3 weeks and will have a sprinkling of individual days off in the middle. Any of you know of any good local crags that won't require a big rack (don't have room for one in the luggage)? Any bouldering close to the campus in town for an evening session?

Serendipity. Figger Eights 309th post was the 310th on this thread... Dennis, you have a history of stereotyping on the bbs. Stereotyping hardly qualifies as intelligent discourse, in fact, it involves no discourse or open mindedness at all. You have had some good things to say once in a while. I will give you credit for those, but not for avoiding the rampant BS on this bbs. Isn't this thread in spray for a reason?

Just downloaded it an opened it no problemo on my mac.

Sweet!

From the title I thought this was going to be about something else...

One of the rope companies did some testing on ropes a few years back. They basically left ropes in the factory coil in a closet for a few years, pulled them out and did the standard battery of UIAA type tests on them. They found that the rope strength actually decreased just from storage. I guess the nylon got brittle of something. I think the best course of action is to either send me your rope or just make sure you keep climbing on it.

Cougar, on the other hand has gotten quite brazen with many sightings up & down the road, even I have seen her grey-ochre flash as she leaps for cover. Whenever we’ve walked the roads we’ve been armed & Buddy dog, being our Cougar Bait, has been keeping close to heel. Neighbor Karen was up with some pain one night & had to watch Cougar jump her tame fat cat that had been dozing on their porch. Zip - supper is served! This weekend hunters with their hounds were out searching for spoor or at the very least flushing Mama & Cubs further back into the forest. For decades this area has been a favorite dumping ground for unwanted pets & a large population of feral cats has flourished - there isn’t hardly a cat left in the valley now. We haven’t seen or heard raccoons in weeks.

And here it is, the Cougar Bait Testimonial! *************************** Faculty member is Cougar Bait ( by Paul Stone) During August of 1997, I was conducting field research on the ecology of the Sonoran mud turtle (Kinosternon sonoriense) in the Peloncillo Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. This particular day my two field assistants, Tamara Watts and Billie Welch, were exploring a stream bed north of our camp, looking for new localities where we might capture turtles. That morning, I had already hiked up the canyon to our traditional study area, measured a dozen or so turtles, and returned to camp. I was now walking down the Geronimo Trail, a remote road/path through the mountains, returning to our study area from our camp. About 200 meters from camp, I saw movement in the brush on the right-hand side of the trail. It was something large, and I craned my neck to try and identify the object. My first thought was "coyote" but almost immediately I realized that I had stumbled across a mountain lion. I couldn't believe my luck! I had just had a fairly good look at one of the most elusive animals in the country. I knew that chances were good I would never see another mountain lion in the wild in my life. Instead of stealthily slipping off into the brush and out of sight like I expected it to do, the big cat circled around a little cluster of scrub oaks and faced me, maybe 50 feet away. It then sat down and stared at me. Amazingly, I now had not only caught a fairly good look at a cougar, I was staring at one with an unobstructed view from point blank range. It was magnificent: huge brown eyes, majestic beauty, an implied mountain of grace and power. It seemed small for a cougar, though certainly not a cub. My guess now is that it was a young cat that had been recently weaned from its mother. I stood there staring at this beautiful creature for at least three minutes. Then, somehow, the tables turned in my head. I realized that I wasnot only 50 feet away from this once-in-a-lifetime nature opportunity, but I was also 50 feet away from the top carnivore in this ecosystem, and even though it was young, this cat could tear me to pieces, and eat me. That made me a little nervous, and I started wishing for the first time that it would go away. Since it barred my progress further down the trail, I decided I would ease back toward camp. I took maybe five steps backward, facing the mountain lion. It immediately stood up and took several of those little cat steps that my house cat takes when he's about to pounce on some string. I stopped backing up and the cat stopped coming forward. I picked up two or three nice throwing rocks from the trail. I lofted one in the general area of the cat, hoping the sound of the rock landing in the bushes would scare the cat away. It didn't. We stood there looking at each other for another minute. Then it laid down with its head just above its front paws. I yelled at it and threw another rock, this time aiming at the cat. The rock missed badly and the cat just kept staring at me. I threw more rocks (all poorly aimed) and yelled more but with no effect. I tried another couple of baby steps backwards, but as soon as I did the cat stood up, so I stopped. I yelled and waved my arms and threw several more poorly aimed rocks. Just when I was really starting to get nervous, the cat leisurely bounded across the road and disappeared into the brush. It was over. However, the fact that the cougar made not one sound while bounding into the brush 50 feet from me was food for thought. For a half hour, until my assistants Tamara and Billie returned to camp, I stood in camp with a rock in one hand and a butcher knife in the other hand, slowly turning around, jumping at every sound, real or imagined. The thing that wouldn't leave my head was this image of this cougar jumping on my back and sinking its long fangs in my neck before I ever heard it. Needless to say, I was really glad to see Tamara and Billie when they returned to camp. **********************

Dennis, That's exactly what I said: the evidnence is a change in rate of global warming starting around the industrial revolution. The data is messy, but the change in trend is pretty clear nonetheless. Cars are definitely a part of it. But, that is a different thing than saying that our cars are the cause of global warming. Environmental degradation is the cost of having the lifestyle that we all lead. That includes cars, silverware, computers, climbing gear, etc. You would be hard put to find something in the room that isn't made of cotton, tree or wool that didn't come from a mine. That fancy computer we are all typing at (or maybe just lurking ) had to come from somewhere. It's not a perfect world. The best way to mitigate is to simply consume less and have what you consume be more green-friendly. Recycle and reuse.

I dunno. Is killing bicyclists manslaughter? It might just be self defense.

And the global warming debate continues... Even if we instantly stopped all of our factories and cars, global wraming would continue. It's been happening for the last 15,000 years since the end of the last glacial maximum (at which point Seattle and Tacoma were under a km or so of ice). The evidence for anthropogenic induced global warming is a change in the rate of temperature increase where the inflection point in the mean global temperature curve is about 1860 (read Upton Sinclair if that decade doesn't mean anything to you). The earth has seen radical temperature differences in the past. During the Cretaceous (aka, rise of mammals and death of dinosaurs) there were no ice caps. None. Nada. Now that's some global warming! Even if we did stop burning fossil fuels, large amounts of C02, HCl, Sulfur and other gasses would still be put into the atmosphere at rates of Megatons per day from the planet's volcanoes. On an average day, Popocateptl (above Mexico City) puts out about 3 megatons of SO2 per day, peaking at about 50 megatons per day. Bottom line: Stopping burning fossil fuels will not stop global warming. Period. The main question is wether the rate at which global warming occurs and if it will happen faster than ecosystems can adapt sans mass extinctions. Also, glacial retreat isn't just due to temperature change. The seattle times story of a couple weeks ago claimed that the summit ice on Kiliminjaro was due to an increase in temperature. The temperature there never gets even close to the melting point of ice. The ablation of the summit ice fields is a simple mass balance resulting from less precipitation. By the same token, some models of global warming actually predict an *increase* in precipitation on Cascade glaciers which would result in a glacial advance, not a retreat. Beware of token evidence used to support arguments in either direction, even if what is being said bolsters what you want. Does that mean that we should continue to think that crude oil is the best thing since the invention of the wheel? No. Production of hydrocarbon-based products is not environmentally friendly (Prudhoe Bay has several hundred spills *every year*). Dependence on foreign oil puts us at a strategically unfavorable position leading to more than a couple of wars from the mid eighteen hundreds through the present. Some of the nastier examples come from the Philipines (read Daniel Yergin's The Prize for examples, though pretty strongly biased towards pro-oil). The list goes on and on and on and on. There are other means of producing energy, but the bottom line is that it isn't going to happen until exactly the day that it costs less to buy kilowatts from alternative sources than to buy a barrel of oil. The world economy is based on the price of oil, and the world economy is what will eventually change that. As for ANWAR... I personally don't think that arctic oil reserves are what it is about. ANWAR is a litmus test for what can be gotten away with. Gail Norton (head of Dept. of Interior and thus BLM, fish and wildlife and NPS, but not USFS) has issued instructions to all of her land agencies to give the green light to all economic extraction requests. If ANWAR drilling is approved- in an area that congress very specifically said is not okay to drill in- what will be safe. A strong precedent will be set saying that wilderness designations and the like can be reversed and mined. THAT is what scares me about drilling in ANWAR. Nobody would go to that much national debate for that little oil. It is the perfect place to set the precendent though because it is in a remote place far from the reality of everyday life for the voting public. There is far more oil offshore in northern california that would be far faster, easier and mroe profitable to extract. Politically, it would be impossible - whithout a precendent that is. Anyways, that's what I think. Cheers.

JINX! Dammit. So much for slab climbing today. We got the full list, rain, downpours thunder and lightning... I guess it's just time to take a

Satisfying, adrenaline charged moment: Doing about 30 on my mountain bike, Range Rover mf starts right turn into driveway cutting me off . I slide sideways a few feet in the gutter (screaming something along the lines of "F*&*%$&**k"), dig my left bar end and shoulder into right corner panel of said car leaving nice scratch, pull around front of car and somehow escape intact. The had dude pulled around me and looked directly at me as he passed just before it had happened. I didn't feel too bad about his car.

Ahhh... timidly stepping into the foray... Dennis, I can understand why you think that most of my generation (X) is a bunch of whinnies. However, I would encourage you to put down the MTV and seattle times and look at what mainstream media doesn't cover. Dig a bit deeper into who makes up my generation before you blacklist all of us. All things are viewed relativistically based on the information you have, but reality is what it is and perceptions can be skewed by a limited set of observations. Viewing all of generation X as a stereotype is no better than the relativistic views you are accusing all of them of having. Being of a certain generation doesn't make you wiser or stupider or more or less likely to be liberal or conservative.

I'm not familiar with rock empire. Is their stuff any good?