PaulB

top100climbing.com CC comes in at #13 and bivy.com is #5.

I contacted Onsight this summer and was told that they no longer reslings cams. Apparently, they had a bad experience with a particularly anal customer, and decided the marginal revenue wasn't worth the potential headaches.

I bought my Camalots (1 & 2) and Camalot Jrs. (0.5 & 0.75) in 1994 and had them re-slung by Yates this summer. Barring major damage from a fall, I expect I'll be using them for another 10 years. If the Camalots are in good shape and the price is right, I'd say you've found a great deal. Even if the trigger wires were frayed or bent, you can probably still get new ones from BD. As mentioned, the only real con is that the old Camalots are heavier than the new ones.

It is true that The Boot has closed. The building is still standing though, and has reportedly become something of a squatters camp for ultra-cheap ski bums. I haven't heard if anyplace in town has picked up the uh, scene, from Friday nights. Inbounds was probably good for about two or three runs before everything was tracked up. Luckily, the backcountry was an endless canvass of untracked, hip to waist deep powder, with only about a dozen or so of us playing in it.

Cool... you can faceplant and have your head and/or spine impaled by an aluminum bar.

You don't really buy Edge tickets. You buy an Edge Card (requires proof that you live in BC or WA) which includes either 1 day for $70 or 5 days for $280. Once the included days are used up, you get a discounted rate (currently $64) every day you ski. Each person in your group would have to buy their own Edge Card. You can either order the Cards online, and pick them up at Guest Services, or just buy them when you get there. If you link your credit card to the Edge Card, you can totally avoid the ticket windows and go right to the lifts. If you live in BC or WA, the Edge Card is the way to go.

The 7-11 tickets are usually $5-$10 cheaper than the ticket window price, which is currently $77. Seeing as this is high season, the discount is probably closer to $5 than $10. Unless you get an accommodation & lift ticket package, or qualify for an Edge Card, 7-11 is the cheapest you'll find. Note that you have to get the 7-11 tickets in Vancouver, or in Squamish at the 7-11/Esso next to McDonalds. You can't buy them in Whistler or at the 7-11/Petro-Canada in Squamish.

Nothing wrong with a wide stance for either alpine or tele. A wide stance equals stability & balance whether you're busting through backcountry crud or carving high speed turns on groomers. These guys definitely use a wide stance: Herman Maier Bode Miller As for learning at the resorts or in the BC, I'd say do both. Buy a cheap AT setup and ride the lifts as often as you can afford to, but also get out in the BC so you can start learning all the stuff that goes with that side of it as well.

There have been a couple of nasty incidents at the Diamond Head (aka Elfin Lakes, Red Heather) parking lot recently. Multiple broken windows and one car torched right to the ground. Something to be aware of for anyone planning to spend New Year's up there. More info on ClubTread & TTips.

Wasatch Backcountry Rescue has recently tested heli based, long range, receivers to search for avy beacons. This addresses the range issue, but is not much help in terms of recovery time unless there happens to be a suitably equipped heli in the area at the time of burial. Probably most useful when searching for someone who is lost or for doing a recovery. The same could be said of the RECCO system.

I carry multiple pairs of light fleece and/or softshell gloves for climbing and a pair of mitts for belaying. I was looking at MEC's Dr. Sno glove ($45) today, and thought they would be good for ice. Snug fit with good dexterity.

The standard SE Ridge route is fun, but it's a long, steep approach to get up there from Airplane Creek. Best done as a weekend trip so you can bag Stewart & The Still while you're up there. Note that the bridge on the Airplane Creek road was washed out a couple of weeks ago, so depending on when they replace it, access next summer might require a long hike up from the Foley Creek FSR.

I've had an Altimax for 5 or so years, and it has been great on all my climbing and skiing adventures. It's only weakness is a crappy alarm that you can barely hear. I change the battery maybe once a year... it's easy to do.

It was more of a short runnel than a full waterfall. Not anything that you'd bother to climb, but neither was it something that we wanted to ski.

Between Gadd's Ice & Mixed Climbing and Twight's Extreme Alpinism, the subject of weight training for ice & alpine climbing is pretty well covered.

Try this.

I've never used Topozone, so I don't know exactly what it offers, but there are a couple of online options for viewing topographic data for BC: - The BC Basemap Viewer (see the sticky at top of this forum) will let you create very detailed topo maps and save them to PDF. - Natural Resources Canada's Toporama site will let you look at maps for any part of Canada.

These reports on TTips from around the Mt. Baker ski area indicate that slides were easily triggered this weekend.

This is a long shot, but go into the Device Manager and look at the Properties for your Primary IDE Controller. Check that for Device 0, the Transfer Mode is set to something like "DMA Mode if Available". If it says something like "PIO Mode Only", change it to DMA or Ultra DMA. XP has a bad habit (or at least it used to) of slowing down the transfer rate of UDMA hard drives if it encounters too many errors when reading from the device. The more errors it gets over time, the more it slows down the drive. It will never increase the transfer speed back to where it was originally.

Take a look at the Western Canada/ November /K country ice thread in the BC Forum. Doesn't sound great. If you're willing to drive to Smithers or Prince George, there's lots of snow up there.

Another lost to the dark side..... Do you still tele powder???

My friends who use Comforts only seem to have icing problems when they use the optional brakes.

Nooo..... just by reading it, I'll have the music in my head for days!!!!

Is this good news or not? What will the Chinese government do when they start running out of oil? They could start looking across the border at Russia, which has huge quantities of untapped resources, and that could get real ugly, real quick.

Not sure what your definition of "topo program" is, but there are a few options depending on your needs: 1) The online BC Basemap viewer. See the sticky posted at the top of this forum for more info. 2) Digital copies of the NRC maps are available from Etopo and Fugawi. The Fugawi package covers all of BC for CAD$100 while Etopo requires that you buy five packages, each for CAD$100 to cover the whole province. Both products come with map viewing software, but if you wan to use them with a GPS you have to buy something like OziExplorer for the Etopo maps, or Fugawi's Global Navigator. 3) There is also the online Atlas Of Canada which lets you view the NRC topo maps and print out small areas of interest.