mr.radon

ALL ABOUT GU. This is the best stuff around, Banana Blitz GU. Top 10 reasons: 10) It doesn't freeze period! 9) It tastes great even at high alt. 8) It isn't heavy! 7) Doesn't turn into a tent stake when cold! 6) Doesn't need much water to wash down. 5) No after taste 4) Easy to consume 3) You look cool eating it 2) You can put a bunch in an old tooth paste tube 1) My climbing partner hates the flavor! Anyone know how to get a sponsorship from the makers of GU?

When I got my bag for Denali this year I selected some fabric colors that gave me a 15% discount (not pink or other fruity color). I got relativly dark colors inside and out, which is what I wanted to speed drying. So ask around, you might get bonus discount. Also, they sometimes have discounted gear for sale, and the bulitine board is know to have a lot of items people are dumping after a Denali expedition. I got a few thigs this way and they were quality. Oh, refering to customer service at FF, they might not treat you like a baby, but they do know WTF they are talking about. BTW: what route?

Lou's Famous Brownies (Improved) Recipe By : Lou Konopelski Serving Size : 10 Preparation Time :2:00 Ingredients: Bottom Layer 1 C Flour 1 C Sugar 12 Oz Hershey's Syrup 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract 4 Eggs 1/2 C Maragrine -- Softened Middle Layer: 2 C Confectioner's Sugar 2 Tsp Creme De Menthe 6 Tbsp Margarine -- Softened Top Layer: 4 Tbsp Margarine 1 1/4 C Chocolate Chips -- Semisweet, Or Milk 1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 9x5x2 pan well, line with parchment up sides. 2. Beat margarine for Bottom layer, then mix in remaining ingredients. Pour into pan and bake 30 minutes. Do not test. Let cool completely. 3. Beat magarine for middle layer until smooth. Beat in confectioner's sugar and then Creme de Menthe; beat until fluffy. Spread over bottom layer. 4. Melt ingredients for the top layer together in a double boiler or microwave safe bowl and pour over middle layer and spread to edges. 5. Cool completely and cut into small squares prior to serving. If you substitute peppermint flavoring for the Creme de Menthe, add a few drops of green food coloring as well.

For russ

quote: while you're at it, you can also make a fake handicap sticker to hang in your car window. then you park wherever you like. or perhaps, you act like your pregnant to get the "expecting mothers" parking slots.Man that is low. I wouldn't do something to imposition a handicaped person. I'm only bending a rule. Like no one has ever exceeded the posted speed limit! Right.... Bringing well behaved dogs into the backcountry is a benifit. The more people see well behaved dogs, the better their reputation becomes. After watching what some parents let their kids do on trail, I think they need a leash law for them, but no they're humans. "I'm kidding" And we all know about the people pooing on the DC route. Ain't that against the rules? How many people get ticketed for wildcat craping? That was so nice to see, I'll never use the DC as a descent route again. I'm just kinda jerking the anti-dog crowd out there. I have looked into training a dog once, but I'm too busy, maybe when I slow down. I haven't done this trick in years, but if I ever hike back into Stuart I will do it again. And about a ticket, your Ranger buddies never asked. Kinda mean to shake down all the handicaped people just to find me. Just kidding

No, just a guy that likes to bend the rules to suit himself. I think the no dog rule in MRNP and some of the backcountry areas (Mount Stuart) are crap. My dog's a pretty well trained pack dog. Doesn't chase stuff, hardly ever barks in the wild. I pick up and haul the poo away too. The MRNP rule is there for the ignorant 99% of dog owners who don't care what their dogs do. If someone's got a problem with that, tuff.

Do what I do. I have a "Seeing Eye Dog In Training" vest and go wherever I like. I've used this several times inside the park, by law they have to treat you as a handicapped person and therefore due to the American's w/ Disabilites act you can go wherever you please with'em. BTW: My sister is a vet so this was an easy item to aquire. [ 09-05-2002, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: mr.radon ]

BTW: For the Exit 38 crowd too A true story. Spent the night close to the Mount Baker trailhead, left my 115# Rottweiler sleeping in the back of my car. (She passed away a few years ago) I was in a tent about 100' away. During the early morning hours someone didn't notice her sleeping. They decided for whatever reason to enter my car. The person was pleasantly surprised. No wallet swiped, no radio swiped. The person got away, don't know if my Rotti took a bite out of 'em or not. But whoever it was managed to get out and close the door. I only saw them running away, I wasn't going to chase in my underwear.

quote: anyway, do you really think that you're well behaved dog will change the opinions of the world? No, but it does bring smiles to the faces of kids and is a great tool to pick up chicks. BTW: What was the deal with you getting hit by lightning. The singing zipper didn't warn you in time?

quote: Originally posted by Cpt.Caveman: I would lie back right off the cams To tell the truth, after the third push I hung off the cam. I had removed it but replaced it higher up to allow me lean over further. The damn pack weighed a ton. (two 6-packs w/ dry ice) On another note: Weather report I heard before leaving was way off, sunny till Monday; WTF. The dozens of small lenticulars I saw from my bivy that Sat evening didn't harbor good news. We didn't' bring any rain gear and were thoroughly wet and cold by the time we got to the Notch. The PNW sucks when it schools you like that.

quote: I hauled my backpack through this section and it was a bitch. A bitch for WHO??? I was with jdog. Now get this. From below we can both see the over hang and HE decides to take off his pack for the lead. No problem. Well the pack does this: (pack stuck in overhanging crack) Well now I have a pack too. I have to follow, jam the left hand, lean over and push the friggin pack over the bulge all the time wondering how jdog is keeping me on belay while he hauls his damn pack up. I was pumped on the first pitch. To his credit he didn't stick me again and led all the really hard pitches, esp. the wet ones. good times jdog, next time we do it all the way. [ 09-03-2002, 10:36 PM: Message edited by: mr.radon ]

This is Roy from The "Boeing Sucks!" team. So what happened to the rest of your group. I think we met them when we flew back, they were trying to get a flight in. Older guy and gal, young kid with them. Looked like a husband and wife tema with their teenager. All worked for Boeing and laughed at our team name. Congrates on the summit! Wish we could have seen something from up there.

Anyone here have any experiances to share climbing with an insulin dependant diabetic? I've climbed Mount Rainier and recently Mount Baker with a diabetic friend (also Adams and many other Cascade peaks), he always seems to have troubles on multi-day climbs. Also, any input for good blood sugar meters? On Mount Baker my friend carried two meters, there was almost a 30% error between the two.

1. I never pay. 2. NFS never collects if you're ticketed. 3. If the road closes, less traffic => less people on the route. 4. Even the NFS personnel think NFS policies are "stupid". Quote by un named NPS worker 5. If they close access you can still hike in. I would love to hear how they reply to your questions? LOL

I disagree big time. That route does have sucky rock, a lot of rock fall, and some route finding issues (in fog). BUT it also is awesome for the following reasons: 1) No one does it - total isolation 2) Highest vertical gain of any route on Rainier, you leave from Longmire 3) No one does it - you don't run into any tracks or people 4) Awesome bivy sites at 13K 5) No one is on the route 6) Awesome views on route 7) Did I mention no one is on the route with you? 8) You summit on Success Point - still not seeing anyone 9) The hike to Indian Henry's Hunting Grounds is very beautiful 10) Watch meteor shower from 13.2K Bivy. Some advice: 1) Don't climb Pyramid Peak and add an extra 3,000 vertical to the route's 12,000 vertical like we did 2) Bring a helmet - I didn't and was wigged out the whole time 3) If you have to rappel to the right ridge really check your anchor, then check again.... We did this route late in the year, a lot of rock was exposed. We really didn't have any problems, but rock fall was interesting. We went as a group of two, the end guy would yell if a rock was heading down, the leader would jump right or left to avoid it. We had to do one rappel, the first anchor seemed good till a good reef on the webbing moved a linch-pin boulder. Had to set up a more elaborate anchor to safely rappel. We climbed to the top of Pyramid peak, that really sucked. The high bivy made for an early summit, wish I would have descended the Emmons, would have had a full traverse of Rainier. Partner didn't think we would get a ride. Descended the DC route (sucked). When I do it again, I will head up earlier in the year to see how different it is. We had huge sun cup starting at 13K, which didn't help.

On that hill it would be "Plane to Plane". I heard some ranger did a speed climb some time ago. Set some sick record. Not that we couldn't break any record set by some well acclimated ranger, but we wanted to enjoy the scenery and suffer by hauling all that gear up to 14K camp. Aren't all climbers a little sadistic anyway? Seriously; this was our, went with jdog, first trip to Alaska. Everything went real well for us. Only a couple of items we brought that were never needed. Food worked out great. We ate real well but still lost 30 pounds between the two of us. Skis worked excellent, Denali boots rule. If anyone wants info on gear or supplies let me know.

Well got back from Denali. Group name: "Boeing Sucks!" Landed on the glacier 5-26-2002, returned 6-12-2002. TAT had a cracked up Cessna 185 on the glacier when we landed, no one was hurt in the wreck; he was delivering pizza to base camp..... We wanted to climb the full West Rib. Weather went to shit the 4th day. Spent 13 days at 14K camp. Checked out the West Rib Direct, skinned/climbed up to inspect the route conditions. Bad conditions on the Rib during the first week of June, tons of new snow. Skied back to 14K from the Rib, what fun! Yeah!!! Fresh snow made for awesome skiing. Skinned to fixed lines to ski down several times. Waist deep champagne powder all the way to camp. Don't leave skis at 11K camp. Motorcycle and Squirrel Hill are fun to ski down even with packs and sleds on. Windy Corner is not a problem with skies like we were told by some Germans. Made the summit from 14K camp 6-10-02. After 17,300' was total vertigo, followed wands to summit (summit was poorly wanded almost walked off). High winds, snow and poor visibility. Tent to tent in just under 12 hours. No rope, no pro, light and fast. I climbed with my Denali A/T boots, didn't want the extra weight of mountaineering boots. Worked really well (they were a little heavy). We figured the weather wasn't going to improve. Hooked up with two climbers from Ouray Colorado. They wanted to do the Cassin, but weather forced them to change plans too so they went with us. If the Brew's Brothers group reads this, let me know how things went. Russians put up fixed lines to the top of Rescue Gully. Used fixed lines to hand rappel back to camp. Snow is dry, needed more fuel then expected but got fuel at 14K from people leaving early, food was available too but didn't need any. Used 2.2 gallons in 18 days with two people. Made a lot of regular meals, (no dehydrated foods) so that might have made us use more fuel then we thought. Met Pencil Pusher at Doug Geeting Aviation, part of a Boeing Alpine Club climb. Doug Geeting Aviation is the service to use. On the flight out PJ did two barrel rolls, then dropped the plane into the river basin (10' off the water), followed the river at low altitude till he got back to town. Big grins on our faces....the whole time PJ piped into the head sets rock tunes off his CD player. Way cool. West Rib for Burger and beer after summit... [ 06-19-2002, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: mr.radon ]

I'm not totally against guides either, but I've had their clients try to kill me on several occasions. I could go on about incidents but I'd just be giving incidental reports. The longer multiday courses are great and from the feed back of the people I've talked to. It's the cookie cutter summit slog operations that make me want to puke. But then again anyone going to a guided operation seems to be of a slightly different mindset.

Climbed Liberty Ridge two years in a row on that weekend. 2000 route was full and we had to hike in from the Carbon River. We took our time to let the parties ahead of us get off Thumb Rock. We got blown off at Thumb Rock, really nasty storm; weather report was suposidly good till Tuesday but Sunday night WHAMO. Lenticular cloud descended to Thumb Rock. The good part about it was we had delayed our summit attempt to allow Thumb Rock to empty, saving our toes. The parties ahead got stuck and one of them lost some toes I heard. 2001, we made it with not a person in sight after the Carbon Glacier. Ran into Scott Kinkle (sp?) the naval aviator that was shot in the head coming back from Rainier. He and another party of three were the only ones on that side that year, both parties turned around after getting to the Carbon Glacier. Coming down through Camp Shurman we ran into a good number of people camped there, lucky for us there was a nice wanded trail from the summit as spin drift and fog rolled reducing visability on the descent. I figure you'll have more company then you'd want on the popular route, but the lines are still fresh that time of the year. Have fun.

Thanks a million Mike, this is what I was looking for. I'm going to try and get a hold of that contract with RMI, would be interesting to read it and see what the "real deal" is. Wonder why RMI only got a one year extension?!?! If anyone gets a copy can you post it or get a hold of me, will do same if I find it. Good/bad quotes: RMI: quote: "The number of people we're taking up now is plenty," he said. {Peter Whittaker} Right. Way too many to be doing it every day during the summer. Skip Card gave a lot of space to old Gordon at AAI. I guess he couldn't get anyone else to interview besides guides. How about all the "amateur" climber's view points? We do make up the other 2/3's of the people climbing Rainier. Skip could have interviewed someone at MRNP. And what makes us amateurs anyway? Because we don't do it for money? quote: "That would give independent climbers an opportunity to climb or train and not see guide services," Janow said. Not see the guided parties? How the clogging of the DC route, or passing bagged and tagged victims of RMI! How about getting crowded out of Camp Shurman on a weekday! $20 is a good investment to hold a spot now-a-days. quote: ...And the park might also consider setting aside two or three weekends when guided climbs are prohibited and Mount Rainier is reserved for amateurs, he said. {Gordon} Yep, I guess in his eyes we're either a guide or an amateur. WTF?Would be nice, but AAI goes during the week between Monday and Thursday. Nice to see he's only willing for RMI to make the sacrifice. Slick! Surprised that Skip didn't follow up on this comment... quote: Gordon Janow, director of programs at Alpine Ascents International, one of the four companies guiding on the Emmons, said he would like to see the park allow companies besides RMI more access to more of the mountain on more days, especially for training seminars. So AAI is for: some guide free weekends, helps AAI; more routes open on the mountain, helps AAI. I really hope more of us "Amateur" climbers show up at these meetings then the guide services. If they have to turn away 1,964 clients every year, raise the price and let the market economy take over! I wonder how many "independent/amateur" climbers are turned away each year because there is no room on the guided routes because of the guided parties?Guides can go to plenty of other place to train. Why Rainier? Because it has the shortest approach? I hope there will be enough people at the meeting to take the side of the everyday climbing Joe. Because you know all the guided outfits will be there in force to lubricate the wheels of bureaucracy to turn their way. Think about it, the people who put 1/3 of the people on the top get 4/5'ths input to the rules. See you all on the 19th.

Trust me I don't climb the guided routes. The one time I descended the DC after three days on Success Cleaver I was horrified. At the top RMI guides wouldn't allow any clients to head over to Columbia Crest??? Rope team after rope team, and then all the people who were backed up behind them. All the poo on the DC trail, granted anyone could have done this. But best of all was the lady who the guides stuffed into a sleeping bag on top of DC; bagged and tagged. Who would do that if you were climbing with a group of friends? BTW SC, no people seen after Indian Henry's Hunting Ground cabin. Best bivy site ever at 12,800', watched a meteor shower that night WOW. One year on the Finger we watched the RMI boot camp brigade come up. "All the guys over here, all the girls over there if you got to pee.", the guide yelled at a rest break. The best one was when I drove to Paradise with my parents. A perfect September day when a bus disgorges RMI clients. A guide picks one client’s pack up and starts ripping into it; "You don't need one of these." Then throws the item to the ground. "You need one of these." Then throws the item to the ground and grabs the next item. I happen to get ask one of the clients why he came out in September to climb Rainier? He said he had hoped all the snow would be melted off for an easier climb. He was shocked to see how much snow was still up there. I mentioned that was the definition of a glacier. The look on his face was unforgettable. Guides do have a place, I'm not all against it. You get the bad with the good like in any profession. In Peru, there were these two guides with three clients; very patient and very easy going, awesome group. I'd like to say that lets have a good meeting with the NPS. I'd still like to know more about the current set up, contracts, long term agreements. Can I get a link to the GMP? Can’t find it. (I think I need a guide ) Remember it's America's National Park.

4WD? I came from Colorado where 4WD is 4W slide.... One big snow storm I counted 18 out of 19 cars sitting in the ditch were 4WDs. The only thing a 4WD is good for coming down from Paradise is to accelerate faster off the road. Who would go up to Paradise and not bring chains in the winter? I'd have to agree with the park service here. I've been up there in the winter and had the weather totally turn on me. I made damn sure the only person behind me was the snow plow. All those 4WD'ers sliding on the ice without chains behind me? Who would climb Rainier without crampons? "Well I didn't need them when I went up in the morning." is a great excuse for calling ol' Mike to save your ass.

I've been up Rainier quite a few times since '97 and met you on several occasions. I'm very concerned over the increase in guided services on the mountain. Personally I'd like to see them all disappear from the mountain. They are not much different then prostitutes and John's. The guide (the prostitute) just wants the money from the client (the John) and will do whatever to get their clients rocks off. The client just wants to bag the peak, isn't willing to do anything more then what the paid guide tells him to. Some guides admite to this relationship, it's just business. If people were really interested in climbing they should learn to climb, and after gaining confidence and experience summit Rainier themselves. I've guided several novices friends to the top only for the shear joy to share my love with the mountain and watch someone else fall in love with it too. I've only taken them after training at least half a year on other peaks. But my biggest complaint is that the Park Service gives preferential treatment to certain guiding outfits. RMI thinks it owns the Disappointment Clever route and all the Park Service buildings it occupies. Aren't these tax payer (public) buildings? Why does the Park service give the Whitaker's special treatment? I know they hung out with the Kennedy's but that was years ago. If we have guides on the mountain, why not open all the routes to guided parties? How about allowing other guided companies to use the facilities at Muir? Why not allow competitive biding on the facilities? Or is this already done? I guess I'd like some more information on the current system the guides operate under before I go and make an ass of myself at the meeting on the 19th. Looking forward to more info Mike. I'll be there.

Two items I remember forget really well. 1) Forgot my jacket on the North Face of Chair Peak. I wore my down, didn't get messed up and was warm the whole way up and down. Small pocket though 2) Forgot my climbing harness last year ice climbing at Alpental. Have a cool picture of me leading with a swami-belt I made from 10' of webbing I had in my cord bag. The rapple sucked. My partner asked I stop to take a picture, but I just wanted to get down and breath again. Thoughs oldtimers were hard core.

Was in Ouray for the long weekend. What a hoot. There are lead only routes, not hacked out. Many variation of top rope routes that haven't seen a pick. So much stuff to climb you think you were in heaven. Every night they turned on the water so a lot of routes early in the morning are fresh. I don't konw of anyplace else where the hike in is so short, and a warm hot tub is only minutes away from your last belay.