Bug

Buy gear.

Good beer. Good slides. Picked up Colin's Cobras. Thanks to all!

I taught my girls myself too. It really does depend on your relationship and the mood. Everything else DP said is right on. I wanted my girls to get good instruction. I am not the best instructor in the world but I have been trained on how to instruct. Too many ski hills put their least experienced instructors with the kids. When Drew was 8, I took him out and had him doing good carved parallel turns. Then we put him in the Alpental ski school. At the end of the year, I went out and followed them. Drew and the other slower kids got no attention and he was skiing worse than when he started at the beginning of the year. Not all kids' instructors are bad. But if you have the skills and patience and a pocket full of chocolate, it will probably work out better if you teach them yourself.

Just so you get your perspective straight. At that age, it is about hot chocolate. There will be some skiing but the overall event has to have a solid basis in spoilage. Keeps em coming back. About the third time my youngest went skiing (at age 3) she took off and has never slowed down. But it was touch and go for the second time out. Hand warmers, reeses minatures and hot chocolate were what she remembered about that day. Anyway, the offer still stands. We will have to get em all out together so there is some kid sized incentive. As far as hills go, Stevens has a magic carpet but it is a little too low angle. Their bunny hills are OK. Snoqualmie has lots of beginner and intermediate terraine but there a lot of wild kids. Meredith has been knocked over three or four times. Gee, I wonder why they never hit me? I am going to start extracting a price for hitting my daughter. Like walk down or at least crawl away in fear.

I'm in Redmond. How old are your kids? Mine are 5 and 7 and just starting to hit intermediate slopes. But if we got them all together on the first day, yours would probably pick it up fast. The biggest problem for the real littleones is getting on and off the lift. Also, I still have a pair of kid's size 11 alpine ski boots to give away.

Dang. I missed it. Who's selling tapes.

Take your paper up to Alaska and see what they say. I only know what a Eskimo told me. But he didn't go to college.

I always take all my clothes off to dig a snow cave. The first few minutes must be hard to watch.

I got the afternoon off and sent Mcclellans butte. Ice in the shade is starting to form.

Just as you are approaching the crux, from above. " pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppphhhh uh uh hack HACK HACK HACK COUGH COUGH COUGH HACK HACK.

There are over 300 words for "snow" in eskimo.

My car was broken into at the Mcclellan butte TH too. Nothing taken.

amen. good snow = easy igloo, bad snow = impossible igloo and frustrating coldness despite his amazing survival skills, nanook starved to death two years after that movie was made. website the arctic plays for high stakes. on a totally unrelated topic this is my 500th post . i guess i can no longer consider myself an "occasional user" (jon, you'll be hearing from me via paypal...) If you are implying that Nanook would have troubles similar to yours you missed the point. Practice will help you to build a better igloo. Or to build something else if conditions warrant. Nanook actually disappeared and was never found according to the records I read. But regardless, that was in an environment without MSR or REI. Starving to death was common amoung those people. There just isn't much food in the arctic. Ask any polar bear why he is willing to stalk you for weeks. There was a ship that wrecked up there somewhere. Someone will know what I am talking about. There were about 50 men who ended up starving to death. In their journals was an account of a chance meeting with a couple of eskimos. They tried to get the eskimos to help them but the eskimos "refused". The tale told through the generations of eskimos was of a chance meeting of a bunch of white skinned men travelling in too large of a group During a time of Annuk's anger. They tried to convince the white skinned men to split up so they would have a chance of finding enough food but the white men "refused". There is not enough food available in the artic in the winter to support a group of 50 men. Eskimo families were rarely more than three or four. There was a great polar bear hunter who became too old to hunt. This wa in the thirties when they had really started settling down in the villages the government provided. He told all his stories to his sons and their sons and then became quiet for many weeks. Finally one morning, his wife woke up to find him walking out the door to go hunting. They said their normal passing things and he went on his way. After two days he had not returned and his wife became worried. She asked her sons to go out and look for him. They set out that morning, the morning of the third day and followed his tracks for four more days. After getting far out onto the ice, the tracks met a set of polar bear tracks head on. Both sets ended right there where they met.

Use a snow saw and a rigid shovel. Not one of those folding jobies. The army surplus shovels actually did fine but no one has reproduced the rigidity in aluminum. You guys sleep in your cold air sinks all you want. Nanook can build an igloo for four in fifteen minutes witha walrus jaw. There is a black & white from 1912. Truely amazing footage. We are all posers.

A cave will keep you warm and dry and noise free. The extra vent holes are for the drying period. Water will pool if you do not have a sloping floor and/or drainage ditches. After a snow cave has been use for a night or two and refroze, it's insulating abilities are ice-like. When a snow cave is fresh, there is a lot of air in the snow in the walls and ceiling which provides insulation.

What can I say. I'm a happy guy.

Your snowcave should come with instructions but as a general rule of thumb, one skipole basket vent hole per person and one per stove. two people and one stove = three vent holes. This is conservative. I have usually had one vent hole in a cave and cooked in the opening. If you are spending a lot of time melting water etc, you might want to add ventilation.

There is also the fact that by having the floor of the sleeping area a little higher than the top of the opening, you will trap the warmer air and stay much warmer than in a pit or horizontal hollow. It always puzzles me that so few snow caves I see out there are made this way. Eskimoes used this practice with their igloos. The caves I have made this way were dripping wet in the morning. So you also have to make the roof as smooth as possible and have drainage ditches around the outside of the sleeping area. Also, make at least one high vent hole with a ski pole and poke it open a few times during the night. Pile the packs in front of the door. Erect a pillar or cone immediately in front of the opening as far away as the opening is wide and the same diameter. The area around the pillar will remain clear of blowing snow. One candle will light up the cave like a lamp and a stove will require extra ventilation.

dude. i hope you left the windows cracked a little and some water. The windows fell out long ago.

On the other hand, not getting in any climbing can be unsafe. After a long weekend of my wife and kids in Icicle canyon I left them in the van watching Snow White while I free soloed the R&D route. That was much safer than driving home without having climbed anything. Yes honey. No honey. OK honey. See you in a few honey.

I know I am getting off topic a little here but there are a few off hand comments made above that kind of threw me. First, I offer a discaimer, I have been backpacking in winter conditions since I was 5 yrs old. That's forty years. When I am preparing for any trip, I am assessing which gear I will need, and how prepared my partner will be, or wether or not I know, or that I am on my own. I pack with complete confidence that I have everything I will need for the given undertaking. I have it down. And about 1/4 of the time I forget something important. Shit. That always hurts my pride. OK so now what. Well I stopped in Gold Bar and bought a vinyl rain coat once. Another time I left the empty fuel bottle and stove in the car and dug under the seats until I found a couple extra water bottles. My wife is always after me to clean the car but SEE, I have a purpose for my methods. And then there was the time I forgot my sleeping bag and didn't know it until I was at the bivy. (OK. Drugs were involved). But did I stop what I was doing? Would it have only taken one more thing to cause me to turn around? Or, to be exact, How much tenacity am I capable of mustering and will it be enough to keep me alive? This is a huge question that overrides a lot of missing gear. Otherwise known as "the will to survive". Read 'Desperate Journeys and Abandoned Souls'. It is an anthology of TRUE ship wreck stories from as far back as the editor could find. Some are from the 1300's. Why do some people survive where others died? To ruin the ending for you, it boils down to the underlying will to survive. Dane's boulder is one thing. An objective danger on Rainier took Willi Unsoeld after he had survived a tentless bivy at 27000 on Everest. But "How many people would have survived the North Face?" is my point? Or the North Ridge of Stuart, or Liberty Ridge when the shit hits the fan. (By the way, Line your pack with a plastic garbage sack. It weighs an ounce and saves pounds of water weight and your shit stays dry. If you forget your raincoat, cut arm holes and you have a life saver.) The human body can take incredible abuse. The mind can be a different story. Sometimes, the slightest thing can put you in an off mood. Maybe the partner you thought you liked turns out to be like Capt Caveman. Or you invite me by one of my other avatars (sucker). So there you are in the mountains you love with an asshole, two gear items short of a good setup, one bad bean burrito bursting in your gut and your partner is absolutely adamant that you will forge onward. It's his car. Are you screwed? Or will you have a good time - all be it, an epic? What you do with your mind will a bigger determining factor than most missing gear items. (OK I drove back from Index once and got my climbing shoes off the kitchen table).

Hopefully, your hubby can walk? Or do we need to ask how the fire started? no longer an issue Oops!

Hopefully, your hubby can walk? Or do we need to ask how the fire started?

at least i didn't have to work today....fun in the rain and sun at disVantage.... You too will be old and responsible some day. And I will be retired and climbing every day. Great TR guys. My favorite route in WA.

When I "Yo Dude " someone for doing something bold, it is because I have been there and felt very alive and incredibly free. Hearing someone else's account puts me back there for a fleeting moment and I have to smile. When someone dies and the shit flies, it is inevitable that someone out there would have done it differently and can tell that at a glance. That they are brash and disrespectful is not a good thing but to rehash a worthwhile point most certainly is. If the style of it stirs you to think about it more, then you are all the more edified by the encounter. As we explore this medium and define our social norms, we will find ourselves changing. That can only happen if we step outside of "acceptable" boundaries now and then. Experiment. We do need to change or find a new planet. Beem me up.