Gary_Yngve

At the risk of having a bunch of jackasses post pointless inane replies, here I go: For the past few months, Eric and I have been hitting Index once every week or two (on weekday mornings with no one else around), and it's been great -- we've worked our way up to onsighting 5.9s (no, not Sagittarius) and 5.10a handcracks. It seems the next step to up our grades is to find harder routes to TR until we feel comfortable leading them and then test ourselves on unseen routes of the same difficulty. So what are some recommended 5.10bcd stuff that isn't too much of a pain to set up a top rope (i.e. can climb an easier route to access the anchors)? If you guys are lame and don't give any suggestions, we'll just wander up to Index and spend the day investigating ourselves... but suggestions would be appreciated.

I thought we already explained it... the road rash on my partner's arm was from a bike wreck, not from a lead fall! We swear!

That's right, we bailed from there because we were too scared shitless to scramble down five feet to the security of the bolt anchors on the belay ledge.

The placement actually looked as if the rock parted, someone put the sling in, and the rock closed on the sling again.

And the free end of the sling had an overhand tied in it partway up, just as you tie an overhand when using a cordalette.

actually it's blue, and it looked like Spectra

There doesn't appear to be a constriction (other than the constriction *above*) or any sort of knot. You can feel all the rock above, below, and behind the sling. It would have helped to have a light and a mirror... then one could see behind there as well. No importance to it... just ran across it today and we were puzzled by how it could have been placed there and how it's still staying.

There's a sling about ten feet of the deck that goes into the rock and vanishes you can feel behind it and under it. It seems to be wedged upwards in a crack yet resists a downward pull (didn't feel like bounce-testing it). Anyone know how it's staying in and how it get there?

The new part of the IMA supposedly opens in a few months... don't know any exact dates though.

Sadly, I've been getting way more of that lately than mountains... quite sad, really. I must get my mountains!!!

god, i totally could use a drink tonight... see ya there

I give the talk at SIGGRAPH next Tuesday. He's having a baby in about a week and a half. Between those two, his stranglehold on me should lessen. I plan on making up for my shitty climbing summer (I've been happy with the quality of routes I've done, just not the quantity) by doing a lot of climbing in August.

So yes, I could buy a tent if I wanted to right now. But it wouldn't be a good use of money. (My money this past half year has instead gone towards a pair of tools and a digicam). I use a tent just a handful of times a year, namely when we're looking at a shitty forecast but we're going out anyway. It's really convenient to be able to borrow a Bibler I-Tent or a NF VE-25.

Just to clarify, I had no intent to check out gear over the next two weeks anyway because I won't be able to go to the mountains until August (damn work). I was mainly annoyed by the cheeriness in the guy's voice as he was enforcing Sandi's law. I'll tell you another Sandi story from a few weeks ago. I had to pick up some checks for the climbing club, and Sandi wouldn't give them to me unless Stebbi called her up and authorized her to give the checks to me, and then I came with picture ID. This was after we circulated email among all of us saying that I'd come down to get the checks. Anyway, I came back a few minutes later with my ID and Stebbi's ID, and she didn't even look at the IDs closer than 10 feet away but gave me the checks anyway. Grrrrr...

Get a job? Come on... like working 50-60 hrs a week (and that's not a busy week -- 50-60 hrs was this past Fri-Sun for me) in grad school leaves me with a lot of room to work a job...

I've been extremely moody lately because I haven't gotten any mountain action, especially with having to work insane hours since Thursday. I had a tent to return Thursday, but I was working through the two hour window the gear room was open. So I came down today, the next available time, to return the gear, and the person working there so cheerily informs me that I cannot check any gear out for the next two weeks because I was late in returning the tent. I basically flipped out and spewed a slew of cuss words about Sandi before I stormed off to the UW Rock and discovered that I was too pissed off to enjoy bouldering on it. No doubt this minion has been brainwashed to do whatever Sandi orders, so I'm not holding him responsible. Though I would like to point out that previous people working at the gear room have been far more forgiving. And this hasn't at all been my first dealings with the power-tripping Sandi, who rules over the climbing club (and other IMA clubs) with iron-fisted fury. She's been screwing over the club and its members for years. Grrrr, I just had to get this out of my system...

I xeroxed some stuff from Beckey for him the other day... I'll let you know his top-secret plans for

And all those people who take the boat across Ross Lake on the way out of the Pickets are a bunch of wusses! Give the dude a break... he had a good time in the mountains, which is the most important thing there is!

I have to work. Grrrr...

For $3 US, you can get all sorts of tasty stuff at the Sultan Bakery.

We were there yesterday. It didn't get very cold overnight, so the snow wasn't too hard. We brought a tool each (less clunky than an axe) and single pair of alum crampons for the two of us. We never touched the pons, though the tool was nice for playing games inside the moat and for glissading down Dragontail.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/2325904/detail.html http://www.nps.gov/glac/whatsnew/press03pdf/NEWS0354.pdf Lots of unanswered questions... was he wearing a helmet? Was the rockfall from a party above? ... But most importantly, let's wish him a speedy recovery!

Depending on water levels and your car, you may not want to drive across the creek crossing on the forest road. This would add a few extra miles to the approach.

I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from the other Tech further south.