Gary_Yngve

I'll be doing my one-minute steak.

When I stopped by today, FF had Jim's new edition, but REI did not. However, not any of: University Bookstore UVillage Barnes and Noble REI Feathered Friends Mountaineers Bookstore had the Falcon Self-Rescue book. Bastards. I wasted an entire afternoon hunting for the book before ordering it online and paying more than the cost of the book itself for expedited shipping.

Some caveats with the 6mm perlon: 1) It tangles like hell. 2) Because it's static, you really want about 210 ft 3) Be careful with abrasion, etc. because it's so thin

Really? Wow. I was up there (Colchuck and Enchantments) in early June last year and the rangers told me that I did not need an overnight permit. (Or maybe I just needed the self-issued one at the trailhead because they weren't doing quotas yet?)

And in season for Mountaineers, who will try their best not to pour down cliffs. Intermediate Rock 2 is this weekend, so expect roughly half the class the first day and the other half the second day spread around on 5.4-5.6ish multipitch climbs. We won't be on single-pitch stuff, and we won't be on hard stuff, and we'll be starting pretty early in the morning, so hopefully most of you won't notice.

top 100 peaks

Trask's

Anyone know what's up with that? Saturday they didn't plow it until 10 AM, and we had to sit in the car and wait.

Grrrr... just turned down a ski trip for this weekend because I have to work. Fuck, I worked through Xmas. I worked through New Years. He had a cow when I told him Friday that I had unmovable prior plans for Saturday. I haven't been to the mountains since Dec 7. I add more and more features, just as he tells me, and the results still suck. This bullshit is driving me insane.

I'm ignorant... what state parks are of interest to climbers? The only one that I recognized was Peshatin. http://www.parks.wa.gov/alpha.asp

"Maybe you can sign up for keeping track of the conditions around that belay check route? Are the trails up Pilchuck and Mt. Si in these days?" Yeah, the cougars are hibernating.

Re EDK: EDK tests

Hehe, we'll see how badly I get flamed for this one. The Mountaineers have a rough rating system for the Basic climbs, where they're rated relatively 1-5. In their system, it goes Baker then Fisher Chimneys then Rainier, which I believe, are respectively 3, 4, 5.

I'd add the Klemheist knot to the list. Works with webbing too, though it's only one-directional.

Ah, I see. Funny, Caveman and Trask have around 50 votes each, and Lowell Skoog only has 1.

I only have 1. How do the ratings work anyway?

Two ropelengths up the NE Ridge of Triumph is one of Fleblebleb's nuts.

Maybe the statement "did everything correctly" is too strong, but I think there's nothing wrong with the newspapers saying that with knowledge and experience, risks cannot be entirely eliminated.

And the congress was too busy passing this stupid bill and didn't have any time to renew unemployment benefits? What the hell is wrong with them?

Yeah, the other day a guy was telling us how much hard work and exercise it is setting high marks while snowmobiling. He was doing us a big favor at the time, so I kept my mouth shut.

seattletimes article with some quotes from SEF

They said on the news tonight that two were buried, and the five others went to rescue the other two. It sounds like the newspeople didn't know what they were talking about yesterday. Re: Texplorer's comments: His first one was in poor taste. We should be respecting the dead, not making them the butt of jokes. His second perhaps has some validity, especially with the Mountaineers paradigm of trip scheduling. When you sign up for a trip X weeks in advance, there may be more of a desire to summit instead of bail. Even more so if people on the trip need the credit for a course.

More info: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134605198_avalanche30m.html

What I'm curious of is how seven of them got swept down... if they were crossing an avy slope, shouldn't they have been more spread out? Or was the avy really that big? Of course, I'm just speculating and by no means criticising... just want answers. I hope there's a lot we all can learn from this incident.

This bio is kinda funny: Troy Henkels, 35, Eagle River, Alaska. - Troy is a telecommunications technician and a locksmith. He has climbed Denali and spent time climbing in the Alaska Range. He also "soloed" Mt. Dickey, Alaska. During his free time, he plays guitar and enjoys writing. First, the quotes around "soloed." Second, the lack of specifying a route. Some of the other bios mentioned summiting El Cap and Halfdome... does that mean they did the walk-up? Yet in another bio they go into gory detail about a VI A4+. Kinda funny, because bigwalling has about nothing to do with climbing Everest. Nah, they just wrote that because something with a bunch of letters and numbers and plusses must be pretty damn hard. In general, it seems like they are choosing things that the general population will be aware of and thinks is impressive, while to someone literate in mountaineering, many not be as impressive. They've heard of the big mountains. They've heard of Yosemite. They think that West Butt on Denali is harder than Inf Spur on Foraker. Heck, another bio mentions a successful ascent of Mt. Blanc. Isn't the easiest route on Mt. Blanc a walk-up? So why am I ranting? For two reasons: 1) I'm curious of their serious climbing resumes 2) here is a chance to educate the public more about mountaineering instead of just spitting off a few well known names