Gary_Yngve

hee hee hee Anyone else imagining Zidane headbutting RuMR?

The images look fine to me. I'd have to run experiments to see if how much of a space savings 75-90% quality in Irfanview affords (and how low before noise/artifacts become readily apparent. A few of your images exhibited slight color-casting (e.g. the snow in your 2nd pic has a greenish tint), a byproduct of either the film or the scanning process. Photoshop has cool semi-automatic ways of fixing this, but not Irfanview (in Irfanview you can tweak color-balance, but it's not intuitive how to do so to correct the colors the best way).

Before I got the 5mm tech cord stuff, my cordalette was bulky 7mm, and I often found myself leaving it at home (or wanting to) on a lightweight alpine trip.

I'm lazy. I went to Pro Mountain Sports and bought 5mm techcord already precut to 20 feet.

IrfanView supports batch operations such as upping saturation. My concern about the batch processing is that it's hard to know what the magical settings are without a projector to test it on. You may notice banding in the greens and blues but unsaturated reds, or banded reds but yellowish bluebird sky.

Unfortunately, I think the problem is usually in the digital projector. Affordable (<$5K) digital projectors have noticably poorer sharpness/colors than LCD monitors. If you can get access to the projector beforehand, you have a chance of possibly tweaking things to look better on the projector. Also remember that the darker the room, the better the projected image will look.

Haireball, I think that's a great idea. Miraculously, a bad accident was avoided by sheer luck up in the Mtn Loop this weekend when two gym/sport climbers were adventure climbing, one fell, and the other was ripped from the belay anchor. Attachment point to the belay anchor? A gear loop...

It always rains on 4th of July. late-May to early-June is always wetter than people expect. Usually there's a cold-clear spell in late Dec and again in mid-Feb. If you have steady high pressure forecast, the weather is usually bomber, aside from thunderstorm activity or the Pickets.

Trogdor, I really want to climb SF too, though I prefer visiting the area in Aug-Oct.

Am I invited?

Early signs of shock include pale/cold/clammy skin, shallow/rapid breathing, and a weak/fast pulse. Perhaps reduced level of consciousness. Important to note differences from patients with increased intracranial pressure (closed head injury): slow/bounding pulse and possible irregular breathing. First the body is trying to compensate for inadequate perfusion and maintain blood pressure. Increased breathing/heart rates and shunting blood from the periphery accomplish this. Eventually the body is unable to maintain blood pressure. Informally, this means the body is in deep shit and likely can't dig itself out without serious help (ALS, IVs).

That's also a good technique on brushy low-angle raps, e.g. from the top of Exfoliation Dome.

Your rope gets stuck 500 feet above flat ground because you forgot to untie a knot. The face above you is blank. Your choices are sit and wait for help, with a bad storm brewing and no bivy gear, or prusik up the questionably stuck rope. That sounds like DYING to me.

Dru is correct. A knot can get stuck in a crack when tossed on a windy day, and if you're tired, you can forget to untie the knots when you pull the rope.

Russ, good job getting everyone else down safely.

Regarding Condormorphine Addiction being a good/bad choice for a first multipitch climb, I think it's one of the best ones out there -- lots of bolts and single-rope rappels. There have been other incidents lately regarding climbers who are strong in the gym but who may not have all the knowledge they need to do mountain stuff. A close call recently involved a climber anchored off a gear-loop who was ripped from the belay when the partner fell. Miraculously both did not fall far even though they were on 4th-class terrain. How is a climber supposed to get the requisite knowledge to safely make the transition, aside from a mentor or a formal class (Mountaineers, Boealps, WAC, etc.)?

I met Emily in Vantage a month ago. Ruth and I had just topped out on the Sunshine Wall and were walking around to find the nearest rap anchor. We managed to walk past George and Martha and came to a route being top-roped. We waited for the climber (Emily) to finish, as we chatted with a Vantage regular who also just topped out and had some strong opinions regarding the Kropp plaque. When Emily got to the top she decided to have her partner lower her and let us clean their anchor and rap their rope. Later in the day, I set up a fixed line for my friend Kevin to take photos of my styling Air Guitar. Emily was climbing one of the bolted lines to the right of Air Guitar, and Kevin got some pictures of her. She and her friend were nice folks.

sweet!

I agree with Dru. At this time of year, Baker is probably the better place to go.

Were you the guys camped at the base of the E Ridge on Eldo? We saw lights there and were wondering if you guys saw ours. A group was also heading in to do Eldo W Arete...

"We must abandon our ascent and go down the mountain immediately." "We're so very close to the top, Mr. Puffy Jacket Man." Classic!

Antonyms: meek, timid, weak, prude, unadventurous, insecure, cowardly, etc.

Awesome!

World Cup!!!

Nice reflection shot!