Gary_Yngve

The purpose of the leash is pretty much to prevent you from being stupid and dropping the axe. You need to grip the head of the axe firmly to self belay or self arrest. Be sure to practice arrest prior to the trip. Self arrest must be done immediately and aggressively. Having an axe and not knowing how to use it is next to worthless. I'm not familiar with the terrain of the Sierras, but if the area is heavily trafficked, then maybe a pair of trekking poles would suffice?

yah, I know people whose must haves are car repairs and medical expenses. I'm all for raising taxes to provide better healthcare and mass transit for everyone.

We were up near the Three Brothers yesterday. Not quite as gusty (maybe 40mph), but the skiing was excellent. Hard to believe that Blewitt Pass was bare a year ago.

What did yall think of the Alpinist a few issues ago?

Yeah, kids are spoiled these days. Cellphones, fast Internet connections, cable, $5 lattes, SUVs, fancy clothes, dozens of DVDs... With my relative pittance of a graduate stipend, I'm still managing to max out my Roth each year (though it will be harder when the limit hits $5000). My parents managed to raise two kids on a single income without a college education. So yeah, if some spoiled yuppie brats can't manage to balance a budget because of their extravagance, that's their own damn fault.

Sounds like a really cool trip. All the routes you mention you should be able to do in under two days. If you were fresh, someone of your fitness could probably do each of those peaks in under 24 hours. I think your biggest problem would be timing around adverse weather, and I like your attitude of not having a hard one-month deadline. July might be the best month to aim for.

I'd be worried about trying to bust through a hard ice layer and the darn pole just flexes instead of punches through.

A tentpole would not work well as a probe. The probe is designed to have less flex and not to pull apart on extraction.

You just farted didn't you, Gary, you sick bastard. Dechristo, you've been on a roll lately. I dug your bipartisan green pork comment too. Anyway, offtopic, but do other people besides me prefer to edit and give feedback on paper and ask for printouts in double-space? I haven't grown to like the PDF embedded comments stuff.

I forgot about Jeff Hansel. He had some works of his on display somewhere in Cap Hill last year. I really like his painting of Oregon Jack.

An air blast can be almost twice as effective as s ground blast. The reflected wave from the ground merges with the incident shock wave, forming a much fiercer Mach stem.

I'd love to see more mountain shots. There's an artist in Mazama who does some mountainscapes -- Steve House has some of his photos in his show. I've generally seen mountains neglected in art until I visited the Norwegian National Gallery. There were some excellent works in there. I'll try to post a few later today. For those of us like me and you who may not be able to afford paintings, consider that your employer may be looking to buy art. Seattle has a mandate of some amount of art that needs to be purchased for a new building (or something like that), and there's always the thing about how the art is supposed to inspire us and keep us sane.

Fuck this weather forecast. As of yesterday, it was supposed to be partly cloudy on Sunday. Now it's mostly cloudy, including on the eastside, though I've yet to look at the MM5 to see if it's possible to get above the clouds. If it's going to be this wet, can it at least get colder in Lillooet?

The Incredible Hulk's green is from GFP. See, jellyfish are useful for something! Now if the darn republicans would just see that we're losing scientific advances by extinguishing species...

Is that the same sort of connection on WC Zeros or Superlight Rocks?

Gotta love the Green Fluorescent Protein.

Real alpinists jug while seconding.

The Moose's Tooth after fifty years of global warming?

For the WWU one: Most of the practicals (usually at least three per day) were in the parking lot just outside the classroom. It worked out really well because there wasn't much time lost on the transition and it split up the dady and kept your attention going. And you got the experience of working with different people each time. We did one two-hour in the dark and rain on a muddy hillside in the woods, which was really good too. There's enough WWU undergrads taking WFR that it's not too hard to find somewhere to crash. I think the first night I split a motel with three others and then we had a place to stay for free the remaining nights. One night I came back from Seattle after midnight so I slept in a stairwell on campus. For food, I brought an electric water heater and had oatmeal, sandwiches, etc. for breakfast/lunch. As for when to take the course... it's a lot of material in a short time, so you want to be awake/focused for it. It's different enough from m field of study that I wasn't too frazzled. I'd highly recommend reading the book before taking the course (they shipped us our books two months early).

Good job on the lead, Selkirk. I was unnerved plenty just on toprope! Drytooling is weird. You can clip bolts, but you can't hook the hangers. Is it legit to say screw the tools and use your hands, say on those mantles? Anyway, thanks for organizing it. It was fun, though I think I'd have a hard time convincing a nonclimber that drytooling is anything but stupid.

Some nontrivial subset of recent aliens are bad, as indicated by the recent pull tests. Hopefully we'll receive an announcement soon on the cause of failure, what batches/years are affected, and what steps will be taken to prevent this from happening in the future. But it obviously takes time to figure this stuff out.

Good to hear some solid facts about the CCH incident and that action is being taken. Pity that there's been so many trolls and folks dissing CCH for their pro pulling from poor placement (user error) that caused the legitimate claims to be doubted.

Gary, your supposed understanding of statistics should let you understand that Mgear could pull test each and every one of the units on their shelves successfully and that will give an absolutely meaningless confidence You're assuming things I didn't say. If the MGear tests come back with zero failures, I'm certainly not going to interpret that as all Aliens are safe. All I said is I'm withholding opinions until more information is available.

Good to know that the whole science of sample size, population size, and confidence is bunk. When you can't think of anything intelligent to contribute, you resort to the foul personal attack. Classy.

What I meant by " I'd be mouthing bullshit if I were to start bashing CCH's manufacturing." is that I'm not qualified to be saying statements about their manufacturing. Yes, I would like an explanation at some point, but I'm in no hurry. Give them time to do their job. It's ski season anyway.