Gary_Yngve

Yes, this would be all the less annoying if I had the car to let me go solo.

If someone says to you, "I'd like to do something in the mountains this weekend; do you have any plans," to what extent have they committed to going on a trip with you should the objective be mutually agreeable? With what urgency should they contact you if you email back saying, "Let's do something this weekend," and they're not game? My policy is that whoever asks first has first priority, because when they ask, they (in my mind) implicitly commit to the trip. In the case of this past week, X asked me on Tuesday. I couldn't commit just yet, so I told X I'm tentatively interested but won't know till later. I told X to look for other partners in the meantime, and I won't be upset of X finds someone else. The next day, I was ready to commit to X. So I asked X if our trip was still on. In the meantime, Z emailed me, looking for a trip. I emailed Z back and said that X had gotten to me first but I had been noncommittal, so if X is not on, you're on. X had found Y (and a mellower objective appropriate for Y), and I wasn't annoyed because of what I previously told X (furthermore, X was apologetic and said I was welcome to join them). I emailed Z back less than 30 minutes after my first reply to Z, saying that X found someone else and now we're on. Nearly 24 hours later, I get an email back from Z saying that they have city plans instead, not even one single sorry. The thing that miffs me the most is that Z would normally check email at a much higher frequency than what it took to get a response. Because of the delayed response, that was nearly a full day that I could have been searching for other partners, but instead I was sitting on my ass assuming that I was doing something with Z. So anyway, X is staying high on my reliability list, and Z is dropping. The stupid thing is I had an absolutely fabulous trip with W last weekend, and if that trip had been this weekend instead (and the flakiness the previous weekend), it wouldn't have bothered me so much. But because of the connotation of this weekend, I'm moodier.

No I didn't, but I will!

Who in Seattle can fix them? How much? Can I fix it myself? Where is there info on how? The hardest part looks like the attachment points to the cam lobes.

I was never wearing shorts and polypro at the same time! The polypro long underwear was for sleeping in. Ah, my bad -- black polypro briefs under the shorts. But that's probably TMI.

breakdown of my pack from last weekend: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gyngve/light.html

TLG: I used a Canon S410. On many of the shots, I bracketed at 0 and -1 and digitally aligned them afterward, then applying a digital split filter. And then tweak curves, saturate colors, etc. Maybe even some more drastic edits to improve composition. PVD: Sloan Creek Campground -> NF Sauk -> Mackinaw Shelter -> White Pass -> climbers path -> cross ridge -> Whitechuck Basin -> Glacier Gap -> Disappointment Peak Cleaver -> Gerdine -> Cool -> S Ridge -> summit Road's fine. No bushwhacking. Roundtrip mileage... maybe 34 miles, about 22 miles on trail/nice climbers path?

where you drop into the Whitechuck Basin the sad state of the Whitechuck Glacier Ben mounting the iceberg Gary swimming in the lake Whitechuck Basin at sunset Chiwawa Range at sunset sunset hue over the Dakobed Daniel and Hinman at sunrise Monte Cristos at sunrise Mountain Loop peaks at sunrise group photo roped up on the glacier roped up on the glacier roped up on the glacier the summit as seen from Disappointment Peak Ben on the summit Brian on the summit looking south from the summit Ben and Rainier Whitechuck Basin on the way down Glacier Peak from the dry dying Whitechuck Glacier purple heather purple heather Sloan from White Pass Monte Cristos from White Pass

The lightest steel pair that I know of are the Petzl/Charlet Sarkens at 31 oz. I own the Stubai aluminums that weigh 21 oz. Camp makes a pair that weighs only 17 oz, but I haven't played with them. I think the points on my aluminums were moderately blunt when I bought them new, and I don't think they've significantly blunted in the past few years? I've definitely walked on rock with them over that time, as well as scrambled short sections of rock. I suppose I should compare them to a new pair to see how much wear they have. What are the failures on the aluminum crampons? Just dulling, or have folks bent/broken a whole tooth?

And at 10 PM on FOX, "When Snaffles Attack." Shoutouts to Ben Long, Brian Polagye, and Aaron Zabriskie for the good times I shared with them this past weekend.

There will be photos a few days later. I digitally postprocess all my photos, which takes longer. Though I didn't mention it in my original post, because it didn't fit in with the style, conditions were about as perfect as they could get. The trail has been recently brushed. The Whitechuck basin is either snow-free or dry dying glacier. Running water in the basin and at Glacier Gap. Only a few crevasses, excellent cramponing. Go bag it next weekend! (I'd even dare say that some sick bastard could do it in a day.) We saw only six other people in the Whitechuck basin / on Glacier Peak the entire weekend.

Climb: Glacier Peak-Cool/Disappointment Date of Climb: 7/24/2005 Trip Report: Saturday: 7:00 AM - We ate some homebaked cookies. 9:00 AM - We ate some berries. 11:00 AM - We cached our sneakers for the return and put on boots. 1:00 PM - We swam in a glacial lake. One of us mounted an iceberg. 2:00 PM - We saw (and heard) an F-15 flying about 500 feet over our heads. 3:00 PM - We suntanned for a while. 6:00 PM - We drank some Cap'n. 8:45 PM - One of us watched the sun set. Sunday: 4:00 AM - One of us played the 10-minute why-won't-the-F'in-contact-go-in game? 5:45 AM - We watched the peaks all around us light at sunrise. 7:30 AM - Happily hid behind a boulder and out of the fierce wind to put crampons back on. 8:00 AM - Wind magically stops. 8:45 AM - One of us took an orgasmic dump. 11:00 AM - We drank some Cap'n. 12:30 PM - Some of us swam, some of us bouldered, some of us took photos. 2:00 PM - We swapped wet socks and boots for dry socks and sneakers. 3:45 PM - We ate some berries. 4:00 PM - One of us took an orgasmic dump. 5:45 PM - We ate some homebaked cookies.

Ah, it's amazing what a little bit of saturation enhancement can do.

We know way too little information on this to speculate. My guess is: The officers in question were authorized by superiors to kill if they felt that the subject was putting the public into mortal danger. Alternate question: If I felt I were sitting on the train next to a suicide bomber, and I killed him, under what conditions would that fall under self-defense? Only if he indeed was a suicide bomber or having such an appearance that the vast majority of the public would agree on?

This latest attack sounds like a bunch of copycat terrorist-wannabes, not some precision-planned funded operation. Once again, kudos to the Londoners for getting on with their business and not freaking out and raising a ruckus.

No, the route's not rated VD4.

Here is a picture from this weekend, courtesy Chris Woytko, of the route and our highpoint. The sketchy soft hanging snowblocks that we would have had to cross looked like this in my semi-accurate artistic rendition:

awesome!

Actually the other day I was showing some photos at a friend's place and when someone asked how we got all those fancy stuff to the top of the Tooth, I replied tongue-in-cheek that a heli dropped it off. I should have also added that the word gullible is not in the dictionary.

My god, this thread certainly devolved quickly. I don't know what it is about the questions, but when you get asked so many times, and you're bummed from not sending the route, it just gets annoying. Especially when they give you the look, "I got up the Cat-Dog route. Why couldn't you?" The questions were much less annoying two years ago when we did the North Ridge. It was actually kind of fun, especially when we let a 3-year-old play with an ice tool.

I don't know how many times we got asked that by innocent hikers. We'd say no. If there were a followup question, such as, "How was the route?" we'd say that we tried a harder route, the headwall. Or we'd describe the icecliffs in gory detail until they'd start puzzling. (It's hard not to make something come out as arrogant when you imply you were climbing something harder than the dog route.) Then there was the guy who asked us if we turned around because we didn't bring enough pro. Finally back at the car, "Did you guys summit?" "No." "Did you guys almost summit?" (wtf does that mean?) "We came back alive." "Well I guess that's all that counts -- too many deaths in the news lately." So what do yall say in a situation like this? It all reminded me of that Kelly Cordes letter in Alpinist a few months ago.

specifically the headwall? Anyone have any to share? There were 4 climbers doing the N Ridge and at least 50 doing the C-D (or at least it felt that way). Surely not everyone had a dead camera, as I did...

We tried to go straight up the center earlier today. We did a few hundred feet of glacial ice (fun, more ice than on the NR) before the snow ramp that we thought would take us to the upper snowfields turned out to be a jumble of detached snowblocks. We didn't see a way to stick to the ice, and we thought the snowblocks were too sketch (along with a general "things aren't going our way today*" vibe) so we aborted, and I pulled out the coathanger to start v-threading. There are two bergshrunds higher up that can definitely be end-run to the left. Sorry I don't have any pictures; my camera passed away sometime in the preceding week and I didn't discover it until today. We ended up seracing some on the Lower Coleman before heading home. * We took longer than anticipated to get out of camp and weave our way to the base of the route. We weren't climbing with the speed and confidence that I know we are capable of. While we were packing camp, there was icefall right of the Roman Nose. During the pitch before we turned around, the headwall was having some indigestion.

The seams need to be removed. (Code for that is another two-week project.) I remember seeing Seattle from when we were on Chair Peak, but I don't see it in the diagram.

Very cool. I've had that idea for quite a while but haven't had the free time to code it up. The biggest issues are dealing with such huge amounts of data (can't be contained in memory all at once). I've raytraced individual quads of DEMs but not larger. Maybe I'll get around to it someday (the idea would be that I'd make the software publically available).