Gary_Yngve

Cheers to the AAI guides for stepping up and assisting after the accident!

Thanks for the update, Tom. Still lots of unanswered questions, and most of us (myself included) don't have names yet. Oh well, I think I'll just block this out and work all day and ping the news again in the evening.

I had a grocery bag with some potatoes dangling from my handlebars today. The bag got sucked through the fork, and a few potatoes got impaled by the spokes, locking the front wheel. Luckily I was going slow, which averted a wreck.

Very cool. I wonder how many parties have done the route since Forrest and Dan put it up.

There's a fair amount of give, but it's still a pretty obtuse angle. The force on each anchor is probably double the mass of the bear.

Ok, I guess that makes sense. The bear is probably under 100 lbs? (And the bear doesn't care about a 10:1 safety factor. )

I recall watching squirrel acrobatics with the birdseed feeder when I was little. Wild stuff. Something is bothering me about the pictures though: how heavy is the bear? what type of rope/cord is being used? It seems that the cord would have to be very strong (certainly not your household twine), and either very low stretch or pretensioned (with possible backties to where it's anchored in the trees). Dru, do you know any history about the photos?

Although my partner, while on G-M, did see a large bird fly by her, carrying a small bird, and that smaller bird was screeching ang wailing. Sadly I missed the sight -- there's something primeval and powerful about the cycle of life and death in Mother Nature.

I just find it laughable that you criticize someone on their reading comprehension of your supposed prose when the quality of said prose leaves much to be desired.

You could write it more slowly too; your writing has a dearth of punctuation.

Some things I noticed about security when I visited England in Spring: Instead of having self-service luggage lockers as they do in Scandanavia, one must give your bags to an attendant who X-rays them before storing them. I didn't have to take off my shoes at the airport. No one asked me. On the other hand in the States, when they say that it is "optional" to take your shoes off, it's really that it's "strongly recommended" to take your shoes off because if you don't remove your shoes, they'll hand-search you.

Yeah, Jim's shop rocks!

The horn is roughly where the bolt-ladder start and the 5.8 right start meet. It's just below where the liebacking starts.

I saw Chuck yesterday as we were doing G-M -- what route had you guys just finished?

Woah, I didn't see the birds nest when I climbed it yesterday evening. Must have climbed right by it? Where is it compared to that huge horn you can sling?

One more note: The altitudes in Klenke's SummitPost description seemed a little off. The altitude to leave the trail to hit the ridge seems like it should be more like 4200 than 4300. Don't be too literal on the WSW. You should be able to see the ridge through the clearing if the weather isn't sucky. Unlike us, use common sense. If it's too steep, correct yourself sooner than later. By the time we realized that we needed to go climber's left, there were ravines/cliffs preventing us from doing so -- we didn't top out onto the ridge until 6200. We did find exposed wet slopy ledges to traverse on at 6400 that took us into the basin. The ramp that you need to find is pretty darn obvious. But it was more like 5700 feet than 5900 feet. Basically, at the toe of the buttress.

Fortress: the SW route is in great shape. the E ridge is still holding steep snow up top, turning a mellow ridgewalk into scary exposed traversing. we felt that traversing to Chiwawa would have been inappropriate for our group; obviously a stronger party may make a different decision. Buck: Lots of snow up top, making for nice cramponing in the early morning. I don't think I slogged through any pumice. Head close to the West Peak, and then locate the Middle Peak from there (it has a thin white dike on the upper middle of it). As for the approach, I think any approach sucks. Two of us took the Beckey ramp; the other four went over LG Pass and up Louis Creek. The two of us got off-route on the E Ridge up Berge -- we ended up in steep brush and cliffbands to the right, which were joyously wet on Saturday.

I just got an email that really irked me. The SIGGRAPH Exhibition was boasting that they have the largest number of companies showing up since 9/11/01. What the heck does 9/11 have to do with the computer industry? NOTHING. How about claiming "the most companies since the DOW dropped below 10000?" That sounds a little more relevant for me. Maybe I should start going around saying, "This is the best the team has played since 9/11." "This is the least bugs Windows has had since 9/11." "Baby, you're the best lay I've had since 9/11."

I could also do early mornings on MWF.

I haven't rock-climbed outside much all year, and I'm looking to kiss my rustiness good-bye. Would like to climb the standard 5.9/5.10as -- BoC, PA, Gdza, G-M, etc., to get myself in shape for SF Prusik, Backbone Dtail, etc. Don't have a car. Would happily lead everything for folks who don't want to lead or would happily follow harder .10s. Send me a PM of your general availability -- mainly looking to build a list of phnums/emails to hit for "let's go climbing tomorrow" deals.

This is an interesting shot: It's a combo of morning light and evening light.

any good tips? i've been using Shoe Goo, but it only lasts so long when bushwhacking and kicking steps in snow

a monkey or a hummingbird