Alpinfox

Better:

JayB, Maybe you should invite your climbing partner over and photograph their stuff too! The photographing thing is a good idea, but I don't think (or hope) it's necessary.

I bet Erik and Trask can tell us the details, but I believe the insurance companies trust you to remember what you had and make a list. You can't be expected to have notarized photographs with reciepts for everything you have ever bought. Since I live with housemates, I would make sure they were all getting out of the house and then I would grab: wallet, keys, computer, photos, CDs (I have hundreds and hundreds), my one little accordian file of important papers, and my guitar. To hell with the climbing gear, I'm tired of that hobby anyway . I'd probably grab my rasta bivy kit too...

Ring... Ring... "Yo" "Hey Alpinfox, you wanna go hit up Index?" "Yup" "OK, see ya in a few" A couple of sandwich and caffiene stops later I was charging up the hill towards Index's sweet Lovin' Arms trying to keep up with the indefatigable Mr. Peru. While waiting for me to catch up, he amused himself with a bit of trail maintenance, and we eventually made it to the base of the route. I tied a rope to the animal and he tore off up the rock. I managed to get the rope through my belay device sometime before he reached the second anchor. Putting the absolutely stellar climbing aside for a moment, this is a spectacular route for the simple exposure and scenery. A near vertical, 500+ft tall monolith of God's most blessed building material, granite, with views of the fall colors, the bumping river, fog-shrouded Mt. Baring, and the quaint hamlet of Index all right below your toes throughout the climb. Superb! Shouts of ecstacy and exhaltation punctuated the afternoon as we climbed higher and higher. At the top of Davis-Holland, I looked up to see a steep, dripping, moss-choked chimney up and to the left ("Thank God we ain't goin' up thataway" I thought) and some bolts off to the right. Mr. Peru led out from the belay, and for some reason was not heading towards the bolts, but instead headed into the aforementioned drippy elevator shaft. Well, it wasn't as hard as it looked, and I was amazed at how solid a handjam can feel even when with oozy moss between your fingers and water running down the sleeve of your shirt. However, I was still quite pleased to be on the tourist end of the rope for this pitch. At the next belay, I zoned out again staring at the kaleidoscope of autumnal brilliance below me, and only "came to" when I saw Mr. Peru not heading left up the easy ramp to the summit as I expected him to, but instead heading straight up the face of what appeared to be an overhanging 20ft section of holdless granite and then mantling up and over the top. This last pitch, the last two of Lovin' Arms, combine mind-boggling exposure, thin-but-secure face climbing, and an outrageous finish. The seemingly blank wall is in fact crisscrossed with felspar bands which make wonderful little crimpy edges. My giggling on this pitch belied my mirth and glee. As a mantled over the top, the sun dropped below the horizon. "Hey, we timed that well" A few quick rappels and we were back at our stuff and... in the dark. Here at 48 degrees of latitude in late October, it gets dark early. We failed to consider this fact when setting out from Seattle at 1pm. Descending the trail proved to be the crux of the day. Luckily I happened to have TWO lighters! The ephemeral glow of these meager flames allowed us to slowly make our way down the trail. We stopped occasionally to stick our burned fingers in our mouths and mumble curses, but were making pretty good progress. Attempts to light dead pine branches to make a torch were unsuccessful. Eventually my lighter overheated and exploded and Mr.Peru's lighter ran out of gas, leaving us with only the light from the spark of the flint to help us find the trail at critical moments such as switchbacks. We joked about what gapers we must have looked like to anyone with a nightvision scope, feeling and falling our way down the class 2 trail. We fell off the trail a few times, but after a couple of hours, finally made it back to the car. We stopped at the store, bought a couple and a new lighter. After a brief stop by the river for some , we headed back to Seattle, with Mr. Peru beating some crazy rythyms on my dashboard to the fine tunes he brought along. Thanks BP! To all you suckas stuck at work yesterday: Get on that route!

Where did the road go? End of the road: Mountain Loop Hwy just north of FR 4065 (Vesper Peak/Sunrise Mine Trailhead).

What makes it "alpine"? Frosty girl? No bolts?

I bring every other stopper and maybe 4-6 cams. Maybe a couple hexes/tricams too. That's about what I took to NE ridge of Triumph recently where a "small alpine rack" was recommended.

I looked for it on Friday night from the Mtn Loop Hwy area. No luck. I've seen the aurora a bunch up in AK though. Mostly green and blue, but red every once in a while.

PFFFTTTT!!! No Jeffski. Most Americans do just fine going to/from Canuckaland with just a DL (even after 911). "Well, remember to bring that birth certificate NEXT time or we might not let you in/out...." This was a freak job by some border guard who's girlfriend prolly just left him or sumfin.

500 PITCHERS!?!?!? GEEEEEZUS! etc...

I have the "Half Dome Plus Two". Top half of the doors are mesh so it's a three season tent. I used mine on Mt. Hood once in windy conditions and got a fair bit of spindrift coming in so I buried the windward edge of the fly with snow. That worked pretty well, but... yeah, it's a three season tent. I would guess that at Vantage on a windy night you'd get sand blown in through the mesh too. Only weighs 5lbs and costs $150. That's pretty good. Rainfly is polyester and fully taped which means very good waterproofness and very little stretch/sag in the rain. Vestibules aren't very big and I haven't tried cooking in them. Two doors is nice so girlfriend/belay slave doesn't have to crawl over you to use the facilities in the middle of the night. Gear loft is nice. Reflective guyline ties. Ventilates well. Fairly steep walls, so probably handles snow pretty well, though I have not yet tested this. It's a clean, simple two-pole design that is easy to set up (clips no sleeves) and has a minimum of superfluous features. Things I don't like: It says REI in great big letters on the fly. Some sloppy stitching of the zippers on the doors. Overall:

Smokin' weed in vietnam.

Well! I found something for my christmas wish list. Mom, are you reading this?

Wrongo. You's gots to shell out some extra ducets for da kayaking shizzle.

Beer in my buds? I wouldn't wanna get em all soggy!

I dunno. Dru?

Well maybe ya'll should nuke the US. Oh wait, ya'll ain't got no nukes! BWAHAHAHA!!!

Why thank you for remembering. Mine was last Thursday, but better late than never!

That's still BS. I can only assume they were trying to make an example of you or that border guard was in an extremely bad mood and wanted to take it out on someone. Sucks. We should nuke Canada, it's the only appropriate response. I'm going to email my congresswoman right now!

Geezus! That's even more horrific than the bear-eaten corpse pic that Sisu posted.

OK. I posted this info there too. Wish I knew about the road closure before heading out. I think it must have happened very recently because they didn't have cones/gates/etc, just one strand of engineer's tape which was hanging down onto the road so you could drive right over it.

The Mtn Loop Hwy is washed out just north of the turnoff for Vesper Peak (Sunrise Mine, Forest Road 4065). This came as quite a surprise to my partner and me as we were driving towards the Sloan Pk trailhead on Friday night. A strand of pink engineer's tape strung across the road was all that kept us from a 15-20' plunge in the Subaru. In other news, there is enough snow and verglass on the N. face of Vesper to make it unclimbable for a wimp like me. The NE ridge on Vesper is a nice scramble.

Yikes! That's freaky. I might get a complex about crack climbing if I think about that too much. We saw a ring-tailed cat come up to the party below us on "Cat In The Hat". I thought it was appropriate and amusing, but the party below us was scared. They seemed to think the cat was after blood, but I think he wanted twinkies.