ivan

holy shit sky, now that's an avatar image! only way to make it better might be if they were "my little ponies!" my daughter'll love it...

if you can't fit into the gregory denali, you sure as hell don't need it! very comfy pack - heavy, but then that's hard to avoid when you're going for a big load anyway - though i used it for a month on denali w/ all smiles, i get far more use out of mine now humping the 80 lbs of supplies it takes to keep my family alive every week along the 4 mile loop to safeway

You shouldn't thank people in advance for a favor they haven't done yet, it's very passive aggressive. Might as well ask for the TPS reports done on saturday. And your welcome, although, I supposed I sprayed. Thanks for not minding this post!!! So how's the dating scene in SEA Mike? "no spray" is like "adult swim time" at the pool when you were a kid...

thanks - i usually just use my cowbell for weather prognostications...

how the fuck did bilbo get mixed up w/ the goddamn decepticons?

my other annoyance w/ skinny ropes, discovered this past weekend - they really don't take prusiks well!

who cares what it counts as? it sounds fun!

dogs fucked the pope! no fault of mine! don't you fuckers know this thing belonged to the world bank? that money goes to italy!

jeebus dude, you didn't get enough after a full week up there this summer already?!? doesn't look that much colder than august, really....

eeeexxxxxceeeeeeelent

man - feels good to have josh back - can you go back to the old mr. burns avatar image now?

dude - that was soooo last week!

not much too it - a long hard route on a fall day - we didn't start until the sun hit the wall - dan voted to cut off onto galaxy when we were an hour and a half from dark but it was my lead and i was obstinate (a long drive from pdx afterall!) - the belay i'd set up made it hard to get in the right side of the pressure chamber and i spent a long time in a supertight squeeze chimney to the left - dan finished his pitch to just below the exit crack/roof as it got dark - the belay was too far left for us to haul the pack w/o a 2nd rope, and i spent a long time feeling pissed and stuck - eventually went to prusik but the rope was too skinny for my cords - went skittering off into the inky blackness at one point, rope rubbing across a sharp edge - ah! - climbing by headlamp is not fast - we probably topped out around 1000 or so - was only my 2nd descent off the wall and it was a bit tricker at night - missed the turnoff for traversing over to orbit and the base of the wall - ended up much lower down and had to hike back up a bunch to get the backs - a fun day, it's good to know you can still do the hard shit when the conditions are less than optimal, no? a great climb - lots of wild places - the step around the edge onto iconoclast - the steep, chossy bit below the belay/cutoff for library ledge - my favorite was leading the double cracks, where i could stem way the hell out on the knife-edge of the dihedral (beacon training in effect!) - the climb def gets harder the higher up you go

- castle rock on friday - bone, damnation, old grey mare and crack of doom - remorse/iconoclast/hyperspace epic on saturday - a fun route to be finishing by headlamp for sure - careno crags on sunday but the wasps were fawking insane! bk route and then the long drive home

good times - sorry i missed you mike (too busy epic'ing on hyperspace (thanks for the idea too, bastard!)) - rain on friday mornign but managed to find castle rock all to ourselves - did the bone, damnation and crack of doom, none of which i'd done before - sunday was so wasted from getting in at 2 a.m that we just did some stuff at careno for a few hours until the yellow-jackets became too menacing to stand

marriage is fun - my recent favorite moment: my wife calls a chick i work w/, who last year i spent a fair amoutn of time w/ since we were working on some shit together - anyway, she calls this chick after a year and lays into her, threatening her and shit in the finest of ghetto-fashion-style - then she wigs out on me like i've got a plan to cheat on her all this time and not believing i've ever been out climbing anytime i've said i was over the last year (like, given the choice between dealing w/ bitches and all their stupid shit and being in the great church of the alpine, i'd choose some fucking wierd pdx-creature?) anyhow, now all my bidness is the world's bidness and damn, it feels good!!! ha, ha - mah-whaj! creating adventure out of the clear blue sky for centuries!!! waht's not to love?

damn! forgot all about that one - looks tits! seem to recall it looked 6 inches in places, and kinda funky too like beacon cracks can be, w/ the crack behind the lip all hollowed out low down

true that - climbed it w/ a #4 (old school camelot) whihc was almost immediately worthless - small pro does show up in time to protect the last move or two - you'd dig it john - do local access right below it to warm up the entirely wrong set of mental muscles after that, go a few feet further down the trail and do jensen's ridge - .11 and to 5 inches - wackier than flying circus for sure and plenty of other hardness in finger and hand crack sizes - you might want to consider the poison-oak-less variation!

looking forward - been a few years since i made the rope up - what the hell happened to tuff love this year, it usually got the kitchen-pass nod in the past?

opdyke remembers this great "act of sacrilege," more or less his words, and swears he could never return to the sacred wall as a result of its defilement

and warmed up considerably today, so starting the freeze/thaw thang - i likey!

july

what's more memorable - the trip where you lost your fingers or the trip where you DIDN'T lose all your fingers?

October 31st 2003 was the best day imaginable for the n side! w/ all this recent precip i imagine it'll be getting good real soon.

the key difference being though that cheswick was a doily-little fruit-fuck and i'm a big bull goddamn loon ken kesey