ivan

one word for peace - piece

so i want to climb denali this coming summer...as i'm a teacher can't make it outta town and to talkeetna before june 20 or so...my partner seems to think the snow will be too shitty to land on any of the glaciers that late...is this true? does there usually occur a time each year when the planes stop landing on the glaciers? if so, what is the range of dates when this stoppage occurs?

never climb w/ orangutangs (or try to spell them either)...all the hair, plus they climb better than me, don't protect long traverses and throw excrement at you the whole time you're seconding

all the cool people bivy sans permit all the cool people use the word "sans" in everday conversation too

josh...sounds like you're the guy whose car i slept by after the rain stopped friday...no shit on the 3 things you didn't want to be doing this weekend...the east ridge didn't happen....ah, well, it was all worth it just to make that miserable avalanche traverse...gimme a call if you ever need someone to climb w/...i'm new to the northwest and still trying to put together a pack of fools to keep the weekends entertaining

interested in climbing the boulder glacier route on mt baker on saturday...anyone know if the roads are open to the boulder ridge trailhead, or any other south side approach?

didn't the great lionel terray meet his demise while shortroping the top of a difficult route in france? guess this would illustrate even high caliber guide-types can get killed this way...

did you climb mt. mathias off the blue glacier? if so, did you approach it from the pass up by the summit or from the blue? the map shows this peak to be more than 1500 feet off the glacier, with a long tongue of steep glacier leading up to just 700 or so feet from the summit (wouldn't be surprised if it was totally jumbled up though)

planning on spending a week or so around olympus the second week of july...read all the info on olympus here, and was looking at the map last night and thought it would be sweet to climb all the summits off the blue glacier...so from reading i have good descriptions of the main summit, how are the others? anybody have good info on them? routes, ratings, etc? i of course am a cheap bastard and have deigned not to purchase the olympics guidebook ...support my laziness!

look out for "los banditos yanquis" you know what happens when you live in bolivia, right? you get colorful dammit

awesome editiorial...evenly presented, responds to all the common arguments...sounds like a smart guy (jesus, what the hell is he doing working for the goverment then?)

be happy you're not like one of my students...this kid showed up yesterday, his entire face red and pusy, his eyes swollen, bleary and oozing, the size of oranges...such nasty shit i told him to go home instantly and not return until he vaguely resembles a human being again...i think he's going to sue his biology teacher (she had them outside pressing wildflowers, guess he wasn't there for poison ivy lecture day)...poor bastard

we're all dead anyway...shouldn't we enjoy the hell out of ourselves while we can? the greatest mistake in life is taking life too seriously...

so these days i'm like, "yo, screw the east coast...i'm getting the fuck out of here" just got a j-o-b in camas, wa so can now securely flee the utterly flat confines of virginia and hopefully devote the rest of my life to the aimless and profitless ascending of godforsaken piles of snow and rock, doubly hopefully without alienating my non-climbing wife will be arriving in early july, allah willing and will more or less instanteanously desire to get to the hills...should anybody wish to have a half-way competent partner (ah, but my good mirth and mule-like legs more than compensate for my generally mule-like grace) write early and write often...i'm especially interested in the alpine rock of the north cascades, as climbing shuksan last summer was the highpoint of my 2 month mountain vacation (and if i ever do another adams easy-route style climb again i wish to be clubbed like a baby-seal (unless i'm 90 years old, in which case i should be clubbed anyway)) yeah, this is more than i really needed to write...just feels good to be alive today, ya know? ivan

ah, devil glissade....so quick a way to descend, yet so numb an ass at the end of it all...not to mention the fact that i have now shredded two (shame on me) pairs of expensive pants from sliding over ice...i think i need to carry thick trashbags or something to sit in from now on while glissading, b/c i can't keep purchasing 200$ pants (though i'm sure rei would love me to)....how do ya'll keep from ruining your drawers? shit, i think that last part might be taken the wrong way

"all we are is dust in the wind, dude" -bill (or was it ted? fuck! the blonde one!)

When I was a young man I carried my packAnd I lived the free life of a roverFrom the Murrays green basin to the dusty outbackI waltzed my Matilda all overThen in nineteen fifteen my country said SonIt's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be doneSo they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gunAnd they sent me away to the warAnd the band played Waltzing MatildaAs we sailed away from the quayAnd amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheersWe sailed off to Gallipoli How well I remember that terrible dayHow the blood stained the sand and the waterAnd how in that hell that they called Suvla BayWe were butchered like lambs at the slaughterJohnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself wellHe chased us with bullets, he rained us with shellsAnd in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hellNearly blew us right back to AustraliaBut the band played Waltzing MatildaAs we stopped to bury our slainWe buried ours and the Turks buried theirsThen we started all over again Now those that were left, well we tried to surviveIn a mad world of blood, death and fireAnd for ten weary weeks I kept myself aliveBut around me the corpses piled higherThen a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over titAnd when I woke up in my hospital bedAnd saw what it had done, I wished I was deadNever knew there were worse things than dyingFor no more I'll go waltzing MatildaAll around the green bush far and nearFor to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legsNo more waltzing Matilda for me So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimedAnd they shipped us back home to AustraliaThe armless, the legless, the blind, the insaneThose proud wounded heroes of SuvlaAnd as our ship pulled into Circular QuayI looked at the place where my legs used to beAnd thank Christ there was nobody waiting for meTo grieve and to mourn and to pityAnd the band played Waltzing MatildaAs they carried us down the gangwayBut nobody cheered, they just stood and staredThen turned all their faces away And now every April I sit on my porchAnd I watch the parade pass before meAnd I watch my old comrades, how proudly they marchReliving old dreams of past gloryAnd the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and soreThe forgotten heroes from a forgotten warAnd the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"And I ask myself the same questionAnd the band plays Waltzing MatildaAnd the old men answer to the callBut year after year their numbers get fewerSome day no one will march there at all Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing MatildaWho'll come a waltzing Matilda with meAnd their ghosts may be heard as you pass the BillabongWho'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

when all else fails...teach not a bad gig...plenty of time off for holidays and summer/spring...reasonable pay (considering all i know is history and have absolutely no marketable skills besides bullshiting (which, come to think of it, oughta be pretty valuable)) all you have to do is put up with a ton of crap from adolescent assholes and fellow morons who are also dodging real work....it helps to imagine them all as dirty nazis and you as that awesome telly salvas character from "the dirty dozen" doing 'em all right. franklin, eh? god almighty that place stinks...seem to recall the aforementioned paper plant is the exact reason

didn't see die when she fell through the thin ice of hot life? isn't she waiting for the worms somewhere under the rubble outside the wall? or perhaps she ran like hell when she started feeling too comfortably numb? maybe she don't need no education? [ 03-26-2002: Message edited by: ivan ]

sucks...you seem awfully chipper...i think i would'va killed somebody already i don't know the guy's name, but national geographic tv featured him within the past two years...he lost a leg to frostbite (right at the knee, i think) on mt. washington (his buddy didn't make it)...at any rate, he's designed a climbing prosthetic which he used to climb el cap (i think)... a little more investigation through national geographic oughta get the rest of the details good luck dude...you sound like a better man than me

jesus...info overload i like the jedi reference...shame the new movies suck appreciate all the responses...the consensus seems to be that, at best, girth hitching is unnecessary, at worst, deadly. it seemed incorrect to me, to begin with, and the lesson i learn from this dialouge is to avoid said arrangement except for in low risk or emergency situations i have plenty of biners (and was attaching pro the prescribed way almost exclusively anyhow), but wanted a verdict of my friends concept feel free to continue arguing...its amusing...why doesn't somebody go ahead and be a sweetheart and call somebody a mother-fucker or something? ivan

my buddy and i have a real death wish (okay he doesn't, but i do) and have been teaching ourselves lead climbing for about a year now...i figure if i could pass algebra and just read "freedom of the hills" a gazillion times i could stay pretty well out of trouble...that and climbing in virginia doesn't afford the opportunity to get truly cluster-fucked 500 feet off the deck at any rate, my friend is in favor of conserving on biners by simply girth hitching slings to the nuts and cams....his point is that it's one less failure point in the whole setup...meanwhile i've yet to see another climber use this technique, or to see it mentioned in the literature anywhere my main problem with this method is seconding the climb...the slings are rather more a pain in the ass to detach and stow...i was wondering if there might be any increased danger of the sling breaking as well? any opinions on this method? my bud's a phd engineer type, so there's pretty much no arguing with him without a world of evidence behind me.

realized last august after spending almost 2 months climbing out west, plus almost all of the prior 3 summers, with me wife and home 2000 miles away, that i was damn near on the verge of getting divorced (after being married only a year) over this consumptive hobby...not wanting that, yet retreating into a rain-man like state the whole long damn school year (i teach) b/c there's nothing better in virginia than rock climbing (longest pitch 100 feet, with continual danger of redneck debris reigning down from above) i had to, as you say, come to my senses and achieve a more western state of consciousness...can't wait to be able to get in a good 4 climbs a month with awesome, no bullshit summers to boot now i just hope i can convince some damn fool can hire me i saw the wy'east route on the approach to the cooper, i think...i assume it's approached from the same campground as the cooper? opinions on soloing it? on this job hunting trip to come the wife'll have to chill at the timberline while i'm out, so long approaches might have to be ruled out (the Leuthold looks interesting though, and I remember the descent down the standard route to be right quick) christ, when's spring break even gonna get here?

the picture reminds me far more of mt. adams standard route that i saw this summer...the two times i was on the hogsback it was either too early or too shitty to see so many jackasses (but i did see literally a 7 year old girl lashed to a rope being dragged along by a party of 5 while i was descending the second time, that and another interesting character skiing right up to the edge of the large smoking fumarole right behind crater rock)...i infinitely preferred the cooper spur, which has that neat simplicity of just going right the hell up the side of the mountain to the summit (didn't see a soul on that climb) so what's the Leuthold like? haven't been on that side of the mountain but the picture of yokum's ridge in CTCV makes the prospective scenery seem tight...

moving to portland from richmond, va (how the hell did i ever get into this hobby, eh?) and will be in the neighborhood and looking to climb hood the last weekend of march...i've already done the standard route and the cooper spur...was looking for something a little more interesting...anybody interested? email at ivanthedark@hotmail.com