Geek_the_Greek

I have been getting the Canadian mag Explore recently (comes free with ACC membership), and find it quite entertaining. It's kind of like a Canadian Outside, but with less hype (still has some) and more humour. It seems to have a decent ratio of content:ads, which is my main criteria in a magazine (to see how bad it can get, check out Vogue sometime - 250 pages or so, with a content:ads ratio of about 1:20, I'd guess!) The other mags have never gotten over the fact that people aren't that interested in hearing about hard climbing grades from professional climbers (especially sport, but equally true with bouldering and mixice routes now). Ok, maybe once a year it's interesting to hear about so and so repeating Musashi and Dreamtime and whatever, but it's so dull every month. It gets totally silly once you figure out that there are plenty of equally good climbers out there whom you don't hear about. The alpine journals are better, but tackling the AAJ feels like work to me (obscure, thick, academic-sounding, reference-laden, etc.). I personally learn the most from reading ANAM...

Funny that everyone is against Into Thin Air. I thought it was a pretty good read, actually. He painted a pretty harsh image of the commercial guiding operations, which seems to be on the same level as what a lot of cc.com'ers feel. And he didn't mince his words in saying that what he wrote was just his opinion based on what he observed. I guess if a book, just like a band, gets really popular it gets disowned by the original purist fans....

Not that anyone gives a shit, I'm sure, but here in yank-land it's called serviceberry (the generic name for any Amelanchier genus shrub). ....thus ends this brief foray into spray...

Mmmm.. I was more thinking that you probably drink more urine by gettin down (call it what you want) than from a bleached out nalgene.... I guess I was setting myself up for some quality replies!

Whatever - wipe off the skull and crossbones and you're good to go! It's just piss.... Think of it as a cultural experience (didn't Ghandi drink his first piss every morning?). If you're not worried about the effects of crypto, then a little urine residue shouldn't hurt ya one bit. Ok, wash it out until it doesn't smell any more. (Come on people, doesn't anyone practice oral sex?)

Proski on Aurora (or in N. Bend), owned by Martin Volken is a good bet. They know their shit when it comes to skiing way better than any "general" outdoor shop, were super friendly the 2 times I was there (totally no sales push), and have good stuff. Only downside is that they don't have quite as much selection of backcountry boards, bindings, etc. as some places (they do a lot of downhill stuff), but they do stock everything - beacons, shovels, probes, etc. They also rent beacons for cheap. Check 'em out.

Filters are handy, but when I'm going for light weight I bring the Pristine stuff (chlorine dioxide, sold in Canada at MEC, not yet approved in US). Apparently effective against crypto as well. Used for decades in European community water supplies. Check it out here The only pain in the ass is it's a two-part solution that you have to prepare, and then wait 5 minutes before adding to your water (and then wait 15 minutes before drinking).

You're all cheating - we only get 3 routes total! (oops- maybe not....anyway) my picks: -Rainier: Gib ledges -Squamish: Grand wall -Smith: Wartley's revenge

Yeah, but scorpion's point may have been that this (guidebook ratings) is a subject that was beaten to a messy death long ago, and continues to be beaten some more every couple of months or so. Of course hand size matters for crack climbing. Of course it matter for sport climbing too (check out those 11-year olds sticking their whole hand into a "2-finger pocket"). Of course height matters (good for reachy moves, bad for underclings or crunched-up moves). It's not science, for crying out loud, it's opinion, just like judging music or art or something. So whatever, man, rate your guidebook however you want - just be consistent, and we will all appreciate it.

There's a funny article in the 2002 CAJ about the circumstances surrounding the birth of his son. It seems to have been....something of a surprise! You should read it - it's funny, and says something about John. I should stop posting about this, because I don't want to speculate about what I don't know.

You know, that's a good question. I think he was in his sixties. His "mad scientist" shock of white hair showed his age, but his enthusiasm made him seem like he might well have been in his thirties. He'd been doing first ascents since the '60s, so he's been around a bit. Dru or Fern could probably answer this better than I.

Legendary BC mountaineer John Clarke passed away yesterday, apparently peacefully with his family. For those who didn't know him, John was responsible for hundreds of first ascents and ski traverses, mostly in BC's coast range. Lately he had been working with several environmental groups doing talks and slide shows and raising awereness for wilderness issues in BC and elsewhere. John has a wife, Annette, and recently had a son, Nicholas. John was the subject of a great Tami Knight cartoon in the late nineties. In the strip, John is giving a slide show to the BCMC "Beautiful granite walls, easy 26-day approach..." I hadn't seen him for a couple years, but will miss his ageless, cheerful joking and energy.

Six inches? Twelve inches? We're talkin' big boulders here, folks!

Uh, yeah, hey I agree it's kind of silly. I reckon the best bouldering *potential* is up in the alpine (talus slopes and the like), where all those nice clean boulders fall as they erode. But, like cragging areas, potential does not a climbing area make! No one wants to go climbing on moss-filled, weed-choked cliffs with the crumbly rock still there - unless you're going for a summit, that is, in which case anything goes. Likewise, boulderers need a modicum of development into cleaning and establishing problems and the like. It's just like cragging - a classic area has loads of developed routes/problems of high quality, good rock, it's scenic, there's good access without being trashy (no areas beside malls or landfills or anything), etc. Good free camping nearby always helps, as does year-round sunshine, but these aren't total requirements. I'm just theorizing here, so maybe someone who boulders more than a few times a year (although every week at the gym!) could say more...

Well, I've seen stuff that's decent, and Larrabee sounds fun and all, but world class? I'm thinking Hueco, Bishop, Rocklands, Fontainebleau here - which I haven't seen or heard of. I suppose you could make a case that Smith is in the cascades, and it does have good bouldering, but it's a stretch... So what am I missing? 100!

Well, the bouldering here isn't exactly all that hot(Squamish doesn't count - coast range, not cascades) [triple digits, here we come...]

Sport climbers get way more practice catching hard falls than alpine climbers do. They also deal with real groundfall potential way more than alpine climbers. That's why good belaying takes a lot of work on a hard (note - term is relative to climber ability!) sport climb. It's the proper payout of slack for clipping vs a tight belay to avoid groundfalls that makes it so active. Of course falls on mountain routes, when they do happen, are way more serious, but they're rare, so belayers are sloppier (and all the stuff about the lack of good anchors and trying to save time using quick hip belays and all that too). As a big generalization: Crag climbing (especially sport): high probability of falling, low consequences if we do (assuming a good belay) Alpine climbing: low probability of falling (usually because we don't push ourselves as much), high consequences if we do (assuming a good belay)

I'm with Dru, sort of. The difference between +/- and a-d is moronic. Do you want three sub-grades between numbers or 4? It makes no difference, because of the bogusness of grading systems to begin with. Pick a system, and stick with it. Swain was on crack when he separated the two for the Red Rocks guide, and he started the whole damn trend. [Ok, this was a dying post, but I'm cruising for 100 posts today...]

I once played a drinking game involving words that "sound perverted but aren't". The crowd favorites were pinochle humdinger spotted dick angina any others?

Like: good rock up here in WA Dislike: hard to get to it until late spring Like: hard to get to it until late spring (keeps it a bit wild) Dislike: the mud they call rock in the Oregon cascades Like: Safer snow (mostly) than the interior

More good scrabble ones: ai, the south american three-toed sloth (Bradypus tridactylus). Aa, a form of lava. qat, qaid, qoph, qintar, sheqalim, qwerty, faqir - all the non-u q-words.

"The five men, aged 44 to 31...", followed by "Greg...19, one of the men rescued..." Air a little thin over at CNN?

I recall dropping some bombs from the loose slab on the upper third pitch of zz. They would sail all the way to near the crappers, actually. Climbers at MG were totally safe. As I recall, Karate crack is solid if you're strong (which, if you can trust the spray, DFA qualifies), whereas zz takes more technique - somewhat technical jams and such.

Riiiiiiight. So you pull out your palm with cell-modem, log on to cc.com, futz around until you manage to retie the knot just like Lambone's picture, hope - no pray - he was right about cutting that top strand, and hope you don't accidentally unweight the rope while rapping... (then you pray the dammed knot actually unravels when you unweight it, 'cause the only thing that sounds worse than rapping off that fucker is prussiking back up on it...) Whatever. You do half-rope raps and build anchors. You can always find something in 100 feet (jammed knot, shrub, chickenhead or whatever) better than some uber-sketch trick knot. You do pendulums or whatever until you find something.

Yeah, you got it right, Sloth. I guess what I'm saying is that if you're building an anchor and you will be belaying the next pitch and you really want to protect against an upwards pull, you might not want the leader to clip one of the anchor points as pro. In this case, you'll obviously have to be aware that a fall right onto the belay will come from a different direction and all that (so mind yer crampons!).