Jake

Anybody have an idea of where these planes are? RELEASE NO. 05-26 July 12, 2005 A JPAC RECOVERY TEAM DEPLOYS TO WASHINGTON STATE HICKAM AFB, HAWAII – One Recovery Team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command will deploy from Hawaii this week for approximately two months to conduct operations in Washington state in hopes of bringing home remains of Americans still missing from World War II. This is the first Joint Field Activity mission in the continental United States since 1996. Operations will be conducted at two sites in the northern cascades of Washington. One site, in the Wenatchee National Forest, is associated with a SBD-5 Dauntless aircraft crash site. The aircraft, with two men aboard, was reported missing on Feb. 15, 1945 after having departed the U.S. Naval Air Station, Seattle, on a training mission. The second excavation site, located in the Okanogan National Forest, correlates to a P-38 aircraft loss that was reported missing in 1942. The pilot from the 54th Fighter Squadron, 343rd Fighter Group, departed Elmendorf Air Base, Alaska on a maintenance flight to Pain Field, Washington and never arrived. A four-member investigation team that included a World War II analyst from JPAC deployed to the sites last year. The team found physical evidence at both locations and evaluated archival records leading them to recommend the sites for recovery this year. JPAC’s mission is to accomplish the fullest possible accounting of all Americans still missing as a result of the nation’s military campaigns through investigative, search and recovery missions. JPAC routinely carries out operations on foreign soil that take its team members worldwide including Russia, Laos, China, Papua New Guinea, and Burma. Today, there is one American still missing from Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 1,800 from the Vietnam War, 126 from the Cold War, more than 8,100 from the Korean War, and more than 78,000 from World War II.

Ok so this has been hashed out some in the past, but has anyone had trouble with aluminums, particularly on glacial ice towards the end of the summer?

So my memory is failing me! Oh well. The N. Face is right around the corner on the right.

Yeah there is definitely some relief. I've thought about heading up there to check it out someday. This is a pic of the EAST face, not the north.

Nice! Any guesses on how the glacier is in late season? Too broken up?

After the easy 5.7 slab deal there is an exposed traverse right along the ridge crest. You probably want your more experienced person there. It is simple, but there is some rope drag. That last chimney o/w to the summit can be interesting, though it is definitely harder than the other way. Rap off with a 60m rope, though a 50 would work with a little down climbing if you had to. I don't know about actually downclimbing the entire rap route. It would be way hard (vertical cracks and steep steps) and the rappel is fun and quick anyway.

An overhanging rock cornice???? That sounds like bad news.

Jack in the Box would clean up too with all the late night business.

Had a rattle in my Jeep that sounds kinda similar to yours and it was the exhaust pipe banging on the frame. Just had to push it around and tighten up some clamps a little.

Alcohol is killing Russia's people and its future, experts say ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — His eyes are a bright and piercing blue, the same color as the jugs of Icicle-brand window cleaner he used to drink because it was twice as strong as vodka but five times cheaper. Gennadi Shegurov, 45 years old and five years sober, isn’t sure how he survived his 20 years of drinking Icicle, along with untold quantities of antifreeze, beer, homemade vodka, brown bread soaked in shoe polish, industrial solvents, a rose-water cologne called Flight and a popular perfume called Triple. “I drank like other people breathe,” said Shegurov, who was a prize-winning mathematician in college. “I had to look at newspapers to see what season it was. One time, the police stopped me and it took me half an hour to remember my name.” By rights and statistics, Shegurov should be dead, another victim of a national addiction to alcohol that’s led doctors and government officials to worry that Russia — its current health and future population — is circling the drain. Some 85 percent of Russian men drink regularly — they outnumber female drinkers by 5 to 1 — and on average they knock back a fifth of vodka every other day. And that doesn’t include the Russian intake of beer, wine and liqueur. Drinking began to rise dramatically in the Soviet Union about 50 years ago, according to Dr. Alexander Nemtsov, one of Russia’s leading experts on alcoholism and the head of the psychiatric research department at the Russian Ministry of Health. Per capita consumption in 1950 was the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of pure alcohol per year. By 1985 it had soared to 3.75 gallons per person. In recent years it’s climbed again, to 4 gallons per person, an all-time high for modern Russia. The average Russian man, in large part due to alcohol abuse, won’t make it to his 59th birthday. Government figures show that an estimated 51,000 Russians died of alcohol poisoning last year, compared with more than 300 in the United States, which has twice the population of Russia, in the late 1990s. Not surprisingly, alcohol poisoning has its own category in the government’s cause-of-death charts. A startling 34 percent of all deaths in Russia over the last decade — from murders and heart attacks to suicides and traffic accidents — were related to alcohol, said Nemtsov. The comparable figure for the United States in 1996 was 3.2 percent, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “Drinking is how we live,” he said. “And now it’s also how we die.” Nemtsov’s statistical studies show direct correlations between drinking and mortality — with sharp spikes in the mid-1980s as the Soviet Union began to fray, in the mid-1990s as inflation and economic uncertainty went haywire, and then again starting in 2001. The Russian statistics bureau Goskomstat, the National Security Council and the United Nations all project a sharp decline in Russia’s population. The United Nations says the population, now just over 144 million, will fall to 112 million by mid-century. Dr. Alexey Magalif, a prominent Moscow psychiatrist whose private clinic specializes in the treatment of alcoholism and depression, thinks Russian society has “very deep psychological problems in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. ... And yes,” he adds, “I’d use the word crisis.” “Drunkenness is a slow suicide,” Magalif said. “People are disillusioned and they feel they have no future. They feel abandoned by the state. They turn themselves off — and turn to drinking.” Doctors and public health experts are almost unanimous in their frustration at the government’s inability to stem the tide of alcohol. Requests for interviews with senior officials at the Ministry of Health went unanswered. “The trouble is, nothing is being done,” said Nemtsov, who works for the health ministry. “Millions of personal tragedies have not coalesced into a public sentiment against alcohol. Heavy drinking is part of our daily life, and this sustains the official indifference to the problem.” Nemtsov was aghast that President Vladimir Putin listed 147 priorities for his second term, but “alcohol was not even mentioned.” Gennadi Shegurov credits Alcoholics Anonymous and a vision of God for getting him sober, and he uses his personal horrors to counsel other alcoholics at a Salvation Army center in downtown St. Petersburg. He and his buddies drank “all day, every day.” The six men with whom he shared a vacant attic have all died from drinking. Russia’s tolerance for drunken behavior doesn’t help, he said. “When I had my own apartment, I went on a binge and couldn’t get my key in the door, so I spent three days sleeping in the hall in front of the door,” Shegurov said. “My neighbors were very kind and understanding. They said, ‘Oh, that could happen to anybody.’ “But after 10 days of me sleeping there in the hallway, they said, ‘Oh, he’s a drunk.”’ ___________________________________________________________ Holy crap that is some depressing stuff. Better have a to relax.

Rotunda's still open. Schedule a tour through a member of Congress's office or show up and wait in line to go with the Capitol tour guides. Really, the barriers can be a pain in the ass and the police are generally stupid - especially when they stop a truck in the middle of the street and make it turn around (so as not to go by the Capitol or Congressional office buildings - though the truck has probably already driven right by half of them) or run some kind of weird road block where they just end up slowing the traffic down and not inspecting anything. However, I don't think its really that bad. You can wander into any Congressional office building, sit on the Supreme Court steps and walk right up to the Capitol. They were flying F-16s and not F-15s too. DC National Guard from Andrews AFB.

Never noticed that before on any biners. So it is bending/stretching that much when you weight it? I don't think I would want to climb on it.

I've had good luck with Sierra Design's Stretch Dome. It is pretty light for its size and is strong too. Never gotten very wet in it and it can take the wind just fine. I've just about layed on top of it and it didn't collapse. You can put it together fairly quickly and two doors are super nice. Usually, I use the back door for going in and out and stash stuff under the vestibule by the front door.

Whoa...

From the Sky River Mead website: "Current Washington State liquor control laws prevent us from identifying specific locations where you can find our wines. However, we have endeavored to make Sky River Mead available at most fine retail wine shops and supermarkets in Washington State." WTF. Alcohol laws are incredibly pointless stupid. You can't say where someone can buy your product? Are kidding me?!

I've always loved it when a good "son of bitch!!!" or "fuck you rock!!!!" drifts down from up high. It means my partner is presently having too much fun and I'll have another twenty minutes to relax at the belay. I like to help with shouts of encouragement: "C'mon dumbass, you can do it!"(in the finest Waterboy style). Or, "Hurry up fucknut, I'm freezing my ass off down here."

Well thanks. I'm trying to get an idea of whether or not it would even go at all this year in Sept. From this, it sounds like it's possible, it just might be tricky. Hopefully, as the season goes on, there will be some updates on conditions.

Schweet.

How do the glaciers and snowfields on the Ptarmigan Traverse look in late season? Are they too broken up to cross generally? I imagine things will definitely be a little thinner this year. Would early September be too late?

kayak.com

"Nice work, Ace. Now we're really fucked."

Maybe just get one of these.

Considering all of the mountain rescues around here, it does seem pathetic, as the article points out, that there are no helos operated by local agencies that can do the job. Maybe some of the counties can get to together and purchase a suitably equiped H-60 or maybe even look into a new UH-1Y if it is cheaper and equally suited to the work. When it's not flying rescue missions, it could be used just like other county helos.

So how about that coulior on the N. Face of Davis? Any guesses on time or difficulty?

Ya caught one, Brad! Yeah yeah yeah.