j_b

dwayner: i choose to not do climbs that see spontaneous rockfall unless it is very cold. i have done gib ledges a couple of times (in march) and had rockfall on both occasions during the descent. based on the above and what else i have heard from other climbers, i don't see the point climbing the route when it is warm out while there are other safer and equally attractive mountains, routes, etc .. it is obviously a personal choice.

dude, you are a complete lunatic.

one of the worst choss piles in the state. imho, there are certainly better alternatives.

gib ledges is not an option unless it is very cold. and even then beware of direct-sun loosened rocks (rockfall).

hey Fairweather - how are the concentration camps coming? be sure to let people know if you are lacking barbwire or something.

as we settle for a bivy just below the summit pyramid on shuksan on an early summer evening, this couple (shorts and t-shirts, hiking boots and no pack) takes forever to get off the summit. eventually, they reach the snow slope beneath the lower rocks, the guy takes off in a teetering standing glissade, falls on his butt a couple of time and barely escapes the gaping shrund that can only be avoided by circling way out of the fall line. the woman still stands just beneath the pyramid, not knowing whether she should follow in the same manner or take a more conservative approach. she attempts to glissade but falls and decides to walk downhill. all flustered at such a display of timidity the guy starts yelling at her that glissading is the only way to go and to boot:"it is fun". she hesitates, tries a glissade, her upper body swaying wildly back and fro, falls again, and indicates she wants to walk downill because she is scared. but the dude keeps shaming her into glissading. this goes on for a few minutes, the scared whining and falling, alternating with the abnoxious goading. we are a captive audience to the abuse and potential disaster; we can't stand it anymore and scream at the dude to keep quiet, and ask his partner to walk carefully around the crevasse. she does so and they dissapear toward the sulphide glacier.

on the issue of whether we can have slot canyons in Washington. steep sided narrow canyons exist whenever the river cuts down much faster than the side walls can relax to the angle of repose. in the southwest, erosion of sidewalls relative to river cutting rate is small (little precip, veg, etc ...). so if you can find a setting in washington where the relatives rates of erosion (river bottom versus side walls) are similar to that of the southwest you could get a slot canyon irrespective of rock type. glacial environment have very high down cutting rates (flashy discharge with many abradors, water under pressure, etc ..) and often produce box canyons. if you haven't done so you should check out Box Canyon at rainier, it is quite a sight.

cool article. is skiing 70deg slopes do-able? Lowell's site has a few short book reports on the history of extreme skiing: http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/book/lund-1982.html

why can't you address something i say without launching into hyperbolism? if you want to make it a requirement that suv's owners possess 10,000acres in tennessee or anywhere, it's fine with me but it won't be too popular with 99% of the suv crowd. in the meantime they'll be driving on as much public land they can get their wheels on, as we all know.

what ursa said but also because the environment is more than just clean air and fossil fuels (i am surprised this has to be said on a climbing board). mass marketing of suv's, atv' s, etc ... attempts to legitimize driving over every single piece of dirt and grass with knobbies. in other words, although most suv's are not used off roads, their mass marketing results in more indiscriminate off road use as an end in itself.

"validating" "sustainability", you some kind of commie or what? next time, i won't even step out of my suv to bang in pins (and i'll empty my ashtray out the window too!)

sounds like a great trip! did you end up climbing the North Ridge/ NE face? did you cross Cedar Creek at Shelakum Creek or downstream from it?

true ow. although there are few slot/box canyons, some cascade streams can be fun as well (darrington area is a fav). around here ascending rivers ends up being a necessity to avoid the brush anyway.

ha! "gmoney" thus we agree on one thing. "They are privately owned businesses"; thus the "consequences" are business and ideological decisions made by individuals in key positions. as for the Chicks i would not worry too much about their financial future; they are talented and have an international audience.

you post implies that said consequences resulted from other citizens actions. the burden of proof is on you to show that it is the case. even in the case of the DChicks, the decision to not play their cuts was taken by radio execs and DJ's, not by the 'people'.

Mt Rainier has a couple: Cowlitz Canyon and Box Canyon on Stevens Canyon road. Box canyon would be quite spooky: http://www.tnaqua.org/JoinUs/westimage17.htm

I am not sure where you got the notion that a book written by an award winning journalist (who has reported on the auto industry for decades) should be less accurate than a one-page piece written by an automobile industry corporation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rollover/interviews/bradsher.html do you mean the following is not accurate factual information? "if the average car goes 27 mpg (by no means as high as it should be) and the average SUV goes 20mpg, it means that the typical SUV guzzles 33% more gas than the average car …. end of story. how much this represents of total US consumption is a function of how many guzzlers are on the road (increasing at a fast rate). anyway, 3 weeks of gas is 6% of total US yearly consumption which is not negligible by any standard."

the board loads fine today but not the gallery (no pics). disabling the firewall eliminates the problem for me too.

let’s note the source of the document you posted: Visteon Corporation out of Detroit. in their own words: “Our customers include the 19 largest vehicle manufacturers in the world.” http://www.visteon.com/newsroom/autoline/2002/101502.shtml i won’t bother asking why you cut out the following sentence: “A new book titled High And Mighty—The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles And How They Got To Be That Way points out that SUVs have a higher fatality rate than passenger cars, and it's true.” or why you cut out any other reference to the book by Bradsher (cited above). in response to the spin on fatality rate: “SUVs are no safer than cars for their occupants, and pose much greater dangers for other road users. SUV occupants die slightly more often than car occupants in crashes. The occupant death rate in crashes per million SUVs on the road is 6 percent higher than the death rate per million cars. The occupant death rate for the largest SUVs, which tend to be driven by middle-aged families, is 8 percent higher than the occupant death rate for minivans and upper-midsize cars like the Ford Taurus and Toyota Camry, which are typically driven by similar families. SUV occupants are much more likely than car occupants to die in a rollover, which accounts for about 1,000 more deaths a year than if the same people had been in cars. In collisions with other vehicles, however, SUVs are nearly three times as likely as cars to kill other drivers, inflicting another 1,000 unnecessary deaths a year among motorists who would have survived if hit instead by cars of the same weight.” http://www.detroitproject.com/readmore/myths.htm the part about fuel consumption is a classic case of muddying the water. if the average car goes 27 mpg (by no means as high as it should be) and the average SUV goes 20mpg, it means that the typical SUV guzzles 33% more gas than the average car …. end of story. how much this represents of total US consumption is a function of how many guzzlers are on the road (increasing at a fast rate). anyway, 3 weeks of gas is 6% of total US yearly consumption which is not negligible by any standard. also note that despite all attempts at minimizing the bad news, the bottom line of the piece you posted confirms what we already new: as we should attempt to consume less gas, we consume significantly more; as we should be making safer cars, we make them significantly less safe.

jay - you know as well as I do that the "more fuel energy efficient" SUV's are also the most dangerous. Light SUV's have little payload capability; fact usually unknown to their owners which leads to many accidents. anyway I am not 'condoning' the use of an empty V8 van to drive oneself around, or 'condemning' the occasional use of a sport car. i am only saying that doing an increasing amount of our transportation in gas guzzlers does not make any sense considering the energy problems we are facing. I won't discuss the SUV media culture of running over every piece of dirt and grass with knobby tires because its implications are self-evident to most people on this board.

obviously I'll keep my answer short but it's not for lack of disagreeing with much of what you guys have to say. % of the world population living in the US: 6% % of world energy used in the US: 30% % of world CO2 release emitted in the US: 25% % of world military spending done by the US: 50% estimated lifespan of current oil reserves at current level of consomption: a few decades (20-30 years? some say less) i think all the numbers above are related. i also think that the current policy of encouraging gas hogs (of which the fastest growing type: SUVs) over energy efficient vehicles is for short term profit, does not account for our medium term needs, needlessly wastes away an energy source that could be slowly used for more worthwhile goals, and is responsible for much of the violence occurring today in the world.

graemlins not showing? avatar pictures mixed up?

for me too. I don't see smilies but boxes.

you have been told repeatedly that 98% (or wahtever overwhelming percentage) of SUVs are not used for off-roading, that only a few people do things requiring more than a 2-wheel drive yet SUV sales are ~30% of all car sales in the us today, that SUV are dangerous to their drivers and others on the road. yet you keep hammering that nobody can be sure the suit driving across 520 in his tank may just need it after work or whatever. without addressing the salient facts cited above. i don't have to demonstrate to you that the laws of probability indicate that said suit is most likely not going to need commuting in a tank for after work pursuits. yet, i am sure you'll keep focussing on the fact that there exists a very small chance teh wrong car may be tagged instead of admitting that driving a SUV for mondane tasks is very wasteful. furthermore it will take you many lines to express this simple fact and much time for your readers to decipher what you are saying. and you wonder why joshk and others are done debating?

good one gregm. there is plenty of horror in this tragicomedy. but saddam cheats, the numbers should be normalized per year and he never went global.