JoshK

I use tennis balls. I can't imagine them damaging the baffles, unless your sleeping bag is shit. I agree about tennis shoes, it seems they could be a little rougher on it.

holy shit that sucks balls. good luck. Guess that's another reason for one-day super-pushses that I had never considered.

Hey, if it's a charlet M10, I'll take it. I dropped one of them in a crevasse on the price glacier, so I suppose it's possible it made it's way over to the southern pickets.

Just get two sleeping bags. That way when you finally realize the reality that your boyfriend is a stupid schmuck you won't be stuck with a bag you can't use.

cool. how was the climb all and all? I was considering it since it's so close to home.

FWIW, i went with the trango S boots. Wore them this weekend for the first time and was quite happy with them. they climb well, hike well and frontpointed very nicely. I was also amazed when the dried out in 4 hours overnight. That's a nice advantage of a non-leather boot. It felt great to not have to hike the approach in my full shank boots or be forced to carry the boots and wear tennis shoes in.

Holy crap! You must sleep cold! I can't imagine using a -5 around here in the spring or fall, let alone two of them with another person's body heat!

I carried skis up the NR a few weeks ago and despite the drawbacks (and swearing I did) of having skis on your back while climbing somewhat technical terrain, all was forgotten when skiing down the C/D!!

chuck, are you dead set against trying the route in a day? Wihtout the extra weight of bivy gear you should be able to reach goat pass in a pretty reasonable amount of time from the car. I have no idea what the NW buttress of stuart is like, but despite it's drawbacks, cascadian coulior is at least a straightfoward and simple descent...as long as you get in the right coulior. It may be worth forcing out the approach and the climb in the same day to allow yourself the simple descent, esp. if it ends up being late in the day. If you do end up decding to go down the NW buttress, I'd be very interested to hear how it goes. If it is, in fact, a reasonably easy descent, it would be great to have the option to get down to that side of the mountain.

we got back to our "camp" (aka a large rock we bivied on top of) at 1am, which I think was about 2 horus after we saw you guys near the false summit of stuart. the descent wasn't too bad...just loooong. I forgot how long that coulior goes down before getting to the shrund. Near the bottom we had to go about 20 feet at a time to make sure we didn't just walk right into the damn thing. Side note: seeing you guys coming down super-late as well had to be one of the funniest experiences I've ever had in the mountains. It was late and dark and we were sick of walking and we started to get that "why do I climb / yet another mini-epic" feeling then we saw you guys going through the same crap. Great for a laugh, not to mention very uplifting. BTW, did you guys also notice the headlamp a few thousand feet below eric and I on the south side of sherpa? That completely confused me as I can't see why in the hell anybody would be coming up that way, esp. at that hour.

if you are wanting the 3rd for security's sake, I would offer that the glacier crossings on the ptarmigan traverse are not very technical. if you are more comfortable with a third, however, don't listen to me, just my 2 cents.

just checked PMs, don't see anything...

climbed this with paco on saturday. really freaking hot out and more mosquitos than I have encountered in a loooong time. really unpleasent. descent off sherpa summit to sherpa glacier coulior is a pain in the ass, but we had no description to follow, so maybe we screwed it up some how. pretty fun climbing all and all, but found things quite hard to follow for the first half of the route. we may have been off-route as we did some pitches that were at least as hard as the 5.8 crux pitches. good climbing, great partner, awesome setting...if only the bugs would have laid off. we were hoping to do ice cliff glacier on sunday but we were tired and lazy and it was *really* hot out. only got down to 60 or so in the basin over night and I heard a couple of good ice falls take place.

nice, lee! don't you find the naming of "virgin" lake quite ironic?

nice job guys!

come to think of it, I believe our own very ExtremoMtDude may have had a part in aspen extreme.

My last choice is exactly where I sit...at work. T-minus 40 minutes 'til I'm the hell outta here.

Yeah, *definitely* do the east ridge. Unless you are a beginnier, the south ridge (more acurately described as a face or a slab) is very easy. And alasdair described it perfectly, it'll be a cluster fuck indeed on a weekend like this. It's probably only has the tooth for competition for the most overcrowded "alpine" climbs around here.

THough not a climbing movie, I always loved "Aspen Extreme" Anybody who has every been to aspen knows what I mean when I say there is *nothing* extreme about that place! Well...maybe extremely stuck up!

that basin actually gets a decent amount of snow, considering how quickly the lower stuff in the area melts out. every time I've been to ingalls I've had to go through snow for a ways. don't let it discourage you, it's easy and goes by fairly quickly. You'll be rewarded with some good views of stuart hopefully.

fuck yeah, these people are the scum of the earth. The thing that sucks is some shit is exempt like airlines, insurance and phone companies. Jeez, I wonder what industries lobbied hard with congress? fuckers.

ditto what those guys said. I would say it's very much preferable to do it in a day with a lightpack than haul overnight gear up the approach. It really isn't that bad if you are light, it makes boulder hoping and that steet forest about 100x less terrible.

Who the hell cares about this character or the guy from last month. I'd rather go climb myself than wank about some other dude climbing. I dont recall this alpine buddy of the month thing, but at least if it's about people we know doing shit locally it's somewhat interesting.

I've got trango S boots. Not full shank, but reasonably stiff. I am bringing a second tool, but obviously that won't make up for really shitty footing. I'm torn because the aluminum crampons are really nice n' light but I'd hate to get into anything difficult with a non full shank boot + substandard crampons.

strom finally died? Damn...couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Oh, but I do like this... "In 1968, he married Nancy Moore, a former Miss South Carolina. He was 66; she was 22. They had four children and had lived apart for several years" Well done, Strom.