JoshK

You should be more cynical. It's old news that politicians are full of shit, no matter what party they're on. They do what will get them elected, not what it right, or what they believe in. Human nature. Deal with it. Too bad that Gore didn't figure out a better way to cheat than Bush...you losers would be happy. Please provide proof of another U.S. presidential election in which the final result was directly affected by corrupt inter-party election manipulation. Go ahead, I'm waiting.

I'd agree. First winter accent is a hellavu lot more important than the first blind guy to ascend or the first poodle to paradlide off, etc. Stupid on NG's part.

Independent of the presentation, the stats presented are true. I'm not sure if it would have made the difference or not, but what went on in Florida was illegal, plain and simple. If you can't smell out the good ol' boy shit that went on down there, you're a fucking idiot.

Why exactly do you refer to squamish and smith as washington climbing areas!? Squamish is in canadia and smiff is in oregon.

My way around this problem is to stop using my brain..

You missed.

So where the hell are you guys climbing that you need piss bottles?! Is it *that* hard to get out of the tent at night? I suppose I would use one in a seriously shitting climate, but even in the winter around here I can manage to drag myself out.

Yeah, sitkum glacier is a good ski down. the only time I did it was without skis and I regretted it the entire time since that route is BOOORRRING otherwise. I figured frostbite might be a more interesting alternative that would still allow the ski down. Damn, that's high for the snow to start. I did it a bit later in June last year and we were on snow about 500 feet above kennedy hot springs, which made finding the trail up to boulder basin a bit of a pain.

scott, what route on glacier peak did you do? I was thinking of going up frostbite and down sitkum on skis sometime soon. where did the snow start?

I'm not sure I'd say it is *completely* analagous. Climbing shoes allow climbers to stand on smaller ledges, smear better and use their existing skills to climb more difficult routes. Being able to simply stick yourself to a blank face is a far cry from that. Imagine, however, the possibilites of being able to "tape aid" yourself up a difficult pitch in the alpine instead of bringing an extensive aid rack. Somehow I doubt this is something we'll see in the remotely near future, however.

complete with secret messages encrypted with the unbreakable ROT13 encryption

Is that Exit 38?!

You really gonna depend on somebody else's opinion for those decisions?

Too bad the exchange rate is getting shitter and shitter.

Nice Code? Cmon EMD, they used freakin FrontPage. The code is all messed up, navigations is wacked, and layout is lame. A for effort I guess, as they are most likely a novice. (Not that I have good code either) At the risk of exposing my own nerdiness, I feel compelled to point out that html is NOT "code", nor is the act of authoring HTML "programming" or "coding." I always get a great laugh when my tool "web developer" friend tells people he's an "HTML coder."

Shpinx, she said everything she needed to say with "it looks great...blah...blah", proving once again that REI is hitting it's target audience perfectly. In any event, MEC makes a powershield top that I got. fits great, performs, great, and is very cheap. I don't wear powershield around town, so I don't know how it looks.

We ascended the north ridge. Not sure about the wallow factor, but FWIW, the coleman headwall looked like the better line than the NR, in my opinion.

BTW, bring skis if that's your thing. It was my first time skiing down the coleman/deming and it's a blast! much better than sloggin down that thing, especially the giant flat parts.

we found conditions decent today. a little soft crossing the coleman, but nothing bad. the alpine ice on the NR and icefall were fun.

and wonders for my sunburn too. ouch ouch ouch.

used the C/D for a descent today (on skis, actually) conditions are good. if you climb when the snow is hard, I can't imagine flotation would be needed. things seem to have consolidated well.

Agree with Eric. That's a *beautiful* area of the cascades, but from what I saw the NF maude route wasn't that impressive. That said, I still have an interest in going in there and hitting all 3 of those 9000s in one shot. I've also heard from 2 seperate people now that the entiat icefall route is more fun than NF maude if you really want to do a route on that side of the mountain. something to think of...

Good quesiton, forrest, a bit confusing that climbing media would report just the ascent as well. BTW, in your first post it should be "when dan made up the story about his first climb" not "when dan did his first climb"

5.10 my ass. None of the tools that get dragged up everest free climb that, dude, it has ladders and ropes strung up it. How pathetic is this? "In 1975, China tackled Everest with a 410-member team."