billcoe

As the ozone turns. To be continued........... Xoxo all

LOL. Not me. To lazy. Lol. I'm in a car heading to yos right now and surfing CC.com! Love technology! Ps if they want to charge marylou double, I'm fine with that

Little trail work is all Dane, I wasn't even climbing. Your story is much more interesting and gripping for sure. Welcome back, must have been a long painful road for you both. (not Sobo's head LOL, Debbie I mean). ...and thanks for the well wishes Jefe. I think Ujahn is thinking the same thing as he wants a belay more than a camp bitch:-)

The awesome DMM stainless tell V-twin belay device at Climb Max for $20.00!!! Designed for 8.0 to 10.5mm ropes. http://climbmaxmountaineering.com/index.asp same site has Kong Pitons for $1.99, unfrikkan belivable. Pretty good pin too. Adam got a couple and we slammed them into some junk rock and they work great. If you're in PDX, these are great folks and you can save yourself the freight and go gear whoring in their shop.

Oh? You are a fish and wildlife biologist and you disagree with this?

Wow . Nice work, that's out there. You weren't fearful of snow sloughing off/avalanches or cornices breaking off above you on that line ? Big congrats!

Not sure if that's the issue up there for Kaskadishflajforejf, but this will help you count Rad. LOL! http://obamaclock.org/

Welcome back Dane! I can totally relate right now as I've decided to head to Yos Thursday (bit later than planned) to be with my bros. My leg is over 5/8s of the way back, weak, tad swollen...etc, etc. No climbing or training for 3 weeks if you don't count drinking, eating and working on enlarging my manboobs and love handles:-) s'alright...I can be camp bitch and climb the climbs Dwayner would do if he still climbed. Thinking Grack Center, best 5.6 in the universe like every day in the am and quit for the day and read a book and drink some wine. I'll do a daily lap and a nap..LOL! BTW, the only reason I didn't start my post "Holy shit!" was because that's already been used on this thread. I was thinking it though. I feel for you and Debbie for sure. Damn.

http://www.oregon.gov/OPRD/PARKS/OCT_main.shtml Looks good. They should be charging, someone did a lot of (good) work on the public nickle.

About time someone figured this out! ps, the Reuters byline is real, this is NOT the Onion! "Afghanistan's only pig quarantined in flu fear Reuters KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan's only known pig has been locked in a room, away from visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats, because people are worried it could infect them with the virus popularly known as swine flu. The pig is a curiosity in Muslim Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain. "For now the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine influenza," Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters. "We've done this because people are worried about getting the flu." Worldwide, more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus, according to the World Health Organization, which also says 26 people have so far died from the strain. All but one of the deaths were in Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak. There are no pig farms in Afghanistan and no direct civilian flights between Kabul and Mexico. "We understand that, but most people don't have enough knowledge. When they see the pig in the cage they get worried and think that they could get ill," Saqib said. The pig was a gift to the zoo from China, which itself quarantined some 70 Mexicans, 26 Canadians and four Americans in the past week, but later released them. Some visitors were not concerned about the fate of the pig and said locking it away was probably for the best. "Influenza is quite contagious and if it passes between people and animals then there's no need for the pig to be here," zoo visitor Farzana said. Shabby and rundown, Kabul Zoo is a far cry from zoos in the developed world, but has nevertheless come a long way since it suffered on the front line of Afghanistan's 1992-4 civil war. Mujahideen fighters then ate the deer and rabbits and shot dead the zoo's sole elephant. Shells shattered the aquarium. One fighter climbed into the lion enclosure but was immediately killed by Marjan, the zoo's most famous inhabitant. The man's brother returned the next day and lobbed a hand grenade at the lion leaving him toothless and blind. The zoo now holds two lions who replaced Marjan who died of old age in 2002 as well as endangered local leopards. In all, it houses 42 species of birds and mammals and 36 types of fish and attracts up to 10,000 visitors on weekends." _________________________________________________________ Yahoo news link

no close no and no

We are in agreement on most of that. They were delisted yesterday and the states now take over management. It's good they are keeping this at a local level and the wolves will do fine as management is moving to the states is all and they can decide what to do locally. I just got back from Eastern Oregon Sunday where they are still discussing Oregons first major wolf encounter. 2 Wolves killed 19 lambs (final count I believe although 12 was the initial number) but only ate 2 of them near North Powder. Here's a link to that encounter with them. Link to pic This won't be cheap to deal with. However -large predators are critical in ways we often don't understand. Turns out, the aspen were dying in Yellowstone and no one knew why. When Wolves were re-introduced the aspen started coming back. They know why now. Guesses? ps, there is an organization which compensates ranchers for losses, I don't believe it's the gobment though.

I thought my wife was doing a casserole as 4she had fired up the slow cooker yesterday with a bunch of beans and stuff in it. So I stopped and bought a baguette from the French Bakery (man, it's spot on the money like Parisian bread). Turns out she was making Burritos. At the burritos and the entire baguette too last night. Damn that stuff is soooooo friggan good. Love French food.

This may be as awesome as it ever gets John! Hot damn, thank you so much for sharing it. AWE-FRIGGAN-SOME! Very very much! Where's Dan and Elises TR?

These kinds of things is why I read all the rest of the drivel ya know:-) The description of the drivers ed teacher could be right out of a Hunter Thompson novel.

It may be true that Meth heads are usually poor, but all poor people are NOT meth heads. Many are honest and good people. This fee will not prevent the meth heads from camping miles away and showing up during the day to steal your things. It will also NOT prevent them from just camping for free there and breaking the law by not paying as some otherwise honest folks will choose to do as noted above? Walking a mile in our less fortunate brothers shoes would be a thing to start with here IMO.

Thanks in advance for going back to put the pin in. I clip all those fixed pins on Superstition. Furthermore, big thanks for aiding that line as well. Thing collects a lot of dust and makes it even harder for the first free party in the spring. I'd imagine some of that got knocked off, and if nothing else, the pins get tested! If they won't hold bodyweight or the pull from a weighted line, they really really need to be replaced or rehammered in, and as none of the freeclimbers ever carry hammers to test, a rude awakening was in store for the unlucky person who was to fall or even hang on that one without backing it up with a small nut eh? Fortunately, most of those can be backed up with a small RP if you look. I'm not in agreement with Jefe who said:

This is bullshit. You think the gov't can make money charging $5 here? I have never camped at grasslands and don't plan on starting. I won't be personally bothered by this and will most likely never ever pay this fee myself. Furthermore, I don't worry about $5 as I often pay more for a beer than that and I would bet I paid more money in taxes for the year than your car costs. $5 is less change than behind my seat cushions as far as that goes. The fact that I am more affected in no way diminishes the bullshit nature of this bullshit. For me, there are several layers of wrongness about this bullshit that almost calls out for a new Robin Hood to show up and fix this crap. 1st) I suspect they will be losing money trying to administer this new tax. The Bush admin lost plenty of money on stupid things, most of us were hoping that this new Obama one would reverse that trend. During the Reagan years, they started this add a fee thing, it was wrong then ad it's still wrong now, especially as everytime a new tax is added, which is what this is - the fixed administrative costs goes up. 2nd) It's regressive, unlike the income tax, and poor people will be getting shit on hard. Not idiots with more money than brains like me. Just because the government chooses to continue to f* the poor because they can in no way makes it right or honorable. 3rd) As far as many people choosing to go camping down the road or stealing the space by leaving before the govenment gets there to collect, by starting something unnecessary which is unfair and most likely money losing which is going to make people compete, lie and disrespect our government - it adds to the total wrongness of this $5 fee. Lets start something unfair which gets otherwise normal and honest people to try and cheat the government? Bad idea. Bad. They want to take a piece of undeveloped land and make a campsite and charge a fee and add services where it is needed. Uhhh, OK. I'm fine with that. IF IT IS NEEDED. They did that very thing and Smith Rocks very effectively. This is just more counterproductive government bullshit in my eyes for at least the 3 huge reasons I outlined and I hope they reconsider and drop it. We should not have to pay AGAIN to use our own land. IT'S JUST WRONG.

Wow, what a story. "Adventure is for the adventurous. My face is set. I go to make my destiny. May many another youth be by me inspired to leave the snug safety of his rut, and follow fortune to other lands." "God, how the wild calls to me. There can be no other life for me but that of the lone wanderer. It has an irresistible fascination. The lone trail is the best for me." denver post "Wanderer's last trail found after 75 years After Everett Ruess vanished in Utah's wilds in 1934, relatives tried to retrace his steps. But a few overheard words are what have now led to his bones. By Kevin Vaughan The Denver Post Posted: 05/01/2009 12:30:00 AM MDT Updated: 05/01/2009 08:46:05 AM MDT Archaeologist Ron Maldonado examines the crevice in the Comb Ridge area of southeastern Utah that held Everett Ruess' bones, above. The bones were from a man 19 to 22 years old who was roughly 5-feet-8, matching Ruess' age and size. (National Geographic Adventure magazine ) As the man's eyes wandered across the red-rock country of southeastern Utah, he first saw a weather-beaten saddle jammed in a canyon wall crevice and then, behind it, bleached bones sticking out from the earth — the keys to unlocking one of the West's enduring mysteries. That discovery, made more than a year ago, came full circle Thursday with the announcement that the bones belong to Everett Ruess, a poet and painter, writer and thinker who vanished near the Four Corners area in 1934. For 75 years, the answer to his disappearance at age 20 had been the stuff of speculation. It might never have been solved but for a Navajo medicine man's admonition, a grandfather's story of long-ago death, a curious writer and contemporary forensic-science work conducted at the University of Colorado. Maybe, some posited, he had slipped while climbing a canyon or met his end at the fangs of a rattlesnake. Maybe he'd been murdered. Ruess died, not long after he was last seen, in a remote wash miles from anywhere. "The family is deeply, deeply appreciative of everything that came together to solve the mystery," his niece, Michele Ruess, said Thursday during a conference call announcing that work by CU anthropologists and DNA experts had identified the remains as those of the wandering intellectual. Tale of Ute chase, clubbing Born in Oakland, Ruess was just a boy when he began writing, and by the time he was 16 he was exploring the West, on a horse or a burro or on foot. He trekked through the Sequoia and Yosemite parks. He crisscrossed the canyon country of Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. He painted. He made woodcuts of the beautifully stark images of the landscapes he visited. And he wrote of his own restlessness and the land. He scrawled "Nemo" on rocks, maybe because it was Latin for "no one," or maybe because it was the name of the main character in one of his favorite books, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." Bones removed from the crevice by forensic anthropologists Dennis Van Gerven and Paul Sandberg. (Vaughn Hadenfeldt) was Christopher McCandless three generations before the subject of Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild" wandered off in Alaska. On Nov. 11, 1934, Ruess wrote a letter to his older brother, Waldo. "As to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon," it said, in part. The next day, Ruess set out from Escalante, Utah, with his two burros, heading off on the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail. A week later, a sheepherder talked to him close to where the Escalante River emptied into the Colorado. He was never seen again. Daisy Johnson was a young woman in 1971 when she walked in on a conversation between her grandparents. "Grandmother was getting after him, saying, 'You should have never, ever messed with that body,' " Johnson said. " 'You should have left him down there.' " Daisy asked her grandfather, Aneth Nez, what they were talking about, and he told her the story of sitting on desolate Comb Ridge, of sometimes seeing a young white man riding a burro in the canyon below him. He told her about the day he saw three Ute Indians chase down that young man, club him and leave him for dead, and how he later sneaked into the wash, where he picked up the bloodied body and carried it up the canyon, then buried it in a crevice. Now her grandfather was sick. A medicine man blamed his cancer on what he had done with that corpse, and said he needed to return to it and take a lock of hair that could be used in a ceremony to cure him. Nez had Johnson drive him out to Comb Ridge, and then set out on foot into the desert while she waited. Two hours later, he returned with a lock of hair. He lived another 10 years. Bones, family's DNA a match Uncle Everett was always a part of Michele Ruess' life. Paintings and prints hung on the walls. Books bulged with his writings. On a rock slab, her grandmother painted one of her uncle's favorite sayings: "What time is it? Time to live." And her father, Waldo, spent his life trying to uncover the mystery of his brother's death. He went to Utah in 1964 to see whether any human remains had been found during work to build a dam, creating Lake Powell. He wrote to magazines imploring people with information to come forward. Waldo Ruess died in 2007, still wondering what happened. He was 98. In the spring of 2008, Daisy Johnson told her grandfather's story at a family gathering. Her brother, Denny Bellson, had never heard it before. Bellson searched the Internet for disappearances in the Four Corners area and found stories about Ruess. He got a map of the Comb Ridge area and had his sister show him where she had taken their grandfather. On May 25, 2008, Bellson drove to Comb Ridge. He parked and descended into Chinle Wash. In a slot in the chalky red rock, he saw the remains of a saddle. Bellson moved closer. There, behind the saddle, were bones. "I looked around and I knew it was him," Bellson said. Bellson took a friend to the site. That friend knew the Ruess story, and he knew David Roberts, a contributing editor at National Geographic Adventure magazine. Roberts had researched the Ruess mystery extensively in 1999 for a story. Roberts approached CU anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven, asking whether he would examine a jawbone discovered on Navajo land. "I was actually not interested, but David persisted," Van Gerven said. Van Gerven and doctoral student Paul Sandberg carefully exhumed the remains and determined they were those of a man between 19 and 22 who was roughly 5-feet 8-inches tall. All of that matched up with Ruess. They photographed facial bones and superimposed them over pictures of Ruess. They matched . Next, they turned to Ken Krauter, a CU biology professor, who directed the process of extracting DNA from a leg bone unearthed from the grave. They compared that to DNA obtained from Waldo Ruess' four children, and it matched exactly as one would expect between an uncle and his nieces and nephews. Krauter called it "an irrefutable case." The scientific work and Nez's story answer many questions about Ruess. But they don't complete the tale. There is no proof of how — or when — Ruess died, or how he ended up 60 miles from the place he was last seen. And there is no way to know who might have killed him. Still, the discovery of his remains brought a measure of peace to his surviving family members. "Even though it's very sad to imagine the manner in which he died, we're happy to know how it happened and where he's been resting all these years," Michele Ruess said, "and that there was such a man as Aneth Nez who cared for a fellow human being." Her uncle's remains will be cremated, she said, and scattered in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, Calif. It's the same place where the ashes of Waldo and other family members have been scattered through the years. It's the place where Everett Ruess will be one with the earth forever. "

LOL, I was joking on the SPCA crack (Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals) The thanks was genuine Rod. Regards Bill

I think on some long alpine routes where you are pushing your limits and barely hanging on, and a pound or 2 can be the tipping balance for a tumble....it would matter in a huge way. Otherwise, why would it. McCale packs are suppose to be pretty damn good themselves are they not Matt? Probably something each of us has to answer for ourselves due to their own attitude and usage. When I was young, I had no money and made due. Not that I liked doing that. I climbed harder then as well, however, my partner was a total gear whore with no kids and big discretionary income. Bivys were often uncomfortable in more ways than one for me as I'd be freezing looking over at buddy all warm, dry and cozy:-).

Going with Blake on Cilogear 110%. Sure, you can buy a Chinese made pack cheaper, but not better. I was thinking of using a standard 60L Cilogear pack for rockclimbing/new routing and Graham talked me out of that (bad) idea. "You don't want to be hauling a lightweight pack over rocks" he said, or something like that. Wise man. He did take it to heart and is soon to be coming out with a kick assed strong (but not overly heavy) backpack based on Yosemite climber Ray Olsen's much ballyhooed and loved discontinued Big Wally design that gregory produced when he was there. (Ray designed the first Chouinard climbing pack when he worked there). I learned about this pack from Joseph who found one used and was crowing on it. I later found a used one and understood why he was so enthusiasic. I got to try and trash the demo prototype pack Graham made last summer, and then Graham donated it to the Kevin Rauch fundraiser still looking great. Kyle was bidding on it so I didn't want to step on his toes but then he got snipped at the end. How many Chinese pack makers have ever donated packs to raise money for disabled local climbers? Here it is above getting ready for one of those solo climbing/ getting in some shooting trips. You can tuck the straps and make it a haul bag in less than a minute. The last day I had it, I hauled 4 full (2 inside and 2 on top) sized climbing ropes and all my gear out of a relatively isolated canyon. This involved some rappelling over real sharp rock and pulling my ropes (one which core-shotted from 2 people rappeling on it) so they wouldn't be wintered in. This back looked close to new when I cleaned off the dirt and turned it over to the next pack tester. It performed amazingly. Glad Graham talked me out of one of his lightweight race packs cause I'd have trashed it for sure. I'm first in line for the production model of this pack and I'm damn jazzed up about it. Cilogear rules. Anyhow, like some of you are saying, if I'd used my 9.1 Beal Joker to toprope with my buddies doing laps like last night (bad idea) and lead I doubt I could use it for a full year before it was trashed. I love the rope for those long routes where light is right though so my tired and old ass can shave some weight.

I go no on the bridge but don't get to Smith much, so maybe thats .02 of a regular vote , but I want to thank you for both bringing the supplement out and for donating the extra to the SPCA. Regards Bill

Fine then, if we want to see a list of your recent 5.5 rock and easy class one snow slogs we'll rattle your cage. Meantime, we can only hope this helps you out... Good luck.

Never sank one. Adam sank a Rurp Sunday (larger than these) that was surprisingly way tight and bomber though. Thus ends Bills random post dejour