billcoe

Consider it raised. Warm regards to all my brothers breathing or not as all too soon, our turn will come to follow Don. How about a picture or 3 of Don?

Are you quite so certain that you correctly interpret what you read and that your reading translates into practice exactly as you interpreted? If so, then when I ask questions it must be a sign that I must be suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect . LOL!!!! Best slam of the month! Ouch!

I typed "Ruby's Cafe" I think.

Apologies to Jim Morrison for the title. Could the Pac. NW be in for a long hot summer? We are having below normal snowfall as a quick look around will tell you. Come July and August, it's gonna be damn dry and damn hot and if the damn wind kicks up, watch out. This bullshit, if real, would be difficult to stop. Police in Australia are treating these huge fires that have ravaged their country and so far killed 166 people and burned 850 square miles as a crime scene. There appears to be preliminary evidence of arson, although it will take a long time to sort out and get the truth. http://apnews.myway.com/article Perhaps this contributed? Link here, full text below. http://www.theage.com.au "Islam group urges forest fire jihad * Josh Gordon * September 7, 2008 AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror. US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands". The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine. The posting - which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months - says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time". "Imagine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organisation were to claim responsibility for the forest fires," the website says. "You can hardly begin to imagine the level of fear that would take hold of people in the United States, in Europe, in Russia and in Australia." With the nation heading into another hot, dry summer, Australian intelligence agencies are treating the possibility that bushfires could be used as a weapon of terrorism as a serious concern. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained "vigilant against such threats", warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws. "Any information that suggests a threat to Australia's interests is investigated by relevant agencies as appropriate," Mr McClelland said. Adam Dolnik, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said that bushfires (unlike suicide bombing) were generally not considered a glorious type of attack by jihadis, in keeping with a recent decline in the sophistication of terrorist operations. "With attacks like bushfires, yes, it would be easy. It would be very damaging and we do see a decreasing sophistication as a part of terrorist attacks," Dr Dolnik said. "In recent years, there have been quite a few attacks averted and it has become more and more difficult for groups to do something effective." Dr Dolnik said he had observed an increase in traffic on jihadi websites calling for a simplification of terrorist attacks because the more complex operations had been failing. But starting bushfires was still often regarded as less effective than other operations because governments could easily deny terrorism as the cause. The internet posting by the little-known group claimed the idea of forest fires had been attributed to imprisoned Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Suri. It said Al-Suri had urged terrorists to use sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires."

It's not often I can't understand your posts Pat. I have on occasion disagreed, but I usually understand your position and thoughts. Not this time. You bought the new Frou Frou music and after a listen they: SUCK BIG TIME or ARE AMAZINGLY AWESOME YOU MUST GET THIS MUSIC IMMEDIATELY! Could it be perhaps some woman with a Frou Frou dog sat in front of you on the bus? ?

Sometimes it's just better to grab a shovel and help dig rather than discuss it on the internet, where someone is just bound to get pissed off.

Gesundheit STP.

Hike the rap. What? Never heard of a HAHO jump? High Altitude/High Opening (HAHO)

That's some heavy stuff PP, but it can certainly be debated: Full text from PP link: "As we go to the polls today, the world around us is quickly changing in new and distressing ways. The challenges the international system will present the government we elect will be harsher, more complicated and more dangerous than the ones its predecessors have faced. Bluntly stated, the world that will challenge the next government will be one characterized by the end of US global predominance. In just a few short weeks, the new administration of President Barack Obama has managed to weaken the perception of American power and embolden US adversaries throughout the world. In the late stages of the presidential race, now Vice President Joseph Biden warned us that this would happen. In a speech before supporters he said, "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama... [We're] gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy... They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the subcontinent. They may emanate from Russia's newly emboldened position." As it happens, Biden's warning had two inaccuracies. Rather than six months, America's adversaries began testing Obama's mettle within weeks. And instead of one crisis from Russia, the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent, Obama has faced and failed to meet "generated crises" from all three. TAKE RUSSIA for example. Since coming into office, Obama has repeatedly tried to build an alliance with the "newly emboldened" Russian bear. A week after entering office, he announced that he hoped to negotiate a nuclear disarmament agreement with Russia that would reduce the US's nuclear stockpiles by 80 percent. At a security conference in Munich last weekend, Biden stated that the administration wishes to push the "reset button" on its relationship with Russia and be friends. Responding to these American signals, the Russians proceeded to humiliate Washington. Last week President Dmitry Medvedev hosted Kyrgyzstan's President Kurmanbak Bakiyev in Moscow. After their meeting the two announced that Russia will give the former Soviet republic $2 billion in loans and assistance and that Kyrgyzstan will close the US Air Force base at Manas which serves American forces in Afghanistan. After cutting off one of the US's major supply routes for its forces in Afghanistan, Russia agreed to permit the US to resume its shipment of nonlethal military supplies for Afghanistan through Russian territory. Those shipments were suspended last summer by NATO in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Georgia. And now they are being resumed - on Moscow's terms. The US, for its part, couldn't be more grateful to Moscow for lending a helping hand. THE US ITSELF WOULDN'T have found itself needing Russian supply lines had the situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan not deteriorated as it has in recent months. Much of the situation in Pakistan today is due to the Bush administration's incompetent bungling of US relations with the failed state. For years the US gave tens of billions of dollars to the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf in turn used the money to build up Pakistan's military presence along the border with India, while allowing al-Qaida and the Taliban to relocate their headquarters in Pakistan after being ousted from Afghanistan by US forces. Vigilant in maintaining his power, for years Musharraf repressed all voices calling for democratic transformation. For their part democrats in places like Pakistan's Supreme Court were not friends of the West. They did not oppose the Taliban and al-Qaida. Rather their enemies were Musharraf and the US which kept him in power. Responding to a sudden urge to encourage the forces of democracy in Pakistan, while advocating their abandonment throughout the Arab world, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice compelled Musharraf first to resign as head of the Pakistani military - thus ending his control over the country's jihadist ISI intelligence services and over the pro-jihadist military. Then she forced him to accept open elections, which unsurprisingly, he lost. The democrats who replaced him had absolutely no influence over either the ISI or the military and realized that their power and their very lives were in the Taliban's hands. Consequently, since Pakistan's elections last year, the new government has surrendered larger and larger areas of the country to the Taliban. Indeed, today the Taliban either directly control or are fighting for control over the majority of Pakistani territory. Moreover, the Taliban and al-Qaida have intensified their war in Afghanistan and are making significant gains in that country as well. This would have been a difficult situation for the US to contend with no matter who replaced George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, due to Obama's stridently anti-Pakistani rhetoric throughout the campaign - rhetoric untethered to any coherent strategy for dealing with Pakistan - the Pakistanis no doubt felt the need to test his mettle as quickly as possible. For his part, Obama gave them good reason to believe he could be intimidated. By letting it be known that he intended for his special envoy to the region Richard Holbrook's job to include responsibility for pressuring US ally India to reach a peace agreement with Pakistan over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir province in spite of clear proof that Pakistani intelligence was the mastermind of the December terror attacks in Mumbai, Obama showed that he was willing to defend Pakistan's "honor" and so accept its continued bad behavior. LAST FRIDAY, the Pakistanis tested Obama. The Supreme Court freed Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove - A.Q. Khan - from the house arrest he had been under since his nuclear proliferation racket was exposed by the Libyans in 2004. Through his nuclear proliferation activities, Khan is not only the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - but of North Korea's and Iran's as well. Khan's release casts a dark shadow on Obama's plan to dismantle much of America's nuclear arsenal, because with him free, the prospect that Pakistan is back in the proliferation business becomes quite real. Already on Sunday Khan announced his plan to travel abroad immediately. For its part, the court in Islamabad specifically stated that Khan is free to resume his "scientific research. Pakistan's open contempt for the US and its weakness in the face of the Taliban's takeover of the country has direct consequences for the US's mission in Afghanistan - and for its new dependence on Russia. This week the Taliban bombed a bridge on the Khyber Pass along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan that served as a supply line to US forces in Afghanistan. As US Brig.-Gen. James McConville stated in Kabul, the latest attack simply underlines how important it was for the US to resume its shipments through Russia. MANY HAVE POINTED to Pakistan as an example of why Israel and the West have no reason to be concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear arms. To date, they claim, Pakistan has not used its nuclear arms, and indeed has been deterred by both India and the West from doing so. While it is true that Pakistan has yet to use its nuclear arsenal, it is also true that since its initial nuclear test in 1998, Pakistan has twice brought the subcontinent to the brink of nuclear war. In both 1999 and 2002, Pakistan provoked India into a nuclear standoff. Moreover, due to its nuclear arsenal, Pakistan successfully deterred the US from taking action against it after the September 11 attacks showed that al-Qaida and the Taliban owed their existence to Pakistan's ISI. Although Pakistan's government is not an Islamic revolutionary one like Iran's, the fact is that since it became a nuclear power, Pakistan has moved away from the West, not toward it. Indeed, its nuclear deterrent against India - and the West - has empowered and strengthened the jihadists and brought them ever closer to taking over the regime in a seamless power grab. Far from arguing against preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the Pakistani precedent argues for taking every possible action to prevent Iran from acquiring them. After all, unlike the situation in Pakistan, Iran's regime is already controlled by jihadist revolutionaries. And like their counterparts in Pakistan, these forces will be strengthened, not weakened in the event that Iran acquires nuclear weapons. Indeed, since Obama came into office waving an enormous olive branch in Teheran's direction, the regime has become more outspoken in its hostility toward the US. It has humiliated Washington by refusing visas to America's women's badminton team to play their Iranian counterparts. It has announced it will only agree to direct talks with Washington if it pulls US forces out of the Middle East, abandons Israel and does nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It has rudely blackballed US representatives who are Jewish, like House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman, at international conclaves. And it has announced that it will refuse to deal with Obama's suggested envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, who is also a Jew. In all of its actions, Iran has gone out of its way to embarrass Obama and humiliate America. And Obama, for his part, has continued to embrace Teheran as his most sought-after negotiating partner. MOVING AHEAD, the question of how our next government should handle America's apparent decision to turn its back on its traditional role as freedom's global defender becomes the most pressing concern. It is clear that we will need to embrace the burden of our own defense and stop expecting to receive much from our alliance with the US. But it is also clear that we will need a new strategy for dealing with the US itself. In formulating that policy, the next government should draw lessons from fellow US-ally India. Once it became clear to the Indians that the Obama administration intended to treat them as the strategic and moral equivalent of Pakistan, they struck back hard. When the administration signaled that it would agree to Pakistan's assertion that its problems with the Taliban were linked to India's refusal to cede Jammu and Kashmir to Islamabad, New Delhi essentially told Washington to get lost. In an interview on Indian television last week, ahead of Holbrook's first visit to the area this week, India's National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said that Obama would be "barking up the wrong tree" if he were to subscribe to such views. He added that India would be unwilling to discuss the issue of Jammu and Kashmir with Holbrook and so compelled Obama to remove the issue from Holbrook's portfolio. At the same time, the Indian government released a dossier substantiating its claim that the December attacks on Mumbai were planned in jihadist terror training camps in Pakistan and enjoyed the support of the ISI. Moreover, in response to Khan's release from house arrest on Friday, India called for the international community to list Pakistan as a terror state. In acting as it has, India has made two things clear to the Obama administration. First, it will not allow Washington to appease Pakistan at its expense. Second, it will do whatever it believes is necessary to secure its own interests both diplomatically and militarily. A sound example for the next government to follow. "

Still stunned. Bumped it to the top so that Jon Stewart can use it for his whipping sequence pp presentation.

John had those Rubys Cafe pics on CC.com right here: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/519347/site_id/1#import

Ain't worth dying over. Folks left your stuff up there in case you want to check it out later yourself, if you want it pulled off now just say and one of us can take care of it. Here's some that might work for you Jon: I have a ground up story from the Ozone. There's probably a reason it's called "Ground up" if looking at my arm then was an indication. I have a route name for you already "After the Fall". Sort of a "Flying Dutchman" variation:-) You can ask Jim on that one. Here ya are bra, hope this helps for the PP presentation.

there's gonna be some happy climbers when they get their gear back...."

How about a trip report to get folks to nashing their teeth:-) GRRRRRRRR.

Wishing you folks well and I hope you get it all back. ps, I see you list Montrose, Colo as an address. I lived in Paonia for a bit. Hopefully you never ran into my cousin, Tommy Sandifer: highway patrolman he's out of Montrose as well. Some of my relatives come from over there. Great Grandpa Hammond was a friend of Chief Ouray and got some of his stuff when he passed away, and some of my other relatives traveled that road past Montrose back when the military had first put it in @ 1880 or so, I was reading the letters while back I don't remember the exact date. Great Grandpa Sandifer was born during the civil war in Kentucky and rather than continue to starve and eat grass and other poor forage they moved west, he had lived in Paonia from @1869-1870 until 1966 when he passed away. Lots of Sandifers and Hammonds running around over there.

I might have dream't it. Didn't you say you knew someone who climbed it?

Still there!? Well, Kevbone had posted that he knew someone who had driven over and climbed it, so at least the route is seeing some action. Obviously not everyone is outraged. Then bone pulled the post. Maybe too controversial to admit something like that I guess. Could be the villagers were heading over to burn the monster but saw a beer tent and took a left turn and forgot about it?

I have some a few as well. Maybe us PDXers can have a pub club and bring all our old mags to a central location, slap a buck or 2 on the person they give them to for shipping costs and we can get some over there as well and make it a significant thing.

I think he's adding 10 more feet to an existing route so he can bag the FFA "sit start variation":-) I bet a sketch from you would be more interesting than most of my pictures Marcus!

FW, you have Joseph wrong on the Neocon=Jewish=racist tag. I don't believe he has a racist bone in his body. Neocon to him only means neo, as in NEW-conservative. A philospohy. Here is a link to a definition you can use but you can skip the controversial Jewish hater charge for JH as it doesn't apply outside of what is best for the country. For JH I'm sure it's about the U.S., and what is best for US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative Don't know why you bring up that idea to somehow reduce his ideas to not being worthy of thought. Wolfowitz should be included in that as his writings, thoughts and philosophy often steered the admins actions. JH's first sentence, ie, that the admin had a plan and 9/11 gave them justification to act on it, seems obvious enough to the rest of us. BTW, I think Lincoln was/is way overrated, and as far as FDR goes, don't forget that his breaking of the law to get material support to our allies before the war both ultimately got us involved and possibly in the end (arguably) saved our country. Plans recovered from Germany after the war had the US included in the military invasion/grand plans of the 3rd Reich. So I see Reagan/Bush doing the Iran-Contra thing, and although it pisses me off, the FDR (being right) comparison keeps me from being too judgmental. We often do not know 1/2 of what is really going on until many many years later, if at all.

Come on, someone must have gotten out and done something this weekend, bring it! Phil Guidotti on some route prep work with a shovel. Around these parts sometimes you have to dig to see rock:-)

Very skillful stack job there FWG!

Man, it's only been a few years and I'd already forgotten most of those adventures I'd used as examples back in 2006! I just saw Bob (regular partner of 25 years who stopped climbing 8 years ago due to balance issues) the other day and someone came over as we were bs*ing and said to him, "You're Bob? Andrew says you're the guy to have next to you when the shit hits the fan". I said: as I flashed right back to that vertical ice example up above there and Bob stubbornly refusing to belay me until we discussed the whole thing: "He is, he always bailed my weak ass out!' That time Bob had talked me into turning around and of not getting on that one (I still don't understand the drive I had then to get up the thing so bad so many years later, but I do still remember the intensity of wanting to fire that pitch of ice right there even now, 30 years later). Bob's wisdom then undoubtedly saved us from an epic or worse. Shortly into what would be a long descent, the wind and the horizontal ice pellets and whiteout thing started up...then it got dark with many miles yet to go, even following the footsteps of the person right in front of you became difficult as they filled up so fast....

F*em, they didn't know if these guys would come stumbling down after a 2 night out epic on the Mt without their sleeping bags and barely make it to the cabin in a comatose/hypothermic near death state and these pricks stole their sleeping bags? That could easily kill someone at the wrong time. It's why they use to hang horse thieves, without a horse in the backcountry you were pretty much screwed, usually the water was draped over the saddle horn and your sleeping stuff over the back as well. Hey wageslave: would there be a place or a way they could anonymously drop off the journal, or all your stuff, if they read this and feel guilt? How about Mazama clubhouse or someplace generic so you don't have to give out an address.