billcoe

I talked to Jim last night about this very function and he's in as long as someone reminds him closer to the date. Saw Joseph too as we were doing a rope hostage exchange thing before he leaves town again, but as he's all over the nets and most likely saw this I didn't bring it up. I suspect he is in Vegas/Alburqurque. - guessing we won't see him. It will be good to see Ivan too, since he's now going to be there. I can counsel the lad on relationships....NOT. . Well, after my 5th pint maybe. BTW, old F* reminder (moi and Jim for sure), dress warm, that place is cold....brrrr. HEY HEY, GOOD IDEA, LETS GET ONE OF THE ROOMS THERE!

It's pretty damn current too: it has Joseph and Larry's new route (just done Mar 07?), and a bunch of new Karsten routes too.

Wisely spoken all the way through JH. ____________________________________________________________ John: I heard a post children survey of parents had 77% of them NOT choosing to have children again if they could do it over. And they were non-climbers...wonder what those numbers would look like with this group?

Absolutely. Risk can be mitigated in many many stages as well in the Mt's. A 2 team FA of a steep route deep in the Wallows in late winter/early spring is radically different and dangerous on so many more levels than a spring jaunt up the South Side of Hood with 3000 other (working) cell phone carrying individuals. It is what we chose to do, vs what we believe are the risks.

hmmm What Rad says certainly strikes a cord. Jim Anglin passed away 2 weeks ago by falling off of the descent trail. Not on a burley dangerous climb, of which he had FA's on many. I was with another well known Oregon Climbing pioneer whom almost died after slipping on the mud at the Butte at the bottom of the easy downclimb by Blackberry jam (he had finished the downclimb and was standing on the wet dirt when he slipped, several surgeries and 4 weeks or so in the hospital...). My statement on the other thread was for me: and I see many other parents putting it way out there further than I want too on a regular basis. Here's a reworked version. ....... Speaking only for myself, it was considered and acted on. I had summited Hood well over 30 times before my (now 21 year old) daughter was born. I have not been there to climb except once since, (COUGH*outofshape*COUGH*fatbastard*COUGH) and that was only to fulfill a guide contract for a friend. We got off the summit 20 min before a major lightning storm hit. We stopped below the cloudcap and started back up when it passed to go help some highly skilled, highly experienced, very savvy Portland Mt. Rescue folks who were still going up as we were going down. They were fine as it turned out, but not by much. Proving you can be the very best Mt climber in the world and end up dead. I can name some names and circumstances if you would like. The loudness of a lighting strike near you is not something you can communicate on a computer. An unexpected avalanche, crevasse bridge collapse or humoungous rock whizzing right by your head can be equally shocking. As far as answering your first question, I bumped my life insurance and stopped what I consider the high risk things. I don't do the mountains and ice. Stopped drugs and toned down the partying. I do not ride a motorcycle now as well, although my wife does: go figure eh? Kids made a huge impact on us both, yet we draw our own lines, with our eyes wide open knowing both the risks and the consequences. I still rock climb, which I consider a lower risk activity. I do not make judgments for or about others who still climb ice or Mt's and have children, this is my choice. They make their own choices. I understand those parents still mountain climbing, I sometimes ache to run up Rainer or jump on the ice in the gorge when it hits, but I can easily get a quick pump in the rock gym, where it's warm and safe all winter, and spend the evening with my family, which makes it worth writing off the mts. As a family we do things together as well. A hike up dog mountain gets talked about for months, and your son would most likely love doing that with you as well. He doesn't give a shit about Mt Hood, he wants to be with you. You came on the board asking advice, and got good advice in my opinion. These guys have seen people come on this board asking advice whom later wound up dead in what some would say is a tragedy. It is something these cascadeclimber folks take seriously (generally). My dad died when I was 18 months old, due to no fault of his own, I take my responsibility as a parent pretty seriously, it is my prime job, and all else is secondary. But, I can see a time - where we kick the lil boy out soon as he's 17 now, where this will be changing. My son and I have gotten season passes the last 2 years, and it's pretty safe (and fun) to burn some fast runs at Meadows all winter. Great fun. So I'm ON the Mt, but not really ON the Mt. in a serious way. If the weather turns we head for the bar and a couple of hot buttered rums, and the lad has a hot chocolate and then drives me home while we discuss the highlight reel of the days events: prime jumps, runs where dad got left in the dust, major crashes, turns missed, etc etc :-) Sweet deal! Good luck with whatever you choose. I feel you have already taken a very responsible and intelligent path gathering as much info BEFORE you jumped in, something not everyone does. Your son is lucky to have such a committed and caring parent. Regards; Bill ps, read this trip report of Ivans day on the Mt. Keep in the back of your mind as your read this that this horror show was during great weather in PDX today.

Are any of you folks hiking around in the woods carrying a weapon after being stalked by a Mountain Lion or a bear? Or just carrying them preemptively in case you might be?

Ouch!

I've owned both the Bose 901s and 501s back when vinyl ruled Brittania. When compared to the Sansui speakers my buddy had, the Bose 501's paled, so I sold them and got the Sansui's. The Sansuis we better than the 901's as well - but not by a wide margin. Love the Klipsh I have hooked up to my computer now. I put a Revolution 7.1 sound card and plugged in the Klipsh speakers, which fill the room with great sound. If the familys home, I put on a pair of Sennheiser 595s or some old school lookin' Grado Presige series headphones. I like the Bose, but thought I could do better on the phones as well. Good stuff!

MOUNTAIN GEAR ROCKS IS A HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT!!!! I love the fact that when all that Alien cam failure stuff started, with the CCH folks totally denying that they had an issue and just sitting with their thumbs up their asses picking their noses, Paul Fish of Mountain Gear just grabbed a bunch and paid to have them independently pull tested. Shitloads failed at shockingly low foot lbs. and CCH was BITCHSLAPPED UPSIDE THE HEAD and FORCED to recall and fix all the dimpled ones. Paul Fish alone may have saved many lives by his actions. We need to support and encourage folks like this every chance we have. Thank yew Mountain gear! Mountain Gear site for internet sales link

Do you have - or can you borrow - an electric soldering iron?

Good to share that kind of info Shapp. Since Goran Kropp died, I always wondered if Air Guitar has that issue too, but maybe not so blatantly obvious.

Cool stuff Jason, thanks for the heads up!

HOLY CRAP WILL, GREAT READING! That looks familiar from over 20 years ago, but I don't think I did it. (before crash pads were used, a day bouldering alone it's easy to back off and do something else:-) Some of those early valley guys were crazy strong. Nice job sticking it!

Yeah thats right High: I almost forgot, Ujahn led that section, and I thought he ran it out further than normal: needlessly I was thinking, but it was his lead and thinking it was easy. Might have to change my recommendation Sherri! We'd already climbed Dream of Wild Turkeys and Epinphrine at a few other harder routes at this point of the trip, so this seemed easy, but if you're pushing 5.7-5.8, or are kicking ass anyway but just have a moment of inattention: might be dicy or ugly.

Hi Sherri: No that Tunnel Vision route is awesome, and not difficult at all, you'll like it. BUT, my bad ju-ju story is a fleshing out of that. Like many long routes that have multiple pitches, with a 60 meter rope you can miss the belaying points or "official" belay points anyway and wind up somewhere else. So Ujahn gets up there in the middle of the line, not a real good spot for him to be hanging out, but the pro is good and he gets 3 pieces in and equalized and brings me up. My lead next, I get up 40-50 feet of great climbing to the (what must be the obvious belay) ledge that starts the tunnel. I call down to Ujahn, "Hey dude: I think your pitch ends here, on this ledge. " I climb up off the ledge into the tunnel (not having a topo makes you come to grips which your eye-brain connection, something I often like to do, and that was the case here - no topo). It looks to me like the real route wusses out left soon from the tunnel, but that if you climb straight up, you'll get lots more, maybe 60-90 feet of relatively hard and good tunnel chimney climbing. So I eyeball it and think maybe I'll head up into the wild blue yonder instead of following the obvious line which has chalk on it that heads out left. There is no chalk or indication that any human has been here before and gone straight up like I'm doing, the pro is minimal or non-existent and also as I'm older now, my eyes aren't seeing particularly well either in the darkened tunnel. I can see that there is a spot the tunnel closes and touches @ 5 feet above me and left, and I decide I can make that and runner it for a piece of pro, and it may be good enough. Then I can crank the spot and try for the top and maybe get something else higher up. At this point, I have a single piece in: but may be looking at hitting the ledge after bouncing around in the chimney, not a pleasant prospect, so I do not want to boff it. I'm feeling a bit sketch too as the rock gets smooth and slippery as well, and my shoes are greasing around, and I'm mentally musing if belaying off the ledge wouldn't be better for Ujahn as he's most likely uncomfortable down there hanging on the belay. I'm also wondering what the effects on a fall would be if he belays me from there and I head straight up again instead of where he's currently belaying at.... Ruminating on all of this, I made the mistake and violated the cardinal rule of climbing: I pause and said (out loud) to Ujahn: "Hey, should I belay from the ledge or head up". I cannot see him, nor hear well as I'm in the tunnel, he's down and out of sight. The stupidity and enormity of my error comes to me soon as I make the first moves up after choosing to just go for it straight up into the wild unknown then: OFF BELAY wafts up from below..... "HOLY FU*K DUDE - HEY, WHAT THE FU*K ARE YOU DOING, PUT ME ON, CLIMBING.... CLIMBING..... PUT ME ON BELAY" I scream down. "Dohhh, sorry dude, ON Belay" I soon hear from below. Tail firmly between my legs, I quietly and quickly downclimbed and followed the obvious and easy path towards the light coming into the tunnel from climbers left where I should have gone to begin with. Ujahns was pretty embarrassed as he gets to to my anchor (which was on the correct line of the route), after sharing with him how insecure the position I was in as he yelled up "Off Belay", (trying to rationalize my earlier screams of terror) I'm letting him know: "Hey, no worries - this ones on me bra"... Sh*t, you think I'd know better too.....35 years climbing and just boff it like that on an easy route....DOHHH!

The owners of Climbmax are the best! They have shitloads of great gear and are all climbers themselves. site says: "Climb Max Mountaineering is an employee owned and operated business in Portland, Oregon. We have been providing Portland with life safety equipment for over 8 years! Come check out our shop at 928 NE 28th Ave (corner of 28th & Sandy). We're here Monday-Saturday 10-8pm PST. Call the retail store at 503.797.1991! Or call our websales department at 503.797.1996 or 1.800.895.0048!" Oregon Mt community is also nearby, and advertises on this site, and Portland Rock Gym has a selection of gear too.

Well thats a pleasant visual:-) Great Red Rocks pic too! I didn't do that one, but have a good story about Tunnel Vision last week I'll lay down later.

I should have time to dry out from all the alchohol I've consumed over this holiday to show up, but it might be closer to 7-7:30 PM as a better time for me.

Speaking only for myself, it was considered and acted on. I had summited Hood well over 30 times before my (now 21 year old) daughter was born. I have not been there to climb except once since, and that was only to fulfill a guide contract for a friend. We got off the summit 20 min before a major lightning storm hit. We stopped below the cloudcap and started back up when it passed to go help some highly skilled, highly experienced, very savvy Portland Mt. Rescue folks who were still going up as we were going down. They were fine as it turned out, but not by much. Proving you can be the very best Mt climber in the world and end up dead. I can name some names and circumstances if you would like. The loudness of a lighting strike near you is not something you can communicate on a computer. As far as answering your first question, I bumped my life insurance and stopped the high risk things. I don't do the mountains and ice. I do not ride a motorcycle now as well. Kids made a huge impact on me. I still rock climb, which is a lower risk activity. I do not make judgments for or about others who still climb ice or Mt's and have children, this is my choice. They make their own choices. I understand those parents still mountain climbing, I sometimes ache to run up Rainer or jump on the ice in the gorge when it hits, but I can easily get a quick pump in the rock gym, where it's warm and safe all winter, and spend the evening with my family, which makes it worth writing off the mts. As a family we do things together as well. A hike up dog mountain gets talked about for months, and your son would most likely love doing that with you as well. He doesn't give a shit about Mt Hood, he wants to be with you. You came on the board asking advice, and got good advice in my opinion. These guys have seen people come on this board asking advice whom later wound up dead in what some would say is a tragedy. It is something these cascadeclimber folks take seriously (generally). My dad died when I was 18 months old, due to no fault of his own, I take my responsibility as a parent pretty seriously, it is my prime job, and all else is secondary. But, I can see a time - where we kick the lil boy out soon as he's 17 now, where this will be changing. My son and I have gotten season passes the last 2 years, and it's pretty safe (and fun) to burn some fast runs at Meadows all winter. Great fun. So I'm ON the Mt, but not really ON the Mt. in a serious way. If the weather turns we head for the bar and a couple of hot buttered rums, and the lad has a hot chocolate and then drives me home while we discuss the highlight reel of the days events: prime jumps, runs where dad got left in the dust, major crashes, turns missed, etc etc :-) Sweet deal! Good luck with whatever you choose. I feel you have already taken a very responsible and intelligent path gathering as much info BEFORE you jumped in, something not everyone does. Your son is lucky to have such a committed and caring parent. Regards; Bill ps, read this trip report of Ivans day on the Mt. Keep in the back of your mind as your read this that it was great weather in PDX today. Click here to read it

Sorry, all gone now, but REI still has the sport anchor available. $8.83/ea is a great price. BTW, looks like the deal for the SS Fixe Chain anchors is now at Acme Climbing for $19.70 ea plus freight. Link I expect that to go up, reminding us only once again: if you snooze, you lose big nose.

Yes they are. I think I fell in love with em. On a long route you need to rap, like Crimson Chrysalis or Dream of Wild Turkeys in Vegas, it's the schizz. Even a route like Epinephrine it's cheap insurance, should something arise like a fall and an injury (ran into some fellas rapping as we were heading up the nose who had slammed into one of the Penjis trying to do it fast in a day and had a bum leg). It can get ugly doing half rope raps and leaving all the extra gear to do so. I've never had to do so yet, but as I age and get weak...... Sorry Hendershot, wasn't ignoring you, but I don't know the answer to your question so I was just gonna shut up and see what gets said by others by way of a reply to your inquiry. I can say I do not remember seeing anyone doing that, but don't know why not.

The solution: JxgjVVbHfVg&rel=1 ? Why be brisk and perchance miss helping out with the lessons for others?

like wise : have a great holiday all. Its a day for all of us to count all of the many blessings which we all have, living in one of the richest countries in the world, we all have so much to be Thankful for. I haven't seen my daughter in almost a year, and she'll be here in @ an hour. (Borat voice) VErrryy Nice!

Metolius Monster 7.8mm are the lightest double ropes on the market. I have a set and don't have a bad word to say about them. I especially love the little tufts that mark the middle and end distance, you can feel it in the dark, both the middle and like @30' from the end.

...and brought a rope?