catbirdseat

I'll be darned. I've never seen one of those before. It look a little bit like a pill bug, but it's different. Maybe you found a living trilobite.

I think that the point of that story to which I refer is that the discovery of the body had made them both very uncomfortable, because it reminded them of their own mortality. The comment was gallows humor, an attempt to break the tension. The men were criticized for it after others took the story out of context.

Happy 4000 Timmy!

Make sure you search for old cc.com trip reports. There are a great many of them. But don't read mine. It has too much information and could ruin your experience.

Isn't Dru's comment a reference to an old story about two Yosemite climbers who on encountering the dead body of a climber who had fallen a couple weeks before, one said to the other, "his jacket doesn't fit". I think one of the guys was Chouinard.

If the tree is growing smack-dab in front of the crack you want to climb, you gotta climb the tree. It's de riqueur for Darrington.

That all depends on what the "job" is, wouldn't it? So many people are always asking what rope to get without giving a clue as to its intended use.

Matt and I went back to Witchdoctor Wall yesterday to look at variations to Sunday Cruise. We came equipped with a large rack and some aid gear, just in case, but we never used it. Boy that pack was heavy though. Even with our leisurely pace and cleaning we were off by dark. Roboboy followed us in and snapped a few pictures. He even watched my little leader fall on Pitch 3. We ended up doing quite a bit of cleaning, which consisted mostly of cleaning out cracks to improve options for protection and also trundling loose rocks and flakes. The route is pretty safe to climb I would say. Matt discovered a much better route for Pitch 5. Instead of going straight up A0 from the belay, you step left along the top of a flake, stand on a small tree and make a cool step left around a corner. There are some cool moves, I thought. Not only does this go free at about 5.8, but it completely eliminates the unpleasant bush crawl we'd done before. See topo, above, where it says "Original Route?" I would suggest that people ought to give the route a go and see what they think. It's a really cool place to climb, easy to get to, and no one goes there. The decent goes really quick, thanks to the rap route that Matt put in. To find the start of this rap route, go west (from the top out) staying to the north side of the ridgetop about 30 meters. Look for an approximately 8 ft. tall symmetrical alpine spruce tree on the edge of a flat area with blueberry bushes and heather. The slings are hidden under its low branches. There should be two slings and a quicklink.

The approach gully right below the notch. The snow will be completely gone and it will be full of loose rock. You can rappel the steep parts on the way down. The first rap is a single with a 60 meter rope. The second might not go with a single. Better plan on doubles.

A 15 meter rope is not adequate to protect against crevasse falls. I would have either taken the whole 30 m or left the rope behind.

Not a Mercator Projection. It's a ______Projection.

"Tierkörperbeseitigungsgesetz" - easy for YOU to say.

I might add that most of the bolts are stainless steel. For some reason a few of them were not stainless and the constant stream of water that comes down in winter is rusting them. The anchor for the first pitch is an example. They'll need to be replaced eventually.

I think we should start mining the poors of net dorks Poor dorks.

I would suggest that you show up for some Exit 38 climbing on a Wednesday or Thursday night and make yourself a known quantity. Then you stand a better chance of hooking up with someone for an alpine climb.

Climb: Fee Demo Wall-Million Dollar Footbridge, 5.9 Date of Climb: 8/17/2006 Trip Report: Rather than going to Exit 32/38 as we usually do on a Thursday evening, we decided to check out Fee Demo Wall which is located on the north face of Steggosaurus Butte on the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River. Larry and I carpooled up from the QFC and met Jimbabwe at the trailhead at Taylor River. A 15 minute hike had us to the base of the wall. It was dry and looked pretty clean. I led up the first pitch of Million Dollar Footbridge on a single 60 meter rope. This is a really nice route with very consistantly challenging climbing at the 5.9 level. It's a real rope-stretcher. My belayer had one meter of rope left when I clipped into the chains. To my surprise, rope drag became a significant factor near the end of the pitch. [Found a pair of carabiners on a bolt half-way up, attesting to a previous visit by climbers who forgot to bring a second rope] The #2 TCU mentioned in the Topo is really optional, as the climbing at that particular place is easy. A #8 or so B/D nut might work there too. First I brought up Larry, who is a beginner rock climber and then Jim. This was Larry's first 5.9 slab climb. He had some difficulty in places but did a good job. Jim took the second pitch, which looked a lot grungier than the first. This pitch is 5.10, but of about the same difficulty overall as the first. It does have a more difficult crux about three or four bolts from the top. The moss on the rock was more a mental factor than physical. The good foot placements were all clean. Still, that second pitch could use a bit of scrubbing. Don't let the foreshortening in the topo fool you. The second pitch is nearly as long as the first, about 55 meters. My impression is that Fee Demo Wall is a place I'd like to go back to with more time. I thought the route we did was well thought-out. The bolts were all well placed to protect the hard moves. There is zero chance of a Z-clip as the bolts are never closer to one another than 10 feet or so. An earlier cc.com post on Fee Demo Wall Gear Notes: 14 draws 1 60 meter rope 1 50 or 60 meter rope Approach Notes: A very easy and pleasant approach. Don't forget your Trail Park Pass.

I can tell you're a chemist and not a physicist I read that somewhere in a newspaper article. You don't have to believe it. The process of weathering is what generally limits the size of mountain peaks.

If you're going to use latin you should spell it right.

If the judge's ruling has taught the Administration one thing, it is that they must keep their illegal activities secret if they are to continue them without judicial review. They are hoping to silence all possible whitleblowers and scare journalists with threat of jail in their efforts to keep their wrong doing under wraps.

Who's going to go first?

"This is not to say that the cultural dimensions associated with T. gondii are necessarily undesirable," noted Lafferty. "After all, they add to our cultural diversity." Spoken like a true liberal.

If you were to make it a trikephalos dog, you'd have Kerberos.

A planet would not need ever to have been molten for it to form into a sphere. The only requirement is that is mass and hence gravity be sufficient for it to collapse into a sphere. It is said that if Mt. Everest were much larger it would collapse under it's own weight. Perhaps one reason why Olympus Mons on Mars is so tall is the lower gravity. I would hazard to that if one were to measure the angle of repose for that mountain, it wouldn't be all that steep. It has a huge base.

That's quite a trip for your first time backpacking ever! Congratulations.

but means the same thing... literally. If we want everything to sound better, why not write everything in Latin You are really sharp, dude. By the way it's a Greek word, not latin. I believe the word is "capitis".