catbirdseat

By gay, I am sure you must mean they are happy and cheerful routes with pretty cracks and with puffy clouds set in a bluebird sky.

The road was recently improved to Dingford Creek, but it still is very bad after that point.

If you need a reminder, look at your feet. Lamisil, one tablet per day for six weeks. It is expensive but guaranteed to work, if you complete it.

I did, in fact, use a Red Camalot.

I didn't have to heel hook that last pitch of UltiEvy. Aliens make protecting the thing a breeze. I pissed off Jim a little by running out the last bit. Gotta remember your second on those traversing pitches! Yeah, Sickle was pretty easy. Felt like 5.9. Jim managed to walk right by a bolt on the hardest crux of the route. I told him to not forget to clip the next one. If you told me 5.11a, I wouldn't argue. Form is way hard!

I almost forgot to add that Squamish is a really great place to climb. The people there are very nice in general, althought the boulderers pretty much keep to themselves. If you look like a trad climber, you don't exist. Dru was right about tricams. They come in handy in Squamish. They work great for building anchors, and in horizontal cracks.

Climb: Squamish: My First Visit-The Ultimate Everything and Others Date of Climb: 8/18/2005 Trip Report: Arrived in the early afternoon on Sunday and met my buddy Jim in the climber's campground. He said goodbye to his partner of the past three days and off we went to do Diedre. It's a pretty fun route and very moderate, except for one weird friction move on the first pitch. We continued on up and climbed Memorial Crack which I followed on. It seemed like a pretty nice climb. In the afternoon we went and played at Murrin Park for a bit, doing 3 pitches of 5.8-5.9 cracks there. On Monday we intended to do the Ultimate Everything. Instead of doing one of the easy routes up the Apron, like Bananna Peel or some such, we took Saint Vitus Dance, 5.9. On the third pitch I made the mistake of continuing straight up past the belay cove and onto a different 5.10b which I was able to do with the 60 m rope we had. I thus robbed Jim of his pitch which should have gone at an angle to the right. It was dumb, but part of my rationale was I was a bit short of gear for the belay, but I could have done it. Jim finished what remained of the other route and we had our pick of Karen's Math, 5.9, Dessert Dyke, 5.10a, or Form, 5.10c. Jim doesn't like laybacks and he managed to psych me out so we didn't want to do Karen's Math. He'd already done Dessert Dyke the previous day and said it was runnout, so we decided on Form. Jim managed to get to the third bolt and lowered off. I had a crack at it, but couldn't get any farther, so I traversed over to Dessert Dyke and finished on that route in the interest of time. I then led Memorial Crack and decided it was harder on lead than I had anticipated. Plus I managed to fatboy myself by clipping through a sling that was hanging from my harness. Dumbass! By now it was 2 pm so we scrapped plans for the Ultimate Everything and descended for lunch we finished the day by doing a fun route at Campground Wall called Feeling Groovy, 5.9. It features an undercling traverse that was really fun. On Tuesday we got up early and zipped up The Sickle, 5.10- and then Boomstick, 5.6 to get on Ultimate Everything by 10 am. Jim took the odd pitches and I took the even. The last pitch was my first clean 5.10b onsight. I think it's can't be that hard if I was able to do it. We topped out at 1:30 pm. That afternoon we climbed Slot Machine, 5.9 at the Bullet Heads. It's a pretty good route, but it has a bit of a tricky start. It rained Tuesday night which put the kebosh on our plans to climb Rock on Wednesday, but we did manage to climb 3 pitches at Smoke Bluffs. It was kind of slippery in places. The cracks were a bit slimy inside in places, but it was fun anyway. I led a 5.8 and Jim led a 5.9 and a 5.10a called Circus Crack. A nice one and very popular. The sun came out and we had nice lunch before going home. Gear Notes: One set of nuts. One set of Clog cams to #3.5. Aliens from blue to orange. Small tricams.

Are you going to tell us what they are or do we have to guess?

Once a summit is visited frequently the register's function is purely for amusement. I see nothing wrong in that.

30% THC?!

That sounds about right.

The Inebriometer for Flies Gotta love that name.

It'll be nice and cool.

Yep, Dom DeLuise, badly in need of a trim.

Marvin Bush

THIS is repulsive:

If I were driving a truck full of explosives, I'd take corners at high speed too.

Cloudy mornings do wonders for the commute to work. No fumbing around in the glove box, looking for those damn sunglasses. I've noticed that the better the weather the worse the traffic.

When it comes to insurance companies, anything you say can and will be used against you to screw you.

Just change bridegroom to bride.

The Montrail Splitter is a very comfortable shoe. Friends who have the shoe have told me they find them comfortable too.

Great story Murray. You should submit it to one of the boating magazines. I'd be willing to bet they'd publish it. I recall an incident many years ago in which we were attempting to bring my brothers Laser sailboat home from the Yacht Club on top of the family station wagon (a '71 Kingswood Estate Wagon). My Dad had tied it, bow forward, upside down on the roof. I was of the opinion that the boat was sitting bow heavy and needed to be moved back and more lines secured. But my Dad, as usual, said, "aw, it's good enough, let's get out of here!". We didn't even get out of the parking lot. My Dad hit the brakes rather hard to avoid an oncoming car he hadn't noticed. The boat slid forward and a big, honking cleat first broke the windshield before severely damaging the hood.

Sorry, I was referring to Dru's comment.

Glad you managed things so well. I hope David is mending well. You'll get it next time.