catbirdseat

Badda bing. Yo, lummox. When are you coming up to "sunny" Seattle? I'll buy you a drink if you show up to Pub Club.

Is there any trick to getting one end to sleeve into the other? I should think you would need a fid to do that. The weave may be too tight to get the fid to exit.

I was there and I couldn't really tell. It was October and there was no snow anywhere. It looked just like smal talus and scree. The rocks all moved very easily underfoot. We were never sure about exactly what a rock glacier was. I was able to find this definition: "Rock glaciers like this one, in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, are rarer than ice glaciers. A rock glacier takes a combination of cold climate, a copious supply of rock debris, and just enough of a slope. Like ordinary glaciers, there is a large amount of ice present that allows the glacier to flow slowly downhill, but in a rock glacier the ice is hidden. Sometimes an ordinary glacier is simply covered by rockslides. But in many other rock glaciers, water enters a pile of rocks and freezes underground—that is, it forms permafrost between the rocks, and ice builds up until it mobilizes the rock mass. Rock glaciers may move very slowly, only a meter or so per year. There is some disagreement over their significance: while some workers consider rock glaciers a kind of dying stage of ice glaciers, others hold that the two types are not necessarily related. Certainly there's more than one way to create them. For more photos of rock glaciers and a taste of current research, visit this page at Queen's University of Belfast. " Link

At least you don't have to worry about sitting on a seat that someone has pissed all over.

That's a squat toilet. Climbers don't need to shown how to use one of those.

You are right, Dave. The cider thing is just a "nice to have".

If you are doing much rock climbing, the doubles (half ropes) would be much more durable and more versatile. I'd get larger than 8.0 however.

(1) If it is a sport route, what is one more bolt? The important thing is climbing at a consistent grade. (2) Fine, as long as the bolt is truly for aid and isn't added to protect a run out stretch after the FA without permission of the first ascensionist. (3-5) I don't think it matters. (6) Amend the topo. Wait a while while word gets out, then chop the bolt.

I was a snaffle in another life. Believe me, it's not all it's cracked up to be. The fleas can be murder.

All those urban puffies have got to show up eventually at the thrift store, so dirtbag climbers don't have to pay $500. So what if there are a few pieces of duct tape on it?

Speaking of ethical treatment of animals. Why don't people keep their dogs on a leash. We've had two women fall off cliffs in the past week chasing after their unleashed dogs.

Look at the fricking radio antenna, OMG!

That's pretty darn cool, if you ask me. It should be stronger than a water knot. My only concern would be the ease with which you can monitor the length of the tails when buried out of sight. In a similar vien, there are some single braid splicing techniques from the sailing world that could applied to tubular webbing. These are very strong and can be executed safely by the amateur. Example: http://www.ropeinc.com/sp12b_sbraid_eye_lock_stitch.htm The splice may be too long to be worth the weight. Maybe for a double runner.

Dryad will soon be moving to Boston to take a job with a big pharmaceutical firm. She'll be leaving either the first or second week in March. She deserves a proper send off. Her preference is non-smoking and with hard cider on tap in that order. Where shall we go to drink?

Who doesn't make DDT? It's made all over the world.

I know bonsai well enough to say you know what you are doing. Nice work!

What I mean is this. Pain as humans understand it, is quite complex. We remember pain. We associate it with many different things. We contemplate it. We make it less or worse depending on our thought processes. Pain is undoubtedly different in lobsters, but is it any less than it is in humans? I don't know. All that matters is how much empathy we happen to feel for them, which isn't much.

Heard this on the radio this morning. Supposedly these jackets cost $500. "In years past, it was the Air Jordan sneakers, the Starter jackets, the Eddie Bauer parkas. This year, the fashion accessory most likely to get a teenager beaten up at the bus stop is the North Face jacket. " Unfortunately, I couldn't get the article from the Washington Times.

What it all comes down to is how you define "pain".

Yep, they look like those fat Metolius rap hangers.

I don't know specifically where that is. Only that there are places with severe erosion problems. As for your second point, a sling birth hitched around a tree doesn't do much (if any) damage. I am aware of that. My point is that some of the newbies who go there don't. Besides, those rappel anchors look a lot less obtrustive than a bunch of multihued slings on a tree.

Perhaps unnecessary, but they might, after all is said and done, reduce erosion on trails and reduce damage to the trees.

The B-52 was on sale at REI for $8, so I bought one just to try it out. So far I've only used it for belaying and lowering. I've not tried it yet for rappelling or belaying the second. What I can say is that it does not lock off as positively as the ATC. You have to bring the tail down more to lock off, so you can't be careless. It does lower very smoothly. So what would happen if you tried to belay the second with only one carabiner on the anchor? If it was one second and the biner was on the same side as the rope, it looks like it would work. If you were belaying two seconds it appears that it would cocks sideways and perhaps jam, hence the two biners. So supposing you used two biners, only one would have to be locking, right? Trango B-52 Instruction Sheet They only show one locking biner on the anchor regardless of whether one or two seconds are being belayed.

Oh yeah! My Acura gets 33 mpg... Doh!, it's not an American car.

I had a dream that I was at the Home Depot. I was putting a piece of lumber back on a stack when suddenly the ground began to shake. It was an earthquake and all those stacks of materials were swaying back and forth. Home Depot is the last place on earth I'd want to be in an earthquake. I awoke with a start and felt myself shaking. "Maybe this really is an earthquake!", I thought. I looked at the lamps and other objects and they weren't moving. It was me. My heart was trying to beat itself out of my chest. I was having heart palpitations. "Oh, my god! What should I do? I feel okay. I feel lucid. Maybe it will go away on its own?" After about 5 minutes it did. It was now 3 am. I've been taking Avelox for a sinus infection. I looked on the side-effects list and there it was, Heart Palpitations, and a warning against taking the medicine if you have heart arrhythmias. Crikey, I was rock climbing yesterday, what if it had happened then? I heard that one of the Sonics players who has been sidelined with a sinus infection had heart palpitations. I bet I know what medication he was taking...