catbirdseat

I agree it is cool belaying from column tops, but it isn't always practical. These things have to be considered on a case by case basis. In the example of Chips and Dips there is a very rubble-filled cleft at the top of the crack that you have to chimney up before you get to the column top. It isn't very good climbing at that point and it only risks dumping rocks on other climbers below. In my opinion, the chain anchors would be for safety and not just convenience. I'd have to look at it again. It might be possible, with a great deal of trundling, to clean up that cleft to make it safer.

Somehow I didn't notice this old post before, so I'll respond now. Lucky, I'd love to take you up on your offer. Let's get together is February perhaps at the Coulee and talk about it.

Dru, this is the sort of thing you dream about, eh? You top out on this great route on a big mountain and there in front of you is this huge bale waiting for you. You look for your pipe and you can't find it. You are looking for a scrap of paper, but none to be found. Ah, but there is the summit register! All is not lost...

Doesn't Barry Collins live out there? I can't remember his screen name.

I want one. Please?

I just tried out a pair of Cassin C10L aluminum step in crampons that I bought for $69 at the Pacific Coast Feather Company sale last month. They are great. Very quick to put on and they stay on with no balling up. I've never had aluminum crampons before. It is so nice not having all that weight on your feet! Cassin C10L Crampons

It was so nice on Pilchuck yesterday. The feeling of the sun's rays was incredibly welcome. Nice view up there. I met a guy at the trailhead who had just come off the mountain. I saw him again headed back up for a second go round with his family in tow. He said the weather was so nice he had to share it with them.

Dru, my two offspring are soon to leave the house. I am in no hurry to sire any more, thank you.

Did you see the other article about making sperm, no men necessary?

Ray is Zeus, I think. I don't know what else he is.

The idea that the Y-chromosome would disappear is preposterous. As was mentioned in the article, the Y has ways of correcting errors or replacing lost information. The use of palindromic sequences is one. There may be other mechanisms as yet undiscovered.

The head gasket on my wife's minivan once blew when we didn't have $700 to fix it. I became an mechanic overnight. It took me all weekend, and several trips for parts and tools, but I managed to do the job. I had a terrible sunburn on the gap between my pants and my tee shirt from leaning over the engine in the hot sun. The new gasket held and the car worked great after that.

First Vioxx and now Celebrex . Merck and Pfizer are taking it on the chin.

Trolling again, Dru?

The Scots will deep fry anything. "The Mediterranean diet is penetrating into Scotland, "albeit in the form of deep-fried pizza," say Morrison and Pettigrew. "

So are you saying you need a ride to the gym?

Little Melissa comes home from first grade and tells her father that they learned about the history of Christmas. "Since Christmas is for a Christians and we're Jewish," she asks, "will God get mad at me for giving someone a Christmas card? Melissa's father thinks a bit, then says "No, I don't think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a Christmas card to?" "Osama Bin Laden," she says. . . . "Why Osama Bin Laden," her father asks in shock. . .? "Well", she says, "I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give Osama a card, he might start to think that maybe we're not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit. And if other kids saw what I did and sent cards to Osama, he'd love everyone a lot. And then he'd start going all over the place to tell everyone how much he loved them and how he didn't hate anyone anymore." Her father's heart swells and he looks at his daughter with newfound pride. "Melissa, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard." "I know," Melissa says, "and once that gets him out in the open, the Marines could shoot him full of holes". [This one is for you, trask]

I recall past threads by Layton trying to get the ladies to come out and post. Now he's accomplished that, and out come the sheep jokes. Bye bye ladies.

Look on the spine of your carabiner. It shows the rated strength with gate open, usually 7 or 8 kN and closed, somewhere between 22 and 26 kN. If you take a whipper, you better hope that gate is closed, or the biner is going to break.

You just aren't doing it correctly. Maybe you should start a thread in "Newbies" forum detailing how you are going to make your own PTFE in your bathtub by mixing solvents Dru, you fool. The monomer is a gas at atmospheric pressure!

This is at least the third time this same joke has been posted.

We ain't talking about relationships.

Shhhhh! Don't give away all my secrets.

Michael, you got to think of ways to approach women so they aren't faced with a yes or no answer. Make it so that "no" isn't a possibility. Say you meet a woman you like in the gym. You might just compliment her on a nice move or something and smile at her. Then you might ask her what nights she usually climbs. More than likely she'll tell you. Boom, those become YOUR climbing nights, etc. If it works out right, soon you are climbing together. Then, after a gym session, "hey, let's go across the street. I'll buy you a beer". Don't say, "wanna go out with me?"