catbirdseat

I mentioned this in a thread on the Pearly Gates in the Rock Climbing forum, but I thought it might make a topic for discussion. At PG, we met more than one party with beginners. One guy had a fellow on a 5.8 slab route on is very first day climbing. I asked, "is he a gym climber?", and was told, no, it was his first day ever. The reason I asked was that they guy had left all the draws on the bolts. We asked if we could climb the route and the guy was cool. My partner clipped his draws and then I cleaned them and returned them after we rapped off. On another occasion we watched another climber following on a 5.8 trad route and again she left all the gear in place so that no one could get on the route. I would never clip someone else's trad gear, obviously, so we waited until they could rap down and clean it. So I'm wondering if it is really all that wise, not to mention ethical to take rank beginners to a place that doesn't even have any climbs below 5.7 and where the routes are long enough that communication can be an issue and where you can't always see your partner? If it were me, I'd take a beginner to one of the roadside crags first and teach him/her to clean first.

What are you waiting for? Come to Pub Club. You can meet other climbers and you can pump them for information. You can ask them to suggest people they know who might be willing to take a beginner under his/her wing.

I suggest doing Baker first. It is a fun climb with a lot of the same glacial features of Rainier on a smaller scale. You can dial in all the skills you will need on Rainier.

I wish I had known about this route. I might have tried it, as it was crowded up there on Saturday. There were a bunch of newbies in tow. Several times, I saw climbers leaving gear on routes instead of cleaning them. The leader would clean on rappel because the second didn't know how to clean gear. It would tie up the route for an extra 15 minutes, which isn't a lot, but when it is that crowded it makes a difference. I led Celestial Groove, 5.9, which for someone like me (just getting into 5.9s) was a real trip. Damn, that start is hard! I wasn't all that thrilled about having to rely totally on an Orange Alien for the first 15 ft. It was windy that day and it was difficult to hear. My partner and I had a miscommunication and he started climbing before he was on belay. He fell trying to get my Alien out and hit the ground, slightly injuring his ankle. The fact that he sucked it up and cleaned the route shows what a great partner he is. Someone ought to bring a Pulaski and dig out that stump that lies right in the landing zone.

From the King5 TV Website (www.king5.com):

Squire Creek wall wins for total area, but how do all these areas compare in terms of elevation?

Not to mention the fact that if the end links wear, you are there to replace them.

Yes, you missed it.

They buried him again on the mountain, perhaps to turn up again in another 32 years.

cj001f and Fairweather. Where one is found the other cannot be far away.

Cherries, cherries, and more cherries. Fingers stained with cherry juice, tee shirt stained too. Cherry pie, cherry cobbler, cherry jam...

I love surfing down huge waves with the spinnaker straining to pull the mast out of her. Rail in the water going like hell. That's living! Put you goddam best helmsman behind the wheel and everybody hold on for dear life. Keep the F'ing spinnaker pole from rolling into the water, if you please. "Hey Ralph, still feeling seasick? How about some nice cold, greasy porkchops". "Arrrraagggghhhhh!!!!"

Just watch where you step.

Where is John Brown when you need him? I suppose that what ELF is doing is akin to Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

Corolary to the above: "If you can't tie a good knot, tie lots of them."

When I go to my job interview next week I'll try to remember not to get in an argument with my prospective employer.

Dru is a psychotrope, whereas lummox is a misanthrope. Use any soap you like, but be thorough in rinsing out all soap residue as it will cause the rope to wet out.

9/16" Climb Spec is a lot stronger than 1/2", webbing. I have no reservations about rapping from new 9/16". I recall Wayne and Colin mentioning that they used the 1/2" on their Picket Range Traverse, however, Colin mentioned that they used it to back up old slings they found and that whenever they built a new anchor, they used two turns of it around a horn or whatever. He kept a bunch of it in a stuff sack with one end sticking out. Whenever he needed some, he'd just pull out what he wanted and cut it off. I'd use it that way too, but I'd want to use a double or triple fisherman's rather than water knots.

Have you heard of modafinil? It is a drug made by Cephalon and sold under the brand name Provigil Approved by the FDA to treat narcolepsy, it appears to be a much safer drug than amphetamines, such as methamphetamine, Ritalin, and Dexedrine. The article mentions "off-label" prescription of drugs. I'm wondering if you went to your doctor and told him that you are fearful of steaksauce off behind the wheel driving home after a big climb and dying, would he prescribe the drug for you? Here's the article from the New York Times: Wakefulness Finds a Powerful Ally By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Published: June 29, 2004 Laurie Coots, a marketing executive who flies to meetings in other countries twice a week, spent years trying to conquer sleepless nights and chronic jet lag. But nothing worked, she says, and every day was a struggle to stay awake. "It was debilitating," said Ms. Coots, 46, who is from Los Angeles. "I couldn't give an effective presentation because I was always shaky and nervous from being amped up on caffeine and stimulants." Then she found modafinil, a small white pill that revs up the central nervous system without the jitteriness of caffeine or the addiction and euphoria of amphetamines. "Without it my life would not be possible," she said. Since 1998, modafinil, made by Cephalon and sold under the brand name Provigil, has quietly altered the lives of millions of people. No one knows exactly how it works, but sales of the drug are skyrocketing. People who take it say it keeps them awake for hours or even days. It has been described as a nap in the form of a pill, making most users feel refreshed and alert but still able to go to bed when they are ready. And because its side effects are rarely worse than a mild headache or slight nausea, experts fear that it has rapidly become a tempting pick-me-up to a nation that battles sleep with more than 100 million cups of coffee a day. Few numbers are available, but experts say that as modafinil grows more widely available, it is becoming a fixture among college students, long-haul truckers, computer programmers and others determined to burn the midnight oil. Some worry that an array of common disorders, like diabetes and sleep apnea, will go undiagnosed if doctors dole out Provigil instead of seeking the underlying diseases that cause fatigue. In a culture of 24-hour stores, graveyard shifts and coffee shops on every corner, modafinil might also pose a more subtle danger: to the countless Americans in search of an extra edge, modafinil could be a cure for sleep. "This drug enables us to be that much more workaholic and that much more obsessed with accomplishments and productivity, and I think our society is already extreme along those lines," said Dr. Martha J. Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. "The natural checks on that tendency, like needing to go to bed, are being rolled back by modafinil." To the extent that modafinil becomes the latest lifestyle drug, as ubiquitous as Viagra, scientists warn that cutting back on sleep, even by one hour a night, can have long-term neurological and cardiovascular effects that are only now being recognized. "It's almost fortuitous that at the same time that this drug has come out, we have increasing mounds of data showing that sleep is a restorative, protective health process," said Dr. Neil B. Kavey, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "It affects performance, blood pressure, heart rate, insulin, various hormone secretions. No matter what medications come out that make sleep seem like a waste of time, we know that the sleep-deprived state is a bad one to be in." Discovered by French researchers in the late 1970's, modafinil went on the market in the United States in 1998 as a treatment for narcolepsy, a severe sleep disorder. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration broadened its approved uses to include obstructive sleep apnea, a narrowing or blockage of the airways, and sleeping problems caused by shift work. An effort by Cephalon to have the drug approved for a third indication, excessive sleepiness from any cause, was rejected. But the three conditions modafinil is approved to treat make up only a fraction of its total uses. According to Cephalon, based in West Chester, Pa., 90 percent of all prescriptions for the drug are for "off-label" uses, including fatigue, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and sleepiness caused by other prescription medications. Click here if you want to read the entire article.

My uncle died last summer and I attended his funeral at Gig Harbor. As he was a WWII veteran who saw combat in Italy, he was afforded full military honors. There was an honor guard which fired a salute and a bugler who did a fine job with taps. It really was an impressive and meaningful performance, and it it would have pleased my uncle.

There is an unnamed 5.6 (5.8 if you ask crackbolter) chimney on the third pitch of champagne. It is rather obscure, but pretty cool in my opinion. If the second carries the pack, be sure to speak up and volunteer to lead that sucker. It is a sort of simultaneous climb/45 degree traverse, for want of a better way of describing it. It is like a huge boulder that clove in two with a gap of about 24-36 inches. Your pro is in small cracks on the right side. You finish the pitch by surmounting (what else?) the obligatory chockstone.

Someone built a cabin recently in 76 Gulch. They built a trail that makes it much easier to get in there. The climb out of the gulch is quite a chore, I am told, but you can visit the Comet mine on the way, which is supposed to be pretty cool.

If you look directly across Icicle Canyon from the top of Icicle Buttress, you see what looks to be a long offwidth or chimney. What is it?