catbirdseat

We've had just a couple of meagre two or three day weather windows and those have been mid-week. I'm curious if anyone has attempted Rainer this winter by any route.

Geez, has it already been a whole year since anybody has talked about Alpine Belays?

The filming sequences in the crevasse were simply awesome. Show me where anything like that has ever been done before. It was eerily beautiful and scary as shit at the same time. It is this strange dichotomy that makes crevasses so facinating to me. When Joe lost it and just started pounding the ice with his fists, yelling "fuck, fuck, fuck". That really brought out the utter hopelessness of his situation. That he got it together after that was inspirational.

Interesting choice of forums.

Since this is the Newbies section and since nobody else has said it, the Abalakov or Vee Thread (see FOTH) has entirely replaced the use of electrical conduit for rappelling off of ice climbs.

Okay, imagine you are an administrator in the Atlanta school system and you are interviewing this young bright black man. He comes across as incredibly arrogant and you take an immediate dislike to him. You figure that with his glib demeanor he'll stir up all sorts of problems with other teachers if you hire him. But the guy is really well qualified. You can't just tell the guy you don't like him. What are you going to tell him? Whatever you do you don't want to give him the impression that you are rejecting him for racial reasons (heck you, yourself are probably black). So what do you tell him. You say he is overqualified and probably would not fit in.

I read in the Globe that Regis Philbin is terribly sad that his pet Himalayan cat of 20 years just died.

I'm not saying that, Dru. Preparation can reduce the damage, but there are certain trips you can't prepare enough for, right? You just have to go for it. I think what you do immediately after the big climb can have a big effect on your recovery. For example on the drive home, don't just get in the car and sit for hours. I will make any sort of excuse to get the driver to stop for beers or the rest area just so I can stretch my legs. Some guys, particularly the married ones, are in such a damn hurry to get home after a climb and don't want to stop at all. I think the stop for beers is an integral part of the climbing. Nothing like beer for recovery. Maybe its the walking back and forth from the bar to the toilet that helps prevent soreness.

A certain friend, who happens to be fond of climbing in the Darrington area was interested in the view to the north of Deer Creek Pass. This picture was taken from high on the summit ridge of Bald Mountain. Kelcema Lake is in the foreground. The drainages are Clear and Copper Creeks. Three O'Clock Rock and Exfoliation Dome can be seen.

Part of it is the practice of (what do they call it?) Mainstreaming? Everybody in the same classroom from the village idiot to the young prodigy.

How silly. His first mistake was choosing Atlanta. There are schools all over the country who are dying to get people like that. On the other hand, he may have come across as arrogant in his interview. If you don't come across as personable in the interview, you've lost.

Hey, at least you had boots. People often do that traverse in rock shoes or at best tennis shoes.

There was no attachment. I think that the server really was the source of the message.

We should have sent the "Pope-Mobile" to Mars. Instead of a drill, it would extend the hand of Friend-ship.

I do my part. Call me the set up man. Badda-bum-bum-ching.

There was something I remembered from Touching the Void where Simon, I believe, mentioned how frequently their hard alpine climbs would leave them essentially laid up for a week afterwards. I've heard the term "devastated" applied before. I've never quite gone this far, the worst was being sore for three days after North Ridge of Baker in a day. It would seem that ideally one should avoid getting this fatigued on a climb through preparation. I was wondering about ways to recover as quickly as possible after really hard outings.

$450 for LoJack is less than I would have supposed.

Now I've started to get Delivery Failure Notification messages. I think this means that someone who has me on their address book got the virus which sent a message to a bad address using my return address. The server sends me the notification based on the phony return address rather than the infected computer.

I've climbed with people who are the opposite. They stoically endure pain until they can't stand it anymore, then they cause a crisis. One guy ended up with a pulled hamstring. We left him by the side of the trail (it was a nice day) and picked him up on the way back.

It's going to suck for everyone except for maybe ice climbers. No more Kew Gardens, except for under glass. Basically it works like this. The Gulf Stream carries warm water starting in the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean. The engine that drives this is the salty surface water sinking in the arctic as it cools. It returns to the tropics by flowing in the opposite direction below the Gulf Stream. Melting ice in Greenland is putting lots of fresh water on the surface of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The fresh water is less dense so it stays on top. This is going to cut off the engine that drives the Gulf Stream and it is going to get very cold in Northern Europe.

Yeah, so there is no point of sending a reply saying, "I think your computer is infected".

Congratulations on your NEW CAR. Those of us driving beaters can't justify the expense of something like LoJack. A hidden kill switch, maybe...

I agree with what Petey is saying. I think hip joints rely on a small number of "uber plab" dudes who sort of get things rolling, so to speak. They have a huge influence on the others, so many of whom are just hangers on who just snipe from the sidelines (myself included). Having said that, I believe that all it might take is one or two new cool cats coming round to liven things up.

I'm getting e-mails from people I don't know. Spammers have huge lists of addresses. If they get hit, there's bound to be a lot of infected messages going out.