catbirdseat

Vantage has a forecast of a slight chance of rain Thursday through Sunday. Toast and I are talking about going Friday. If not Friday, then Sunday. PM me if interested.

Yes, and he probably could have free soloed it too. But he is supposed to be teaching. His techniques should have been exactly as he would expect his student to use at the student's skill level.

I would never do what that guide did. The quick draws do two things: 1) the sling can twist allowing the load to come from any direction without cross loading the biner on the bolt hanger, 2) they reduce rope drag. This is not a major issue on most sport routes, but can be. There may be a few specific situations where what the guide did would be safe, but the student wouldn't necessarily be able to judge what those would be. It's just better to use draws and not have to think about it.

There are numerous climbs at Vantage that would not only take, but require your #5. Some of the routes on the Green Wall take gear up to 9 inches. The cracks get wider and wider as you go up. Not a lot of people seem to like offwidths though.

Be sure to do a search of "boots" in the Gear Critic. There are several threads in the past year that might help.

Mea Culpa, I am a sick bastard. Now Dru has done the same with the Wet T-Shirt Thread that was dead for three months.

If you can find something you like at REI you can take them back if they end up hurting your feet. I don't know where else you can do that.

Distel, I'd be ecstatic if I could climb 10c.

Which Rooney? My son sent me an e-mail with the war piece by Andy Rooney and I went and found the source. It was Dwayner who came up with the Mickey stuff. I guess it was just free association.

Erik, if only I had made the trip to Smith with you I wouldn't have had to ask. I'd be "with it", oops, that's dated. I'd be "hip", oops that's dated too. Oh, well, call me a square, oops, dated.

How many people know off the top of their heads how many ounces are in a tablespoon for crying out loud? How many bushels in a peck? Ha ha ha. Hanging on to this antiquated system imply demonstrates backwardness and arrogance. It is no doubt costing us economically.

That's what I call close super-vision.

Is Shred maximus a dinosaur or a skier?

Talk by Gen X. Meaning unknown.

Wooohooo, touched a nerve, doink, doink.

That would be my que to "exit, stage left".

I wouldn't expect to hear anything until summer.

Don't forget to bring an oxygen bottle in the freezer with you.

Oops you're right about the skiing. Tomcat is back, by the way, although he seems a milder tomcat thus far.

Norsky, thank you for sharing that with us.

In the context of this bulletin board, "spray" refers to (not necessarily useless) talk of any kind whether related to climbing or not that doesn't fit into any of the defined topics or forums. Skiing used to be in Spray, but is now in Freshiez. Spraying is what a tom cat does when it pees. It's marking it's territory. The more frequently it goes, the better its territory is defined. I guess you could say that Dru has the "largest territory" on cc.com through his high frequency of urination. Trask's large territory derives from the pungency of his emanations as much as from frequency.

A bunch of cc.commers already have these, but here they are incase you haven't got yours yet. web page

I am not familiar with that term "pod". Please explain.

Part of it makes sense but not all of it. This is not entirely accurate. When atmospheric pressure drops, the partial pressure of oxygen drops accordingly. The partial pressure of oxygen is 0.21 times the amospheric pressure. At 16k ft this would be 0.21 x 0.5 atm=0.1 atm O2. The concentration of oxygen in your blood must be maintained by your body at a constant level regardless of the partial pressure in your lungs. At altitude, you breath in fewer molecules of O2 with each breath (and transfer to blood is less efficient too), and hence you must take more breaths in a given amount of time to saturate the hemoglobin in your blood. Yes. The pressure increases by 1 atm for every 33 ft of water, or decreases by half for every 16,000 ft of altitude. Earth's rotation accounts for its distorted shape. The centripetal force causes the earth to bulge. The atmosphere bulges proportional to the rest of the globe. I know that storms can rise to 40k ft at the equator, but the cloud tops seldom exceed 20,000 ft in the actic, but this may have more to do with temperature than pressure. The Nova website on Everest puts the pressure at the summit 3,000 ft lower than it would be if it were at the same latitude as Denali. Some of this extra pressure comes not from the latitude effect but because Everest is located at the center of a continental land mass, whereas Denali is at the margin of one. High pressure systems center on big land masses with highest pressure towards the center of the continent. Couldn't be Tom Hornbein. He's been climbing for a lot longer than that.

(Sound of feet running on pavement) Tex...Tex... where'd ya go?