catbirdseat

Unually not until mid May, if I recall rightly. This year it may be earlier- perhaps April.

I'm sorry, but acetaldehyde is indeed very toxic. In small concentrations it is not harmful. In normal individuals, its concentration is never very high in the liver because it is rapidly metabolized. It is however responsible for cirrhosis of the liver. By the way, aldehydes are not esters. I agree with you that bicycling on the street is more dangerous than climbing. Mountain biking on trail is not without risk, either, but at least there are no SUVs to flatten you.

Many of the problems other people have with dogs stem from their owners anthropomorphising their pets. Dogs are NOT people. Dogs are NOT people. Dogs are NOT people.

We started climbing about 10 am. Stupid, huh? I'll stop short of calling it an epic, but for me it was the closest thing I've experienced to it. I still haven't experienced a forced bivy, but this was almost it.

WTA website has been replace by Phyllis Diller.

Dave Page resoled my Raichle Montangna boots and I was happy with the work. The cost was $60 and it takes up to a week. Dave Page Web Page

Don't let the bastards wear you down. Write your trip report the way you like and if they don't like it they can go take a long walk on a short pier. The ones doing the complaining probably can't write. They were ones throwing spit wads in English class.

Leejams and I were to meet another climber from Spokane at Alpental Saturday morning to find some ice to play on. He didn't show up, so we grabbed our gear and headed up to Guye Peak. Lee thought we might find some ice, but I didn't think so. This was confirmed when we got up there. I'm not sure how we decided to climb Guye but we did. Probably we weren't thinking straight. For one thing we were carrying too much gear, and for another we didn't have a route description with us. We talked about the South Rib, but decided it was too slabby with all that snow on it, so we went for the Spur. I'm not sure we were on route or what, but we hit several class 5 sections on the first two pitches. These ate up a ton of time. On the second pitch Lee was having trouble with the crux, so I yell up to him to put in an anchor. I came up and saw it was a hairy move around a wet corner, exposed and hard to protect. I suggested that he try it without his pack and we'd haul them instead. This worked, but after watching him, I didn't want to wear my pack either, so we hauled them both on the end of our climbing rope. They were heavy and stuck on everything, but we finally got the pack up to the belay tree. After the first two pitches it is supposed to be easy climbing, but we found snow with a breakable crust that was really treacherous. You could never trust your footing. We couldn't get the nerve to simulclimb so we belayed every pitch, which obviously took a lot of time. We didn't mind being out late because the weather was so fine. Warm, with not a breath of wind. We didn't summit until 6 pm. That's when we realized that Guye isn't trivial to get off of in the dark. You have to run the ridge north to the saddle. There are three or four high points you go over, but the last one is too steep. We rappelled down a gully. At the bottom of the rappel, you are supposed to climbing back up another gully to get on the ridge again, but we couldn't see it, or whatever. So we continued rappelling and were committed to that course. We ended up in a nasty slot gully. On the fourth rappel it put us close to the bottom, with no anchor. I downclimbed about 20 ft of 70 degree ice unroped then gave Lee a weak belay from below which would have at least stopped a slide over a cliff below. One or two more rappels later we were on a slope we could plunge step down, sometimes up to our thighs in powder. We found a snowshoe trail on the west side of Commonwealth Creek and were home free. We made it back to the car at 1:15 am and for some reason decided to go home and not climb Chair Peak on Sunday. Today I feel totally wasted. I must have had pine needles shoved under my fingernails, because that is what it feels like. Should have worn gloves the whole time for all those vegetable belays. This was the first climb in which I've had to rappel in the dark. We could have bivied, of course, but I felt that if we just took our time and were careful, we could get down safely and stay warm in the process. Lee and I both learned a lot on this climb and now better understand the importance of good communication and also in efficiency of rope handling. A couple of radios would have been really nice on this climb. With radios, we could have decided on when to simulclimb.

Joe, you are forgetting articles, like "a". You sound like a different avatar.

I was out climbing. We had beautiful weather. Sorry you were stuck inside.

Why NOT park on a wet grass with a 25 degree slope, when you know that trask will take care of the problem. This sort of behaviour is the product of dependence.

Nope, no superfluous material. But, where's the part about the climbing in your trip report?

Have you talked to Garth Bruce yet? He just published his Exit 38 book. Maybe he can provide some guidance.

Hmmm, five straight wins. Just beat the Lakers.

Newstips, don't act surprised. We're talking about trask here. He isn't exactly typical.

Naked News is old news. But what is new is the improved preview. So are you a subscriber, trask?

The credit card companies have a computerized and automatic system that searches for these unusual patterns. You can expect to get a call when the computer detects something unusual.

Perhaps other branches do, but bear in mind the Everett class is 40 this year compared to 200 at Seattle. It is something to discuss.

I thought he just didn't have a car.

See-through skirts.

Oh, no! I've been fingered!

You just hit on a possible thread topic. "Top five posters you'd love to filter out".

Imagine all the climbers actually in the Mountains at the same time. It would be crowded. If anyone pissed you off, you might just off them with your ice axe because you wouldn't care about the consequences. You might trundle shit on guys below you just for fun.

I know who dryad is and I can definately confirm that dryad is a she. Furthermore, I can say that she has thus far represented herself truthfully.

Curious, 7 pages and not one post by trask. He must be on an airplane or something. The title says "Gym vs. Sport". How did Trad get pulled into this?