catbirdseat

I guess we are all part of the Neo Romantic Movement of Northern Europe. I used to work with a guy from Oaxaca, Mexico. I asked him if he liked to go camping. He told me no, when he was a poor dirt farmer he camped by the fields for lack of a choice. Now he has a nice roof over his head. Why should he want to sleep on the ground?

Actually, I saw an article some time ago about a black guy who was backpacking across the country. He had some stories to tell of a few unkindnesses he had endured. I'm sure trask could find it if anybody could.

http://health.yahoo.com/health/dc/000931/0.html

In reply, here is a poem I am sure many of you have seen already, but I really like it. Ode to a Pink Tricam Oh Pink's the one I love to place when I'm alone way up in space on some exposed and airy face. They sink where other gear won't go. When all you've got is manky pro, This tricam saves your butt from woe. But it's often hard to get them out; They make your second moan and shout And wave his nut tool 'round about But that's why you're the one on lead Your problems are a different breed As long as someone does the deed... "Oh quit your whimpering," you rumble, "And get it out or there'll be trouble" "Get to work now, on the double!" Although it sometimes takes a while, They do come out with vim and guile, (or chiselling and curses vile.) Pink will do what all the rest. Won't do when they're put to the test. Oh pink tricams are just the best! -- Charles "Pinky" Danforth Source: http://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/~danforth/climb/sinkthepink.html

Why are we climbers so lilly white? I've only ever seen one or two black climbers and one of them was born in Africa? Why shouldn't they enjoy it as much as the rest of us? I asked the fellow I play horn with in the band and he said, "we don't climb mountains and we don't jump out of airplanes".

Trask, we only know what you tell us, which isn't much. About all I know is you live up north near water, sell insurance and spend an awful lot of time online.

I notice you carry lots of creams for restoring hair. Is that how you get that healthy mane?

Okay, pope. Here's one for ya. Of all the sport climbers, if you first took away all the ones that don't do alpine because they can't afford the gear, and if you approached ten and offerred to be their mentor and show them how to climb alpine, how many would take you up on the offer? That can't all be pussies, or can they? Hell, I like to sport climb myself, but I only consider it "practice" or a "workout".

Oh, no. Pete was not downloading child porn for gratuitous purposes. He was doing research for an autobiography. So it is okay.

In order to have Spray you got to have a difference of opionion about something that matters, like whether smoking weed in Muir Hut is a good or bad thing. Nobody has been doing anything interesting these days, or if they are, they aren't writing. Just trading insults back and forth is boring, because there is no conviction behind it. No belief. Where are the arguments? I'm not sure why it is that the sport climbers and the trad climbers are so fond of sniping at each other, but it has been fertile ground for Spray in the past. Now they are being nice to one another for some reason. Sport climbers: don't you realize trad climbers stink because they go days without a shower. Trad climbers: remember that sport climbers are pussies because they are averse to risk and the expenditure of effort to reach their favorite climbing destination. We're having an outbreak of civility. Why even the snowboarders and skiers are starting to show respect for one another. What is this world coming to? We need to end this bad habit of seeing issues from both sides! Come on everybody. Put those blinders on. Think one-sided. Use unfair arguments. Polarize. Dehumanize. Remember, there is no human being behind the avatar. They are just some sort of primative primate species that doesn't deserve your respect. Remember to put down your fellow CC.comer, you have to lump him/her into that category called the Enemy. You must not just insult him, you must make the the rest of the world lose respect for him. Until then your mission has not been fulfilled.

You playing dumb or what? I-90 was built to transport people and commerce over the mountains over many years. The business generated increases tax revenues, which more than make up for the investment. Logging roads are used once to for one purpose and one purpose only to take out cut trees. I'd heard the FS likes to amortize the cost over 50 years so that they can include the value of the next cut in the cost of the road. The only problem is they don't account for what it costs to reopen those roads in 50 years after they've grown over and landslides have taken out most of the roadbed.

Drink the whiskey. Only the alcohol will poison you. There shouldn't be any heavy metals in it.

Sounds wonderful. I am so jealous.

I caught a look at Drury Falls from the road on Saturday and it looked in good condition. There were some climbers getting ready to launch a rubber boat around 8 in the morning. I'd love to hear a report. I'd love to go climb it with someone. Just bought a couple of stubbies to get ready.

The Forest Service has always been about cutting down trees. What really irks me is that they do it at a loss to the taxpayers. Through poor accounting, and questionable accounting practices, they mask the fact that the money they spend on road building and maintenance exceed the value of the timber they sell. Nobody really knows how much money they are losing because according to the GAO, the FS has the worst accounting of any government agency. Clinton's roadless plan was in reality a plan to save the taxpayer money by not building roads. Bush would like to undo that so he can continue to give away public money to the big corporations that support him.

Blue Star sounds good to me. No smoking appeals to me. http://www.nwbrewpage.com/wapubs/BlueStar.html

rwb, I was referring to the massless subatomic particle, but we might was well talk about biners (good joke). I'm a trad climber and I use Neutrino carabiners. They are the lightest made as far as I know. Supposedly they are quite strong. I only have a few. They don't frighten me. Should they? Should I save them for ice climbing only? That seems to be what they were designed for. BTW, my freshman chemistry prof was Fredrick Reines, the discoverer of the neutrino. Did you know that millions of neutrinos are streaming through your body as you read this?

Uncle Tricky, isn't it nice to have a current inventory? No more guesswork! Avoids duplication and omissions.

You have to give them credit for their survival skills. The outcome could have been much much worse.

Generally accepted wisdom says that trask is not a climber, although, I suspect that he did at one time. He was active at one time, as he claims to have made it to the Three Fingers Lookout before. I suspect a possible beer gut that would make an ascent of Si difficult today. There is no way to confirm this, as trask remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma and by all indications prefer to remain that way.

They brought a fancy locator beacon but they apparently did not bring a map and compass, or a GPS. Those things also would have been a good investment.

It's looking like the weather won't be good until Wednesday. The report calls for "moderate" precip through Tuesday. It may be necessary to wait until after then to allow for the snow to consolidate. The good news is steadily lowering snow levels from Sunday to Tuesday.

I have a Garmin 12 and it works well enough. I learned a hard lesson with it at Asgaard Pass. We arrived there on our way to Prussik Peak in June. It started snowing and we soon lost the line of cairns we were following. It was windy and snowing hard. Visibility was quite poor. I had not put any waypoints into the unit in advance of the trip, and my map was just a Green Trails. For one thing, GT does not have UTM markings on it. Lat-Long is practically useless. The scale is so small that small plotting errors can put you way off. My map was getting soaked as I was trying to plot our location. It sucked. Oh, we got close enough to where we wanted to camp, but we didn't know exactly where we were until morning. I learned to do my homework before taking my GPS out and to stick with USGS maps.

I thought perhaps the thread was also an indictment of the global warming. There are lots of people who still refuse to believe it exists. There used to be people who didn't believe that the ozone hole existed until they measured it. My Physical Chemistry Prof was F. Sherwood Rowland who discovered the effects of chlorofluorcarbons on ozone. He predicted the ozone loss. He showed which chemicals were responsible. They went to Antarctica and measured increased UV light. They even measured increases in Tasmania, where there are people. So now there are those who are in denial about global warming because the solution is so unpalatable. The solution is to burn less fossile fuel, but that means we would have to sacrifice, and that is not the American way. Oh well, we don't need Florida and Louisiana anyway do we? But we climbers know it's real. All we have to do is look at the receding glaciers. Imagine Kilimanjaro without its white mantle. Imagine Glacier Peak without glaciers.

LOL