catbirdseat

Ouch(!), I hadn't heard that one before. A swell simile.

This story has more to it than just music. It has to do with the need or lack thereof to experience beauty. Another example was the time I was at Smith Rock for the first time, we took a hike over Misery Hill. I was staring at the trees. I had never seen such beautiful trees. These twisted juniper, so weathered, so full of life experience. I tell people about it, and they say, "there are trees at Smith? I guess there are trees there".

Man, you completely miss the point. You are clueless. The point was that people are attracted to NAMES. Everybody would have recognized Van Halen, or his music. This is classical music. The point was would people be able to recognize brilliance when they heard it. Would the music itself speak, rather than the cachet? The answer is no. And the reason for this is that the VAST majority of people have no ear for music at all. They wouldn't know good music if it hit them over the head, which figuratively happened in this case. I am quite certain that you could replicate this experiment almost anywhere in America and get exactly the same results. I'd be willing to bet you couldn't pull it off in any European country.

The only 5.9 that compares for difficulty is Damnation. I've done 5.10c's that are much easier than Saggitarius, but of course none of those were at Index. It's harder than Toxic Shock, Godzilla, and Princely Ambitions. Are there any other good 5.9's I should be doing there?

Well, you completely missed the good part, the mouse squirming until it expires from thirst and exhaustion, followed by the wriggling maggots and insects devouring the body.

This system is called a Purcell Prusik and I have used it. I quit using it because I couldn't find an adequate way to store it when I wasn't using it. It would always dangle down and one time I reached down to pull up rope to clip and ended up clipping through my Purcell, thus fatboying myself. That was it for the Purcell. I went back to the Daisy.

Check again, especially at the bottom. With a 9mm rope, correctly tied knot failure was at 2600 lbs, meaning an incorrectly tied knot could cause a carabiner failure as low as 1560 lbs. Not inconceivable to have this occur before your gear fails. The point of the article was to be aware, and be careful. And for what its worth, the clove is considered a suitable tie in knot without a "backup" by the ACMG and AMGA. A friend of mine prompted me to go back and look at this post of yours. I think that you are confusing knot failure with biner failure. If I read the report correctly, the knot always failed before the biner. Actually the report was rather confusing and incomplete.

If you can get onto the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge before 7 am, you are okay. After that it's terrible.

Right you are. The force in top-roping is double that of rappelling, even if there is no fall distance. This assumes negligible rope friction at the anchor, which is what we strive for anyway. To see this see look at the first force diagram here or the first pulley diagram here Of course you are correct. Still the loads are nothing compared to a leader fall. All I really was saying is that it's so damn easy to put in a couple of UNLOADED backup screws, there is no reason not to.

I got fed up with Hotmail long ago and switched to Yahoo. I use that as well as Seanet. Gotta pay $5/ month for Seanet but it's totally reliable.

You are wrong. Northbound on I-5 in the morning is not bad.

I used to commute from Shoreline (North Seattle) to Bellevue every day. Here are my estimates. 1.Bellevue 30 min 2.Redmond 45 min 3.Edmonds 20 min 4.Kirkland 40 min 5.Downtown 15 min

I had a look at it last weekend, and of course it is covered with snow, but things are warming up and the snow is melting fast. I should think you might climb it in a month or so if you get a spell of dry weather. It's a cool looking objective.

Damn, I wish I'd seen your post sooner. Mark McKillop and I went to the Lower Town Wall today. It was dry, for the most part. We did Princely Ambitions and the first pitch of Saggitarius. Damn, that last one is REALLY hard for 5.9!

Yes, you are correct. You can also use two biners as BD recommends. You can also tie an overhand knot near the end loop.

Camera 2 seems to give the best angle relative to the lighting.

I said exactly the same thing. Predictably, all Fred had to say was, "It's just Bullshit!"

Yes and those days are long past.

They are nice because you can clip into both bolts with it (with two carabiners, of course) and you can adjust your distance from the anchor with it. All points are full strength. If you use only a clove hitch, you'd best back that up with an eight.

One of these days I'll get around to replacing my daisy with a Metolius PAS.

Hmmm...I guess it's worth tying correctly. I usually clip my daisy to the first piece of gear I place or one of the bolts if it's a bolt anchor, and leave it there. That's my backup.

At the border crossing we were asked if we had any agricultural products in the car. We said no. I knew we had a couple of apples but I didn't want to be hassled so I said nothing. We apparently were not believable because we were told to pull the car off to the inspection station and given a orange slip of paper. We were to present the paper to the agricultural inspector. When asked I told her we had a couple of apples and a package of chicken hot dogs. "Are you sure they are not beef?". I said yes, it says so on the label. Upon inspecting the car, they came back with Fred's remaining third of a salami. They didn't care about the apples. Turns out they were after all beef products- you know Mad Cow and all that. Since the part of the label listing the ingredients was missing they had to confiscate the salami. And that is the story of how Fred lost his horsecock.

The biner will fail at 3000 lbs instead of 5000 lbs. Your protection will pull out long before the biner fails.

What's your partner Matt serving up there old buddy? I knew you weren't a fussy eater, but shit...

Upside down on your back. I wonder who you learned that technique from?