catbirdseat

What you talkin' Willis? That was my first ever visit to Mountaineer Creek. So you're saying I have some "special affinity" to that place?

I suggest that if you aren't doing this aleady that you get a group of your classmates to go climb and practice the stuff you are being taught outside of class. You don't learn by osmosis, you learn by doing. Get your hands on this stuff and it will make sense. Also, read as much as you can. Go buy books and magazines other than those provided by your class. Finally, go climbing with some of the people on this site. Many are quite willing to take newbies out cragging.

I was forced into a short course in modern music education on a long trip to Canmore. Some of it was tolerable, but none of it was memorable. As far as I am concerned, it's good music if there is a melody that you can remember after you've heard the song and can hum or whistle it. Most rap doesn't have melody, neigher does it have harmony. It only has rhythm and the rhythm it does have is standardized and monotonous. People used to complain that most rock is too simple because it has only three chords. Rap often doesn't have one chord. The bass line is frequently one or maybe two notes.

That was all well put and I see your point, but in this case let me say this. Few of us know who Ondra is so we don't have a personal connection to him. Bob didn't provide any details other than the grades, so we have no idea about the "drama" of the moment. We don't know what he was feeling or saying for that matter. Few of us have climbed in Europe so we can't form a mental picture of the routes. So to sum it up, Bob's post is pretty damn sterile and hard for us weekend climbers to relate to. There's no story.

I was up there on Saturday, Feb. 24 and some of the climbs are still hanging in there. It was still worthwhile to visit. The one we were on is hollowing out between ice and rock near the top. If some cold doesn't come along soon there won't be much left. If you go take snow shoes. You'll need them. A lot of new snow has been coming down. There is a rain crust that I was punching through occasionally that made it really annoying without the slow shoes. There is still a convenient snow bridge to make it easy to cross the creek, upstream a little from the climbs.

Twins are easier on the belayer because he always treats them the same as single. It's a little harder for the leader because he has to clip two instead of one, but that's not hard with practice. Nice thing about halves on hard routes is if you are in the habit of clipping high, and fall while blowing a clip, the other rope will catch you without all that extra slack.

"I used to smoke marijuana. But I'll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening..... Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening - or the mid-evening...... Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early midafternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . . But never at dusk. I would never do that." - Steve Martin

I think Jamin would like to make the pick of his ice axe a part of some of the wiseguys on this thread.

In one of his books on training for rock climbing Eric Horst compared three skills: driving, rock climbing and golfing. Granted, he wasn't discussing safety per se, but rather overall skill. The learning curve is steepest for driving, followed by rock climbing and finally golf. I would have to say that alpine climbing has a much longer learning curve than just rock climbing, as there are many more facets to that activity, and the greater role of judgement.

What's black and white and comes in gallons?

$1 pitchers! It's like a wet dream!

It may be bullshit, but I encourage all climbers to vote in this poll. This sort of thing can be used to influence lawmakers and we should be heard. Vote early and vote often. Hmmm. Tried deleting cookies and I still couldn't vote again. They must keep track of IP addresses or something. Oly?

That's a lot like stating that "gullible" is not in the dictionary.

Works for gloves too? Doesn't blow so hard the gloves fly off?

I couldn't make Feb 25, but possibly Mar 4. Mattp isn't really a Vantage climber, but he might be interested, especially at this time of year. Be sure to contact Lucky Gibson and Craig Gyselink. MCash climbs there a lot too. Last time I was there in December, the place was fairly clean. The time it really needs cleanup days is during concert season. There are some projects that need doing, for sure, including pouring some concrete bases for signs.

It seems to me that what got these people in trouble was the failure to use an altimeter properly. They were following a compass bearing that should have lead them to the top of the Palmer Lift. Their route was more or less down hill, which means they were steadily losing elevation as registered by the altimeter. They overshot the top of Palmer because they didn't stop when they reached its known elevation. Had they done so, they might have run back and forth on the contour line until they bumped into a tower. All that was necessary was to find one tower and they could follow a bearing back to the Lodge. It's sort of like what mariners used to do in the old days before chronometers when they had no way to find the longitude. If there was an island they wanted to find, they would drop down to its know latitude and run down that line until they saw the island. They didn't know when exactly the island would be sighted but this method usually worked.

Sounds nice, but all I ever do is just set an ordinary electric fan in front of my boots on the bedroom floor. They are always dry by morning. In the summer I can use the fan to keep me cool.

I hear Fred likes Surrey.

Same probably applies to defacation, where it is much more important to wash hands.

Yes we broke that pitch up by soloing up the low angled first part to the cave. There was enough room for us to all stand in that corner. The only reason we broke it up like that was so we could top rope with the belay from below. We could have just done it like all the other pitches, but I think people wanted to be able to watch other people try variations, etc, and take pictures.

Fred playing Where's Waldo?

I think we should close Mt. Hood to climbing completely. That would solve the PR problem. All the media attention grabbing stories are coming from Hood. It's a gumby magnet. I'm only half-kidding.

In this picture, Petr is actually climbing and lowering Scott at the same time. So technically, he is belaying.

If he is indeed a troller, than his posts represent abuse because they are in the Newbie forum.

I assume you have tested this in your own back yard under a variety of snow conditions. Which works better, Labrador or Poodle?