cman

Friday February 20th at REI @ 7pm Black Diamond sponsored - Chad Kellog and Roger Strong. for people who saw chad's slideshow at Feathered Friends in the fall it was cool, speed climbing in the Tien Shan, plus other places this time. and for all you sprayers who had negative things to say about mixed climbing and the rap wall in particular come and meet the man behind the whole thing, roger. and i did not make the "local heroes" line, that was REI

Word is that vertical world is building a new gym in that area, not sure where exactly or when it will be open.

i skied the easton a couple years ago. it is pretty low angle except for the headwall at the top. not too many crevasses, you should be ok as long as the weather is good.

thanks for the info, keep it coming.

for the mythos. taking care and placing each foot jam carefully has definitely lessen foot pain for me. that is why great climbers can climb cracks all day, not because they are masochists but because excellent technique= not painful. or so i have been told by great climbers.

I skied it two years ago in mid-may and it was great and there was snow all the way to the marblemount parking lot, probably will be lots of snow around all into the spring this year.

Dave, read the subject line. K and i took two runs on the south side, towards white pine creek. there were a couple other groups skiing down there two, unfortunately i had to be the one to break the trail coming back out.

after trauma of seeing k's ski almost meet their maker there were plenty of great turns to be had

what kind of apprenticeship are you talking about? becoming a climber is not like becoming an electrician. Just save whatever money you can, move to boulder for the summer, get some crappy job, live like a skid and climb as much as possible, that is how you become a climber.

better get out and enjoy winter this year. next winter, rock climb all the time!!

I have those bindings and could use the crampons. what do need for trade?

a good link on the failures of traditional avy courses avalanche avoidance

What part of 20% (not 30%) of all avalanche victims die of trauma(that's you head getting caved in, massive bleeding - things a beacon don't help) didn't you read? At best that means you've got a roughly 1:5 chance of dying - no matter what safety equipment you have. That's worse odds than Russian Roulette. You should be saying that 20% of avalanche deaths are caused by trauma. This not the same as saying that 20% of people caught in an avalanche die from trauma, because that is not true. as you can see from these figures (see link previously) of the 123 avy victims only 4.9% died from trauma. These figures also show that if you have equipment, ie a newer digital beacon, and travel with skilled individuals your chances of surviving an accident, yes even perfect people have accidents, increase dramatically. Granted it may not be possible to rescue someone from a large avy in 15 mins, thus lowering survival rates. But without any beacon/safety equipment it would likely be hours for SAR to show up and by then survival rates are near zero. Arguing that safety equip is useless is ridiculus. All the statistics show that the shorter the burial time the higher the survival rate, and the only way to shorten the burial time, outside of luck, is safety equip.

alpinek and i were skiing under chair on thursday and we saw a bunch of snowshoers who were up there and obviously did not have any safety equipment, made me wonder if they had even checked the avy conditions. we also saw a ski and snowboarder who were both solo. seems like with the nice trail and high traffic people do not realize the potential danger.

I have the slightly older version of this same binding which does not have the plastic thing on the toe. otherwise it is the same binding and i like it, i only use it with AT stuff though. check the latest Off-Piste, has a review of these bindings plus the 500 series which may be what you are looking for.

If you tried those super short skis they are on now you would find there is no backseat to be in, either you are on balance or on your ass. he does look a little back but it is just because he is basically doing a power squat for the entire run.

I have done tele turns in my AT gear for my brother's camera when the terrain was really flat. The reason is that a telemark looks more dynamic on film than a parallel turn in those conditions. I just saw that new TGR movie and those guys were doing some really dumb stuff to be on film, but I would hardly call that a reason.

the proper terminology is Brobonics, a highly de-evolved english subset

check out this link. Also the current Backcountry Mag had a blurb about the air canisters being considered classified a dangerous material in canada requiring special treatment for transport, and possibly getting into the country.

what about some skiing? backcountry, steven's pass area? PM

what about some backcountry action nearer to seattle, stevens pass area anyone?

except in Canada. I just read that you cannot buy this up there, something about the air tanks being dangerous. kind of ironic isn't it?

Ticket price: Winter 2003-4 $99 November, December, and April. $119 Jan, Feb, & March 2004 per day with a guide--no unguided skiing until the BLM completes the Environmental Impact Study. it better be sick for that much $$ although for $30 it sounds good, when it that supposed to happen?

i lived in JH for 2 1/2 yrs. the skiing is killer and it is great to be right in the mountains. don't know too much about laramie except that it is great if you like wind and cowboys. also it is pretty far from the mountains. the winters are cold and snowy, i.e. awesome, but you will definitely be moving to the middle on nowhere, that goes for pretty much any place in the whole state.

I can't believe someone wants to pay $113 for an old Ortovox F2. I have got one of those things and i won't let anyone use it. the range is crap and the earpiece sucks. Look for mine to be on sale soon.