murraysovereign

Another good reason to bring back Apartheid. Under segregation, "Whites" and "Great Whites" had to use separate beaches. Once they started letting them mix freely it was just a matter of time before something like this happened. Damn the ANC!!

Whoa!! Sounds like you may be "triaxially loading" your gear sling - it could potentially fail under the stress. Maybe you should put it around your neck so it hangs straight down in front, instead of across your shoulder?

For the summer we open at 8AM Saturdays, so you can grab what you need, head for the crag and be topping out your first pitch while other people are still standing around on Broadway waiting for MEC to open We open at 9AM every other day of the week. Close at 6PM every day except 5PM on Sundays.

They're here now

Looks like they found him

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

Unless you live in one of the many communities that have made gun ownership mandatory whereby anyone who doesn't own a gun isn't allowed to vote. So you either give up your right to think for yourself, or give up your right to have a say. Freedom's on the march!

I remember hearing someone (Pat Morrow, maybe?) arguing that the Seven Summits thing was really just a sideshow, and that the real challenge was in climbing the second-highest peak on each continent: K2 instead of Everest; Kenya instead of Kilimanjaro; Logan instead of Denali, etc. In most, if not all cases, the second-highest peak was technically or logistically more difficult. As for Danielle, good on her. Even though the road she's been travelling the last couple of years has been done to death lately, it's still quite an accomplishment, and she'll be a much fuller person for the experience - especially compared to her peers hangin' out at the food court.

Just wait another 6 months or so - it should be worth a fortune once it's right on the beach.

Grouse Mountain isn't really either/or terrain: some of it is perfectly suitable for sandals, some of it is very difficult terrain with cliffs and ravines. If you just ride up the gondola and roam about on the ski hill, it's as tame as can be. The Grouse Grind is basically a giant staircase, a bit rough in spots but you can do it wearing decent sandals without difficulty. The problems happen when people venture beyond the "groomed" area of the ski hill and surrounding trails - that's where they can get into a lot of trouble very quickly. There are some very steep slopes covered with very dense forest, and the terrain is irregular enough that it's not hard to get completely lost in a few minutes of bushwhacking. Even if you know exactly where you are and exactly where you want to go, you may find it nearly impossible to get there due to the dense bush and cliffs and ravines. So if it seems sometimes that people are talking about two completely different Grouse Mountains, it's probably because there are, in fact, two completely different Grouse Mountains - the one the general public is familiar with, and the one North Shore SAR is familiar with.

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The Weather Network forecast for Squamish this afternoon/evening is calling for temperatures of +6C, and 100% chance of rain or snow. WTF? How do they forecast snow at temperatures 6 degrees above freezing? Must be the new guy...

At least here in the NW, storage is pretty simple, and already in place. By using solar power or wind power when they're available, we reduce the amount of water that needs to be drawn from the Hydro reservoirs, so that amount of water stays in the reservoir - effectively "storing" the equivalent of that day's wind & solar production for use later when the sun &/or wind isn't available. The same basic principle works with coal - if we can find some other way of generating Thursday's power, then an equivalent amount of coal won't have to be burned until Friday, so that energy remains "stored" until it's needed. Same with nuclear - don't "burn" the uranium until you absolutely have to. Instead of using the non-renewables as a last resort, we've built our entire system around using up the non-renewables first. I say we start shifting some of our consumption toward renewables wherever possible, and in so doing reduce our reliance on the non-renewables, so they'll still be available to us in the future. What we're doing right now is kind of like burning all the furniture in the house, and even tearing out interior walls in order to burn the studs, while there's a forest of trees outside that we could be burning instead. But it would "cost" too much in time and effort to go cut down one of those trees and buck it into fireplace lengths and split it, so we bust up another bookshelf instead. We're just lazy, and as long as the easier thing is to keep burning the furniture, that's what we'll do. I'm not saying we shouldn't ever burn the furniture - it may be necessary some day, and we should be prepared for that - but shouldn't we be trying to delay that as long as there are alternatives?

The classic solution is a #6 Camalot (formerly #5) stacked against a piece of 2X6. Seriously. In fact as I write this I'm looking at a photo of someone doing exactly that.

No shit - where did I say otherwise? And the average SUV's mileage is also "per passenger", in case you've never noticed. So we're still comparing apples to apples. A fully loaded 747 gets better mileage per passenger and does a Hell of a lot more work, a Hell of a lot faster than your average SUV. Dumbass.

1L per 19km works out to a little over 45 miles per US gallon for a vehicle that travels at hundreds of miles per hour. That's a Hell of a lot less "excessive" than your average SUV at 55 mph.

Sulphur is a by-product of petroleum refining. The bitumin "tar sands" of northern Alberta have higher sulphur content than most conventional crude oil deposits, so the stuff piles up faster in Fort McMurray than it does in most other places. Eventually it gets shipped by rail to North Vancouver among other places - next time you cross the Lions Gate bridge heading north look over to your right and you'll see a couple of huge piles of the stuff waiting to be loaded onto bulk freighters. It gets used for a myriad of things, from making matches to pharmaceuticals to fertilizers to, I dunno, making rotten eggs smell bad so people won't accidentally eat them and get sick. Stuff like that. I don't know why the piles in the photo are bleeding - maybe they're devoutly catholic sulphur piles that have developed stigmata through mourning the death of John Paul II?

The Gondola project is dead and buried. The gravel pit, however, is still there and could be developed into just about any kind of commercial or light industrial operation you can imagine. The plan is to purchase the gravel pit to ensure that any development that takes place there will not be incompatable with the park that surrounds it. So instead of a casino or an ashphalt plant right in front of the Chief, maybe a campground/RV site, or use that land for a new access and parking area for the park, or... ?

Not long after the trial ended I saw a news program in which they showed various clips of OJ doing pre-game and half-time commentary at various football games. He was wearing leather gloves, and they were obviously way too small for him - not even reaching to his wrist. The reason those gloves in the court room were so tight is because that's the way OJ liked them.

Awesome point ...and His Holiness responds: Pope "abandons self to God's will"

relax, everything's fine

The US Postal Service did exactly the same thing to Robert Johnson's cigarette when they issued a commemorative stamp in his honour a few years back. I guess the "fringe" of "socialist Europe" has spread clear across the Atlantic. Or maybe they just took their inspiration from the US example?

Based on sales, I see wayyy more demand for 10.2-10.5mm ropes than for anything sub-10mm. The price/demand relationship only works up to a point, until the supply catches up to demand. At some point if demand is high enough, production gets ramped up to a volume that starts bringing the unit cost of production down, and competitive pressures force the manufacturers and retailers to pass those lower costs on to the consumer in the form of lower retail prices. More than anything that's why 10.5s cost less than 9.4s - they're making far more of the stuff, so it's cheaper. So in this instance, the lower demand product (9.4mm rope) ends up costing more precisely because there's less demand for it.

I think we need to distinguish between someone "losing" their life, and someone deliberately throwing it away. Unfortunately the courts don't seem to agree, and there are plenty of precedents. This bonehead will probably be cashing a big cheque in return for his willful stupidity, and everyone else's insurance will be paying for it.