Phil K

Good times! I’m pretty sure that I made an attempt on the Coleman Headwall with Jeff Street and this guy. He talked a great game; studly Iranian alpinist, climbed various 4000m peaks, very fit, etc. We started to suspect something was amiss five minutes from the parking lot when he’d disappeared behind us and took a looong time to catch up. Next “morning” (middle of the night), the conditions were PERFECT; full moon, crisp hard snow, no wind, perfect visibility, and he totally screwed us! ‘Took twice as long on the approach, then once things started getting a bit spicy, it became extremely obvious that he was in no way fit or competent. We pretty quickly decided that he was an unacceptable liability and bailed. I’m still pissed when I think about how great conditions were that night, and how he lied his way onto our climb.

Is that with a dog or without?

We were up that way years ago, following in the footsteps of Tabor & Crowder. A fair bit of elevation gain as I recall........ How far beyond the first top-out did you go?

Yeah, it usually seems pretty late in the year for high elevation lake fishes by the time the larches turn. This is another area that has been on the radar for some time. Now I'm inspired.

How was the fishing, Jason?

Nice photos (as usual) Jason. This is one of those areas we'd looked at in Red Fred and on maps and thought about getting into.... if it wasn't such a PITA. Now, thanks to you, age, and infirmity, I can completely write off the notion. Thanks!

Maybe a nomination to SCOTUS? He seems a good fit in the Clarence Thomas mold.

Good times. My wife broke her nose doing that.

Cool. I haven't got my CAG with me right now, but I think that's a Becky-Leatherman FA. He (Phil Leatherman) prolly hauled a Hasselbald up with him; you should appreciate that.

Thanks Obama!

Cesare Maestre should have had one of those; would have saved himself a lot of work. We are living in the age of narcism, and DAYUM this is an awesome tool. I vote suck for 95%+ of how they'll be used.

Nice GIF Oly, but aren't we supposed to be staying on topic? FW: referring to this Faux-rageous incident as "one of the shitlowliest things you've ever heard of" seemed a bit excessive and worthy of calling BS on. And yeah, those guys effed up royally, as we're still seeing today. Not that BHO has really done as well as he should have dealing with the mess.

As opposed to, say, falsifying intelligence to justify starting an unnecessary war which directly led to somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 deaths, destabilized and entire region, and sent billions of tax dollars up in smoke? Yep, pretty much.

Always saw him as both. Which kind of reminds me of..... Oh, never mind.

Always saw him as both.

Is that your real hair?

It seems that the implied objection to teachers' salaries is that they've got it too good. We all remember those carefree days of summer vacation, and some resent the perception that teachers get to spend ten weeks doing jack while getting paid a fair wage. And that comes out of our stolen tax money. The horror. Add to that the fact that kids fail to measure up to the high standards we all grew up with, and it appears that teachers aren't even doing a very good job while taking home all of those sweet tax dollars. Never mind that the raw materials; kids with many challenges that aren't their fault (Have you looked at the public school demographics lately?), mainstreaming of learning challenged children, unmanageably large classes, etc, and it's nary impossible for even great teachers to consistently meet performance goals. It's a tough job with a high burn out rate, and begrudging someone making a pretty good living at it is petty and selfish. Something that hasn't been mentioned yet; consider the value that society derives from the collective effort of our teachers. Beat them down, make it a less attractive profession, lower the quality of those who stick with it, degrade public school education, and see how well plays out in terms of social and economic health of the nation. Jeez.

FW must have been a champion in third grade playground arguments, 'cause he's got all the techniques honed to perfection.

I remember talking with Norm Winn, who used to lead trips for the Mountaineers and has been active in the effort to expand NCNP (sorry Jason), about being on the Brothers Traverse on the morning of the eruption. Try looking him up. http://old.seattletimes.com/text/2019048690.html

You're implying that someone here is even more of a sociopath than Ted Cruz?

Excuse me. I thought this was Spray.

Interesting piece. I seriously have to wonder if you actually read your own post as you left out a few bits like this: In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated East Chicago Democratic Mayor Rob Pastrick’s primary victory because of massive fraud. Pastrick, an eight-term incumbent, lost in a 2004 repeat election. Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty in a wide-ranging conspiracy to purchase votes through the use of absentee ballots. FW, nice try cherry picking information to imply the exact opposite of what the article states again and again. That being: individual voter fraud is so uncommon as to have virtually NO effect on election outcomes. Heck, this isn't even a case of individual voter fraud, but rather of a group of insiders trying to manipulate the system. Corrupt pols of any stripe deserve to be outed and punished. Too bad Katherine Harris (using her position as FLA Secretary of State and with the complicity of Governor Jeb Bush) was able to get away with improperly purging thousands of legitimate likely Democratic voters from Florida's registration lists in 2000. Too bad Kenneth Blackwell (while simultaneously serving as both Secretary of State AND co-chair of Bush's re-election committee) was able to manipulate registration and voter machine access enough to flip the state in his boy's favor. But you don't care about that shizz.

Libtard Lies and Self Deception (of course!) Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters. “Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn. “There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

OK, I'll put you down in the "Fuck it, let the billionaires run this country" column.