Rad

Taken w/your SD800 IS? Just got one myself. Let the good times roll. Rad

Infant diaper rash has some similar features to adult chaffing rash, and the products made for it can be useful once you've got irritation. Triple paste, though expensive, not only provides a barrier but helps promote healing. Your pediatrician can probably hook you up with free samples. Perhaps that's TMI. Tight, synthetic wicking layers are useful, as mentioned. Yep, shorts over polypro has its value!

Perfect. Thanks Oly!

I need a new digital camera for climbing. It should fit in a pocket and be light (probably not 35mm SLR). It should also be good for taking pics of kids (little or no shooting delay). Some of you take some great shots. What do you recommend? Thanks very much, Rad ps. Enjoy the fresh snow out there!

You might look here: http://www.nwac.noaa.gov/

The rock on the lower part of the route is great (very solid rock quality and some fun mid 5th moves) if you stay on the buttress instead of the gully. See thread: Vesper N Face thread Route: Looking down lower buttress Upper slab Enjoy. Rad ps. If you don't want to hike a ways to get to some lovely, moderate climbing then you might as well scratch 3/4 of Cascades Select off your to do list right now.

The science may be new, but the concept is not. With regard to climbing, the role of visualization in engram acquisition and reinforcement is covered at length in Goddard and Neumann's book Performance Rock Climbing. If you want a theoretical and analytical explanation of training for climbing this book is excellent. Daydreaming is not as useless as once thought

Timy, There is no shame in taking a rope and roping up when you feel being unroped is too dangerous. A thin, short (25m) rope can be light and effective. However, this will require some training. You have ample time so go do it. For most climbing routes, the descent route is different from the ascent route. In this case you should probably just hike down the trail. Lastly, Whitney is the highest peak in the lower 48 at just under 14,500ft. If you have not hiked or climbed at this altitude you will find it harder than you might think. Try some other high routes before Whtiney. You don't want to ruin your trip with the mother of all headaches or pulmonary edema. Good luck, Rad

In addition to ratings, guidebooks provide other clues to difficulty and quality within a grade. 1 - When was the route put up? (older routes are usually graded harder than newer routes). 2 - Who put up the route? Some routesetters are known for sandbags whereas others float the other way. 3 - Star ratings can sometimes give clues to difficulty too. 0-1 star routes may be one move wonders. Multiple star routes are more likely to be sustained or require multiple moves at the grade. I've found that the highest starred routes are often the ones that are hardest for the grade and on high-quality rock with the best moves. They are often the most memorable. Area with the highest star overload I've seen: Owen's River Gorge. Books that could use stars: Beckey guides.

The first photo looks like P1 Canary, but my head nearly came unscrewed trying to see it.

Does this count? It was three months before I had sensation in my big toes after that trip.

Anyone got comments on PRC? ......... Thanks! ....... In my case, training discipline and grip strength are more likely to be limiting.

I would like to move off my rock climbing plateau. Any comments on these books? Horst - How to Climb 5.12 Horst - Training for climbing: the definitive blah blah Goddard - Performance Rock Climbing Bompa - Periodization of Strength Are there others I should consider? Thanks, Rad . . . Ps. Here is one Amazon review of Training for Climbing that discusses several books, but not How to Climb 5.12. "47 of 50 people found the following review helpful: Not bad. Not bad at all..., February 19, 2003 Reviewer: K. Mills (Jackson, WY) - Udo Neumann and Dale Goddard did would-be authors of climbing training manuals a real disservice when they published Performance Rock Climbing back in the early nineties. It was beautifully written, comprehensive, and extremely well researched. Few subsequent books on the subject have added anything to the knowledge base and some actually managed to subtract from it. Having said that, many found PRC a tough read in that it was consumed with `why' and not so interested in `how.' Training for Climbing, on the other hand, is a much needed blueprint for `how' and is the first book that I'd rank in the same league with PRC. Horst breaks his book into the triad of skills necessary for climbing: Mental, Technical, and Physical. The first two are, for the most part, a repetition of methodologies laid out in PRC, but with cute monikers like `Metal Wings.' The physical section is were Horst's book comes into its own. While it breaks little new ground, the focus on very specific training protocols will be highly useful to those who got bogged down in PRC. Horst tells you exactly what to do, when to do it, and how long to keep it up. He also includes chapters on nutrition and injury prevention that many will find useful and interesting. Having said that I have a few serious reservations about the book (and a number of nitpicky ones that I won't bore you with.) First, Horst's 3/2/1 week training cycle, while catchy sounding, is probably too short and will be sub-optimal for many people. For more on this, see PRC or if you want to go nuts check out Tudor Bompa's Periodization of Strength. Second, Horst may have been a bit hasty in completely discarding muscular endurance training. I can't help thinking that his opinion on this subject is the result of an overly narrow interpretation the facts. Again, see PRC for more on this. Lastly, there is no discussion of the strengthening of connective tissue-which may be why Horst is pretty much covered in tape in every photo. Overall, though, a strong effort and a book that if read carefully, will help just about anyone improve their climbing."

Very sad. RIP The first time I climbed Snake Dike was in late October, after the cables had been put to bed for the season: they lay flat on the rock with no posts to hold them up or stairs to stand on. Between glaciers and millions of footsteps that sucker is polished and slick! What to do? Lift the cable, tuck my thigh underneath, and walk down facing downhill. The extra weight/friction gave peace of mind. Just like the Snake Dike runouts, it's easy ground but if you fall you're f$%^$d. Dry is bad enough, but wet? I'd probably say and find a way to rap or throw a crude prussik on the cable or something.

Twas a year by my humble standards: 1 - Like Weekend says a few pages back, found some awesome new partners! 2 - Established, with said awesome partners, 4 new awesome sport routes that we hope other awesome climbers will think are awesome. It was a new experience for me that I look forward to repeating. Awesome! 3 - Ticked off a long-standing objective with an old friend: Hoh/Olympus Blue Glacier. 4 - Ditto with a new partner: Complete N Ridge Stuart. 5 - Ditto ditto on the W face of Sloan. 6 - Redpointed 11a. OK, it was only Late for dinner and Overture at X38, but the last time I redpointed 11a was in 1992! 7 - Went with Fred to Index. I bought us all icecream on the way back and he insisted on paying me for his share. To overcome his resistance to hospitality, we had to hide his money in his car. 8 - Contributed to Colin's hedge fund when he used his entire repertoire of aid techniques to trim the laurel in my backyard. 9 - Enjoyed a bluebird day on Forbidden E ridge - and we saw John Scurlock, or some aerial pirate taking a joyride in his plane, buzz by us. 10 - Ordered a few Scurlock prints to decorate my office and they are fantastic! That man is the most kindly gentleman on this entire site, I reckon. 11 - Survived floods of biblical proportions. Living on a hill has its benefits. 12 - Lived to see the political pendulum swing blue again! 13 - Managed to sift some useful nuggets of advice/beta out of all of the garbage on this site. Look forward to snowboarding and more climbing. Cheers, Rad

We will probably get big landslides like this one: Or like the one that took out the Stehekin road in 03.

Considering quality of moves, quality of rock, ambience, and exposure: WA crack: Heart of the Country P3 - Index. Thin Fingers looks like it would take the top crack spot, but I've never been on it. Hopefully next year! WA sport: Overture - X38 (w/new direct start off the road) - X38. Spray about X38 all you want but go do this climb.

Nice granite with sparse, big knobs. My first guess is Phantom Spires (I50 W of Lovers Leap). Second is Echo Summit (South Tahoe).

I'm not a skater, but this is Rad! Free NYTIMES registration may be required to view this article A Skateboarding Ramp Reaches for the Sky Sandy Huffaker/The New York Times The skateboarder Bob Burnquist, 30, takes in the view from the top of the Mega Ramp. VISTA, Calif. — The largest skateboard ramp in the world can be found on a 12-acre farm north of San Diego among the green foothills of the San Marcos Mountains. Bob Burnquist working on one of his skateboards. “I’m not afraid of falling. I’m afraid I might jump,” he said about his Mega Ramp. Pilots routinely adjust their flight paths for a closer look, which is as good a way as any to sum up the scale of the Mega Ramp. The wooden structure is longer than a football field, as tall as an eight-story building, with a creek bed running through a 70-foot breach. On a recent sunny afternoon, the ramp’s owner, Bob Burnquist, a renowned 30-year-old professional skateboarder from Brazil, peered over the side to treetops below and said: “I’m not afraid of falling. I’m afraid I might jump.” That mind-set helps on the Mega Ramp, where skaters reach speeds of up to 55 miles an hour and soar like stuntmen. Approximately 360 feet long, the ramp is 75 feet high at its apex. That is where riders begin their run, speeding down a 180-foot-long roll-in to a ramp that launches them across a 70-foot gap with trapeze netting below. Landing on a 27-foot sloped section, they then boost up to 50 feet above the ground from a 30-foot quarterpipe. A shorter route begins with a 55-foot-tall platform leading to a 50-foot gap, and the 30-foot quarterpipe. For Burnquist, who stands out in a crowd of iconoclasts, the ramp has become the latest step in a journey to create what he called an exponential progression in an otherwise street-bound, terrestrial sport. Completed in September after more than a year of construction, Burnquist’s Mega Ramp cost $280,000, part of which was covered by his apparel sponsors Oakley and Hurley. Although not the first — the X Games builds one each year — it is the world’s only permanent Mega Ramp, and Burnquist said having it at his home allows him to explore all the possibilities of the sport’s most daring discipline. “Bob has this ability that transcends traditional vert skating,” Tony Hawk, the sport’s biggest icon, said of ramp skateboarding. “He can spin like no one else spins. He’s comfortable upside down. He’s the only one that can actually start backwards on the Mega Ramp.” A winner of 12 medals at the X Games, Burnquist performs moves no one else dares try: he has rolled upside down through a Hot Wheels-style loop — backward. And in March, he built a 40-foot-tall ramp on the rim of the Grand Canyon, from which he launched himself and his skateboard onto a makeshift metal rail, and then BASE jumped 1,600 feet to the canyon floor below. BASE is the acronym for using a parachute to jump from fixed objects of a building, antenna, span, earth. “When I’m risk-taking, I feel like I’m alive,” said Burnquist, who is also a farmer, pilot, skydiver, musician and restaurateur. “I trip out on how his mind works,” said his partner, Jen O’Brien, a professional skateboarder herself. “The wheels are always turning.” Building a structure of the Mega Ramp’s size in an agricultural district required a creative twist typical of Burnquist. “I’ve done some organic farming and I plan on doing some more,” he said, explaining how he skirted zoning restrictions. “In the conservation plan, the ramps are the agricultural buildings. I’ll put some plastic on the side and build a greenhouse underneath. That way it is proven it’s an ag building and I happen to skate on the roof.” The only visitor to ride so far has been professional skater and Mega Ramp pioneer Danny Way, Burnquist’s lifelong muse. Not wanting to risk injury, other elite skaters have been waiting for the end of the competition season. But beginning next month and continuing through the winter, many of them will descend on Burnquist’s backyard. The Mega Ramp is the latest backyard creation, adding to an ensemble that includes a 13-foot-tall ramp with a clamshell shape appended to one end; a loop-the-loop with a removable top; a 12-foot-diameter metal pipe; and a corkscrew design that requires an inverted leap from one section to the other. “It’s like a paradise for skaters,” said Sandro Dias, a professional who is also from Brazil. “It’s a playground for us.” Burnquist lives among his creations in a spacious two-story stucco house with O’Brien and their 6-year-old daughter, Lotus. Their menagerie includes two goats, six chickens, two dogs, a cat, a rabbit and a turtle. Look Out Below Last week the Burnquist homestead was a locus for family and friends from Brazil and industry filmmakers and photographers. Born in Rio de Janeiro — reared in São Paolo — to an American father and Brazilian mother, Burnquist grew up speaking English and Portuguese. He began skateboarding at 11 and developed a style by imitating the exploits of professionals featured in magazines and videos. He was particularly captivated by Way, then a teen prodigy from California. Way had experimented with performing tricks switch-stance; standing the opposite way on the board, like switch hitting in baseball. But Burnquist took switch-stance further, learning a full repertory of tricks. Still, he remained unknown in the United States until the skateboarding magazine Thrasher led a group of American professionals to Brazil in April 1994. Because he could speak English, Burnquist offered to act as translator and guide. “He was a dirty skate rat dude with two different shoes on,” the Thrasher editor Jake Phelps said. “He just followed us around.” But Burnquist, 17, impressed them with his skating. “I knew he was doing stuff that was light years ahead of what people were doing then,” Phelps said. “With his switch riding, he had a go-for-it mentality — ‘Make it, or take me to the hospital.’ ” The next year Burnquist won his first contest against top international competition, and his star rose quickly. Lanky at 6 foot 2, with trademark thick, black-framed glasses, he became an international skateboarding celebrity and a pitchman for the likes of Lego and the Got Milk? campaign. In Brazil, his popularity comes after that of soccer stars, Dias said. All of which allowed him to buy a former horse ranch in Southern California in 1999 and indulge his restless imagination by building ramps. He did not invent the Mega Ramp, however. Way conceived and built the first — a temporary structure — in 2002 at an airport near the Mexican border. The X Games added a Mega Ramp in 2004 for its Big Air discipline. Then, in 2005, Way used a Mega Ramp to launch over a 72-foot wide section of the Great Wall of China. Only two dozen skaters in the world have the skill and guts to ride such a ramp. Way has been the leader, winning three consecutive gold medals at the X Games. At the last Games in August, Burnquist won the bronze medal. “The amount of willing participants is always going to be a select few,” said Hawk, who has ridden the ramp. “It takes a certain person to want to do it. I know plenty of guys who did it once and said, ‘I’m done.’ Knowing you’ve done it is an accomplishment in and of itself.” “If something goes bad it could be a tragedy,” Hawk said. “It’s not like you blow out your knee. You could fall 50 feet.” The professional Brian Patch fractured several bones in his left foot when he fell 15 feet to the deck of the quarterpipe at the X Games. “If you go down here you’re going to get broken,” Burnquist said. He has fallen hard and rolled his ankle, but sustained no breaks. To protect himself, Burnquist wears pads on his hip, tailbone, ribs, elbows and knees. He also wears a helmet and knee braces. All skin, except for his face, is covered by neoprene to prevent severe friction burns. He can wear through a pair of sneakers and gloves each session from sliding on the ramp’s surface during wipeouts. Although Burnquist said he felt scared riding his ramp, he did not appear so on a first run during a solo session last week. Rolling in from the lower platform, he shot over the gap, spun a 360-degree mute grab, touched down and zipped toward the quarterpipe before floating into an elegant method air more than 40 feet up. Landing cleanly, he rolled away. Afterward, he walked off the ramp, plopped into the passenger’s seat of a golf cart and was ferried 300 feet uphill. At the top, he climbed two sets of stairs to the platform and set up for another run. Alone at the pinnacle of skateboarding’s newest discipline, the sky was the limit.

Way to get on it before the rain really flies. I've never seen someone list peer pressure as a reason to climb. It starts as social climbing and before you know it you're doing pullups on your doorjam at night.

Most of us probably did one or more stupid things in our youth that easily could have resulted in death or severe disability (whether climbing or getting in a car when the driver was intoxicated in one form or another). We were lucky when it counted. This poor kid was not. RIP.

Thanks to Chris and Brian for letting me TR Overture yesterday at Exit 38. I accidentally left with one of your Qdraws. Send me a pm and we'll figure out how to get it back to you. Rad

Several of you have raised interesting questions. What does Fred want or not want? Why name peaks at all? Isn't there already some peak in Alaska named after him? Would Martin Luther King Junior have wanted schools and monuments galore named after him? Would John Muir or Ansel Adams have wanted wilderness areas named after them? Probably not. This leads to a more broad question: what is the point of a memorial? Perhaps it is to inspire others to do great things. If this is true, then perhaps the goals and desires of the individual being memorialized are less important than the world's view of how that person might inspire future generations of environmental advocates, human rights advocates, or climbers. Thanks to those of you who have shared your vision of how Fred fits into our collective psyche.

The forecast suggested it might be semi-decent. We (or the forecast) were obviously wrong. I've never been good at sitting in front of the tube watching sports all day like normal people.

All of the above is true. Look for an open area/campsite 100yds past the creek around 4 miles out. The trail heads straight up. It's marked with a cairn and sticks in an arrow.