faster_than_you

The Nodder is under appreciated, that is true. Whoops, did I just kill a Kitten?

This is a much better profile of Glenn, I found it on the front page of the Oregonian. He's a stand up guy and one hell of an avalanche instructor. KUDOS to Glenn, he deserves the positive press. The Monday Profile: Glenn Kessler A high priest of snow safety for Cascade climbers 03/15/04 PATRICK HARRINGTON SANDY After a five-day storm, the clouds encasing Mount Rainier parted to reveal a radiant, celestial wonderland. Glenn Kessler emerged from his tent and, with another climbing ranger and a small shovel, began to form and isolate small columns of snow. The columns held distinct layers, each hinting at the infinite, swirling combinations of water and weather that had formed them. Kessler did not like what he saw when, time after time, a layer would spring away, an indication of the potential within the white fields around him to heed gravity's will, to rumble down the mountain. He radioed his observations to co-workers, and then a feeling gripped him, a sense that someone was watching. He turned toward the 14,411-foot summit to see a moving wall of snow and a powder cloud. Kessler and the other ranger were still scrambling for higher ground when the cloud surrounded them in white, a freight train's roar filling their ears. "I think," the wavy-haired Kessler tells a group of his avalanche safety students on a recent Saturday, "that was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life." At 43, Kessler is a man who frolics in places and conditions that would send others muttering back to city life. For more than a decade, he has been a ranger on both Mount Hood and Mount Rainier, earning a reputation as a stern and safety-conscious shepherd to Northwest climbers and skiers. Now, as winter's curtain rolls away to reveal glaciated peaks, thousands of climbers and skiers, in various states of preparedness, will heed their call. Kessler will be there to greet them. If you bumble onto Rainier unprepared for glacier travel, he may lecture you. If you take his popular Mountain Savvy avalanche course on Mount Hood in winter, you will probably hear his energetic lectures and endearing pleas to eat more of the complimentary doughnuts. And if you are injured on Rainier or fall into the terrible blue beauty of a crevasse, Kessler may just charge up the mountain to help save your life. "If there is anyone I want to be with on a rescue," says Rocky Henderson, a veteran member of Portland Mountain Rescue, "it's him." Early exposure to national parks Glenn Kessler grew up outside New York City in privileged Westchester County. During vacations, Kessler's parents took him and his two brothers on trips to places such as Yosemite and Mount Rainier national parks. Those trips were formative, guesses Kessler's brother Brad, a novelist and teacher living in Vermont. "We spent a lot of time in national parks listening to park rangers spin their tales," Brad Kessler says. "Maybe that has something to do with it." Kessler's parents have a photo of Glenn at about age 5 standing in front of the Paradise Ranger Station in Mount Rainier National Park, a station he now supervises in summer. But before Kessler realized his calling, he followed a more conventional path, graduating from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1983 with a major in biology and minors in psychology and art history. He attended medical school in Pennsylvania before quitting to return to New York, where he was a computer consultant into the early 1990s. "At the age of 30, I just decided I had had enough of that," he says. In 1991, Kessler left his New York City job, making about $60,000 a year, to volunteer as a backcountry ranger on Mount Hood. The Forest Service paid him $70 a week and provided him with a 350-square-foot cabin, where he was required to chop his own wood and haul in water. He had no phone. "I just lived close to the bone on Mount Hood," he says. Although Kessler eventually would assume a paid position on the mountain for part of the year, he would live in the cabin for eight years. "I had literally hundreds of days a year in the field," he says. "It was wonderful." While working as a ranger in the national forest, it struck Kessler that about 10,000 people a year climbed Mount Hood, yet there was no ranger presence above the tree line. He lobbied for and helped create the position. In that position, he witnessed joy and catastrophe, along with saving a few lives. He helped evacuate an injured skier who probably would have died without his help in 1997. In 1998, he was one of the first on the scene when an avalanche killed a climber and injured others. A year later, he worked for nearly two days to remove the bodies of a man and woman who fell and died while descending the north side. As a member of Portland Mountain Rescue, a volunteer group, he earned a reputation for leadership and caution, often arguing against rushing into a rescue, as in the case of a group from the Mazamas climbing club stranded in a storm in January 2003. Kessler's people skills and leadership ability, meshed with technical mountain knowledge, drew the attention of Mike Gauthier, head climbing ranger on Mount Rainier. "Right away, the guy impressed me," Gauthier says, explaining that he met Kessler at a rescue conference in California. Unlike many participants, Gauthier remembers, Kessler had come on his own initiative and paid his own way. And in addition to displaying a vast knowledge of mountain climbing and rescue, he had strong interpersonal skills, a necessary quality to engage and explain things to people on the mountain. "Things that get to rescuers" It would not be long before Mount Rainier would test Kessler's endurance. On a cold and clear night in July 2002, Kessler and another ranger reached the summit as the sun set, then made their way down the mountain. On the way down, they passed two climbers, one of whom worked at the REI store in Tualatin. Kessler warned the pair about icy, treacherous conditions and continued down the mountain. The next morning, a man and woman who were to be married on the mountain slid into a crevasse, taking their guide along with them. Kessler climbed back up the mountain to assist, then came back down to the tent of the two men he had passed the night before. He needed them to make way for a hovering helicopter. But the pair had not returned, and Kessler, according to his colleagues, realized they needed to launch a second rescue mission. "I thought, 'Geez, he's put in a heck of a day,' " says Rick Kirschner, who helped coordinate the rescue that day. "He's got to climb back up another 1,000 vertical feet." But Kessler, Kirschner says, did not flinch. "He didn't even waver at all. He didn't hesitate. . . . I was quite impressed on that day." Guided through a maze of ice pinnacles and crevasses by another ranger and a pilot overhead in a helicopter, Kessler and his team found the bodies of the men and then lowered them to a place where the helicopter could retrieve them. "Those are the things that get to rescuers," Kessler says. "The quick shift between life and death. "One minute you are greeting people who are full of life and enjoying life on the mountain," he says. "Then a few hours later or the next day, you are pulling them off in a different form." Knowing the dragon's lair Back on Mount Hood on an uncharacteristically sunny Sunday, Kessler is teaching his avalanche course. In addition to a day in a classroom, where the former computer consultant lectures with the aid of overhead transparencies and uses Styrofoam cups to illustrate a weak snow layer, he takes his students onto the snow. The students run about in their snowshoes and slide on their skis, learning how to use avalanche transceivers and probes. They test for weaknesses in the snow and run through mock avalanche drills. During one, Kessler screams, lies in the snow and pretends to be a victim. At the end of the course, Kessler urges his students to get out into the backcountry. Quoting an avalanche expert, he tells them, "If you want to understand the dragon, 'you have to go into the lair of the dragon.' " Kessler is a staunch proponent of outdoor life -- even though, he acknowledges, it has not always been easy to make a living. It's a priority of his, he says, to buy a home rather than load all his belongings in a van and move between mountains every six months. He is not married. "No marriage imminent, either," he says. "But I'm always open." He talks lovingly of the nature that called to him as he looked from the window of a Manhattan high-rise. He followed the call, packing up his Honda Accord and driving West into a life of uncertainty, somewhere between the extremes of a sunrise from the summit of Rainier and death within the mountain's maze. "It can be so wonderful to you," he says of nature. "And it, on the other hand, can do at will with you what it wants."

The real Nodder lurks in the shadows of cc.com. The Nodder has expressed concerns over smoke and noise... What do I say to the Nodder's concerns? "Get outta here Nodder!"... Whoa, Whoa, crash bamm boom! Poo, Top, you two clowns are Balderdash!

It HAS begun! The path is illuminated, the observer is near.

Aside from the mentioned, I know these have been done: Start at Staircase, and run to Graves Creek, either via 6 Ridge/Sundown Lake (shorter) or over First Divide, Oneil Pass and down to Enchanted Valley and out. Start at the Dose, over Anderson Pass, out Graves Creek. If you're really burly, run from Graves Ck. to the North Fork of the Quinault, up to Low Divide, down the Elwha and out Whiskey Bend. Begin Deer Park, down to Three Forks, up over Gray Wolfe Pass, out Dose. If you're burly, contine on over Anderson Pass and back to Graves CK. You could also cut south at Honey Moon Meadows and head out the Duck or out Staircase, again, burly.

What do you need hot water for if you're climbing? Leave the plumber a key and return on Tuesday.

The Nodder is in hiding. Fear grips its soul. Perhaps it is lonely, seeking safety from the hounds of cc.com? I ask, where is THE NODDER?

Are you really Swedish at heart? Do you dream of taking on insane adventures? Do you feel that Goran Kropp should be celebrated as an international hero? Was the Swedish Chef your favorite Muppet? Do you steadfastly stand by socialist values? Do you adhere to social rules? Can you sing along to "Fernado?"

There is another version of this test on the web that asks more questions. I'll post the link later when I find it again. It gives you %'s of your answers/patterns. But you're right Greg, your answers can change from time to time. But as an overall concept, it's somewhat accurate (at least I found it to be.) This other test also points out that we cahnge as we go through life. Also take into account that though you may PREFER a certain behavior or action, however, your logic will allow to act/behave in ways less comfortable depending on the situation.

Well, if you want to pay Myer's Briggs, you can answer very similar questions and still find out your an an ass.

The Nodder IS Canadian? OMG! Dru = The Nodder?

You need better glasses.

Here, I saved you one extra click. http://www.haleonline.com/psychtest/index.php Trask = The Nodder. I'm not The Nodder.

No wonder America is outsourcing. I guess clicking the mouse 6 times is hard.

This is the short version of a Myer's Briggs Personality test. Only 4 questions, but rather acccurate. Have fun. www.haleonline.com

You're already DEAD. Das Uber-Air-Guitaron!

What a beyotch! Get outta here Nodder...

Hey there poo, your name is like mine, but a bit more smelly.

Yo Nodder Beyotch, how was your trip?

JY and significant other M are working on a guide. New routes are slowing the pair down, but it will come out, hopefully this winter, with routes up and down the valley, including the goose egg. Hey Yoder, get to work, let's see the new guide! No more playing for you!

I'm 6' 1", 185 lbs, brown hair, blue eyes, oh wait... Too much info. The suit sizes are flexible, someone a bit shorter or taller could easily make it work. It can also handle someone who weighs more. It has internal suspenders that work great for adjusting. Looks like this, only blue.

One Piece down suit from Mountain Hardwear. Used only 2- days in the mountains! Perfect condition! Blue. Designed for Denali early season attempts, or high altitude trips in Asia (or snow machining in AK or MN, or standing around in really cold temps). VERY Warm. I purchased it for photography trips in the cold, but didn't get to use it much. Size LG Gtx ripstop fabric Insulation 700-Fill Down Lining fabric Nylon Taffeta Weight 3 lb 8 oz / 1.6 kg Retails for $700, I'll sell for $450 OBO. PM with any questions.

Sounds alright, but I'm headed to Muir this Sat. I wonder if we can build an alpine fire there?

Where is the nodder?