downfall

Updated, removing sold items and lowering prices.

Prices negotiable. Mens Scarpa T3s. (Sold) BD Shrike. $60 With new alaska pick or I can put back on the more agressive pick (forget what its called) which is also newish. Again some blemishes but just scuffs. Voile Cable Bindings. New. $30 Never been mounted. More stuff good for beginner or interested in lightwight touring oriented tele gear. Voile 30mm risers. New. $10 Never been mounted. Arc Teryx Flece. Size L. (Sold) Scarpa Marathons Size 42.5 (~US 9). $40 Worn twice. No damage, like new.

You don't have to go to the gym if you don't want. They post a workout everyday here: www.crossfit.com Though the blend between personal training and group work really ends up providing much more benefit for the effort and is worth the cost in my opinion. PM me if you want to know more about whats going on in seattle for crossfit.

Don't just leave it in spray. Write them a letter, email them or call them. Paul Hoffman, Paul_Hoffman@ios.doi.gov 202 208-4416 Gale Norton, gale_norton@ios.doi.gov 202 208-3100 Department of Interior 1849 C. Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20240 Speaking up on CC.com is ok, but it doesn't really get you very far. Best are handwritten letters, second best are phone calls, emails will probably be ingored so go ahead and call them assholes in your emails (just kidding, though its tempting on the off chance they do read it)

Last I heard, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there are only like 3-4 full time seasonal trail people in the Washington national forests. Don't think these dudes are gonna be getting to those thousands of miles of trail the WTA doesn't get to. For the crews I've worked on (NPS Yellowstone, NFS Wasatch NF) no one strips new tred down to mineral soil. Too much work. For any new tread we typically would try and make an obvious path (like rake out about 60% of the grass vegitation) and leave it at that. Boots of visitors take care of the rest. But like I mentioned before very little actual new tread is created.

You sound like you work for the WTA. As thats just what they told me except I think they said 10 years. Why don't we just uproot any shrub or tree within 10 feet of the trail then we won't ever have to deal with it? Honestly I want the brush right along the trail I don't want 5 feet of clearance of each side of the trail just so I don't have to dodge a limb every now and then. The core probelm is that for the most part I think WTA people just want to feel good about what they are doing but don't have any real philosophy about the wilderness. So you get a buch of yahoos out there who think trimming brush on the first 3 miles of a trail is conservation (its not, BTW) and they drive home in the Subi felling like they've done their part yet they go through the rest of their life consuming crap, driving everywhere, getting their little suburban home with 1.5 acres of green grass and maybe purchasing a little vacation home in mazama (since they are green you know) and it fucks up the whole system. It lowers the bar of what really needs to be done so far that it has no meaning and no impact in the end. I'm probably generalizing a bit here so don't bother to point out the exceptions in WTA as there probably are some but I know that this is a big factor of what goes on. One story (I've got many): I volunteered on a WTA crew in 2000 at chatter creek trail out of icicle creek. Again, not much work to do within the first three miles so they decided that they should remove any boulders in the trail they came across. These were the rocks which stick up in the trail and you usually run across about 100 every mile. Normally its like the tip of the iceburg for what you see versus whats under the ground. But these WTA people decided they needed to be taken out. They spent the better part of the next two days digging out boulders which were generally about 3-4 feet in diameter (of which only about 3-5 inches were sticking above ground) and trundeling them down the hill. Luckily no one else was out hiking as the trundels definitly crossed several switchbacks and would have killed. These were WTA regulars; they talked like they were out doing this every weekend and they all knew each other.

From what I understood when working trail for the FS for a couple of summers is that major concessions are made to stock travel since for most of the trails these were the origional users. I'd say most trails were origionally blazed by horseback riders trying to get to some lake. Since they have the historical precident for usage its hard to take that away from them (even if I personally would be for it). I second the claim that WTA is turning lots of trail in to roads. I think they have a tendency to not have a very strong wild-ness ethic as well as taking a bunch of weekenders/rei-gawkers our to build what they think a trail should look like. In the end you get 90% of the maintenece done within the first 2-3 miles of the TH and because of this short range you get too much work done. I was once on one of their crews and they told us we should be pruning all foilage back 10 feet from the trail. I told them I didn't want to do that and dediced to go for a hike instead. Sorry this has little to do with MTBs which I don't really have an opinion on.

I beleive if you check ANAM you'll find that just over 50% of climbing accidents occur on the ascent.

yeah like 1.5 million for a Rainier Welcome Center in Enumclaw. There is so much crap attached to that bill as earmarks it makes a joke of us as taxpayers.

No gas tax going to sultan but they got money from the new transportation bill for that new lite and the sync of the lights: http://www.taxpayer.net/Transportation/safetealu/WA.pdf

Its mathematical in a sense that its dealing with layout of planar graphs (sets of nodes and edges which can be layed out w/out any edges intersecting), which is a classic problem from graph theory. Graph theory is a branch of discrete mathematics.

What's a "see-food" diet? You mean you just eat whatever you want? Try eating more low fat protein. Whey is cheep and good. Stay away from Soy. Whats your goals for this weight? You wanna look like a bodybuilder? Personally I wouldn't want to gain weight as a climber.

Thats awesome.

We were up there last weekend and unless you like to climb bowling alleys with mixed conditions then I wouldn't attempt it. The snow is not continuous and rocks were coming down all day. I have a pic at home. PM me if you want me to post it.

This isn't true in the current market. Since rents are well below the average monthly mortgage payments for a similar place you have that extra capital to invest and make money on. You also don't have maintenece costs when renting which are typically underestimated by home owners as well as most rental places include certain utilities like sewer, water, and garbage. And you don't have to pay property taxes. All in all renting, especially in the current market, will probably save you money especially if you are only going to be in the place for 3 years. The best data I've seen on housing performance and bubble indicators is included in the economists housing market index (I think thats what it's called; just look around on their site and you should find it). The main statistic they look at is the historical ratio of rent to mortage payments which right now strongly favors renting in our market. There hasn't been much historical data on housing prices kept which is why you'll probably have trouble digging up the wealth of info you could for other investements.

Pulling up on a solid hand jam yesterday my left hand went numb. It still is't totally recovered with the numbness centered on the back of my hand between the pointer and index fingers. Has anyone had this happened to them before? Is it likely to be a long term reoccuring problem with jamming; is there a way to prevent it? This is the second time its happened to me. The first time was when I was pulling through a roof on a single hand jam and close to 100% of my body weight was on the 1 jam. That time the numbness went away after about 20-30 minutes. This time was a releatively straightforward jam. I'm worried that I may be setting myself up for a long term recurring problem. The first time I was taped but yesterday I wasn't taped so I'm not sure that makes a difference or not. Any pointers on how to fix this would be appreciated.

I think the defense that we need more money going to our forests is bunk. They are just forests, they don't need money, they don't need to be managed, trails don't need upkeep, roads don't need to be maintained. If it were to be something truely wild (which it is becoming less and less of) and that is what I value in the wilderness it doesn't need any resouces or money or staff or management. Its trees, rocks, water, sun, fire, animals, life and death. Once you start charging for something people start expecting something for that money. People don't view wilderness and something and especially not something they will pay for. They want their trails wide, paved, signed, and safe. And to take it a step further than what Ireneo user fees start us down a slippery slope of development.

So when this thread came up I emailed the district which you were in to get a clarification on the matter (basically asking if this was a change in enforcement policy). Here is the reply I received as well as some contact information which might get you to the people you need to talk to: When a person receives a citation there are two things that can happen. One, they can choose to pay the collateral bail (in this case it's $30) and the matter ends. Or two, they don't choose to pay the collateral bail and the Courts assume they are contesting the ticket. This happens no matter what correspondence is included when the ticket is sent in. The citation is supposed to be sent to the Central Violations Bureau within 21 days of receipt. If it is not sent in, the Courts automatically set a court date. A court date is set for an initial appearance at which time the person either pleads not guilty and asks for a court date or pleads guilty and it is handled on that date. I'm assuming your friend is in the latter. You can have him/her call if they have questions about the process, but I don't adjudicate the merits of the charges since that is what the US Magistrate does. Let me know if I can help. . . This is the same process as is used in all of Western WA and has not changed since I have been around. Sometimes our "centralized" process makes it a little confusing since we don't set the Court Docket locally and the defendants can even be notified before we are. Christine Lynch, Patrol Captain SW WA Zone, Gifford Pinchot NF 360-891-5132 Office / 360-891-5130 FAX 360-751-2943 Cell clynch@fs.fed.us

yeah, I doubt it too. Was up there end of last august and it kind of looked like the road wasn't coming back any time soon. I kind of hope it doesn't come back as they would have to re-route it way uphill; there was a thread on the re-route about 8-9 months ago in the access forum.

Sounds like you've got a good basis there. How many carbohydrates you need is hard to judge since most people don't have a good reference handy so if you think you're getting a lot of fruits and vegitables you still may not be getting as many carbs as you think. For my meals (I'm 155 lb ~12% body fat) I generally eat about 4-6 oz of meat (21-28 grams of protein) and 36-45 grams of carbs and lots of fat (snacks I eat less but same ratio). So, some examples of carb content: 1 apple ~18 grams carb, 1 pear ~27 grams carb, 1/2 cup blueberries ~9 grams carb, 3 cup broccoli ~9 grams carb, romain lettuce 10 cups ~9 grams carbs, snow peas 1.5 c ~9 grams carb. So you see that you need to eat a lot of veggies or fewer fruits to get the same amount of carbs. I personally try and eat a bit of both but get a majority of my carbs from fuits and black beans (1/2 c ~18g) since I don't have to gorge myself to get enough. But don't cut out the vegitables as there are invaluable vitamins there.

If your loosing more than a pound or two a week you are loosing water weight. Its not possible for your body to loose that much fat in that short of time. I don't know what advice you are following but a drastic drop in water weight is usually related to ketosis (sp?) where you are not getting enought good carbs (vegies and fruits) and your body is attempting to get rid of all the waste produced by the engergy back up mechanisms.

Loosing weight is a bit more complicated than just creating a calorie deficit. You're body has many places to get energy it needs (stored fat, stored glucose, muscle) and it will do different things depending on what hormones you've got running through your body regardless of how many calories you've consumed. The main one of these hormones being insulin. A lot of modern foods, including the ones you've probably been eating, force your body to produce insulin to signal that surgar needs to be removed from your system. Unfortunately this insulin has side affects which keeps your body from burning fat. So even if you're eating a reduced amount of calories you might find it very difficult to loose fat if you've constantly got elevated insulin in you're blood stream. Anyway, the Zone, by Barry Sears goes over all this. Lots of athletes follow this diet or higher fat variations of it and have excellent results.

So when do you people replace helmets? What if, for instance, you dropped you Ecrin Rock helmet off the 4th pitch of silent running and it skidded down the slab but didn't actually impact anything directly. Say after that there were minor dings in it but nothing that bumping your head on an overhang or something wouldn't leave? Can there be structural problems after this type of fall in the plastic which you can't detect? Not that I actually did this and am still wearing the helmet.

There are alot of different types of hand strengtheners esp for people who are in to grip strength or strong man comps. I find that spring grip trainers are good for overall hand strenght but don't translate well to climbing since most grip strentgh in climbing is static power and not really dynamic (i.e., you don't close your hand while climbing but hold it static on a hold). Iron Mind (www.ironmind.com) is going to be the place to really dig in to what kind of tools and training are available if you want to get serious about grip strength. I have their Captain of Crush Trainer and #2 grippers which I keep on my desk at work. I've never seen anyone even close the #2 (~195 lb of force neede) though its definitly doable by mortal you just have to work hard to get there. They go up to #4 which takes about 365 pounds of force to close. Here is a link to their grip tools: http://www6.mailordercentral.com/ironmind/departments.asp?dept=7 You'd probably be good by figuring out how to work static grip strength either with some of their tools or by coming up with some technique of your own. They publish a monthly web column by John Brookfield called Grip tip of the month, this article is awesome, but beware that it's a bit addictive and you might referring to you "Crushing strength" in normal conversation. http://www.ironmind.com/ironcms/opencms/IronMind/GripTips/griptip.html Click on the "more" link at the bottom to scroll through the previous grip tips. I wont even go in to the bending nails . . . (and no I don't work for iron mind I just really like their stuff and think grip strength is cool though I'm really just a grip gaper.)

So I just got a copy of Routes and Rocks Glacier Peak to Chelan and am wondering which of the high routes people here would recommend or have done (only interested in the routes which still don't have an established trail). There seems to be some cool things in there. Also are there any other high routes which haven't necessarily been documented by becky or crowder & tabor which can be recommended?