ashw_justin

It's a bluff on the south end of the Chuckanut Mountains, 10 miles or so south of B'ham on Chuckanut Drive. One approach is a 2000 foot climb up from Chuckanut Drive, the other is a shorter hike accessed from some dirt roads a short distance off the freeway. The rock is not that great, but there are a couple of 2 to 3 pitch climbs and a few sport routes at the top. The bottom of the cliffs is a dramatic boulder field with caves. A lot if the rock is dirty or covered with lichen because not many people climb there. Here is a picture of the left portion of the bluff, with an easy route to the top highlighted.

I have yet to have my ass saved by a trad placement. My snowboard has saved me from a couple of imminent disasters, although it's what got me in those situations in the first place. It's kind of disturbing that you guys place the smallest BD stoppers (#1,2) on lead considering that they pretty much tell you that they simply can't hold a fall. Has anybody ever fallen on a makeshfit webbing "stopper" or a loose rock slung and used as a chock?

Just a guess but probably a mix of snow/dirt, and difficult to find a dry flat spot. Reason I say that is the slush level is around 5000 feet.

Sweet. "The Forest Service and the timber industry say new roads are needed to reach old-growth stands located in remote reaches of the Tongass." You know, it's about time timber companies start paying for their own gadamned roads.

What if you just snake it, but don't tell anyone. Is that ethical?

Yeah I doubt the "ELF" would resort to pipe-bombing truckers.

Who said nerds don't have a sense of humor?

Come on I know there are some rock climbers out there with way too much time on their hands... ...besides me...

I have a boulderer friend who really likes to say "it's all about core strength!" and "you just gotta keep your body tight!" but then, his forearms are like the jaws of life and his legs are built like a 12-year-old's. Hmm. But the point is, the only non-climbing workout he does is pull-up variations and hangs. I think he benches like, oh, 140 or so.

But back on the topic of seriously weightlifting, I have this belief that lets me convince myself not to pump iron anymore, and it goes something like this. Isolating a muscle group through an inherently confining and independent range of movement will indeed strengthen that muscle, but in a narrow and specific way. So you do a bunch of bicep excercises, great, your biceps will be stronger. But the problem is, you never use just your biceps while climbing, instead, nearly every move is a balanced and complex coordination of many muscles in your body, transfering forces from your fingertips down through your toes. Yes, your biceps are involved in this move, but not independently, as you have trained them in the gym. So you end up having to re-train these muscles to cooperate with the rest of your body, or else you're just carrying around a lot of inefficient extra muscle mass and trying to force a simple strength-based solution onto a complex balanced-based problem. Of course this is not true of all gym excercises. Pull-ups obviously are a coordinated effort. But "preacher curls" are not. And then take bench press. Pectoral muscles are important in many climbing movements, but there are very few times when the situation demands that particular movement. What, are you going to have to push yourself straight out from the wall with great amounts of force for some reason? So why do you train those muscles for that particular range of motion? If I was going to work pecs I'd chose some more climbing-related movements instead. Basically this is all based on my belief that muscle training is movement-specific. My problem with gym workouts is that the goal of most excercises is isolate one particular muscle group and work it by itself, through one particular confined movement. I think if you can just train by climbing, and maintain the same intensity as you would with a gym workout (maybe that's the hard part), you're at least as well off or better for building climbing-related strength. That's why everyone should cancel their gym memberships and use the extra $$ to build home bouldering walls instead. And invite me over to climb so I get the big crazy monkey strength.

That's it, you lose your d20 priviledges.

I thought that was the point of ice climbing? To get all sketched and pumped out and fearing for your life and all... man that sounds awesome! Who wants to go ice climbing? No, I'm serious, who wants to go?

Yeah well considering the conditions...

Yeah, sure you can bench 415 in the gym but we all know that's not real weight lifting... It's all about how much you can bench on a wilderness ridge in 50 mph winds and heavy snow with only a #1 stopper 30 feet below you and bla bla bla...

Voile is all function no glamour. If you want to impress peeps and spend another few hundred bucks then go for the Burton. There are also other board manufacturers who sell splitboards set up with the Voile hardware, such as Never Summer and Prior. I have the Voile and had never skied before, and I really appreciate being able to skin up instead of bootpacking. BC skiers might actually let you go on some trips with them too. If you get a splitboard, consider getting the plastic boot/plate binding setup as opposed to soft boots/straps.

did you see this: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/362683/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1 Although it sounds like he needs a ride.

You could always fly there and hire your own Ecuadorian guides, if you're feeling extra adventurous. I paid $140 for a two-day guided climb on Cotopaxi, when I was living in Quito for a while. The guide service was Moggeli, and the guides were registered with ASEGUIM (translates to Association of Ecuadorian mountain Guides).

So it's around 3 miles, and most of it is bikeable. In fact if you are really aggro with the bike you can haul it another 1500 v.f. or so up the trail to the actual Rec. Area boundary, so that you can bike down the switchbacks. But for the 3 mile flat stretch, you'd probably go about three times faster with a bike so you'd save about 30+ minutes each way. That is, until they fix the road.

Yeah and that ain't powder. Believe me as a fellow boarder, I wish it were...

Maybe someone with the Matlab curve fitting tool will be kind enough to import the data and do it. Cracked, you heard the man. Get on it, colij boy. My nerd connections evaporated when I graduated.

(reminder)

This Mr. Dookie is one sharp noob. Mr. Dookie should hide in Pandora's pack to slow her down a little.

Yeah and it's too bad that excel can't do sine/cosine wave fits.

so bouldering is bouldering. You don't say: let's go climbing; you say: let's go bouldering. Right? So, I think because it's so important to distinguish bouldering as it's own special way of life, that we shouldn't dare call it climbing. No?

OK fine here's Layton's