MisterMo

Van Trump Park at Rainier is very safe and offers excellent skiing to 10,000'. Virtually no avy hazard if you take the 'winter' route in, although in the more recent past it was a major hassle getting the NPS to let you leave a car overnite at Christine Falls.

Okeedokee.......... I tried my hand at it once (mountain photos, not porn). I sold a few prints and what seemed like a bazillion postcards of Mt. Index before I accepted the fact that I did not have the necessary self promotional skills and drive to succeed as a photographer. You may find the following stuff useful: (1)If you want to get consistently good, saleable photos every thing else you do has to wrap around your photography, not the other way around. The camera has to be out, ready to use, and at the front of your mind or youi'll miss the good stuff. As a seasonal example if you're out after freshies it's your subjects who will be enjoying them; you will be scoping out good shots and getting them. (2) If you really want to get good photos and you work hard at it and shoot a lot you will get good photos. If, for example, like Art Wolfe you show up at McNeil River during the salmon run with a long lens and a semiload of Kodachrome and you get up early and work long and hard and shoot a lot of film, you will get excellent bear photos, no doubt about it. If, like John Scurlock, you work hard and spend a lot of time flying and photographing the Cascades then excellent results will also follow. And I'm not meaning to diss anyone or their work. (3) The difference between 'outdoor' photographers shooting the type of stuff on your site who succeed commercially and those who do not is, I submit, not as much the quality of their work but rather their skills and determination as salespeople and business people. Granted one must have something to sell, but given that one must also bust their ass, for years, to differentiate themselves in a very competetive market. I don't have the slightest inkling what your day job currently is but I'd bet money that you'd have to work much harder as a photographer than you do now, for years before becoming financially successful at it. (4)If you want to succeed more painlessly find a niche that nobody is in and do that well. John Scurlock's work is an example. Not only is his work stunning to look at, he's the only one I currently know of doing that little niche: Cascade aerials easily accessible on the web. I don't know if John has commercial aspirations but I believe that his mix of beauty and uniqueness would make it relatively easy for him to succeed. I failed, my ego insists, because I was a crummy salesman, not because I was a crummy photographer. May your experience be better.

Does it maybe have something to do with the age of the population in general: that we boomers (me, maybe not you) are getting old and going on shuffleboard cruises & such instead of climbing? Interesting statistic. There doesn't seem to be any decline in the numbers of hard-core climbers on the Index wallz.

No, John, that's the one and only that I've ever seen; I was kinda messing with you. Just think how burly you'd be if you could put up something on lead with one of those mothers. Unbeatable tool in their place, but being down in a hole with rock dust and and engine exhaust sucks.

Punjar (sp?) is the shit for dyanamite sized holes but I imagine you just want to place bolts.

Bumma! Maybe take drugs & go down anyway? Get well quick, eh?

Huh?

Got to love this place sometimes..........instead raking the shag rug and walking the dog and posting about the Seattle Seahawks or something a coupla fellaz instead go out on the cold icy gloom of Joberg in December for a good effort and a noble amount of suffering and then they come back & put up a nice TR with some cool pix and receive in return..........a bunch of niggling over whether or not it was really winter. Jesus...H...Fucking...Christ BTW OP Nice TR. Cool Effort. Cool Pix

I've never seen the climb in question but I'd like to weigh in: When another party chose to climb beneath you they assumed the consequences of doing so, however wise or unwise that choice might be. It appears they were fortunate. When your party, in turn chose to rappel past them to a position beneath them you assumed the same consequences. It appears that your partner was not nearly so fortunate. I'm making assumptions here that you had the options of 1) descending by another route, or 2)waiting a reasonable period for the hazard to pass. The very closest I ever came to getting killed climbing was due to following an unknown party on what we all thought was solid rock. Just imagine my suprise when the sky rained boulders.... ......a very cheap lesson since I was totally unscathed. I wouldn't even think of going under another party on ice without some horribly compelling reason.

No, I regret I am photoless. It was quite cold for a spell but also quite dry, so less ice than I'd have hoped for. Now it will all melt

One hand is tied to the tightrope walker The other is in his pants

Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance

The circus is in town

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

Like it or not, Dana's arch is thoroughly trashed with or without the bolts, at least from an esthetic point of view. Placing the bolts may have slowed future damage; it certainly didn't undo any. I'm certainly guilty some of the trashing, even though I never drove anything hard enough to break the flake. I don't know if there was stuff available then that would have enabled a pitonless ascent of that pitch; whether or not there was, the pitonless ethic was not then in full force. It's sad, I guess, because that was such a pretty crack and it is now slutted out for all eternity; in fact it's something I regret having taken part in. A more enlightened point of view might have left it unclimbed for a day when it might be done differently in a less damaging style, but, that level of foresight is pretty difficult to get right........maybe more so when you're young. I was sixteen when I took that photo of Dana and we....both....knew....absolutely... everything. I guess where I'm going with all of this is that maybe the place to fuss and fret, if people are going to engage in such things, is to fuss and fret over the style in which NEW routes are done. Stuff like Dana's arch can only stand as an example of styles and ethics that clearly did not work. Beyond that you cannot put the smoke back in the fire.................

I'm pretty sure your '96 ratings for Orbit, Remorse, and White Slabs were the accepted ones before 1970 (though obviously after the Orange guide came out. Don't know about White Fright, never climbed it or knew anyone who did. As for Saber, guidebook ratings tend to be established by fairly highly talented individuals for whom there might not be much perceptible difference between 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, etc. Mixed up in all that was some of the curious "us vs. them" bs where gradings in certain areas were easier or harder than others. Peshastin was supposed to be "soft", with climbs 1 or 2 points overrated. Squamish, on the other hand had gradings reputed to be a couple of points lower than actual difficulty

That is very very cool. The strength of the human will is what gets tough things done. You should be totally proud of that.

Good on ya. That photo is both amazing and sad, reminiscent of pictures taken in 1945. What is the body of water in the upper left corner?

Yes. Dudley. Your FA info is correct. I have no clue how that name stuck. Dana & I did an early ascent of the arch pitch only, but by no means the first; there were already pin scars. Probably like Givlers Dome, Madsen's Squeeze chimney, etc.; those people never named those climbs either....the names just sort of happened. Very A1. Almost all thin horizontals if I remember right. No, I'm not being a smart-ass. I don't know if it was freed before all the rock breakage from piton placement & I don't know what the free rating was then (or now).

This is Dana

It's also a great trip if you go heavy. I've known people who lugged guitars.............

Somebody jump on me if I've got this wrong but a glacier you were on "20 years ago" will today either be A) missing, in which case crevasse rescue will not be an issue, or B) a lot more broken up, in which case crevasse rescue would be a pretty handy skill. I don't think the glacier segments of the Ptarmigan have gone away. You can learn the rudiments of crevasse rescue in a day, easy, and if you're already carrying a rope the other stuff weighs nothing. I'd go prepared. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to the dead it would seem horribly regrettable to perish in a crevasse simply because you and your partners lacked the modest skills and small amount of stuff needed to get out.

All of them if you represent that you did not manipulate the photo. None of them it you're upfront about it.

3 days straight of genuine cold temp fluffy stuff at Stevens. Mill valley opens tomorrow. Wear yer woolies (14 this AM; bring yer snorkel.

No, stillcrankin, it's clearly indignation. Resignation is for has-beens and candy asses. You're not that far gone. No, honk on it. My only reluctance here was that it all stemmed from a cool TR and pix by a couple of guys who didn't bolt shit..........they just went & climbed the route they found.............. This is P2 of the route we found. We placed bolts only at the stations at the top of pitches 2 and 3. You betcha' Lots of it. Good stuff.