wfinley

He was wearing a leather vest.

The Vapor Genie (http://vaporgenie.com/) is what you want... my old college roommate makes these and he's banking! Perhaps he would sponsor a high-altitude study. I once topped out on the fixed lines on the West Butt huffing and puffing to find a Russian calmly sitting there smoking a cigarette. He finished his smoke, shouldered his pack and took off at twice our speed.

So you're saying Boulder is fun as long as you're a Trustafarian?

All the guides services are off by early July. The crevasses start to get nasty in late June... the latest the peak has been climbed was late July by a crazy Russian who later came back to climb it in late December - thus holding both the latest summer ascent record and the earliest winter ascent record.

Nice! I've floated the Tana river but have never visited the glacier. How was the brush once you got off the glacier? Where'd you get picked up?

More pix are here: http://www.hukawai.co.nz/Hukawai_Glacier_Centre/INDOOR_ICE_WALL_IDL=1_IDT=1473_ID=8522_.html That place would never fly in sue-me-USA. It's only a matter of time before some newbie drops a leashless tool through their belayers arm!

We were in Thailand and Nepal last fall. The Khumbu is getting rather spendy... and no matter what you do you're looking at a minimum of $15-20+ / day for lodging and food. In Thailand you could get by on $8-10 / day if you can avoid the pull of good coffee and coconut shakes and can go without electricity at night.

Unfortunately Dynafit doesn't make them anymore. I've only seen them in action once; a pilot was wearing them - he had touched down his plane and skied a couple laps before picking us up and they were still comfy enough for him to wear while flying. I was green with envy! I've never made any mods to my climbing skis. When I'm climbing I want the lightest possible setup and just assume that I'm going to be hating life if I encounter anything less then hero snow on the way down. Currently I choose between Outtabounds with Silvretta 300s or some old She's Piste with 404s depending on the amount of vertical gain I'm facing. If I'm skiing I want fat skis and heavy boots... and Dynafits!

Sorry - when I said fat I meant in comparison to most scaled skis. A shovel tip around 90-100 will work well enough. Some good skis to consider that are made for access climbing include: - atomic tourcap guides - atomic MX 20 - atomic chugach (or fisher outtabounds since they are the same ski) - karhu guides Basically you want something in the 90-70-80 range. If all you're doing is mounting old-school bindings on them then get something used and cheap. No use buying good skis if they are solely being used for access and not for turns.

That's the Euro method - I've seen a few of these. They're essentially used for harder ascents where skis would get in the way but where you also want to ski down. Pretty specialty stuff and most often used with dynafits and those funky cool boots that dynafit used to make that were half mountaineering boot half ski boot. Unfortunately Dynafit doesn't make those boots anymore so if you want the superlight dynafit set up you have to go with more of a ski boot. It sounds like you're more interested in a basic mountaineering setup; consider some of the fatter scaled skis like the Karhu Guides, Atomic Chugach or Fishcher Outtabounds for skis. Get them just slightly shorter than your normal skis. For bindings the Silvretta 500s are great if you have cash. If you're poor get some 404s or 300s. 170 would be a good size. Any shorter and you'll have a tough time in deeper snow. Also check out the super light Atomics. My wife has a pair of Atomics mounted with 500s and they are super light. You can usually find the older models on closeout somewhere. Skiing in mountaineering boots sucks most of the time... but it can be done and at times can be fun.

The Tacoma's and Subabru's you and your buddy and 40 of your climbing buds drove up in scared way the wildlife long before the dogs showed up. Blaming dogs for chasing away wildlife when humans have roared up in SUVs and then tramped out a trail to a spot where they lounge around yelling back and forth all day is ridiculous. As for the dog crap argument... the same thing is argued daily in numerous towns at public parks. This isn't a dog problem - it's a human problem. Just like humans need to lean to pack our their own crap in crowded areas they need to learn to pack out their pets crap in crowded area. I agree that an obnoxious dog that growls or tries to steal your lunch should be tied up -- but most of the time you're more likely to meet obnoxious humans then you are to meet obnoxious dogs. If you dislike crowds and pets so much I imagine there are places where you can go where there are neither pets nor people.

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If he had plead guilty and shut his mouth then it would have bee a basic process. But instead it was a guilty plea followed by an attempt at explaining why he broke the law. In hearing this the judge decided that he didn't learn his lesson from the standard ticket fee so he decided to impose a stiffer penalty. This is kind of like a judge imposing a stiffer sentence on someone who doesn't voice regret for the crime they committed.

He plead guilty. The judge only increased the fine after hearing a guilty plea followed by an explanation. You can't please guilty and then say "but". Think of poor Larry Craig.

The $250 fee isn't really excessive - it was simply the judge factoring in his time, his bailiffs time, his clerks time and his court reporters time. All together this easily adds up to more than $250. If you plead guilty just pay the fine; the judge has better things to do then listen to climbers explain why they shouldn't have to get permits. If you feel strongly about it, try and get the law changed on the legislative level - don't try and argue with a judge.

When I was a kid we lived in New Delhi. The thing to do for kids birthday parties was to hire Hindu Swami's off the street who would then perform magic shows. These were weird shows... sword swallowing, piercing, devilish incantations... good stuff. A staple of any act was the vomiting of copious amounts of materials -- from yards and yards of string to rocks to misc. items that earlier in the day were someplace in the house be it knives or once even a wedding ring. As kids we loved these shows! I recall the adults always being weirded out though.

I don't think that's a hippo... I think it's an anaconda swallowing a tapir. I also don't think it's coughing it up - anacondas have teeth that slope backwards - so anything in the mouth is pretty much stuck there. They can't just cough up a meal. The latter half of the video clip is being played backwards.

Wow! Awesome photographs. I always admire climbers who can take night photos and still wake up early and go climbing!

What!!?? comeon... public gay sex is a threat to our constitution... sort of like terrorism only different.

Read the stats Mr. Plane. Having grown up on a farm I can also attest to the high number of accidents. Farming accidents are very common in rural communities.

This is an interesting discussion in regards to subsidies... I went searching and found this discussion. It's worth the read. Should the United States Cut Its Farm Subsidies? Daniel T. Griswold, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, and Bob Young, chief economist for the American Farm Bureau, debate whether the United States should be subsidizing its farmers. http://www.cfr.org/publication/13147/ (edited to fix link)

Farming has a high number of related deaths - most of them due to heavy machinery accidents. In 2004 Farming was ranked #6 with 307 deaths. Here's a link of stats: http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/26/pf/jobs_jeopardy/

Bivy on purpose so you can watch the aurora.

Avitripp – I think it could be argued that all human endeavors are essentially selfish – be it art, business or even procreation. Environmentalism is no different in that an environmentalist is, as you put it, a “static preservationalist" that wishes to preserve the world as he or she sees it today. In a geologic sense we’ll be gone in a blink of the eye - but on a human scale we’ll see our wild places slowly give way to development, famine and disease rise to alarming levels and general misery rise to levels beyond what we can comprehend today. The dodo and ammonite can be easily dismissed as archaic breeds that were destined to fail. Polar bear populations are in decline; but should it not matter because warming is a trend we can’t do anything about? When famine spreads across Africa do you not support relief efforts because (geologically speaking) key areas of the earth turn to desert on a regular basis? Where do you draw the line?

Perhaps I misread you on some way?