selkirk

Two of the best things my father ever told me were .... "the most competitive people are only ever competing with themselves" and "Do not judge yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you have accomplished given your ability." The second ones a bitch, but has been a hella of a motivator my whole life. For me it's always been about a good day out with good people, and the feeling of succeeding at something that was near my limits, and I really had to fight for. Unless your making a living off of them climbing numbers don't count for much.

That's what Drambuie is for. Tastes' good and makes kids sleepy

Your back Muffy! Where ya been? And you should certainly be able to achieve that goal How's the footsies? My Goals? All the shit I didn't climb last summer so, in no special order Stuart (North ridge) Liberty Crack NW Corner on NEWS West Face of NEWS and a glacier of some sort.

Got a sign from the in-laws that says "Never, but Never Question the Engineers Judgment" It's going on my desk Some Reidel Single Malt glasses are up there, the Washington Ice guidebook from Mrs. Selkirk. But best off all my boss told me to take off my unused sick leave for "mental health days" since I lose it at the end of the year. So I got 11 days off That's just about the best thing!

Didn't actually get any horrendously bad gifts this year. THe usual bad gifters have stopped sending me crap Though I do have a set of tent stake Ligers waiting for a white elephant that's coming up OOOH, and someone got me a couple of Reidel Single Malt Glasses for drinking whisky from Thanks for the suggestion KKK.

aaaahhhhh!!! I'll give you a small child, old ski's, I've got a nice dog!

Next week is time in the Friday Harbor visiting with family and playing with wonder dog. Should be a rough time, too much food, too much booze. Planning on consuming more tan my fair share of spiced wine and Raymous Gin Fizzes Not sure about Thurs/Fri though, suddenly have 2 more days off than I anticipated so I might have to try and go climbing or skiing. As for when the Denali Partners thread will die? Seeing as I'm not reading it isn't it already dead?

I don't know, are you well enough to be getting yet Rob? Good to hear your on the mend And a little perspective is always important. It's far too easy to get wrapped up in the minutiae and forget what's truly important.

yeah, I can see that response. You'd think for a professional consumer of alcohol he'd have a bit more backbone though Now it's time for the little bottle of Maker's Mark

That improved my day Walking wonder dog this morning was an interesting experience. sandals and Ice don't go very well together So anything bruised but the ego?

When I was first putting my rack together, I wondered into a local climbing shop and was asking about nuts, hexes, and cams. The guy on staff that day told me flat out that hexes were a waste of time and money, and the nuts were just a little better. What I should really do is drop the $500 for a rack of shiny new cams and call it quits. I ignored him and bought hexes and nuts. Since then I've picked up a good selection of cams and have special place on my rack for the little ones, but the order I always look to place things in is nuts, hexes, then cams, and always have all three on my rack. There's just too much variability and a bit of black magic with cams. A good nut placement is a good placement. A good cam placement can change into a bad placement without too much difficulty. Of course my only lead fall on gear was onto blue TCU

What can I say about Red Breast, I'm still a whiskey noob, but for damn that bottle went too fast Good flavor, not to harsh, very easy to sip neat. Mrs. Selkirk even manage to enjoy a glass! Which after her episode attempting to shoot Laphroig is a step in the right direction

I resemble that remark! I was a MechE during undergrad and am doing aero now Granted i'm going of somewhat limited experience (I've only been leading for about 4 years now, but have been around rock, ropes, and systems since I could walk. There's a great picture of me learning all about leverage and pulleys as I hoist my sister off the ground using the bear wires in the Olympics ) But I think the engineering mindset has really helped me advance more quickly than most of the folks I regularly climb with in terms of creative gear placement, risk assesment/lead head, technical ability, and thinking 3 dimensionally. I just can't help but always looking for a more elegant, technical solution to whatever I'm doing at the time. A little technical understanding of how the knots/gear/systems work and a little creative problem solving will go a long way in unexpected situations, and that's what ME was really all about you'll be a natural I'm sure. Belated Rescue

Your not me so of course your going to burn. Just ask any muslim... or or jew.... or hindi... or Southern baptist... . . . .

So what did I miss? Help me out here, anybody got an executive summary?

The only cams I know about with stems that are flexible enough to be reasonable in the sort of placement this has been described as are WC Zero's, Aliens, and Trango-Flex cams, of course only the Trango's would be large enough and by most reviews the stems are so flexible they're awkward in the large size. Even the much vaunted camalot's would be too stiff not to result in some serious levering. I guess in my mind this was a triple failure scenario. 1. fall 2. marginal placement (bottoming and not aligned) 3. Marginal placement results in partial placement failure. 4. Partial placement failure results in bad component loading, and material failure. I don't know anybody that designs for that level of failure. As a side bar if the cam had just blown no-one would have cared, which is likely what would have happend with most cams, so it could be argued that the link-cam actually held on longer and hence absorbed more energy

Didn't a littler birdy say you used to be an Enginerd rmncwtr? You'll probably be just fine. From what little I've seen it's a case by case thing. But I think a little creativity and an eye to be sure that you stay tied in to some anchor can go a long way to figuring something out without going into full self rescue mode. (possibly tie excess rope off to an anchor and self belay up to help. Leader stuck but he can't belay you? Have him build an anchor then self protect with a prusik or or a clove hitch into the rope available. ) It may not be as efficient as having had a full self rescue course, but it'll do in a pinch.

That's an oversimplification from what I've read. It was 30degrees off good alignment and prevented from rotating into an aligned position due to the bottoming placement. The lack of alignment caused the upper two lobes to pull out, and the bottom lobes got levered over a feature as the back of the lobes were still activated and a moment was getting applied to it. From what I've read I'd agree the bad placement was the route cause. The breakage may have been due to longer extension of the lobes, but no-one in their right mind thinks a bottoming flaring crack where the only physically possible cam placement is not aligned for the fall is a "good" placement for any fall, much less a high factor fall. If you do think that you should probably stop leading on gear, your life expectancy isn't very high. I'm sure thousand of people have put a cam in the same place. What I'd really like to know is how many have actually taken high factor falls. We all make marginal placements, they just very rarely get tested. I probably would have put a cam in the same pod and have realized it was a shitty pschological pro piece only. Possibly something with as flexible a stem as a zero cam might not have levered out, but that's neither here nor there. So all that said only have 1 but it's always on my rack and will stay there. And I have found good placements that NO other cam will accept with it. Oh, and if you'd like to sell your's dmuja I'll buy e'm cheap

Of course if you piss of a Mod badly enough, I do believe they can assign you an appropriate title as well.

I may be an anomally but I ended up find one through Monster. My theory when I started looking was to open every door I possibly could. I ran down any network connections through the dept, interviewed with a couple of companies visiting UW, searched and applied through every job database I could find. Of course the folks we've hired since then have primarily been folks found through networking. The one piece of advice is apply for anything your interested in even if your not qualified. I think the job I ended up getting required 5 years of industry experience, but they hired me straight out of grad school.

STFU noob!

26 I'm pretty sure the whole morals thing screwed me!!

Your not saying you prefer the graphic to the person wearing it are you?

But the topographical contours are so pleasing to the eye!

Jared_j and i hit Stone gardens and they get a Both for setting up the ropes initially even though they were busy (sorry for the snide comment, I was a little disgruntled with the prospect of not getting any drytooling in ). Ran into Dylan and Andre, thanks for stringing the line on the M7 Dylan I scratched my way a few moves past the transition before burning out. Good quality routes. Definitely pumpy than what I've done outside so far, but a good evenings worth of climbing. And mad props to the guy who let the M5 onsight for his first time ever using ice tools Serious cajones!