selkirk

Since i'm tall, i'm sure I can free-solo anything she wants to follow , and since she's short and light, I can probably just pic her up and call it rope-drag if she tries to lock me off.

hmmmm, so how good are your short people at typesetting? I might have to try them out. I can't believe i'm the only geek here who uses LaTeX, there has to be someone else!

And what do short people use?

And short people should be relegated to belay bitches

Your all so helpful! And yes, I meant know LaTeX, not no LaTeX. So, do you know LaTeX archenemy?

You've all got such dirty minds but i'm going to do my best to dissapoint you! Do any of you nerds no LaTeX very well? I'm stumped on a formatting issue. Now, please proceed to spray you dirty minded wankers.

Which offwidth move? The 6-8" squeeze at the start of p3? The 4" crack in the corner higher up? Or are you talking about the smorgasbord of wide cracks, chickenheads, and hidden cracks on p2? There are multi-pitch routes with Chicken heads out at Vantage!?? Where, Where?

It helps if you are small. My daughter cruised it when she was 10. She must have been able to fit her whole body into the crack! That's so not fair! She should have to curse and moan like the rest of us!

you? young? Morning is never good. It's an oxymoron by definition

The offwidth move on G&M gets the full-value mark in my book! I think that's the only time I've ever road-runnered. Seriously freaked my wife and belayer out!

dude Hell of a job!

There are more issues here than just population density. Remember, the city was evacuated before the hurricane came through, so the number of people dropped significantly. And the reason you need chlorine, iodine, or some way to boil water is because it won't be fresh. You'll certainlly need to purify it. As for open flame cooking/heating, somehow I don't think the heating is as big an issued down there as it would be elsewhere. Up here, it's not even really necessary, it never really gets cold enough that a few extra blankets and little shared body heat won't suffice. North Idaho, Montana, North Dakota different story, but also lower population densities and higher levels of self-sufficiency. For cooking, there's nothing that says it can't be done on a small scale with a little creativity. With damn near anything flamable you could turn a pot into grill. It may not be great, you may not want to eat chicken off it, but you could probably heat water to the point you could rehydrate pasta or make and cheese. Sewage... you simply don't go inside. Time for a community outhouse or 3, or 4, or 20. The old/infirm/hospitalized are pretty well hosed if enough of the infrastructure goes down. One would hope that the hospitals/care facilities are well enough prepared for them, not that that's likely though. Things like this suck on all fronts, and the blame is really pretty diffuse. There isn't any one group that screwed up. The national gov't should have been on top of the issue with the levees. The local gov't should have been riding the federal govt to deal with the levees, or taken care of it themselves. But it seems to me that after the evacuation order people really shouldnt' have been there in the first place. But in general I think people need to be more aware of there surrounding and more responsible for their own actions and safety and well being. Too many people seem to assume that it's the governments responsibility to take care of everything and make sure they live safe and secure lives free from harm, disaster, discomfort, and annoyance. The Mississippi floodplane is the classic example. Every few years a big storm rolls through, the dikes break the river floods an area and a bunch of people houses float away which royally sucks for them. The govt comes back in, fixes the levees, and people build houses next to the river again, thinking oh it won't flood anytime again soon, until the next time of course. Or the barrier islands in Florida? Once every couple years they seem to get completely decimated. And 6 months later people are back building there again, and not necessarily in a fashion that could withstand another flood. It just makes no sense to me to live somewhere that's prone to natural disasters and not prepare for them at every level from the govt. down to the individual, whether this means stockpiling water, food, and fuel, having a wood stove, or having a basement in case a tornado comes through. I also think that living in tornado alley in a trailer park, without some bunker near by is foolhardy. Or living in the SW and not being capable of making it through a hot week without air conditioning/knowing how to deal with heat exhaustion/head stroke, or being able to leave the area. Or living in high-rise in San Fransisco that hasn't been designed to survive a serious earthquake. All of these things are irresponsible on so many levels. It's a tragedy for the people who are stuck there. I wish them all the best, and hope the evacuation/recovery efforts are speedy and successful, and they find there family members safe and well. I'm sure they'll eventually recover most of New-Orleans, people will move back in, they'll rebuild the levees and hopefully make them a little higher. But I really wonder if anything will change at any level from the govt down to the individuals level of preparedness/decision making 10 years from now?

An additional issue i had heard cited in the lack of immediate response was that there was a reasonable level of readiness at the outer edge of the zone they expected to be strongly affected by the hurricane. However, the zone that was actually effected turned out to be much larger, and a portion of the difficulty was just in getting the available supplies through the affected region to the places where it was needed. Basically another undersestimate of the overall effect.

what if, what if, what if. In most things your options are few. Either you hole up where you are, or try to get to some place safer. The problem is once you start moving, no one will be able to find you anytime soon. Honestly? It's a long walk , but only a walk from downtown to home (south shoreline) It's a longer walk from the airport. Most people I know could still cover the ground from downtown to our place in a day (including my parents, and mabye 1/2 of my grandparents given enough time and some good blisters). There isn't any portion of this country that doesn't get hit with what amounts to natural disasters though. Storms, eartquakes and volcanoes on the west coast and NW. Heat waves in the SW, tornadoes and winter storms in the great plains, floods along the Miss., hurricanes in the south (several times a year), winter storms in the NE, not to mention man-made disasters like damn failures, power outages etc. To not be at least minimally prepared to hole up for a few days at home in bad conditions without electricity, food, or necessarily clean water seems foolhardy. If your stuck out somewhere you do what you can. But with half of the disasters I just mentioned there's significant warning. (Most eruptions, nearly all storms, and hurricanes) The only ones that are really unheralded are earthquakes and random power outages, and for those you cope as best you can. Its not that I don't feel sorry for these people. It's not that I don't think the Gov't screwed up in not funding the Army Corp of Engineers work their for the past 10 years. But at the same time, living in a city that's below sea-level, in an region that gets hit with hurricanes several times a year, right next the Mississippi which floods somewhere along it's length every few years, with bayou, which is the only buffer they have shrinking every year, and then ignoring a mandatory evacuation order from the mayor when you know a seroius hurricane is about to make landfall at or very close to the city...... My grandparents live in Fl. and have been through a couple of hurricanes this year though theyv'e come through ok. Hell if I know why they live there.

Fuck man you don't know anyone who isn't white or middle class, do you? I just grew up in North Idaho. Anyone who didn't have at least one wood stove and a enough wood for 2 weeks in the winter, regardless of income was a moron. I distinctly remember the year an ice-storm rolled through the area and places lost power in December for several weeks, and in some areas til the next spring. Regardless of where you live or to some degree your at the mercy of the weather and world, I don't think it's unreasonable to act like. For a lot of friends (from a full range of incomes) heat, cooking and water purification all boil town to a wood stove or fireplace and a couple of pots or a dutch oven, maybe beefed up with some iodine or chlorine. That's not really much of a stretch.

But like most people in the northwest that i've known everyone seems to have sleeping bags, alternative heat sources of some kind, as well as mechanisms for purifying water. I can't imagine living anywhere in the NW without having at least a wood stove or some back up for heat/cooking/water purification. Between winter storms, volcanoes, fault lines, and other random acts it just pays to be capable of being self-sufficient for at least a week or two in a pinch.

Isnt that mostly just downtown seattle? Seems like the hills most stuff north of the the montlake cut would be fine. Of course the waterfront will liquify. I wonder if anyone has done some work predicting what magnitude a quake would set that off?

No, I think that is the rap anchor in the dihedral above the 3rd belay, just after the 5.9ish finger cracks. (This pitch (4?) goes up the dihedral, past a really sketchy rap anchor (2 home made bolt hangers with some webbing and rings on it, and I think that is what's clipped in the pick.) I also think both of the bolts at that rap anchor were pretty sketchy as well. Relatively new but looked homemade to me. We belayed from the trees at the bottom of this corner and climbed past it. The ones i'm talking about are at the end of this pitch. (up the pictured dihedral, around a small corner, up another dihedral, right onto the face and then up a short runnout section with some small cam placements, a pin, and 1 rusty bolt on the face.) The ones I was thinking of are pretty distinctive because they're on seperate sides of a small corner. (1 actual hanger, one funky square job, and they're a good 3 or 4 ft apart.) There's a little sloping foot ledge just below them to stand on. Was there a better belay above Larry? I don't remeber seeing any good stances or nice belay points in the short dihedral above the 2 bolts, or on the face below the small roof?

Ok, i'm feeling in the mood for a nice tempest in a teapot so... Has anyone considered replacing the two bolts at the belay between the 4th and 5th pitchs on Orbit? (2 old rusty 1/4" bols, one with a home-made hanger, that are roughly 4 ft apart). The belay isn't bad, 1 good nut placement for a downward pull (but pointless for any upward) and a small crack you could get a cam or two into (blue TCU size). I don't think I'd trust the bolts for a direct fall onto the anchor and the spacing is so awkward that it makes for some bad angles if you try to tie them together. Seems to be a good opportunity to streamline, and increase the safety level of the belay without adding any new bolts. Fire away!

Of course cat's eat little birdies. mmmmm, tasty!

It's ok, I'm sure your feelings are reciprocated!

Pretty benign. Saw a few in the basin SW of Cutthroat and was somewhat glad for bug netting. My wife got a few mosquito bites picking huckleberries by the Blue Lake trailhead, but the friend she was with didn't. Didn't notice any on the trail up to the Lib. Bell area. Where you goin?

Ok, so the new challenge is, who can use the most permutations in the definitions of PM in a single, plausible sentence?

I could be making that up. Hell if I know! Way to go droppin the weight though!

Once your above 40 it doesn't matter Big Football Players Hosed.