JosephH

Agreed.....right up unitl you only comment on the smallest of user group that dwell at Beacon. What about asking the largest majority user group? We are the only user group capable of direct or close proximity contact with the Falcons and eyries. Period. A modicum of responsible behavior, mutual respect, and voluntary cooperation would have gone a long way both back in '95-96 and made things far easier now. Oh? Do tell...

CLOSE THE TOURIST TRAIL!!!

WDFW and WSP did in fact offer you guys that same deal at Beacon - to leave the routes on either side of the SE Corner open up to the level of the SE Corner tree - you guys swiftly rejected that offer because the tourist trail wasn't going to be closed.

Bill, don't confuse me doing a little dishing back to Kevin so he gets a taste of what he dishes out in a thread he cares about with what I might really feel about what actually happened. As for Menopause, it's in a world of it's own and can easily defend itself.

Indications and Usage ------------------------------- Treatment of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis who are at high risk for fracture (eg, history of osteoporotic fracture); increase bone mass in men with primary or hypogonadal osteoporosis who are at high risk of fracture (eg, history of osteoporotic fracture). Dosage and Administration Adults --------------------------------------- [injected] Subcutaneous 20 mcg once daily into thigh or abdominal wall. General Advice -------------------- Rotate injection sites (thigh, abdominal wall). Give new injections at least 1 inch from old site and never into areas where the skin is tender, bruised, red, or hard.

Climbing on untested Aliens and proclaiming they're still great and safe is a lot like coming home from Iraq and claiming the highway between the Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone is 'safe' and that there are no more IED's because, what the hell, you personally made the trip 73 times and didn't get blown up.

Are you and Joseph advocating tying into your (let's say three) pieces of gear with the rope or are you advocating equalizing the three pieces with a sling/cordelette, clipping a biner to that, and then cloving your rope to the biner? For me it's one of those 'maybe' and 'it depends' sort of deals. An anchor has to get pretty dodgey before I start getting too fancy, but when I rarely do equalize things to a power point I'll clove, alpine butterfly, or figure-8 into that once it's finished.

Mammut Tusk 9.8 60 w/ 38% sheath - my next rope. Not dirt cheap, but stout, a local buy, and a good value...

Hey, I have two sets of Alien Hybrids hanging in the basement - it blows, but I'm with Bill, even testing them with a 4mm cord loop didn't provide any particular satisfaction, comfort, or confidence given some of the braze and cable failures we've now seen (at least the axle holes aren't misaligned). I'm hoping Metolius will start producing Master Cam Offsets later this year... Edit: that should have said "4mm cord loop" above instead of "2mm" - in this case I funked and bounced tested them with the cord loop in the system.

I would suspect quite the contrary, I've seen Metolius cams that were ruthlessly [ab]used by a notorious desert crack / alpine big-wall hardman, each of those cams took an endless litany of big falls while covered with grit. Along the way their wire stems were contorted, mangled, and even showed large open spots in the stem wires. They kept holding and I suspect would still pull test fine. I don't think BD Camalots would have taken the same beating quite as long and still operated, but I bet they'd still test out as well. I'm sure that will complete the picture for the last casualty of a failed Alien. If the issue were about all the well-assembled, solid Aliens out on climbers' racks we would all simply rejoice and go home happy - unfortunately it isn't. The issue is the unwillingness and inability of CCH to make the [technical and cultural] changes necessary to insure every Alien that leaves their shop is solid and dependable. Round after round, and year after year, what this saga keeps showing again and again is if you haven't taken a serious dive on any particular Alien, tested it yourself, or had a third party do so, then you're gambling every time you place that piece and that applies to any production generation - pre-recall, recalled, or post-recall. That may be totally cool with you, but your comments are basically saying "hey, mine didn't break and I haven't died or been hurt so it's all good..." I can't tell which is more irresponsible as a climbing vendor, selling Aliens that haven't been independently tested or your comments here in this thread.

I believe the RC.com user 'adatesman', the OP of the latest Alien thread over there, would be happy to test them for you for a small fee.

Aren't you the good little cheerleader! You definitely haven't been following the saga, know the score, or understand what's being said yet again here in the fifth round. CCH's problems remain firmly rooted in the present, not in the past. As the lastest round of tests show, there's still a lot of bad pre-recall, recalled, and post-recall Aliens out there. Multiple 'Tensile Tested' post-recall Aliens have failed. This is in no way a one-time QC bauble - it's clear and enduring incompetence year after year and the sure sign a small craft shop failed badly in the attempt to make the leap to big box supplier. There's only two things you can count on: a) that your Aliens aren't one of them and b) CCH's indelible garage culture isn't going to be changing because you wish it would. But hey, I'm sure your Aliens are just fine...

Yep, I suspect most old guys like being tied in with the rope whenever possible...

After work, Wed. 5/27 as it stands now - mark your calendar and call your non-cc friends...

Too tight a webbing turning radius - turns the bare cable into a knife. If you're talking older rigid stem Friends it should not be a problem - they aluminum stock stems, not cable.

Well, if you've watched the weather in the Gorge as closely as I have over twenty years, you'd realize some storms and storm tracks relative to jetstream positioning are just a sure thing - not remotely a matter of chance or 'maybe' forecasts. And when the storms locked onto a powerful jetsream are as significant as those were you'd also know that conditions on the mountain were not going to be a matter of chance or any real variability - they're going to be successive freight trains barreling through. And we're not talking about potential storms - we're talking about storms that were largely fully-formed at birth off Japan that, based on the preceding storm tracks, were going to do nothing but gather energy and strengthen on their way across the NPac. If you really had any specific knowledge of the weather of those particular days you wouldn't make as stupid a comment like "every time bad weather was predicted". You guys can keep cluelessly attempting to portray that week as simply just another storm, or just another risk, but the fact is - for anyone with half a clue - it was a guaranteed sequence of big storms squalling through. And if climbers would put a half the effort into weather that surfers, windsurfers, and hang and paraglider pilots do we'd have a lot fewer fatalities in the mountains. As it is, a lot of these incidents and the general attitudes you're intent on selling look like nothing more than bold ignorance and uneducated gambling. But hey, maybe that's simply part of the alpine culture.

Jim just called again from work saying he's getting worked hard there and does in fact want to postpone to next Wed. Maybe the returning Valley team will be fully recouped by then...

Again, if you consistently watch NPac weather and the jetstream, it's pretty easy to tell which storms are a sure bet and which ones are going to be hard to call - these four storms weren't hypothetical or 'maybe' in any way shape or form - they were a sure thing guided home by a very strong jetsream parked over us. Nothing about that situation constituted your normal 'we all take risks' situation. In rock climbing terms it was like onsight free soloing 5.11's - great if you're good and nothing bad happens. You are right they tried to go in one of the windows, which was literally a 20+ something hour window - but the next storms were obviously barrelling in right on their heels. Light and fast? As I said, I don't do alpine so can't really speak to that, but I can't imagine three people being anything but more hassle than two, particularly when things start to go bad.

Jim just called and said if people are too busy this week that he could wait until next week, he has until the end of the month. He also said to put the word out that he's looking for a refrigerator...

I don't, but I climb and windsurf in the Gorge, watch the weather closely and know exactly what it means when four significant storms are stacked up across the north pacific all the way to Japan and marching lockstep to a strong jetstream that is hunkered down over PDX - three very short windows between really bad conditions across the entire mountain. Again, that week was a obvious freight train of bad news barreling through the Gorge consisting of multiple storms of sufficient magnitude to make the possibility of opportunistic localized effects on the mountain basically nil - each of them was going to bring full-tilt conditions across the entire mountain. Going in any of those windows left no room for error and little possibility of rescue.

Bullshit, the combination of Pacific infrared satellite and Jetstream positioning were a complete no-brainer for staying off the mountain then - it was in no way a matter of either a 'hindsight' or a 'had to be there' sort of deal in any way whatsoever. It was more akin to playing Russian Roulette with five rounds chambered.

I would if I could. You might try pm'ing Jeff (go_up), tell him I sent you...

Can anyone else make it tomorrow (Wed) night? Maybe call your friends who might not see this thread?

Thanks for the weather ref's. Not sure how to read the Jet Stream view in light of the multi-colored bar along the bottom but I guess I'll figure it out. This should be of even more use to me when I begin surfing. Intellicast's Jetstream graphic is probably a little easier to read, but is only the current position of the Jetstream whereas the Stormsurf link is a rolling forecast of where they think it's headed. The main thing you're interested is where it sits relative to its highest windspeeds. It's generally in a roughly east-west orientation moving north or south up and down the west coast from Canada to California, but occasionally comes in at an angle or a north-south orientation coming at us from west to east. Any time it's sitting right over us it usually means the storms coming in off the Pacific are going to be coming our way.

Two fundamental reasons from my perspective: Ignoring the weather and feeling compelled and obligated to climb because you've traveled for, and organized your lives around, a specific, short window for a climb. I'm not an alpine climber, but watch the weather closely in the winter so I can rock climb Beacon rock in the nearby Columbia River Gorge. I climbed both the day they arrived at the hut and the day they left it and had been watching the weather intently that whole week on Stormsurf's Pacific and Jetstream forecasts along with Intellicast's Infrared Sat. Significant storms were clearly stacked up across the North Pacific set to come in waves one after another and the Jetstream was on top of us. Window conditions in the Gorge were just dry enough for me to squeak in the climbs, but both days were a couple of the most brutal I've encountered at Beacon and was battling bitterly cold, steady 50-60kt winds and much higher gusts on the final corner ridge pitch. One look at the conditions out in the Pacific in combination with the position of the Jetstream told the story on Hood. My take is the lesson should be that locals have the luxury of picking and choosing their windows but travelers do not, and so should be prepared to back off on a lousy forecast no matter how far you've traveled or how much went into arranging your lives to make the climb possible.