JosephH

Whew, glad that didn't last too long...

STP - the logical, legal, constitutional, and common sense failings of your entire tract are too numerous to detail, but - even leaving aside the inanity and ignorance inherent in the 'determined vs. behavioral' point - the overarching debacle of what you keep writing is the classic [Rovian] approach to turning bigots and racists into victims. It constantly amazes my how you folks on the right rail against 'big government' and 'government in our lives' on one hand and then can't wait to impose government at every turn when it suits what I consider your decidedly anti-American religious and social agendas. Hey, if you, like the Cheneys, Gingrichs, and any number of other folks on the right don't like gays and gay behavior, then for god's sake ST[O]P HAVING AND RAISING THEM! Again, you whole sad litany is a wolf of ignorance and bigotry attempting to pose as a victimal sheep bleeting and bleeting about how 'put upon' you and fellow white suburbanites are - pathetic and weak at best, relentlessly insulting and dangerous at worst.

This is one of those rare, almost-too-difficult-to-take moments when I'm in complete agreement with Kev - well said.

As I understand it, the accident happened to a party which included two brothers, the wife of one of the brothers, and the children of one of the brothers. One of the brothers and the wife were the only ones involved in the accident itself.

We'll have to wait for either an official WSP analysis or a statement from the survivor. It's don't believe it's even clear at this point whether they were climbing or sport rappelling. Everyone should remain patient at this point relative to the details. What is abundantly clear is that everyone should probably review how they think and operate when around edges and tops of climbs.

I have, long ones. The first in my twenties because climbing really just didn't have any emotional 'bang-for-the-buck' left for me. When I got around to it again a few years later I had a grueling and semi-horrifying journey back given I had previously been climbing at a .13 level and doing lots of FA's. Nothing is more humiliating than being humongous and clueless staring up the first moves of your own climb and not having even an inkling of an idea of what to do or a chance of doing it. But since then I've been in and out of climbing a dozen times including this past winter. In a perverse way I now actually enjoy losing the weight and getting back in shape. Take Sunday for instance. I did the first [trad] lead of the season on a climb I could free solo with my eyes closed last October - Sunday I backed off the approach to the crux six times shaking like a leaf. Not even the crux - just the setup for the crux. I did finally push through it, but the fat-boy-on-a-rope deal is humbling. But like I said, I've been through the loop so many times now I kind of like it. I have the big advantage of having done it enough times that I don't have to worry about whether or not I can do it - whether I can come back or not to top shape - I know I can. It is a challenge though, and not a small one, losing 15-30 pounds (which I've variously done) and going from a desk to a 5.xx can be just as hard and rewarding by itself. On the otherhand it's all a pain in the ass and you're better not getting out of shape. How much of a challenge it is 'coming back' would be reflected in the stats if there were any, but the attrition rate each from age 25 on is pretty remarkable and really takes off in the early 30's as kids happen - most never return to climbing.

Wha dat? You clever old snake charmer! How much of the roll did you have and was that 14 or 12 gauge? Just kidding! Looks like you guys had a blast up there. You've really impressed me this past year with your persistence in getting out, onsight stepping up to some solid stuff, and just going about your business. Ok, the TRs are fun too...

I've heard and read more about the accident and it just seems particularly tragic from every conceivable angle (and not that all such accidents aren't tragedies). My utmost condolences to their families both of which sound dedicated to the notion of service to their communities.

From the sound of it I suspect it was an unfortunate case of not having much experience on top of climbs and with edges. To some this may not seem to be a thing one needs to 'think' about explicitly, but in reality there are some basic protocols for operating safely around a cliff top and edge. This is also an aspect of climbing folks don't get any exposure to climbing in gyms so it can be a very new experience their first few times outside and it's easy to underestimate the dangers involved. Another thing which can play in to such accidents is that climbing these days if a very social activity with a lot of non-climbing personal interaction, this can present significant and subtle hazards even when folks are operating from the ground, but such distractions can be exceedingly dangerous operating near an edge which requires constant focus and deliberate coordination if anyone else is involved. I'm not saying any of the above played into this particular accident, but these are things worth remembering and are important to convey to new climbers on their first trips outdoors.

Well, we drive on socialst interstates and most of these guys are all for spending federal dollars to keep socialist wilderness roads open. And socialism? True class-cutting socialism comes in the form of a pandemic that quickly spirals out of control due to a lack of basic healthcare and the fact that we've all but disassembled our public health apparatus and infrastructure.

Simply put, we can go to the moon, deliver amazing fire-power anywhere in the world almost overnight, invent endless technology goodness, but somehow, somehow we can't manage to provide basic healthcare for all American's in an affordable manner. The notion that we can't provide the best healthcare in the world and do it faster and cheaper than anyone else on the planet is a lie. The only reason we don't is due to the mafia-like stranglehold insurance and pharmaceutical companies have over the system and their use of classic Rovian techniques to maintain that choke hold on the country. Until recently most corporations played along, but even they now realize they're at risk under the current system - that private insurance is a failure and burden U.S. businesses cannot and never will be able to afford. All of the obstacles are tied directly to what amounts to theft on a massive scale not unlike the what's gone on in the financial sector. Or at least that's half of the problem; the other half is the cummulative affects of diet, TV, obesity, and lack of exercise in our increasingly sedentary culture. U.S. Healthcare = FAIL - by any measure - and forget Canada, we are failing horribly compared to what we are capable of and our potential. So long as our healthcare systems is weighed down by a crushing administrative overhead, a parasitic insurance industry which delivers negative value, and is managed (gamed) to skim 'profits' out of the system, then we'll continue to decline as a nation both in quality of life and competitiveness. Let's put it another way, regardless of what you think of it, these clowns make the folks running our education system look like a crew of honest, hardworking, highly-efficient Einsteins by comparison.

Yer basic head exploding stuff...

Moof has it exactly right, cloves can cut, the alpine butterfly is what you want for that purpose, but it has it's downsides as underworld states. I sometimes butterfly into a 'sacrificial' piece that won't hold up and which is set just above a 'real' point of pro. But in general you're better off just rebelaying with a long skinny sling or rubberband. Edit: P.S. It pays to make sure your alpine butterfly knots are well-dressed, this isn't a knot to be sloppy with.

Ivan rebelaying periodically on the way up will keep the slack from running through your self-belay device. Heavy rubberbands girth hitched will do it the trick quite well or use longer skinny slings so they can ride up clean in a fall. Basically the same sort of rebelaying underworld is talking about to isolate around sharp edges, but for a different purpose.

1: "Using asterik pass with a 100 lbs of shit on my back was essentially a failed suicide attempt" Been there, hated that. 2 : "rappel w/ the pig on runner girth-hitched to your harness and dangling between your leg." This is where the much maligned, misunderstood, and / or ignored Petzl Shunt totally shines. Shunt on the belay loop, rap device up a trad draw's height above it attached to the belay loop above the Shunt, bag hangs off the rap device - not any part of you; never touch the rap device when rapping, only the Shunt. 3 : "for christ's sake, find some way to protect jagged edges from cutting the rope and killing you!"

How about a warranty on old, ego-tripping, chauvenistic white guys who looked down their noses at the pitiful manufacturing attempts of all those [defeated] little yellow people and then proceeded to masturbate each other for the next thirty nine years until they lapsed into a coma of complete irrelevance.

That's ridiculous - I'd have to look for the stats, but trust me, the docs and nurses are not the ones making out on our healthcare - the insurance and pharmaceuticals are. In the 'raid' I keep talking about, the raiders essentially skimmed $100-150k off the top of every doc in the nation. So, if they're alluding to what may be charged for docs' time, then that would again be the managed care outfits and insurance companies making out, not the docs themselves - BUT, I'll have to look at the article because sitting here at the moment I don't remotely believe that statement.

My point exactly - this isn't 'competition', it's a gamed system built and rigged for insurance and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of both consumers and providers. They raided and took over the system in the late 80's thru early '90s right after they finished raiding all the weakly governed corporations for their pension funds.

The question is simple and has direct parallels to the Wall Street collapse and many other aspects of our society. Central and South American drug cartels are simply exercising their perogatives in a competitive free market setting devoid of government regulation and oversight and also arming themselves under a self-declared second ammendment. It's basic Adam Smith stuff - they sell us drugs, we sell them guns. And don't be confused, weapons use in Mexico is almost entirely a militia activity, it is not about unrestrained, random, or unassociated crime by individuals in possession of a weapon. These are militias, paramilitaries, and shadow enforcement organizations - it's all sanctioned and 'organized' as a basic and opertaive component of their economy at this point. It's probably duking it out with tourism to be the #2 economic driver behind oil. And who can blame them? The have a long pipeline to secure, distribution networks to defend, and they have to oversee the gangs they employ to manage the business on the ground - all expensive stuff and they don't waste a lot of change on management classes - they rule through fear and intimdation. I mean, isn't it obvious why weapons in a poor, largely uneducated society that sits astride one of the worlds busiest drug pipelines exhibits inordinate instability? Consider it the difference between the showroom (us) and the factory floor (them) - things are always more chaotic and messy, especially when you mix in mass quantities of our weapons. Also, if the notion is that we can broadly interpret the second amendment to mean essentially unrestrained access to weapons without some serious negative consequences and blowback in the bargain then I'd say you're either in denial, dreaming, or hallucenating.

I forget now, but aren't you in the technology business? You're confusing 'competition' that generates efficiencies and adds value with 'competition' which embues entirely needless complexity, rampant redundancy, and provides absolutely no value add. Again, collectively, the private Medicare Plan D providers way more than double senior drug costs under the program. It was a classic example of BushCo's corporate welfare, 'free enterprise' system on steroids - the closest example I can think of to it is post-invasion contracting in Iraq. How is diverting tax revenue to corporations which increase complexity and provide negative value add a 'competitive' approach to healthcare or any other infrastructure requirement. Jesus, I mean from the day the leashes came off it took private industry and 'free markets / enterprise' a mere 9.5 years to destroy two thirds of the world's economies - this is a model to aspire to? Maybe in some restrained, moral, and 'conservative' culture of a bygone era, but after 50+ years of television and sophisticated consumer marketing we've become a gaming society with a monetary rather than a moral bottom line - rather than an era where fraud was contained to edge conditions since the mid-'80s it has been clearly shown again and again to be a fundamental component of business. Or, as my accountant says - 'Corporations absent of appropriate government oversight are indistinquishable from organized crime". The results of which currently do not readily support either the notion that 'less regulation is the answer' or that 'competitive free markets are the answer'. The problem with the latter in all forms of the insurance business is there is no competition per se, the players are not playing as competitors, they are playing as an felonious - if not treasonous - cartels and syndicates.

Yes, it is a bit odd and specious to advocate for SCOTUS' recent interpretation of the second ammendment on one hand and with the other say why, if you remove gun violence, our healthcare systems provide equivalent care even if far more expensively. And hey, none of this isn't rocket science, it's actually pretty straightforward. Take the Medicare Plan D for instance. Funny how you can't even find a national list of 'providers', but last I heard back when the plan started there were at least 47 insurance providers doing business in Plan D. Think about it. 47 companies hired a sales force, policy folks, claims folks, and all 47 designed custom software for every aspect of the system. Not only does this represent a massive government giveaway to corporate America, it imposes an amazing amount of completely unnecessary complexity, and what efficiencies and cost savings do we get for that - aside from massively confusing seniors - none. That's right, none - in fact by comparison, the VA consistently pays half for the same drugs. It's a vast and wide clusterfuck of epic proportions to the tune of billions of dollors of overhead and lost cost opportunities all flushed directly down the drain in the name of "free enterprise". And actully, aside from the fact that I'm from Chicago, you knew Obama was a player, a pragmatist, and going to be sadly disappointing progressives again and again the minute he said on the campaign trail that insurance companies were going to be part of healthcare reform. READ MY LIPS - by definition healthcare reform that results in the existence of private insurance companies involved with the administration of a baselevel of universal healthcare isn't healthcare reform. Insurance companies provide no value in the stack. Period. And to answer jayb's question, of course healthcare providers recover their costs by any means possible - they have to and the insurance companies are in on the game. And that game is played across the insurance business. Ever been quoted one price for something with insurance and another price if you don't have any? New windshield, body work, dental work, eyeglasses - it's all fraud gaming the system. Bottomline - U.S. corporations will never be able to compete on the world stage if they are responsible for employee and retiree healthcare. Again, it's an infrastructure and public health concern; it's not a business businesses should be in. And purely from a pandemic public health perspective, it is rank insanity that every human in the U.S. doesn't have access to a [universal] baselevel of healthcare - extremely resistant TB just doesn't give a rats ass about economic, class, suburban, or coach boundaries once it's bred in healthcare coverage dead zones. And don't kid yourselves - rationing happens, it's happening now - we just do it differently. And that would work fine so long as we didn't have public emergency rooms, but with that back door open we're just kidding ourselves about how we go about it. You want homeland security, you want a return to a lasting economic recovery, you want businesses to thrive - then deal with healthcare - establish universal coveverage at some baselevel, build a single payer system with no insurance company involvement, and allow insurance companies and well-off consumers to create a new market for value-added coverage. Think the government can't do it? The VA is proof it can it has the best medical records technology on earth and has had for years now. Pharmaceuticals? Texplorer on this board is about to start his second pharmacuetical residency at the Reno VA hospital doing data mining and national efficacy studies - pharmaceutical companies HATE the VA because they actually are on top of the games and play hardball. It's all a game, a sham, and one riddled with parasitic middlemen. It's not much differently gamed than the one that just collapsed on Wall street. It's all propped up on 'free market' propaganda and the righteous politics of indignation and fear on main street. But again, tell the folks in SE Oregon about free market healthcare and they'll tell you they now have to drive hundreds of miles and book a hotel room to avail themselves of it.

At the end of October I had what seemed to be a heart attack while at a conference in LA. I went to Good Sams ER on the insistence of my sister who is an ER doc down there. I was treated promptly, but still spent eight hours in the ER before being admitted for an echocardio stress test in the morning. The upshot of it all was I apparently had a gastro-reflux episode, not a heart attack (could have fooled me). So in the end it cost about $18k for the following of which very good (and expensive non-group) insurance picked up about $13k. God forbid anything had actually been wrong. - 1 hour of ER work (the rest was waiting for things) - ER doc - 2 nurses - 1 stress tester - Review by cardiologist - Review by pulmonologist - 3 ecg - 1 xray - 1 blood workup - 1 baby's aspirin - 1 nitro spray under tongue - 1 nitro patch - 1 intravenous nexium - 1 bed - 1 echocardio stress test Is that reasonable? Could be, but when it costs $18k to handle someone who is basically fine it gives you some idea of how fast you'd be racking up costs if something were actually wrong. All in all I have good insurance, but even with that we're still basically one bad incidence away from being wiped out. Add to that I'm self-employed and the risk goes higher (totally on me and by my choice). Our healthcare system? Go to SE Oregon where the last nurse practicioner is closing their doors leaving the SE part of the state with no medical coverage of any kind like much of rural America. Add to that the fact that employee and retiree health benefits are just killing U.S. competitiveness in world markets, and then add the wholly unecessary administrative overhead of a myriad of insurance companies, and I come solidly down on the side of our system being a complete trainwreck. We don't run any other part of our infrastructure for profit, and it's completely stupid to run our healthcare system that way from an international competitiveness perspective. And the rightwing mantra of "leave medicine to the doctors, not the gov't" - what utter bullshit - these are the same clowns who took over, raped, and all but destroyed our medical system in the '80s and '90s with 'managed care'. The republicans explicitly didn't want doctors making medical decisions - they manufactured a system which explicitly took decision-making out of doctor's hands and gave it to insurance companies. And poor Natasha? She doomed herself on the slopes when she weighed appropriate medical care against the potential media circus which would ensue and chose wrong. She'd have likely been just as dead skiing anywhere in the US. And with regard to helivac services in CA - get real. All of CA has a massive remote northern territories to provide coverage to - much of it inaccessible in the winter - their helivac coverage is prioritized to service those remote northern areas that have no medical coverage of any kind (SE Oregon should be so lucky).

I believe it was actually Roger Ebert who convinced her on the need to syndicate if she ever wanted to control her own destiny...

Understatement of the year for me given I was coming from a sandstone/basalt background. Slick as snot - especially don't sweat...

Come to Beacon when it opens and aid 'Ground Zero'. Its first anchor has four side-by-side bolts and is a good spot for practicing setting up a ledge and bivy.