JosephH

Your point is well taken in general, but with regard to this, how often does 'extreme weather' materialize out of the blue? Rarely I think, and it certainly hasn't been the case in most incidents on the mountain we've seen in recent years where the weather windows have been predictable and obvious to anyone bothering to look at detailed weather data. Rather, either the forecast wasn't consulted or, seemingly in a lot of cases, judgment calls have been made again and again to go with short windows.

Bend real estate trends Much depends on the inventory, backlog and ongoing rate of foreclosures and that is typically a very localized neighborhood-by-neighborhood phenom within cities across the country where one small part of town sustains high prices while many others are decimated by foreclosures. The foreclosure rates depend on a couple of factors such as whether the state has judicial foreclosures or not (we don't) and how fast the banks foreclose in any market - too fast or too slow and the banks screw themselves. ForeclosuresRadar I take the following chart to imply that banks are witholding listing their foreclosure inventories in order to raise prices somewhat - or at least their inventories are not falling at near the same rate as their listing of the inventory. If the banks can sustain that prices will be up somewhat but those prices will cycle back down if they can't.

If you want to start somewhere, you might start with the United States' long and painful history of failing to understand the Mideast isn't Latin America; that you can't operate the same as you would in Latin America and expect the same results in the Mideast. Hint #1: there are no Latin suicide bombers (i.e. no Latino male is going to trade pussy in the real world for the promise of 70 or 700 hundred virgin Mary versions of their mother in the afterlife). Then simply wind forward through one clueless misadventure after another in the region over the span of a hundred and fifty years and you arrive at today's ill-considered fiascoes. In the course of doing that it should become obvious 9/11 requires no conspiracy other than a confederacy of evangelical- and corporate-influenced foreign policy dunces.

Wait...

Dude, you and Opdycke need to get together for a long lunch.

We can only surmise what happens to it once Buck and Kimmo start riffing on sasquatch, nessie, and ufo's.

These types of resources are great for the general weather forecast, but only constitute the minimal extreme events that can occur at elevation. It's entirely possible to have a perfectly clear outlook and have a rather severe orthographic driven weather event. This would be very likely on mountains like Shasta or Hood or SW Olympics which don't have much disturbances upstream. I agree that you can have fairly localized weather events on the mountains, but the big risks I've seen over the years have been folks not anticipating the time between significant and obvious storm fronts coming ashore, often with a predictable cadence. The links above are provided in that context, not for "general forecasts", but solely to understand what's stacked out to Japan and when it's likely to come ashore. In the winter these are often quite well-defined systems and events which are obvious on the pacific infrared sat animation loops. If three of them are strung out and coming ashore with the jet stream is on top of us it isn't rocket science what's going to happen as each front moves onshore nor how long it's likely to be between them. So yeah, you have to be prepared to deal with localized conditions on the mountain, but there's no reason to be up there as obvious and significant fronts are coming onshore. Here's an example from today. Three significant and obviously recognizable events - one onshore and moving through, two more stacked over to Japan with a split jet stream recombining to sit over us. Pretty clear what's going to happen and the only question really is how long a window between each of them. Infrared above, jet stream below...

It would seem on Hood that again and again folks fail to give themselves much if any buffer on the weather window and / or are insufficiently informed about what weather is stacked up out across the Pacific waiting to come ashore. Picking a weather window with enough of a buffer to either deal yourself or be rescued is fairly straightforward judgment. Heading up without being sufficiently informed on the weather is just a mistake and by and large an easily preventable one. The weather resources available today are unparalleled and there is no reason to not avail yourself of them prior to climbing. Just the global / pacific animated infrared sat loop alone gives you a decent picture of what fronts, if any, are stacked up all the way over to Asia and the three day jet stream forecast gives you a fair sense of how and where those fronts are going to come ashore. Those two together with an endless array of local / reginal three and seven day forecasts round out a pretty fair idea of what weather windows to expect. Seems crazy folks either don't avail themselves of the info or pick tight windows without enough, or any, backend margin to deal with unseen circumstances.

It's no big secret that a lot of uneducated Americans and even some educated ones can't sort fact from fiction and wouldn't know a 'system' if it bit them on the ass. P.S. Did someone force your to drink aspartame? What percentage of diabetes is self-inflicted? Gettagrip.

80 percent of the CIA's resources are spent on disinformation. The "straw man" is a well known disinformation tactic. Present an obviously false theory then try to tie it to the credible theories to discredit them. One of the real problems with government-related conspiracy theories is an overall lack of understanding of government charters, organization, policies, operations, competence, and effectiveness. That, and a poor understanding of human nature and how government 'plays out' in the real world. Typical conspiracies always a assume that somewhere there exists some government organization or another which operates and executes with an unworldly effectiveness and inviolate secrecy and security. It's a wholly fictional, unrealistic, and naive view of the world, of governments, and of human nature in general. And what's always the first casualty when you step off the precipice of this labyrinth of diminishing reality? Common sense. Why? Because none of these conspiracy theories - and most especially 911 - pass even the vaguest means test against common sense, Occam's razor, and undeniable realities and (gasp!) facts on the ground. All of these conspiracy theories are grounded in manufactured, self-reinforcing shared realities not unlike those of online games. In fact, they share a lot in common with online realities like Second Life. Pretty much predictable when you pile a broad mix of classic far-right and -left fringe paranoia, religion, politics, fiction, the paranormal, pseudo-science, scifi, and schizophrenia into the blender that is the Internet and shake vigorously. I'm also positing more recent waves of it exhibit no small correlation with the past forty years of Dent/Atwater/Reed/Rovian social manipulations and the rise of right-wing media and talk radio. [ P.S. And you clearly don't know squat about intelligence agencies in general and the CIA in particular. ]

Kevbone declares facts are dead or, if not quite dead, can be taken on a self-service basis or sourced from the evidence sculptor of your choice. I'm thinking it's a quantum sort of deal deal where every version of the 'facts' are 'true' all at the same time. Kev, dude... Then again, we have a strong local tradition of creative perceptual realization and you certainly aren't the first PDX climber to just invent convenient realities as they go along.

These days conspiracies are just a way of measuring individual and broad demographic IGI (Internet Gullibility Index).

Dude, deflect all you want, but it's known that cc.com is an NSA honey pot for mind control experimentation and Kimmo is just a conspiracy turing machine passing all troll-tests with flying colors. I myself and a digital avatar created to wreak havoc on all things imaginarily Beaconesque. And, you sire, know very well you're just a small cog in the NWO wheel - and how do you live with yourself? When are you going to admit vaccines are explicitly designed to dilute our male essence, lower our trad difficulty at least two grades, and make our balls shrivel to the size of peppercorns when confronted with the 'TRUTH' of it all which is plain to see if you'd simply open your loins to it. Opdycke abstains from the internet and especially cc.com for a very good reason - purity of essences and a grave concern for the corrosive effect alien conspiracies can have on us all. He knows all the moderators are reptilian interlopers and the siren call of Kevbone's posts. We should likewise all heed his sage lead and abstain from this internet climbing purgatory lest the end be nigh.

I wish it were possible to say, "you just can't make this sort of shit up", but clearly you can. The internet gullibility factor is 'skyrocketing'.

None of us has to, too many of us do.

The issue isn't length, the issue is uneven rope ends on rappel. Common sense can and should obviate that risk, but it still can and does happen. I don't know, but it's a total no-brainer from my perspective, but hey, that's just me.

Yep, Ivan, a turkey in every pot...

I'm not suggesting anyone use bicolor as a crutch or as a substitute for common sense, but that it tends to mitigate a certain class of error which otherwise can and does 'slip' under the radar. Coming from back east I've used halfs extensively in the past and buy them and twins in pairs and wouldn't be inclined to be swapping them out for new ones individually. Also most of the time when you are climbing with halfs you aren't doing full pitches, that's more of a singles / twins deal, so losing a couple of meters isn't a big deal and evening them up isn't exactly rocket science. And while I agree the ropes are never 'equal' length at the belay device by definition of what you are doing with halfs, starting out even has a lot going for it as it does when rapping.

Yeah, all my singles are bicolors except my Mammut Supersafes - bicolors are definitely the way to go on singles to help prevent rapping accidents. But on halfs it's not the case and I just don't see a good case for keeping them unequal lengths if you really use them strictly as doubles and use them frequently.

Have a good one, wrap that shite up, and come back safe.

Huh? Deal with it? That would be evening them up. And the rope could be further damaged? Jesus, I hope so, like cut all the way through at the same length. Wrap the spot with two wraps of sport tape and slice it with a razor knife, melt the end, take off the tape, and you're good.

Chop, chop - if you really use them as doubles.

You know you are delusional when you can't bribe the Turks with $36 billion and have to leave one of your linchpin armies stranded on Turkish docks during the invasion of Iraq.

I did. Effecting a surgical cure is much less desirable then dodging the bullet to begin with. Reporting a serious, post-vaccine medical event to VAERS in no way establishes causal link. On investigation almost none of VAERS serious adverse events such as death, GBS, or blood clots could be shown to be a result of Gardasil. Other risk factors with far higher likely causal linkages were almost always present. And in those which weren't the odds as I listed previously indicate the risk involved. So this: Is a totally misleading statement which in no way reflects causality but rather just a reporting relationship to VAERS. Correct, but pointless in any rational discussion - one should obviously be employing both vaccines and smears. What is left out is that warts, and other suspected cancers don't necessarily clear on their own. And being afflicted with warts in the absence of cancer is also not a desirable outcome. Absolutely true and that will remain the case until we all have e-medical records. But Kaiser Permanente did an HPV4 safety study within their system with full access to patient records and declared it safe. the above hpv stats indicate TOTAL hpv incidence (among those tested!!), NOT the strains that gardasil offers (very good) protection for: those strains are less than 5%, closer to 2% i believe. The point is prevalence - as in: that's fine, but make sure you are sharing correct information about the vaccine, and you simply are NOT doing that right now (whether it's because you simply misunderstand, or are willfully "disagreeing" with me (this gets my vote), i don't know). No, I believe you are the one misunderstanding both what Harper is saying (mostly business tactics and public health economics)and how VAERs works. The risks are quite real. ... and understand that the efficacy period is 4-6 years! i believe dr. harper states 5, specifically. don't have the false impression that your daughter is protected for longer. also keep in mind the vaccine does not protect against all types of cancer-causing hpv's, so women still need pap smears (which are more effective than the vaccine in preventing cervical cancer!). The efficacy period has been validated for that period because that's how long we've been tracking it. No one knows for sure how long the efficacy will be for each subtype or when or if boosters will be required. The research to date favors a longer efficacy period rather than shorter at least with subtype 16. We are still entirely comfortable with our decision to have her vaccinated.

We can only hope they keep it up as the one thing for sure the world doesn't need any time soon is another republican administration.