JosephH

Did I just hear the human jambox complain about someone's auditory excess ruining his experience?

Dave, you're just not keeping up with the times. The implicit assertion being made is you shouldn't get hurt on a sport climb, i.e. they should be relatively riskless (like in gyms, for recent parents, and serious hobbiyists). Times have changed and you and your routes are showing their age. Who knew the day would arrive when sport climbs would join the vaunted ranks of 'adventure climbing'.

That's the difference between the two. You invest the time to progressively develop the skills to do that walk and you aren't going to fuck it up - it isn't a cheap thrill where you can put the requisite gear and skills together by rummaging around in your trunk.

Chinese J-14 developed with the best ideas we couldn't protect. and the J-20 right on its heels...

How about climbers acknowledging and addressing the Shoshone-Bannock concerns and looking for ways to get involved to help protect the Cedar Field archaeological site instead of just responding with the usual "climbers are being singled out" tale of woe.

Balls don't make the climber, batteries do.

Good ones Bill! UAV fighters will likely be mixed autonomous / remote-piloted and designed to deal with transient loss of signal. Wide area jamming would likely take too much energy. Hijacking one would require unlikely realtime decryption capabilities as the UAVs will probably have per mission encryption keys. Orbital weapons platforms have been a conservative Hardy Boys wet dream for decades, but nothing will ever come of it - more the other way around as the Chinese have been testing - satellite-killing kinetics which would be better than jamming, but probably be on the fasttrack to the use of nukes. P.S. You can sort of see where things are headed through the lens of the latest UAV/ISR platform out of Northrup/Rutan: http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=221181

Good on you for that, keep it up, and good luck with it - you definitely have the spirit for climbing to see it through.

Big thumbs up to that...!

Cost of putting a human behind the controls of a high performance fighter or fighter/bomber is exorbitant - basically one-half to two-thirds of the total cost and the most limiting performance factor. We could probably build three UAV fighters for the cost of each F-35. The fighter and fighter / bomber role today is way better served with a mix of UAVs and cruise and other missiles. Hell, you could autonomously send twice as many UAVs as you have pilots to the near a battle and then have a the pilots jumping from downed UAVs to one's parked on-station. From a cost and performance perspective the combination of UAVs and missiles is just pretty tough to beat in most any scenario.

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Don't be mean...

Bugs and blades are one thing, but doesn't it take pro in these placements...?

Young Peregrines, Hawks and especially the Ravens, in the years they nest on the East Face, are all a loud full-on party riot with endless antics, intra- and inter-species chases, fights, thefts, and squawks and it isn't about us.

Washington Discover Pass thread

Yep, the 84% of the Discover Pass use-fees is an attempt at a direct replacement for state General Fund operating dollars which have been eliminated in the attempt. DNR and WDFW have had other license and use fees forever - it's a major change in WSP funding, however.

84% of the Discover Pass revenue is going to WSP because it's essentially losing all state General Fund operating cash. Also, only a dozen parks out of 120 make more money than they cost to operate so there really wasn't any choice other than move to a fee for use model for operating revenue.

It's a skill-less, thrill-seeking activity with an all but vacuous over-in-a-minute content. Sooner or later things like that will always attract the unaware and / or the negligent. Also keep in mind it has now likely and directly jeopardized highlining in the park - an activity the does require some considerable discipline and skills development.

And they've been running understaffed that entire time. They run three times as many parks as Colorado with these stats: Wash: 120 Parks / 662 FTE / 500 Temp / 300,000 Volunteer Hours / 46 million annual visitors Colo: 42 Parks / 290 FTE / 742 Temp / 154.1 million Volunteer Hours / 11 million annual visitors So, even if you hired WSP staff to achieve similar volunteer hours, the WSP FTE staff (1162 / 120 = 9.7 per park) is spread far thinner by a long shot than their Colorado brethren (1042 / 42 = 24.6 per park). Colorado has close to three times the headcount per park. WSP staff also provide services to four times the number of visitors than do CSP staff. Plus, the Discovery Pass now accounts for the majority of the WSP operating budget versus a fraction of WDFW and DNR. In that regard, you by poaching, aren't a classic dirtbag no matter how hard you try to adopt that persona, instead you're just another low life leaching off the state and might as well be illegally collecting foodstamps and other forms of state aid.

It should be noted that it isn't weathering that takes a toll on dyneema slings but rather the repeated bending. Mine were used as trad draws and as such went through many repeated bending cycles. I'm guessing a straight weathering test has interesting results, however, it's probably unwise to use dyneema slings that long due to breakdown associated with repeated bending and flexing.

Wrong, at least at Beacon... There is no 'non-essential state staff' in the WSP - they've been running understaffed relative to their responsibilities for a decade. Wrong again. Beacon's ex-head ranger is now WSP finance head for SW Washington parks - figuring out how to do more with less is all they've been doing for a decade because less is all they've had. A complete bonehead assertion. An utter and complete fabrication - WSP do make a good living wage, but are carry both law enforcement and park management responsibilities and are not supported at anywhere near a 5-6 person ratio and instead have a fairly fanatical workload that would have you bitching non-stop. Another completely bonehead assertion. But instead they have to deal with clueless idiots all day who trash the place and boneheads who try to dodge and poach all the fees. Bravo dude. Makes you wonder how they keep ahead of the relentless whiners and boneheads at all.

I used, and then had tested, Mammut 8mm dyneema slings over a four year period. I used the slings in my climbing at Beacon Rock for approximately seven months each year. Bottom line is that by the end of year three they, on average, ended up breaking at 8-10k. That's less than 50% of their original rating. Mammut said they make such slings for fast-and-light alpine applications and that we should consider them a 'consumable' item in that application. They are not and should not be treated like nylon slings which have a much longer usable life span.

The three departments involved in the passes were running way under resourced prior to the recession and now have been asked to do the impossible without near adequate staffing or resources. The Discovery Pass is a reasoned response to simply shutting down and closing resources. It has nothing whatsoever to do with 'jobs' and especially nothing to do with signage or enforcement jobs - no one has been hired to do signage or enforcement - no, they've both just been heaped as added responsibilities on an already overworked staff. "Sounds a lot like" you filter everything through the narrow filter of you and your wallet without bothering to examine any of the facts involved. Just more of the sort of self-absorbed [republican] thinking that got us into this shitstorm to begin with. Yeah, hey, it worked out great for two wars, let's run unfunded parks and blame the staff for coming up with solutions to keep parks open - clearly a guberment makework conspiracy. One doesn't have to guess to hard you'd be bitching up a storm if they closed any of the three department's resources you use.

Certainly not, but the bottom line is land manager perceptions of the activities of skilless thrillseekers and avid youtubians can threaten access to more skilled and disciplined pursuits within the park. Elitist? Sure, but oh f#ckin' well.

Inappropriate use of climbing gear for activities like this, in a high profile arena, frequented by large enough demographic of people without the skills to recognize and avoid "unfortunate set of circumstances" is just an accident that hasn't happened yet. In today's demographic where belay drops, lowering miscommunication failures, and uneven rap rope falls are now endemic if not the 'new normal' you can bet your ass those "unfortunate circumstances" are always right around the next corner at a venue like Smith. The rope swing definitely counted as an 'attractive nuisance' at a high traffic place like Smith and it was only a matter of time before this happened. Again, want to jump off shit? Step up to the real deal and learn to base.