counterfeitfake

Obviously if it HAD been the only support he wouldn't have run his truck into it. You'd have to be some kind of a dumbass.

...climb a cedar tree...

weak trolls

survivor

wanky sprayers hell-bent on propagating an argument at the expense of just about every other thread

How do you tie a wanklette?

Your high school's graduating class on myspace?

Okay, I had envisioned that drawing but thought that those knots would make it no longer a sliding x. Thinking harder I realize that it can still slide some. Le doi. Thanks!

Engaging noob mode... There was some discussion here about anchors, precipitated by this thread over at rc.com (before our thread devolved utterly into spray). Glancing at the RC.com thread, I wondered: what is this "sliding X with extension limiting knots" that they mention? I did a little searching but only came up with references back to various other RC.com threads. I tried to envision the system and couldn't. Can someone illustrate?

chin holds

SURELY someone climbed it this weekend...

Seriously. Use the boot laces to tie them to the outsided of your pack.

Hate the spray, hate the sprayer.

There's a bigass boulder in Bothell: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&q=&near=bothell,+wa&t=h&ll=47.767778,-122.17616&spn=0.001156,0.003251&t=h Haven't looked at it up close since I was a kid. It's got a lot of moss on it.

Wasn't factor 2, I was about level with the anchor and traversing. Probably didn't stress it too bad.

Did'ja get the F-Bomb? That would be Jeff! Haha, yeah, to be accurate he was the talkative one. Nice of them to let us go in front, though they seemed to regret it afterwards. They left after a little while, they probably ended up having more fun somewhere else. Well, I don't know, never tried it before. Like I said, I think if you were better and smarter than us you could make it up the route. There were a few reports here about people climbing it a few weeks ago, don't know how much conditions have changed since then. Just the belay anchor. The prospect of getting out even farther with no pro was unappealing.

Climb: The Tooth-Northeast Slab Date of Climb: 3/4/2006 Trip Report: On Saturday, Chris (ccmeter), Oscar and I headed up to The Tooth to try the NE slab route. On the way in we were really excited about the conditions, the snow was a couple of inches of soft above a firm base, really nice for skiing. We saw a bunch of people heading up to the bowl to yoyo all day long and honestly I was a bit jealous. The weather was looking beautiful. Looking up the slab we could see someone in the middle of climbing it self-belayed, and we were encouraged by this. We stashed our skis in a little alcove and headed to the base of the route, where we found a pair of very talkative gentlemen there in front of us. They told us we could go ahead of them, so we established a belay anchor (two extremely sketchy shorty ice screws) and started climbing. Chris led the first pitch, which was just steep soft snow. He kicked most of it down on my head and I learned that it is smarter to put your belay off to the side of the gully. He stuck to the rock on his right side and got some decent protection in, a couple of cams and a picket. Eventually he got to what seemed like a good belay station, made an anchor, and we followed up. When we got there we realized that we couldn't go straight up any farther, so it would have to be a traverse over to the left. We could see the self-belaying badass dude over in the middle of the face, and asked him how the ice was. He said he got one bomber screw in right where he needed it. We figured that was the way to go. Getting there was a different story. I started leading over and found that what looked like it might be good ice was actually 1/4 inch of ice on top of slabby rock, covered in a couple inches of poorly consolidated snow. I got a ways out, but was definitely in over my head, and eventually took a nice pendulum fall. We decided that for us, the route was "out" and we bailed from there. Back down at the cache we bumped into Solo Badass, who had finished the route and rapped down the south face. I think the conditions are good enough to climb this route, if you are 1. a decent climber, not a gumby like me, and 2. are careful selecting your route. The spot where we ended our first pitch looked good from below, but traversing across that slab would be tricky with very little chance to place pro. Skiing back to the parking lot was really nice though. Gear Notes: Bigger nuts would have been nice. Approach Notes: Trail is firmly packed to Source Lake, snow conditions above were nice and consistent.

I think Pro Mountain Sports' "ultralight rack" is a good concept. I looked at it when I started shopping. I ended up buying a full set of ABC huevos, a few DMM cams, some hexes, a red and pink tricam, and a bunch of Omega Pacific alpine draws. The rack has been good to me so far. This is also legit advice.

"What do you think, should we give him a refund?" "I dunno. He IS pretty intimidating looking..."

I don't think it will hurt, just be careful and don't get frustrated. I'm an experienced skiier trying to make the transition to backcountry and I've been surprised at how hard it is.

If he's been climbing for a couple of weeks and only once outside, wtf is he doing passing judgement on any route at any rating? Tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about yet and be done with it.

I've always liked Alaska Airlines. Taking the train from Seattle to LA is a good idea if you like being 8 hours late and having to travel about 1/3 of the distance on a bus. Well, that's what happened to me when I tried it, anyway. Amtrak is a joke.

This could be one of the most brilliant trolls of our time.

What does "cascade mountaineering" mean? If you're planning on slogging up a lot of glaciers, I think that rando looks great- it's light and cheap. If you want to climb any rock beyond a sport route, 30m probably isn't going to cut it.

Only so many hours in the day.