crackers

If you go to Hungary for the weekend, and come back with stomach pain, maybe this is why... New England Journal Of Medicine work, but perhaps not lunch, safe.

1992 to 1998. I still come back and visit the peeps...

I'm taking a wild guess here. Am I close? Good Luck. 90 pounds 3 miles 90 minutes flat terrain, 45 pounds 3 mile 45 hour?

I'll agree on the deadlifts and overhead squats. In all honesty, i don't think thats all that much weight, and the real thing would be time. That is said with the caveat that i'm 6'5" or so and 180 or so...If you were 140, that'd be a LOT more weight relatively.

oh shit, i love bloodninja! thanks for making me laugh, i totally forgot that one!

I lived in Missoula for more than seven years and continue to visit on a regular basis. I've gone climbing in Rattler or Mulkey Gulch only twice. The basic reason is that it's not very good climbing for the most part. There's a short crack that's okay, and some bolted stuff thats ok. The grades are ridiculous if the guidebook hasn't been updated. I don't know what Raf was smoking when he came up with the original grades, but damn, I've never climbed a 5.6 that masqueraded as 5.10 before or since. Please note that this vitrol is entirely directed towards the car climbing. I've never been so disappointed by a climbing area. Now, Blodgett, well, that's different...

I know people in Eastern Europe who made their own gear out of scrap metal. I have made stoppers out of scrap metal. I made home made pitons in the early 70s.Several friends have. In the early 80s I bought a bunch of home made cams. I wonder why this pattern isn't followed. Do you use the gear that you made as your everyday gear? I personally do not use my homemade gear as my everyday stuff. My slovene, czech, polish and east german friends who made their own gear to climb trad routes also bolted sport routes. And they replaced their homemade gear with store bought stuff as soon as they could. People generally prefer store bought gear, and honestly that doesn't surprise me. I don't think that I argued that "the cost of pro determines ethics". I thought that saying the bolts belong in "rock gardens only" was clear enough. However, Yes, I do believe and did argue that cost is a much more of a factor in climbing ethics than you might want to believe. Did you read the article? I think they mentioned loose rock, teetering pillars and death blocks pretty clearly. I'm not going to second guess the ethics of somebody I've never met, especially in a developing country.

Have you considered the purchasing power in post ww2 eastern europe and sandstone ethics. Absolutely. Interestingly enough, there is a formation of the stuff in SW Turkey, and the accepted ethic there is the same as in elbsandstein areas. And there are sport crags in the Pfalz areas of Eastern Europe where you could use cams and other 'modern' pro. But, in the limestone and granite that comprises most of Turkey and the Caucasus, well, they've got different things going on...

But, for argument sake, I still think the reasoning you posit is faulty. I doubt few here would agree that we should bolt all the cracks in the U.S. simply because it would allow more people to get take up climbing, and would make climbing a much more populist and mainstream activity. Why should it be different elsewhere? I certainly agree that we shouldn't bolt cracks except in extremely special circumstances in the USA. We are rich. And I think our bolt wars are mostly over. A list of the prices of gear might help explain why a lot of stuff in Turkey --a country that has a very strong ethical framework and a pretty strong economy-- got bolted as recently as three years ago, and these are the prices my partner charged...you can ask Erden when (if?) he resurfaces here about Oral. BD cam: $125-$150 BD biner: $15-25 WC cam: $85 Petzl Quick Draw: $25 Climbing Shoes: $165 WC nuts: ~$20 EACH. I think that should give the picture. Ropes were too expensive. There were only a handful imported a year because they were literally too expensive. The kicker was always the 23% sales tax on whatever you bought, which would make your 300 rope cost almost 400 bucks. If you were buying a $1k of gear, it would be cheaper to fly to Germany, except that you couldn't get a visa, so... Things have changed rapidly in Turkey as a few importers decided to go for volume. Until these importers changed the rules of the game, it was a common assumption that 90% of people would stop climbing when they graduated college because they couldn't afford to buy the gear that they borrowed from their school's club (shoes, harness, rope, everything.) At the same time, the locals have a very strong traditional ethic when and where they can afford it. They have a clear understanding for themselves of what that means and rich and fervant (read flamewar) debate about the place of bolts in the sport. The old climbers --I am making a massive generalization here, ok?-- tend to be anti bolt and the young climbers tend to be pro-bolt in climbing gardens only. There tends to be an observable difference in disposable income that is strongly correlated to an individual's view of bolts. Correlation is not causation, and the above paragraph represents a massive stereotype based solely on my experiences over the past ten to twelve years. Basically, I wouldn't ever want to bolt a crack, but when a poor kid tells me that he saved up his money for two frigging years to buy my second hand rope, well, i'm going to at least listen to his ethics before I spout about mine. I do think that the world's rock is a non-renewable resource that should be available to every climber. I'd love to see the least damage possible done to it. But I also remember what it means to my local friends when i donate time, money and gear to organizations devoted to climbing in the developing world and what a huge impact it can have in hearts, minds (and just maybe ethics )... As for bolts next to cracks, I have seen bolts on crappy sandstone here in the states, and bolts in Canada next to a cracks that don't seem to bother people too much, but, hey, i've never touched the rock mentioned in the OP. If my reasoning about how I deal with helping out my friends overseas is faulty, I'm open to constructive criticism, and I'm always willing to have people tag along when I'm doing "pro-bono" stuff overseas. graham williams signed cause i take this kinda seriously... btw: please, no offense is intended in my posts, if we have differing views, fine, like I said, I'm willing to listen.

You're right, I don't know you, but I have met Ed and a few other black and white south african and namibian climbers when I was part of a group that hosted them in New York some year ago. And I have spent a couple of years working on developing climbing areas in developing countries. And yes, the locals ability to afford gear is a major issue in having them take up the sport. I've found that ethics regarding rock, style and culture don't always travel as well as one might like, in both directions. I did not mean to be harsh, I intended to be real. According to my conversations with Ed, membership in colored climbing clubs back in the apartheid era was roughly similar in numbers to membership in the white clubs. I really don't know enough about that to make informed comments though. What I do know about is the costs of a cam versus a quickdraw in the developing world, and the locals' choices that they make dependent on their values. After all, it's their rock, not mine.

I second the stairmaster and the lunges with weights. It will spare your ankles and knees the brutal impact of the load. Hiking up and down conrete will probably lead quickly to osteoarthritis which is not the goal, is it? I'd recommend doing intervals on the stairmaster. I would also recommend going swimming or stretching for ten minutes or so after each workout. If your body's not used to it, you will get seriously worked. If more people do it, maybe we'll look less stupid in the gym.

Another thing about the standby time thing is that the sat phone i've used tended to use a heck of a lot more juice when it was searching for coverage than when it was happily connected to the satellites. By a lot, I mean the battery died in 1/2 to 1/4 of the time.

I'm willing to spewguess that a guy named February was involved and that he knows more about climbing that you or I do and that he also knows how expensive it is to buy climbing gear outside of the USA. No real offense intended, but...Have you ever heard of Table Mountain? Anyway, I doubt that they intend the routes to be "global" stars...as is often the case for areas that aren't really worth visiting, people have been known to give "local" stars.

oh lover of the paris, my apologies. I have never looked for women's XS stuff, and apologize for not looking before peeping. About the stocking / selling thing, i've spoken with more than one buyer at speciality stores who believes they could move the product if it was available...

word.

Huh? Back up a second. What is the reality? What percent of Patagonia's production is XS out of each of those products? I'm willing to bet that it's less than 5%--the US apparel industry standard is about 3% for women's XS. IMHO, if a product is not available easily its just about the same as not being made. What the OP was complaining about was that the product season's do not mirror the activist season, and the OP is absolutely right about that. In August, summer OR will be all about selling next summer's clothing, for delivery in March-June of 2007. The OP is absolutely right that the availability of technical garments suitable for the upcoming mountain season is 0 from the manufacturers right now. sorry about the ranting tone, it's the rest of my day infecting my online personality today...i'd better go and relax a bit.

Planches, front L sits, front levers, muscle ups...do you know what windshield wipers are? Also wall ball: take the medicine ball and do crunches on a pilates ball while you throw the medicine ball at the wall. Just don't miss. I really like kettle bell twists and squats if you've got weights to integrate the tamale.

I hate pack belts. I don't climb with a pack belt on except for glorified snow slogs. If I have to have a belt, 2" webbing... I forgot something important in my earlier post. I climb almost exclusively on thin overhanging faces and roofs. I am pretty close to being able to say "i've never climbed a crack in my life", and well, my experience to date might be totally worthless with long cracks. YMMV.

yeah, they lost like a 1/4 to 1/3 of their rack when their gear sling untied...whoops! silly homemade gear. That said, I haven't even gotten up to the point where they dropped the gear, and well, i guess they didn't really need that stuff cause they finished the route and came back alive.

IMHO, no. The thing that makes for fast changeovers is a clear and well understood system shared by partners. It doesn't make more than one or two minutes difference to rack on the harness or a gear sling in my experience. With most of my partners, we clean the gear and put it ready to use on our harness. I, and most of my partners, rack on my gear loops. From front to back gear gets larger, with our smallest nuts in front. For quick quick changeovers at belays, take all the gear off of the far side of your harness and have it clipped into a strand of the rope. You switch all the close side hardware onto your partners harness, while your partner takes the hardware off the rope and clips onto their far side of their harness. It shouldn't take more than three minutes.

It was a weird bit of weather. Currently, it's sunny and 62 degrees... The best bouldering in the southern end of the park is at Rat Rock which is currently closed for reconstruction of the area. Cat rock has some interesting eliminate problems, and a nice arete. But that is the VERY first time I've ever heard the rock called "good"...must have been exquisite stuff prior to your climbing!

I am having a posting problem right now, but let me briefly say that I emailed the following to Chesterboo, and PM'd it to another person, and I guess I might as well post it here too. As always, I welcome questions. As the pack designer, let me talk about the weight thing to you in tedious detail. The pack ships with ten straps. Total, these ten straps weigh, on average having weighed 300 sets of straps, between 8 and 10 ounces. You can put all ten straps onto the pack at the same time, but I can't really understand why in hell anybody would really want to do that. In fact, I almost never use more than 4 straps at the same time. I believe that the point of these bags is that they are modular: you can and should remove the parts you don't need or arent using. You should also modify the parts to fit your needs. Because I wanted to make it very cheap to buy these bags, I didn't spend money on cleaning up the threads left over during production or cutting the PE sheet into the most elegant and lightweight form. I encourage all the users of these packs to modify them to fit their needs. Personally, I cut about half of the PE sheet off, and I know that many of my customers have done similar things as recommended in the manual. I save about $10 off the retail cost by supplying what is basically a straight cut sheet of PE and leaving it to the end user to shape it. Eventually, I want to have the machinery to press out nice shapes without raising the cost of the bag, but right now, it's user custom. average weights as shipped: the pack bag weighs just under two pounds.* the lid weighs about six ounces the hipbelt weighs about 7 ounces the framesheet and stay weigh 14 ounces unmodified. My framesheet & stay weigh 9 ounces, and i only use them with 50+ pound loads. (ie guiding) If you do use everything the pack includes, yes, you can make it weigh a lot. If you use a reasonable (aka normal) set up, or spend a bit of time modifying your gear, you will have a remarkably versatile, durable pack that can be very light in the mountains and live to tell the story. Please remember what Ken said in his post (and in his emails to me) "it's too light for me to trust it." As the product changes and develops, I plan to make 'updates' available to all of my original customers for cost + S&H. The first update will include the following options: new lighter lid, new lighter hipbelt, 1.5" webbing hipbelt, and red simple straps. The total cost of this update will likely be about $40 with priority mail shipping. *The first twenty five weighed a lot less, but i used two lots of fabric in the construction, and guess what, the second lot of fabric was/is significantly heavier than the manufacturers' specifications.

Blake made me think about my experience with biners and price, and then i found out that i actually have DMM Shields, not prowires. I got them for under $4 each, and I would not pay $12 each for them. No way...they're nice but not $12 nice.

I'm terribly sorry, but how the FCKCKCKCK could anybody think that 'declassifing' information leading to the identification of somebody working for the CIA is legal, ethical or a good idea for building a strong national intelligence agency? I'm terribly sorry, but i think that any chief executive who even comes close to violating the terms of the Espionage Act or breaking the trust and confidence of the people working in the intelligence community should be shot at dawn. I have a lot of friends who really reconsidered their work and their chosen profession as a result of this.

i've got thirty or so DMM prowires. I love them. They've got a big gate opening and a clean nose. I have no idea how much they weigh.