denalidave

I'm not saying ego is good or bad, just a factor in most cases and that climbing tends to have a lot of big egos participating (just like any other risky sport/activity).

Think of it as your art work. You clean a piece of cliff band. And where I come from that means hours upon hours of work removing moss and grass and small bushes and huge engine size blocks. This is not only dangerous but time consuming. Bolts costs money.....a drill costs money.....by the time it is ready for leading you have put 4 weekends in a row of work in and a $100 worth of hardware (including a % of the drill). In the winter you get wet and muddy and cold. All so people like you can have a crag to climb at. I personally don’t think getting the FFA on a route you put so much work into is that much to ask. It’s not all about ego……it’s a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully……just hopefully you have created a classic…… I think it's usually about ego, as much of this sport is. Ego wants to get the credits when the route goes down in history in various printed forms. Ego wants to put up harder, more respectable #'s and when a sport climber put up something hard, ego downgrades the accomplishment because "clipping bolts is not real climbing" (so "they" say). Ego tends to belittle other types of climbers that don't measure up to the "climbers code", whatever that is. The more people that get into climbing, the less exclusive it is for the ones that use it to boost their own ego. Sure, it takes a lot of work, effort and money to put something up for the rest of us to enjoy, but in the end if the FA does mean that much, it must be at least a bit of ego at the center of it all. At least in most cases, generally speaking. I'm all for letting the person who puts the route up have the FA but there has to be a "reasonable" time limit, which could vary from one area to the next. Let's just not kid ourselves that ego is not a factor in the whole FA realm.

and if the fixed line was on the climb for too long a time (over 6 mo's): FREE STATIC LINE! Or they will just steal it even if the project is active. That just happened at Ozone a few weeks ago and the guys putting the route up was there a day before it was stolen. Had to be a climber type that stole the static line since the anchors/rope were not accessible unless you climbed up.

Wieners.

Also factor in the global economy into the gas price equation. Countries such China & India are driving up demand and the US dollar is going down the tubes rapidly. If our currency was stronger, we would not see as much spike in gas prices. Just a matter of time till we are paying $7 gallon though so we all better get used to it and change our lifestyles accordingly.

Bug, you seem like a really nice guy so don't be so hard on yourself (4226 posts and counting). Your probably right in a general sense though.

Maybe he can get a prescription for some medical pot use to aid in his recovery from such a horrible life threatening assault?

No shit. Every time I eat brownies they make me just want to go to sleep. When I was a teenager I accidentally ate a bag of gummy bears dosed with LSD and I took it like a man. He had to go to the hospital? What a puss. :lmao:They never did much for me either. Back in HS, there was this old vietnam vet dude at some party and he was pretty whacked out. The story was that back in nam, he was making LSD for the troops and accidentally spilled a large batch on himself. He had all these burn scars and claimed it was from the LSD spill incident. He was fine one minute, then way "out there" the next. This was in the late 80's, not really sure if I believe the story but the dude obviously had to much of something, somewhere along the way.

Great... I'll post pics of my new flower beds in the back yard and we can have ourselves a garden-off (is there even such a word?)... Well, my shoulder is a jacked up from damn yard work a couple weeks ago... Digging out the dirtconcrete to put in 4 more fruit trees for the lovely wife. Plenty o raised beds in too lately so I'm a shoe-in for this garden-off for sure. Maybe there can be some huge prize money for the winner of the garden-off cause I could sure use a new rotator cuff about now so's I can get back to pretending to climb sumpin.

Very Nice! Good job.

That must have been some brownie.

Hood or St Helens?

So do you have to use a static line or will an old climbing rope work?

She certainly looks perfectly capable of taking her own clothes off, there must be an easier way... A more important question is why does HE, get to take HER clothes off?

Now where the hell are we supposed to shoot up, smoke crack and do bid-ness with da hoes? Oh yeah, go potty too?

Wow, 300 days!

Sweet TR. Remember, if the van is a rockin, don't come a knockin... Super sweet diggs/ride.

Can I barf now?

Alex Lowe Peter Croft

We ended up slogging an extra 3.5 miles to the winter route trailhead. From there, the snow was pretty good, considering how hot it was. The last 1,000 ft or so to the crater rim was real deep and soupy but the rest was great corn skiing all the way back to tree line. The ranger said the road is not expected to melt out till July...4-6 weeks later than usual.

Skiing St Helens was great Sat too. A bit hotter than we wanted but no signs of major slides on the winter route. Mushy & deep soup near the rim but really nice other than that, very consolidated.

That is funny, I bet it's worth a lot more than $200 now. I forget what my dad said he paid for his back in the day but it sounds just like the one you describe... Cool western belt holster with all the little pockets for your ammo. I love that gun, might have to go shoot it soon just for fun. I still have lots of reloaded ammo but don't want to waste em as they are pretty spendy now. I don't really hunt anymore but like to go plinking once in a while, hardly a good gun for plinking though. Another time when I was a little kid in Wyoming my dad used to carry the 44 while we were out deer hunting, I think mainly just because he had it. He's sitting in the woods taking a dump when a buck comes strolling by within range so my old man pops one off from the cannon with his pants still down around his ankles and blows a huge hole in the buck. Good times... Mmm venison...

I have a dream of someday being a real dirtbag success. I just need to work my way up the ladder by having the wife and kids leave, lose my home and job, learn how not to bathe and then I will have it made as a dirtbag.

I don't think my wife would be so into that... I don't think I'd be eating crackers if she were in my bed...