mkporwit
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Posts posted by mkporwit
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PG Porn -- "for people who love everything about porn except the sex"
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Fifth grade at St. Williams with Sister Maria Roberto... had just gotten home for lunch and it was all over the news. The school didn't say anything about it until the following morning...
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Wikipedia has an entry with the conversions to various grades as well.
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Dwayne finally put his pictures up on flickr.
starting up the couloir
Toast nearing the steeper portion
my belay stance for the next two hours
Dwayne trying to get us up the face
Toast having a go of it
the scenic views on our descent
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Trip: McClellan Butte - North Couloir
Date: 1/25/2009
Trip Report:
Toast and I decided that with the avalanche danger still low that the North Couloir of McClellan would be a good thing to try. Our friend Dwayne decided to join us.
We got a pretty leisurely start on the day -- we didn't hit the trail until 8:40 am. The snow on the trail is very hard packed, with occasional bare patches due to flooding having washed it all out. No snow shoes are necessary. Around 11 am we were at ~3400', ready to enter the couloir. So far so good.
The couloir climbs about ~1500, starting with an angle of maybe 40 degrees. The last few hundred feet have a sting in the tail, however, with the slope rising to what looked like a sustained 50 degrees+. The snow is very firm. In many places it was bulletproof neve, only taking the first four points of a crampon. We were slow in the couloir. By the time all of us were under the north face of McClellan, wondering how to best tackle that chosspile, it was 2:40pm.
Dwayne went first, and got maybe ten feet off the deck with a couple of pins under him. After taking his first trad leader fall on the suspect second pin, he eventually decided he did not have it in him. Toast then gave it a go. Despite careful gardening and cleaning on his part, he did not get much higher. He too bailed. Seeing as they backed off, I was not about to make another attempt. Besides, int was 4pm and we were now faced with descending the couloir instead of picking up the regular hiking trail had we gained the summit.
We rapped the first 200', since that was the steepest. Then we embarked on what seemed like endless downclimbing, facing in to the slope. At some point I started getting cramps in my quads, and since it was still very steep we switched to rappelling for a while. That slowed down the pace, but at least now I didn't have to worry about falling off if my legs seized again. We had a 50m rope, and did six rappels interspersed with short sections of downclimbing.
At around 4000' feet Toast suggested we head climber's left over the couloir wall and into the trees. Within half an hour we met up with the trail and headed down. We thought we were home free.
Upon hitting the Iron Horse trail, I had the bright idea of heading left instead of right. Just a couple hundred feet to the left was where the power lines crossed the Iron Horse. We could head down under the power lines instead of crashing through downed timber. So we got do to that and plenty of it. We lost the tracks we were following, at some point dropping as low as 1300' (the TH is ~1450'). My little idea cost us over an hour of trying to reacquire the trail. We got to the car at midnight.
No pics from me, as Toast and Dwayne were the ones with the cameras.
The high point of the trip was stopping at the 24-hour diner at the truck stop in North Bend and having burgers and chicken fried steak at 1am.
Gear Notes:
A handful of pins, small cams/nuts (not used). Thought about bringing more ice tools (we had one hammer for pins).
Approach Notes:
Trail is firm, no snowshoes.
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Can't say I've quite understood the 3rd Amendment to the Bill of Rights in the overall context of the contemporary world:
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Seems a bit outdated if you take it literally. But the intent, if I understand correctly, is that the military is subordinate to the civilian authority.
I don't take this to just mean that the President is the Commander-in-Chief but I'll take the liberty to loosely extrapolate that military means and ends do NOT have primacy.
[/url]--msnbc
Actually, as I recall from my high school history classes, billeting of British soldiers in random homes was routinely done and quite an inconvenience for the owners of those homes, often just on the authority of those troops' commanding officer. So the founding fathers felt the need to explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior, viewing it akin to illegal taxation.
The notion that the military is subordinate to civilian authority stems from the president being a civilian office and being the CIC.
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Simply because abortion is a case where the effects are limited to an individual's physical body, crack smoking is not.
Even the most pro-abortion people don't view abortion as just a simple physical procedure. There are well-documented psychological repercussions of abortion that frequently manifest themselves. As such, these repercussions reverberate throughout that person's family and community -- people require counseling and treatment, in some cases they are unable to function. Add to this the possibility that what you are doing is terminating an innocent human life and those repercussions become far more grave. To argue that the impact abortion is confined strictly to the physical body of the mother is idiotic.
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In any case, recitation of the oath is not required to assume the office of president. The oath was not complete until 12:05, but Obama became president at 12:00 sharp. There seems to be some ambiguity between the 2nd and 20th amendments:
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Reilly is right. They are in the process of shutting down the composting toilets at 12000' (or have already shut them down).
To the best of my knowledge permits are not required if you make a one-day push. Lots of people start at midnight and go for the top.
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Ah, so that was you with peakpimp? Cool, good running into you. Yeah, that rope clusterfuck with the doubles near the top was a bit of a pain. Thanks for yarding the rope more in line.
Marcin
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heading out there Jan. 30-Feb 1. Can't wait for the trip
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Check out "Climbing Mt. Whitney" by Peter Croft.
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Good running into you too, Josh. Amazing weather, except for that damn wind. Made rapping down with doubles a bitch, as they got tangled on us.
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I should add that right now there's a pimp snow cave up there in the hanging valley. If anyone wants to run up there some evening, then hit the climb at first light and be back in time for breakfast, it's all yours. Should be pretty easy to spot heading up towards Pineapple Pass.
Your domicile for the evening, should you chose to take advantage of it
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Trip: The Tooth - South Face
Date: 1/19/2009
Trip Report:
My friend Larry and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and bag the Tooth. Gene's recent TR only added to the stoke.
We planned on doing an overnight trip, so we headed up Sunday afternoon. We dug ourselves a nice snow cave in the basin below the climb and hit the sack. Monday was a pretty leisurely start. We got to the base of the route a little after nine. As Larry was getting ready to lead the first pitch we saw two other climbers come up. Turns out it was peakpimp and a friend.
Most of the climb was pretty uneventful, as the south face is mostly free of snow. There is some deep slush in the trees above the second pitch, and the summit has snow leading down to the rap gully.
The start of the south face
The final, short pitch to the summit. The slushy snow is below
Rapping off the summit towards the rap tree
We also found some ice that looked to be in shape and pretty fat. Saw a couple of climbers on Sunday on what I think was the base of Bryant.
The ice on Bryant(??). Instead of turning left to head up towards the basin, follow the winter trail until you run into the headwall
Overall a great outing in almost perfect conditions. Go get some before the next weather system moves in.
Pics to follow once I upload them to flickr.
Gear Notes:
Crampons/Ice axes helpful but not necessary to get from the basin to the start of the route and back down.
Approach Notes:
There's a pretty good boot track, at least until the next snow storm.
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I had a chance to see him in 2007 when he played at the Puyallup fair. Fun show.
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[video:youtube]7jumXhcTXUY
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You should be able to throw fruit bootsTopsiders? Puhlease! -
Cherry Pie
in Spray
mmmmmmm..... botulism!
Hey, at least you'd be wrinkle-free when you'd croak...
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Cherry Pie
in Spray
Damn it, I wanted to put up a link to a video of Warrant's "Cherry Pie"
but all of them have the message "Embedding disabled by request"... 
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Cheap cuban sugar could flood the US market, providing a ready source of ethanol and displacing corn syrup as the primary sweetener. Think of the health and environmental benefits.
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The embargo is keeping Fidel Castro alive and is the source of his powers. Get rid of it and he will melt away like the wicked witch.
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Yes. Seems a little disingenuous that with some autocratic regimes like China or Vietnam we're saying that economic and cultural engagement is the best way to bring change to that system whereas with another we're saying that isolation is the best. Time to accept that the embargo is a relic of a by-gone era.
[TR] Hyalite Canyon, MT - 1/30/2009
in Ice Climbing Forum
Posted
Trip: Hyalite Canyon, MT -
Date: 1/30/2009
Trip Report:
Having been bitten by the Hyalite ice bug back in December, I knew I had to get back out there. Finally managed to do that this past weekend, when five of us headed out for three days of climbing. We drove out there, leaving on Thursday afternoon and returning Sunday night.
Friday afternoon was spent at Genesis I. We put up a couple of top ropes on the left side of the flow as warm up and ran laps the rest of the day. The entire G1 area is thoroughly picked out and you can hook your way to to the top of all of the routes.
Shannon leading up G1
Dwayne basking in the sun on G1
The next day had us return to G1 to try some of the harder flows to the right. Some people did well, but my lardball ass kept me from getting too far off the ground. In the afternoon we moved to Genesis II, where we ran out the day. With a weather system moving in Saturday was colder and far windier.
Me attempting (and eventually failing) to lead G2
On Sunday we headed out to the Amphitheater, where we climbed on Fat Chance. Fat Chance was a very enjoyable line. We had plans to check out Mummy 1 and 2 but never got around to it as we had too much fun here. Mustache Ride looked like there wasn't very much holding the top in place against the rock, and the climbs were all a little wet.
(l-r)Fat Chance, Mustache Ride, Thin Chance
Henry starting up Fat Chance
Overall, another excellent trip to Hyalite. The ice is fat, the road is plowed, go climb.