mkporwit

You haven't had much in the way of Grand Cru white Burgundies, have you? There's a reason why they're the world's most expensive wines. I haven't had any of the $1000-2000/bottle wines (those are prices at release), but a $300 was a life-changing experience. Or heck, try something by Didier Daguenau -- all the guy makes is Sauvignon Blanc, which is generally an easy-drinking white, but his wines are simply amazing. Also, let me guess -- Washington dry reds is your poison?

HTF do you hang on to 300 bottles of wine??? One time, I bought 8 cases and all I did was have all my friends over and get drunk every night for about a month. It went by fast... Well, I'm married now and have a newborn, so no having friends over for a while... But next time I'm out at Tieton I'll bring a few bottles and ping you, and you can come over and help me out. Also, for years I was a member of 11 wine clubs, so I could drink two bottles of wine a week and watch my cellar grow. Finally, lots of my friends are wine drinkers too, so they often brought bottles. Makes it hard to drink through your stash when you're busy drinking theirs.

All that talk about booze is making me thirsty. Is it Friday yet?

Hey, I can talk about wine... the cellar is shrinking a little, but there's still ~300 bottles there. Mostly new-world Pinot.

You can't get proper Zubrowka here anyway... something about the grass in the bottle being a plant, therefore you can't bring it in. Of course how something that's been soaking in vodka for months would harbor anything living is beyond me. Maybe I just need to harvest some bison grass seeds next time I'm visiting Poland, plant them in my garden and then I can have all the Zubrowka I want. BTW, if you like Zubrowka, try mixing it with apple juice... makes for a fantastic drink we Poles call the "szarlotka" (loosely translates to "apple pie"). Luksusowa is OK. I have some bad experiences with Luksusowa from my college years, so I keep away from it. Chopin is much nicer. And yeah, KKK, Belvedere has a pretty bottle but the contents aren't as good as they should be.

Seems to me that if you can afford it you're better off staying put for another couple of years. Besides, the climbing scene in Nepal isn't sounding that great. I bought my house in June '04 and if I were to sell today, after paying the excise tax and realtor commission I'd probably only just break even.

I typically buy Chopin. I don't go over often enough to bring back anything. Besides, I tend to save my two-bottle customs limit for cognac and armagnac I picked up in the duty-free. The state-owned liquor stores here suck donkey dick and all stock the same mass-produced shite. I miss the good specialty stores in California...

Next time we're at a bonfire I'll bring some vodka, pickles and marinated mushrooms. You bring the barszcz and garlic. Don't plan on climbing the next day.

Heretic!!! The ideal accompaniment to vodka are pickles (or maybe marinated mushrooms)

I didn't realize there was competition about the originas of barszcz... you guys have your own variant, we have ours. We call yours "barszcz ukrainski", and other than that it is made from beets it bears little resemblance to what I know as barszcz... Of course competing for who invented this poor man's stew is kinda like west virginia and kentucky hicks competing who came up with squirrel on a stick... sure it tastes good and is part of our heritage, but the rest of the world just doesn't get it.

How about a good Polish Vodka instead?! That's an oxymoron. Oh whatever... you wouldn't know good Polish vodka if it came up and bit you in the ass. Go find you sippy cup while the adults drink

We totally need this for CC.com. This would drastically cut down on KK razing Kevbone for his spelling errors. Think of the disk space and bandwidth savings...

OW, although the right to privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights (or anywhere else in the Constitution for that matter), the Supreme Court has determined that such a right is provided to us constitutionally. This implied right to privacy is the lynchpin of the Roe V Wade decision. FW, given that right to privacy does exist, those violations sure as hell are not merely perceived

Churches, gravy, and very small rocks, of course

Rides on choppers operated by government agencies of various sorts are generally free regardless of nationality. This would apply to the military, county SAR groups and helos under contract to the NPS. Where financial ramifications kick in is when you switch to something like LifeFlight or some other air ambulance. Those you pay for, and dearly. When we did SAR in Yosemite, the NPS chopper would do the extraction, deposit the subject in the valley, and a LifeFlight chopper would take over from there. The NPS helo did not transport the subject to definitive medical care as it was too far and it was needed for other possible emergencies. Here it is a little different, as the military will fly people to Madigan AFB or Harborview.

Last I checked the main REI downtown also had copies... that's where I got mine.

In addition to the differences between a PLB and a SPOT that Rob enumerated, the circumstances in which an ELT/EPIRB would be activated on a plane/boat are different. On a boat an EPIRB is usually rigged to auto-deploy and activate when it is immersed in water, and when it is immersed in water you already know that the boat and crew are in deep shit. Not much else needs to be said. The same typically goes for an ELT -- it is activated in case of a crash, where the G forces and impact of the crash itself activate the transmitter. Again, you know that something very serious has gone wrong. The old ELT system did not transmit GPS coordinates, and had to be triangulated, which led to false alarms when these were sometimes triggered when the aircraft landed a little too hard and shook the device out of its slumber. Often these were resolved by calling the owner of the aircraft and checking if the plane was flying or not. The new ones transmit GPS coordinates and so can be automatically ruled out if the signal is coming from the airport... The PLB and SPOT do not have fixed criteria for activation -- they are triggered at the decision of their user. As such, they are depended on the intelligence of said user, which, as we all know from reading spray, is highly variable.

I've been very happy with beating the crap out of my Fuji FinePix F10. Great battery life, good low-light performance, and durable. Takes good pics -- I've blown up some favorites to 8x10 and they look very sharp. Only downside is they use the card format. The new Fuji cameras have switched to SD. They don't make it anymore, but you should be able to find a refurb on eBay.

Given the TR just posted, I'd say this is Castle Peak

Amen dmuja Doing the route last fall at the rope-up as a newbie trad leader, these were all things I kept in mind. Well, except for missing that huge hand hold for the right hand, apparently... Nothing a quick french free move didn't fix

I've climbed with pizza before. Take one of those Trader Joes personal pizzas, bake it, fold it in half and wrap in aluminum foil. Kept for 30 hours without any issue.

I had a pair, don't remember the brand, with Cordura soles which were both fairly water resistant and not slippery, in addition to being fairly light and compressible. Yep, that sounds like the booties I have

Sierra Designs down booties Unless it is super melted out, the work very well for me on snow.

Trip: Guye Peak - West Face Date: 8/2/2008 Trip Report: Four of us went out to do some quick and easy alpine on the West Face of Guye on Saturday. The weather report had called for the clouds clearing by around 11am, so we were hopeful. We got to Alpental at 7:30 and it was socked in. About 30 minutes later the drizzle we had passed in North Bend caught up with us as we were making our way up the talus slopes. We hit a headwall and started traversing left under it, like the route description says. We found what we thought was the furthest north gully and headed up. The visibility was poor -- probably 100' on average, so we were guessing. We guessed wrong. At ~4200' we decided this was not the way and bailed. We found some rap tat and reused it. We came to the conclusion that we had come too far north, so we headed back south. After finding what we thought to be the chossy ramp leading up and to the right, we followed it until it narrowed into a class 4 gully. The rock was very loose, and the mist and drizzle made it slick, so the unroped scrambling was attention-getting to say the least. Again we decided this was not the way. This time we figured we were climbing up the Northwest Chimney route, so we bailed off that route. The thought of class 4 slab climbing at the top of the route on this slick crap was not appealing. Two raps, ~20 and ~160' got us down to what we were convinced was absolutely the correct ramp. We headed up the ramp. And then we came to the realization that we were at what looked like the start of the Improbable Traverse. Not feeling like doing that in mountaineering boots in the rain, we retreated down to the car. I'll have to come back when the visibility is better so that I can properly locate all the route starts. Photos to follow once I get them, though butt shots in the fog will probably only qualify them for the bad photo contest. Gear Notes: Light alpine rack which never left the pack -- 3 large hexes, a set of nuts, and cams in 0.5-2. Approach Notes: Steep and loose.