jared_j

Then you don't really need such volume. Do you already have something in the 50-60L range? Take the money you're budgeting for this pack, and use it to modify your shelter, sleep, and insulation/clothing systems down to a modern weight (and volume). I suggest spending an afternoon in a local park with a cheap tarp from the hardware store, some trekking poles, and parachute cord practicing tarp configurations that you've learned from all the videos posted on youtube related to tarp camping (good ones from hunters on there with heavy southern accents).

+1. If you truly need the volume, the old Dana packs are hard to beat if budget is a concern. The McHales are loved by all who use them, but come at a premium that you'd normally expect for something that is customizable and handcrafted locally. Search ebay for terms 'terraplane' , 'astralplane', 'arcflex' appended to Dana and Mystery Ranch.

My bro wants one. I told him they're an internet meme joke among NW climbers. Someone must have one in their closet they are embarrassed about and wanna sell, right? I'm living on the east coast now, but can Paypal you and cover shipping. Looking for something in decent shape. Lemme know what you got and what you want for it. I don't log in here much, please hit me at janowiak at jared at gmail dot com.

Bump. $125 shipped.

Live your Extreme Alpinism dream with this thick barely used belay jacket. I bought this in early '08 right before Wild Things went tits up. It was used a couple of days that winter, about ten days in winter '08/'09, and three days that spring of '09 in Alaska. It was too heavy for much other use. When not used it either hung on a hanger or lived in a cotton stack stored lofted in the closet. It's in great condition save for some toothpaste stains on the right arm from the Alaska trip. This weighs about 3oz more than the DAS from the same vintage. The shell fabric is a fairly high denier Epic. The insulation is 6oz/yd Primaloft 1. Asking $150 shipped to the lower 48 from cellblock Arlington in suburban Washington DC. Probably only a couple of dollars more to ship to Canuckistan. Email at janowiak dot jared at gmail dot com, please no PMs (also, next time I'm in church, please no photos). http://picasaweb.google.com/janowiak.jared/WildThingsBelayJacket#5527271207593630978 http://picasaweb.google.com/janowiak.jared/WildThingsBelayJacket#5527271213752632978 http://picasaweb.google.com/janowiak.jared/WildThingsBelayJacket#5527271228535910210 http://picasaweb.google.com/janowiak.jared/WildThingsBelayJacket#5527271230397619602

Cheap outta China http://www.geomangear.com/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=22 love-fest for this product on a serious mtb forum http://www.more-mtb.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16379&highlight=magicshine

Godwin, Godwin, paging Dr. Godwin. OK Godwin is a lawyer, not a doctor. At any rate, things seem to be done here.

2005 Census says 25% of households make less than $25k a year . Poorer folks like to make the babies more than the non-poor. I don't think you can quite get to 46% even accounting for poorer households having more people in them. That's still a lot of folks, though.

How does the rich man become rich? Is his wealth completely of his own making? Did his success occur in a vacuum? This certainly is the American mythology - the self-made man. And they exist; I know two - a good friend, and my father. They both stand out as exceptions, not rules, in my observation. Here's me, on the other hand. I make decent money as an economist. I was born into a family with two educated parents who pushed me to exceed academically and work hard, and footed the bill for me to get an undergrad degree at an in-state institution. Coming out debt free made it easier for me to go to grad school, which in turn opened career and earning doors. Relatively speaking, I had a leg up in terms of my gender, skin color, neighborhood, and parents. I call that luck of the draw. My personal view is that, as someone who's gotten a better than average deal in this society, I owe it back to society to not be as miserly with my money. If that means higher marginal tax rates if I ever make huge enough bucks to be in the top tax bracket, so be it. Does that mean that lazy people should get a free ride? No. But maybe you highly financially successful people (I'm assuming Fairweather must be uber successful since he is so concerned about marginal tax rates on the high income bracket) should show a little gratitude for your success. Cue "I'm a self-made man biographical spiel" now.

There was a "Planet Money" about a year ago where some former pension fund employees advance a very similar line of reasoning. The pension fund managers would have never been left holding the bag if the securities' risk ratings weren't so completely bogus. I don't have a great answer as to how this problem could have been solved ex ante (e.g. how to build a model to rate securities for which there is no historic data sample during a huge housing boom). I think you'd find some reading on the field of behavioral economics really interesting. I also think you'd come to different conclusions about decision making if you considered the incentives that existed for important decision makers in this crisis. Almost everyone was incentivized to make decisions that yielded some short run profit gain, even if it was not in the long term interest of the organization they represented. Like Chuck Prince, former CEO of Citigroup said, you gotta keep dancing as long as the music is playing.

Yeah, that was an interesting show. It really glossed over a lot of details of the market for asset-backed securities, but hit the important points. Both the securitizer (Wamu) and the purchaser (hedge funds, other folks) are "bad guys" in the sense that they both needed to exist to execute the sale. At the end of the day, 'bailouts' took place to provide assistance to people who purchased and held these securities. This took place in different ways, whether via direct 'bailouts' to specific institutions, or the Federal Reserve's purchase of highly deteriorated asset-backed securities. I in no way mean to diminish from the bigger picture of a pervasively flawed beliefs (that house prices will continue to rise, allowing even shaky borrowers to eventually build enough equity to somehow 'afford' the home) being held across almost the entire system leading to overinvestment in real estate and house price levels that were out of whack from economic fundamentals. I just want to point out that Wamu, at the time of its failure, cost you, the taxpayer, nothing. Incidentally, Wamu didn't actually fail directly due to mortgage losses. That probably would have happened eventually. In the days following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, many news stories were published along the lines of "What's the next domino to fall?". Many of these stories highlighted Wamu's bad balance sheet of Option ARMs, Subprime, and home equity loans. In the 9 business days following the collapse of Lehman, $17 billion was withdrawn from Wamu checking accounts. They were siezed by the FDIC because they became insolvent; an old fashioned bank run like "It's a Wonderful Life". They likely would have limped along for a few more months if this hadn't happened, and would have had a shotgun marriage with JP Morgan Chase anyway. Except JP Morgan might have had to pay a couple of dollars per share instead of pennies. Wamu was complicity the problem in that it was creating securities that were demanded by the marketplace. If you listen to other NPR stories or "Planet Money" reporting from early on in the crisis, you will hear other narratives of extreme pressure put on mortgage brokers to originate loans to bundle into securities. This is what likely drove the fraud discovered by Wamu employees cited in the OP's article. I think an appropriate analogy here is to a cigarette manufacturer. There was significant demand in the marketplace, and Wamu chose to fulfill that demand even though they knew what they were doing was not good for the long - term health of the purchaser. The problem is that the "Surgeon General" in this case was a set of independent firms who rate the riskiness of bonds (S&P, Moodys, Fitch). Instead of posting signs on the packages stating "Don't smooke these if you're preggers" (like a B rating), they posted labels saying "These will make you look cool, get rich, and get laid" (a AAA rating). Those ratings agencies did that because they had garbage models that they believed. Subprime mortgages, Option ARMs, etc, weren't something that had been done much in the past. These guys estimated statistical model parameters from samples of prime loans - the only data they had. Surprise, surprise, risky loans have distributions that are different, and the models completely incorrectly forecasted the losses. Finally, let's say Kerry Killinger (former CEO) gets a clue, and announces that Wamu is doing a 180. The stock price tumbles, earnings fall for a few quarters, and shareholders / boards get antsy. They fire him for 'running the company into the ground', and hire someone who will do what they demand - maximize short run profits. It's hard to make good decisions if you're greedy like their former CEO. It's still hard if you know it isn't a good idea, but it's the only way to keep your job. Sorry for the ramble. Things aren't simple. There's lots of bad guys. Former CEO. Greedy mortgage originators trying to make a quick buck. Greedy wall street that wants a piece of that sweet mortgage action that's been lining the bankers pockets for years, ratings agencies and regulators who drink the kool-aid that prices are going up forever, greedy borrowers who want more house than they can afford, our debt lifestyle / culture, blah blah blah. Ramble done.

These Asolos compare to the La Sportiva Trango and are a little wider (felt the same way about the Trangos as you). I have a narrow heel, and can lace 'em to keep my heel in place; Green superfeet help create a 'pocket' for the heel. They have a rear bail for semi-auto crampons. I've used them for summertime hiking in the Cascades and also WI4 with no complaints.

Don't get your panties in a bunch - you (the taxpayer) didn't bail them out. It got seized by the FDIC at basically no cost to them. Investors with Wamu got wiped out. JP Morgan Chase bought them at a fire sale price. So cheap, in fact, that they'll probably turn a profit on the deal on paper soon (if not already). They bought $180bn of mortgages plus all of Wamu's checking / credit card business for only $8 billion. Anyone with money invested in Wamu got wiped out, however. Businesses in downtown Seattle that benefitted from their 5,000 employees down there got hurt. As did homeowners who got sucked in by the coke rap of their mortgage brokers (or their own greed) who are losing their homes, and driving down the prices of homes surrounding them. There's barely any of these in the Pacific Northwest, it should be noted - mostly Southern California, Central Valley (Merced / Stockton), southern Florida, and Michigan. I used to work in risk management there (my first job outta grad school). Every risk management leader who pointed out that these were bad ideas was more or less asked to leave. For a critical period (2005 - 2006) the chief risk officer (person who's supposed to put a reality check on the urge to do risky lending) was a musical chairs position held by people who were smart and talented businesspersons, but not experts in mortgage credit risk. By the time this role was filled by an individual with the experience and expertise to recognize things were bad, it was too late (late '07 / early '08). Wamu was 'late to the game' in a sense, and made up for it by targeting this Option ARM niche and purchasing subprime originator Long Beach Mortgage Comapany (Long Beach in the article) was the only way to barge in on the mortgage market. It was Kerry's vision primarily to drive the business in the direction it went. In that sense, it probably didn't matter if there were risk management folk who took strong stances. It is really disappointing to hear about mortgage fraud at the customer level. If employees at that level can circumvent bank lending rules, it means the rules suck. It all hangs together in a sad greedy story.

You keep it real... loose rock shoes inside plastic shells sounds like the worst of both worlds to me, comfort-wise.

I typically downgrade myself one grade alpine climbing. When my trad comfort level was only 5.8 at the crags, I didn't get on anything harder than 5.7 in the hills. Once I was climbing anything 5.9 at the crags, then I did some 5.8 routes in the mountains. I never felt super 'challenged' by the routes, but I also never thought I was going to peel, either. This is a nice way to keep yourself out of trouble. Since you have primarily had experience multipitch climbing with bolt anchors, you would benefit TONS (IMHO) from getting basically anything alpine where you have to make your own anchor decisions (sling a tree or horn? build a 3 point equalized anchor? etc) and also have to 'think through' the construction of the anchor, your positioning at the anchor in terms of how you belay, where you flake/stack the rope, etc. Do you belay straight off the anchor if you have an autoblocking device? Is it more sensible to belay off your harness with a redirect? etc. Finally, once a second has come up, are you swinging leads? Leading in blocks? How do you efficiently transfer gear to the new leader without dropping? Does the rope need to get flipped/reflaked? These elements were the 'crux' of such climbing for me first starting out. Based on what I've seen people doing in the hills, this also is the biggest challenge for most people new to the medium. My experience was also that I kinda had to 'mess up' each of these elements on an easy climb before I learned how to 'think through' at the setup of an anchor/belay so as to have it all go smoothly. The time savings (and time loss) from being able to do these tasks quickly (or slowly) can be a lot; the difference between a pitch an hour or two pitches an hour. e.g. good technique (I think) can double your speed on a route, without physically climbing any faster. Anyway, this is sorta off topic, but I will close in echoing recommendations for the Beckey Route on the Liberty Bell, the South Face of the Tooth, Any of the Ingalls Peak routes. I will add: R&D in Icicle Canyon (5.6, a few pitches, short approach, good pro, a variety of positions) Champagne on Snow Creek Wall (5.7, a few pitches, decent climbing if a little lichen-y, not affected by the current falcon closure, out of the way so low traffic, 'alpine' feeling even though you're at a crag sort-of)

Good point about stepping up the 'commitment grade' gradually. If I reflect back, I definitely got out on a lot of lower commitment routes to get dialed on transitioning quickly and roped simulclimbing before doing the longer routes.

Burgundy Spire linked up with Paisano Pinnacle as recommended by Blake and Sky on this board somewhere is a really nice one that doesn't get too crowded. A good alternative if there are gonna be lines to get on Beckey Route at WA pass. Serpentine on Dragontail is a great moderate one, but gets crowds due to ease of access and moderate climbing; only 3 real pitches, lots of terrain to simulclimb if you're comfortable doing it. Tops out on a 'real' peak, which is nice. Don't bother with the rock routes on Chair; tried that soon after moving here, and the rock is poor and the climbing not really aesthetic. You'd do better to do the Improbable Traverse on Guye; still some loose rock, but great position and a very quick hit (if you can find the trail down OK) from Seattle. West Ridge of Stuart if you're in shape and want to summit a tall peak but want to keep the technical difficulties low. to your other ideas

Nice climb; did this one last September. Were the long boulder fields on the approach covered in snow still? There is a shit ton of snow in your Inspiration basin photo. If so, early season seems like the time to do this one.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery! Sounds like perhaps he fell off the side of the Hogsback in one direction or another? Hope he didn't end up in a fumarole.

There are times when I would belay solely from a large tree or large slung boulder/horn. There are also times when I wouldn't. How exposed are the tree roots? Is the boulder wedged in real good between others, or on a sandy downward slope in the direction of the potential pull of the rope? Are there any other immediate anchor opportunities? Ultimately anchor placement requires some level of compromise / judgement call. There are a wide variety of risk tolerances among climbers. I have seen climbers build anchors that personally I found to be totally overkill, and some that seemed anemic to me. You have to find your comfort zone. The reasonable way to do this, in my opinion, is to start out building anchors you know are totally bombproof or perhaps excessive. You can pare down from there over time as your preferences / tolerances allow. I think this is what most people do. If you get on alpine climbs in the Cascades, there's a lot of belaying off of a single tree or a single horn / block.

I'd start out with an easier question, such as which of the major faiths of the world is the true one.

Hey man, that sure was a fun day! So scenic, and Jason was a real solid partner. The drive home did require some concentration. That was my first time up Hood, and was a great day with awesome conditions, and a good conditioner for Alaska. That descent sure was long! Unfortunately, the Alaska conditioning was mostly for naught . At least I made it out in one piece. Unfortunately, that means the Kain face is out for me this summer. Maybe a raincheck?

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I go in for surgery tomorrow and the doc characterized it as a fairly run-of-the-mill break/repair, which is confidence - inspiring. Should be about 12 weeks to recover. It is helpful to hear stories of people who have had injuries and bounced back. Porter, I think you were laid up with a leg injury when I bought some Cobras off of you last year, no? John, it is impressive that you had 3 clean falls this year - way to push it and not get pinched! We're going to DC this fall (fiancee is enrolling at GW Med school, I'm gonna do something involving economics and statistics), and I certainly don't expect it to be the end of my climbing career; just the end of relatively easy access to the Cascades. I'll have to wait and see what my appetite is for serious alpinism once I recover. Maybe I'm kind of a pussy, but when I was sliding down the snowfield unable to arrest, and unable to see what was over the edge, I thought I was gonna die. For reals. And that was a scary thought. That'll be the thing I have to get over to feel good on steep stuff.

Great advice on this thread already. I would like to add two things: 1. The equalette, advocated by Long / Gaines, is an excellent tool that I use frequently. However, I had to learn by doing that there are a nontrivial number of situations where this is overkill / a hassle / too gear intensive / mucks up the whole anchor area. Examples include a lot of anchors you might encounter as a newer trad climber in moderate alpine climbing contexts - trees, slung chockstones that are massive, etc. Focusing your skill development on having a quiver of tools rather than a straight prescription will make your life easier and also help you be faster and more efficient. 2. Think before you belay! Once you've got an anchor set up, and you're belaying a second from the top, stop and develop a plan before you throw 'em on belay. Maybe everyone does this already, but I can remember several circumstances first starting out where I got things in a cluster in a hurry by just throwin' the second on, then bringing 'em up. Specifically, here's the questions I always ask myself: - which side of me/the anchor are they likely to come up? - where am I going to stack / flake the rope? How can I set up the belay so that the belay strand from the device feeds naturally to this area? - How are the load and belay strands from the belay device positioned vis-a-vis my connection to the anchor? Will strands flow smoothly? Will I have to be constantly moving my hands around to manage things? Maybe I'm just a dumbass who had to think hard about this stuff, and everyone else has just has it dialed better. I still ask myself these questions before starting, and it makes things work a lot better. I don't know that it is emphasized in the books a lot, which is why I mention it. Have fun out there, man! Learning the self - sufficiency of trad anchor building is a real step forward in ones' climbing career.