tvashtarkatena

Phone and internet notification is great for folks at home planning a trip. Not so great for folks already camped in the area. Good old fashion signage closing the road before dawn patrollers deploy should do the trick.

Stoopid question: 5:30 am or pm?

Given the mixed nature of your group, its inexperience, and your not knowing the Cascades that well, I'd take such a group into the Pasayten or Sawtooth Wilderness areas rather than through the heart of the North Cascades, with its crevasse and steep neve/ice hazards and poorer fishing opportunities. It would suck to get stuck, say, on the middle of the Ptarmigan Traverse because of your weaker party members. Dropping an inexperienced kid in a crevasse on Rainier is one thing: the mountain is crowded and MRNP has full SAR apparatus on hand. Do the same on Mt. Challenger and the situation is a very different one. Other suggestions: A trip through the Pasayten's Shellrock Peaks (Lake, Carru, Osceola, Lost) and up past Ptarmigan peak, then back via Hart's Pass will give them all the remoteness, peak bagging, and scenery they need without having to worry about pulling a kid out of a crevasse. You can pull out your rope and play around a bit on a any number of those peaks if you wish...at your discretion. Alternatively, the Oval/Star/Reynolds area, which has more lakes than the trip above (with GREAT fishing) would provide the same, again, without the crevasse hazard.

I can't help but imagine what Mr. Gallagher would have done if he'd caught me Fighting Terrorism by snapping pics of perfect strangers and posting them online. It probably would have involved two surgical extractions from my lower colon: first the camera, then his boot.

I asked Ian Adamson, at the time the world's most winning adventure racing team captain, what food he thought was best for racing, and he replied "regular old sandwiches". That was our team's experience, as well. Gu et al is commonly used in these sports, of course, but for a lot of folks, Gu and similar products jacks the blood sugar around too much for long duration endurance events. They're OK for end-of-the-leg, short term boosts, but a lot of racers find them a poor choice for sustained efforts. No surprise: they're basically just simple sugar.

They way to deal with Radical Islamicides Who Hate Our Fucking Ass (RIWHOFA) is to invite em over for some BBQ. After a few tallboys, a couple a pulled pork sammies, and an eyefull a those proud-nippled Georgia peaches, those motherfuckers'll be surfin their iPhones for a pair of TruckNutz.

I just read that a team of Berkeley professors are employing a bank of super computers to model possible fixes to the leak. Yeah, they really have no clue how to plug this one.

Actually, an organization that is motivated enough to send covert operatives to another country and blow them selves up makes them a much larger threat and much larger risk. Sword wielding African rebels don't generally pose much of a threat to the well being of the west, whom the Islamic fanatics target, so they generally are not discussed. Funny how it comes back to discrimination with some people. We don't have a problem with Zimbabwe nationals or Roman Catholics planning suicide attacks. It's nearly a singular threat with a singular common trait, Islamic Radicalism. You're apparently not up on your history of terrorist attacks on U.S. interests and personnel worldwide. Show us a credible report (not the a picture of 911) that supports your assertion that Radical Islam, and not other political motivations, are chiefly responsible for all the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Or worldwide against any targets, for that matter. Good luck.

tvash, i still like u, even though ur a snobby little pussy Well, I might get my knobby in a little pussy every now and then, but I'm humble about it.

You might as well go the distance and rename Index "Kathy's Crag" at that point.

You can attempt to cement the block back into place, but weathering will probably loosen it before two long. Take a cue from WSDOT and bolt some cyclone fencing around it; much easier than deadmanning it into the wall. No specialized equipment required. While you've still got the block conveniently on the ground, you might also consider bolting some additional holds onto it. The addition of a bronze plaque commemorating the repair crew might also be in order.

...yea, that's from PDX'ers going to Calf. and bringing back holds to glue on their test pieces at the Gorge.... Almost...this is a result of one PDXer trying to drill a rock pipe into the thing solo. You need a second to sit on it....

Could the residue have come from a 105mm? Has WSDOT turned up the volume on climbers?

Sarah Palin can ride that bitch down to ground zero. Now THAT's a Palin film I'd watch.

What a maroon.

Passion's cool, but when it gets to the point of trying to figure out who caused AIDS, the Virgin Birth, and the Asteroid that Killed the Dinosaurs, it can seem a bit over the top. I hope this kind of passion doesn't extend to the alpine, cuz I've witnessed a lot of spontaneous rockfall there...as in me finding a nice big juicy block and spontaneously deciding to give it a friendly nudge.

If I were climbing the route, and pulled on the block, and it moved and I felt it presented a hazard to future climbers, and the coast was clear below...bombs away! Better to step on a few sensitive toes than to see some poor younguns kilt before they've gone forth to make their mark!

Engineering backgrounds aside (I got me one a those, too, but you can't swing a dead LOLcat here without hitting one...but they're mostly software geeks so they don't count), it's my experience in stone masonry that seems more relevant. 3 points of well positioned contact is all you need for a stable block. One of the points can be a pebble, grain of sand or stick. Alter one of those supports a little bit (impossible!) and stability can be gone, just like that. Speaking from my massive and decisive engineering background...I would never make such a proclamation about such a system without any knowledge of the system before failure. It's just not, you know, good engineering. That, and the fact that there are lebenty leben trillion tons of constantly exfoliating rock hanging over the thing. What is it about this blame fetish? Fkn weird.

You forgot earthquake. Problem solved.

We've got that river but these illegals seem to be able to swim it. That, and the legally sticky fact that half of em live in on our side.

What have I been sayin? BORDER FENCE.

Or...OMFG. It was Dean Potter.

With enough web-based forensics, I'll bet we can drill down on what brand of ropes the perps used.

I've taken the liberty of notifying the Seattle Times regarding this breaking news.