tvashtarkatena

Where do you live? I've got topo maps of the whole area - did a bunch of hiking/climbing in there.

If you go in on a chopper with 3 other folks it's pretty cheap. I did it the day before we left. You can usually arrange a much cheaper flight out - they like to keep those machines full both directions.

Mt. Aspiring and surrounding area. There's a hut up there - chopper up (1 hr) or walk (2 days). Wanaka is a nice town to hang for doing stuff in the Aspiring area. It's a good place to find partners.

In terms of both pain and pleasure, this was one for the books. The descent was...educational.

Trip: Colonial Knob Job - THRASH RIDGE Date: 3/23/2013 Trip Report: “And that’s Betelgeuse, and Bellatrix next to it. Rigel is lower right, and Saiph to the lower left” “How many stars do I need to know to get laid?” "Nevermind." When you ski with Mr. Kaplan, there are 3 things you need to know beforehand: 1) There will be suffering. 2) Only warm, direct sunlight brings him back from the dead. 3) There will be powder. Thousands of feet of stokaine powder. The Colonial approach delivers a martyr’s worth of suffering, at and in both ends, but, as discouraged as we’d become after a wallowing defeat on day 1, our perseverance on day 2 rewarded us with a spectacular, sunny, windless camp perched directly over a gigantic basin full of 2000 vertical feet of untouched powder. The gheyer the music, the greater the stoke. By the time we’ve worked through belting out the SwedishTechno and into Hall and Oates or some other 80s shit, it’s time to either drop in or rub one out. Flexibility and adaptation improve one’s odds of attaining satori in Washington’s back country. Rather than crossing the sketchy traverse from Colonial Knob to the Colonial Glacier, we opted to stay put and ski the basin to the NW. Sometimes, it pays to laze. That, and JackingTheBox’s Supreme Croissant Sandwich is arguably the most fucking delicious post-thrash replenishment device of all time. A few pics. This is really just to get JoshK to weigh in with the good stuff from that groovy new camera:

I've got short pointy skis for waterfalls.

Postholing is more interesting than skiing? And here I could have saved myself all that money.... Skis are just stretched out crampons with the points cut off, no?

As in "I'm awesome"

If you two were kewl enough you'd KNOW what I'm talkin' 'bout. I'd give you a one word hint, but there isn't one that wouldn't give it away, so here's a letter: "I"

Now back to arguing about who funded Robo Squirrel.

You don't send your New Down back to be re CO2 injected and vacuum sealed. You have your factotum do it.

I seem to have particularly spiritual but not religious friends in that sense.

Remember when you could be dumb and proud of it? Damn libruls!

Let's roll!

Golden calcite. Should look OK on stainless (!!!) or bronze. According to the website, it's also supposed to connect me to my higher self.

I just ordered the sun from China. 2, actually - always helps to have a backup.

Oh, I have no problem with the current system or any other - just takin the piss. Guide on! Every 3 years or so I take a fresh crop of noobs up - friends, family, neighbors, 1st Ave bums, etc. Our number one nemesis: REI's Blue Boots of Pain.

Thanks, OW. I am serious - mos def gonna happen on my end, but Proxima Centauri would up the WOAH factor quite a bit. Shoot me his contact info if you will so we can discuss the preliminaries of how it might work in his end. No hardware yet on my end - still designing it. The footprint's really small...a few square feet or so plus viewing area is all I'd need for the Grand Junction end. Of course, now Colorado could have their own Proxima/Alpha Centauri solar system with Kepler rockin the exoplanets.

I'm going this project in concert with a buddy up the street and his 12 year old son Alex - the kid who made a Rainier attempt with us last year. That's what stuck me, too - the reach of gravity. Maybe someday we'll figure what it is. The sun is dense - its specific gravity averages 1.4. It also contains 99.9% of the solar system's mass. But it's not all that big, relatively speaking. VY Canis Majoris would engulf the solar system far beyond the orbit of Jupiter - well over a 100 foot radius (relative to 1 inch) on my scale.

Meh. Uranus is relatively calm. Calmer than you are.

I could have that information for you by 3 o'clock, but you don't want to know.

Did you know that the moon around Uranus has methane geysers?

Not enough time to spread the word on 911, but I do what I can. Figuring this stuff out isn't too time consuming with a spreadsheet and a little grey matter. Neither is making a few bronze medallions with the appropriate symbology.

The sun and planets out to Jupiter will be on my property, so don't piss me off. As far as I know there are no solar system models than include other star systems out there. They're all too large (public art and all that). This will give me an excuse to head out to Colorado one of these days (with Proxima Centauri in the glove box). Perhaps I'll even have the city's permission to install it.