tvashtarkatena

Skis can kill, too. Snowshoes just make you want to kill yourself.

That's gonna make for one helluva match.com disclosure.

Or not. Maybe he clearly never was a person that should own. Not much details about him in that link. What, you've forgotten how to stalk already?

One more Vizio 32" safe and sound. HERO.

If you're a noob you ask someone who isn't. Same as it ever was.

Go with Schoeller pants or the equivalent. I like REI ACME pants, but everybody makes something like it. As for hardshell pants, I have a 5 oz pair of windpants that I usually leave at home and Patagucchi's lightest goretex pants for when I have to work out in the yard in the pouring rain, which is never.

No Jelly Belly plant is safe with these guys at large.

I'm picturing Dr. Strangelove and his lovely new young wife Starbrite.

The flyby is quick - less than a day's duration. The drive home takes a month and half longer than the drive to - that's gonna suck. What's really gonna suck is 16 months of freeze dried. More strokinoff, my dear?

Did someone say Giant Sperm Hook? Rope rack made from a curtain rod and WWII surplus pitons: The down bags, puffies, and packs hang in the closet, shoes and boots in a bookshelf, and the rest is bins, one of which is marked 'NOW' - meaning clothes for the current season, the other has my essentials. Then there's a rock bin, a ski bin, an off season bin, and a camp food bin. Confused yet?

Chain saw fairies have been known to fly in to certain neglected trails on occasion I hear.

Colleen has now joined the Order of the Long Shoes.

When this is in your rear view, you know the shit just got real: [video:youtube]ljh8_q-DmuI

Fortunatley, no road was ever built to the Plummer Mt. Mine I refer to. I was surprised to come upon a helo dropped 'superbag' of new plastic piping up there in 2006. Since then, Washington Trails Association, a local advocacy group, worked to ensure a wilderness future for this island of private land within the GPW: WTA saves GPW from future copper mining Here's a stewardship organization that seems to be a bit more deserving of an environmentalist's donations. BTW, the Chelan PUD still maintains the right to land a chopper at the Lyman Lake Snotel site (in the heart of the GPW) 4 times a year. Given this and many other reasonable exceptions to motorized vehicle ban in wilderness areas, WW's suite looks even more like a complete waste of public time, money, and energy. If only WW would content themselves in aggressively wafting sage smoke at passing A6s from Whidbey.

After Apollo 8 rounded the moon, NASA spent the next two missions testing the LEM in both earth and lunar orbit before landing on the moon. Apollo 10 must have sucked in a way - all dressed up and no shore passes... It would be fun as hell to watch Tito's Spam in a Can barrel race round Mars actually happen. No one's ever been more than half a million miles away from earth - watching the planet recede into a blue dot has got to be a mind bender.

Lower Winthrop seracs are at 7000+

2 crews, plus a third, bonus crew a bit later on.

For those of you interested in how just much a standard Marsianaut eats, drinks, pees, and poops per day: Inspiration Mars Feasibility Analysis "Given the limitations of the mission, this will certainly be reduced by eliminating or reducing items such as toilet paper, tape, dry wipes, detergent, disinfectant and clothing." The "minimal clothing" paragraph caught my eye. Hopefully for us viewers, the couple will be of lower rather than upper middle age. The mission proposes to use a modified DragonX capsule for the crew and Heavy rocket, neither of which are currently available. Cost estimates being bandied about run around 2 B.

Lower Winthrop Gl just over St. Elmo's Pass offers some terrain.

Light and small can be kind of gimmicky, but be able to ski a 6 day traverse with a 40L pack is kind of a cool trick, too. Successful small companies tend to get bigger. Small companies can also make crap as well as larger ones. I tend to focus more on the retailer - small local shops who provide good service should be rewarded with repeat business so they can stick around and continue to raise the bar.

I haven't yet been able to decipher the original thesis here, but... Modern gear rocks. All around or out of town, goin up or goin down, in Kermit Green or Charcoal Slate, whip it good, it's not too late. If the enjoyment of not being cold, injured, or dead constitutes manufactured performance anxiety, hand me a Xanax or comparably marketed medication.

And speaking of irony - its perfectly legal to air drop mining supplies on Miner's Ridge, right smack in the middle of the Glacier Peak Wilderness (although on a private parcel), but illegal to airdrop construction materials for preservation of an historical lookout.

I don't use the term "common sense" to support my viewpoints, as I consider my self neither common nor particularly sense-making, but then I don't get too wrapped around the axle when someone else does, either. While we're on the topic of effective communication: picking apart another's rhetorical micro-choices, or lack thereof, doth not a winning debate make. Bottom line is this: Washingtonians overwhelmingly love our last remaining 14 lookouts, and support their preservation. The WA Act does not require Green Mt to be torn down as a sanction. Appropriately narrow legislation can (and should, IMO) save the Green Mt. Lookout. And finally, WW has a habit of bullshitting its supporters. As a board member of a non-profit advocacy group, I take particular exception to this method of duping the public out of its hard earned donation dollars, and I question WW's overall impact on habitat and wildlife - which I'd estimate has been not much over the years, given its focus on letter of the law trivia (at the great expense of historical preservation), rather than substantive action. I'd say WW appears to be little more than a jobs program for a handful of folks who care little for regional values, honesty or substantive action. For anyone actually interested in preserving nature, it seems there many other organizations that would put donations to better use.

That is all.

Does the GMLO predate Wilderness designation and therefore deserve protection via the HPA and WA? Yes. Did the FS use a chopper to rebuild GMLO? Yes. Did the FS have a good reason to do so? Yes. The structure as originally restored was unstable and would have created a huge debris field - not exactly an environmentalists wet dream, had they not taken that action. Our massive storms after 2000 changed the rules, as Mother Nature is want to do on occasion. I reckon folks in states a thousand miles away probably never got that memo. Must they, or should they, tear down the lookout, risking greater environmental damage, huge expense (particularly with the road washed out), and loss of one of the last few remaining historical treasures? No. Does one need to be aware of or give two shits about the Muir hut's issues or lack thereof to care about Washington's last remaining historical lookouts? No again. Is Washington's 1984 Wilderness Act, which codifies our citizen's democratic desire to preserve our 14 (out of hundreds of original) remaining lookouts, possibly in conflict with the 1964 Wilderness Act? Arguably. Can legislation provide for legal exceptions to the No Power Equipment rule of the 1964 WA? Yes, there is much precedence here. Rep. Rick Larsen is pushing for just such an exception for Green Mountain. Wilderness Watch is fighting it, of course, incorrectly characterizing it as a Republican ploy. I've noticed they play really fast and loose with their website rhetoric and basic facts, but hey, honesty is for whimps, right? And finally, how many of you here have ever even been to Green Mountain?