Bosterson

I have a Core that's a few years old. For outdoor use I keep it in altimeter mode so I haven't tried the barometric storm warning alarms or whatever. The display seems easier to read than the older Vector model. Nothing fancy but it works well to gauge how high you are on a ridge, etc. The battery seems to last for about a year.

As the Deschutes NF decided to still take the nuclear option and plans to institute a massive paid permit and quota system for the Central Oregon Cascades from May - October, people who submitted comments on the original draft proposal have an opportunity to object or appeal the USFS's decision. Someone I know wrote out a guide on how to do this, which I am quoting below:

Various closet cleaning. Available for pickup in Portland, or we can work out shipping for rough cost. 1) Sportiva Katanas - men's 39.5 - used a couple of times, a little too narrow for me. Edges like new. $60 2) Sportiva Tarantulas - men's 39.5 - tested once inside but fit was off. Basically new. $50 3) Julbo Explorer XL glacier glasses with case and cleaning cloth. Like new (too big for my face). $75 4) MSR Whisperlite stove, three 22oz fuel bottles with pump, 1.5L + 2L stainless pots with heat exchanger and lid, pot gripper, windscreen, storage bags, etc. Heavy by modern standards but basically indestructible. Well used but in good condition. $50 for all. 5) BD Ion 80 lumen ultralight headlamp. Never used cause I couldn't get into the "touch" button. $10 Petzl Zipka (with retractable band that you can use to hitch it to things). Original 3 LED version from over 15 years ago! Basically a candle compared to modern headlamps. Maybe fun for kids? Free to a good home. 6) old BD headlamp - takes 2x AAs in a battery pack, 2 proximity LEDs and a focused center spot LED. Free to a good home. 7) Two old style BD Hotwires. Minimal use as I apparently forgot about them in a box for years. Used lightly on bolts if that matters. $5 for both. 8) Julbo beater glacier glasses. $5, or free with any purchase above $10.

Pretty sure the 4th red one ("unknown brand") is an early/mid-90s Black Diamond X-15.

If you customize the chart and then save it as a bookmark and then try to open the saved one in a new tab, it also just says "loading plots" and spins indefinitely without loading the graph. Lame.

Awesome, thanks!

David Kantola's weather graphs interpolating NWAC data for the prior 7 days appear to have gone offline - the dkantola.nl URL now redirects to a .cn jewelry website. Not sure what's going on there, but those graphs were fantastic. Anyone know whether they were moved elsewhere, or if there's another source for telemetry weather graphs like that?

It's too bad that his 2nd video - the Cliffhanger Guide to Climbing Gear (featuring the ice screw gun!) - appears to have been taken down via a Sony Pictures copyright claim... https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=seluTSIqoQ4 He must not have ever gotten around to doing the 3rd installment, which I believe was supposed to be called the Eiger Sanction Guide to Training. (Probably something about climbing in jeans with a six pack in your rucksack...)

I think this belt is a good solution for how to equalize the 4 weighted charms on the small industrial keychain. Also works for ~2 ft double strand emergency rappels. This is the perfect setup for those cutting edge buildering projects.

HEY BROS, I AM HAVING A HARD TIME CHOOSING WHICH PREMADE TRAD ANCHOR TO BUY. MEDIUM ANCHOR HAS A WIRE FOR EQUALIZING THE PIECES, BUT THE SMALL ANCHOR IS CHEAPER AND HAS AN EXTRA WEIGHTED CHARM FOR MORE PLACEMENT OPTIONS. THOUGHTS???? ALSO ARE THESE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS CLIMBING SAFE??? https://www.endclothing.com/us/off-white-medium-industrial-keychain-omnf006s182530089100.html https://www.endclothing.com/us/off-white-small-industrial-keychain-omnf005s182530089100.html

The USFS has released a proposed management plan that would require prepaid permits with quotas even for day use in the Central Oregon Cascades. This would massively restrict access, and would affect climbing on all of the Central OR Cascades volcanoes. Comments are due to the USFS by 5/21/18. I just found out that the Access Fund has a page set up to help send in your comments. If you want to read the whole 188 pg USFS proposal, it is here.

Since the math has been bandied about regarding "cumulative risk," can you elaborate on how you're calculating this figure? I have not messed with complex probabilities and binomial series since high school, so I'm a bit rusty, but after some googling, I came across the formula for a Bernoulli trial, which appears to calculate this kind of thing: P(k) = (n!/(k!*(n-k)!) * p^k * q^(n-k) where n is the number of trials, k is the number of "positive" events, p is the probability of the event happening, and q is the probability of the event not happening. The probability of having k events in n trials is kind of a special/easy case when k = 1, since the binomial constant is just n (the other terms cancelling out), so it appears to effectively pro-rate the number of trials by the proportion of them that are positive vs negative, yielding the cumulative positive proportion for all the trials. When I run the math on this, if the p of rappel failure is 0.1% (.001) and we use n = 1000, P(k) = 36.8%. (This appears to be the inverse of the number you got...) I interpret this as meaning that if the rate of rappel failure is 1/1000 (I think it is really much lower than this, at least for non-alpine climbing), then ~ 1/3 climbers would die in rappel accidents if most climbers average around 1000 rappels. Regardless, this does seem to indicate that 1/1000 is not an acceptable failure rate for an event that will happen more than a few times.

Well said, Jon. I am super sad to see things turn out this way. I remember first seeing Marc on here as a kid with a silly banana avatar, who then turned into an alpine superstar. His tick list outlined in the Gripped article is unbelievably impressive. There were clearly more great things to come from him, and this doesn't seem fair. I don't generally get choked up over the loss of climbers I've never met, but this has me crying. I'll just repeat what Jon said: rest easy, Marc. Thanks for showing us what was possible. The next beer is on us.

I agree with DPS. You can also see on the T-Line webcam that the bergschrund is still gaping. The upper area looks like it got just enough snow to dust things and maybe cover over any open cracks, but not fill them in. If there's a big snow dump and the whole mountain gets covered, you could probably go in a month or two without too much to worry about.

Metolius MasterCam #6. Placed once, never weighted. Too much overlap with the rest of my rack so sending it to a better home. Comes with a Camp Nano racking biner! $45 Mountain Hardwear Castil men's shorts (7" inseam, khaki) - size 32 - new with tags, too large for me. $20 Pick up in Portland or we can split shipping.