trumpetsailor

Might add the Voile Vector to your list of ~95-100 mm skis. Marmot had 'em on a bit of a sale last week. I've seen rumors, maybe on telemarktips, of sales online too. ~95 mm seems like a great size for a do-it-all ski.

Saw folks on low that route (and late in the day), or one nearby, on President's Day weekend of last year. Beautiful position. Took photos, but they're not on this computer.

For the Shaman fans: Icelantic now makes them in a 184. http://icelanticboards.com/skis/shaman/ Quite a few ~200 lb people seem to like the 161 and 173, so the 184 may be overkill for some. "Railed" <--> "edge high" Just bought a pair of used 161s for my girlfriend; tuning them yesterday, the only flaw I noted was a couple of base dimples from the binding mount. Appear to be burly well-made skis. Want to play with them, but our BSLs don't match... For the OP: Friends put friends on Dynafits. Fiddly at first, but ultimately much lighter on the up. How fat is fat for you? Noodly compared to what ski?

Strong work. Especially so on your self-rescue.

After a few moment's thought, there are at least two sorts of distinct "spiritual experiences" commonly discussed. * When an event occurs that places a person in mortal danger (real or perceived), it is sometimes described as a "spiritual experience" and sometimes involves the soiling of pants. * When a sense of place or mental state gives a person the sense of being closer to a higher power/plane/nature, it is sometimes described as a "spiritual experience". Are you interested in both, the latter, or something more?

Presuming, for a moment, that the article isn't just in error: From the rescuer's perspective, a severely hypothermic patient can be indistinguishable from a dead one. As the mantra goes, "Cold and dead is not the same thing as warm and dead." It can be standard procedure to treat a patient as hypothermic until they're re-warmed and confirmed deceased. From personal experience, the MRNP rangers have rescue wired. A big thank-you to everyone involved. Thoughts and kind wishes to the victim's family and friends. Sunday was probably a beautiful day on the mountain. Edit -- More from TNT: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/adventure/2011/12/14/new-york-man-brian-grobois-apparently-got-lost/

TNT has a little more prose: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/12/14/1944479/snowshoer-found-dead-on-mount.html Searching for "rainier" on google news turns up more articles.

If you'll consider a pressure-sensing watch, I've been happy with the Casio SGW-300H, especially for the price. Occasionally curious display, but the menus are pretty well laid-out. $40 for a rugged altimeter watch... Used Highgears for several years, but lack of durability/waterproofness (pressing buttons on a wet watch --> water inside the watch) led me to look elsewhere. Nice displays and pressure sensors on even the inexpensive ones, just trashed one every year or two.

Flown several times in the past couple years with nuts/smaller hexes/tricams, 30m double, helmet, slings, biners, etc. No problems, not even a search. SEA,COS,ROA airports. Always left the nut tool out, as per cc.com lore.

EXCELLENT WORK, MRNP!

Burly.

Glad you got in there; especially to Azure .

MAR - Just a friendly thought: I solo moderate routes all over the Cascades, summer and winter, but I've been very glad to have a quality partner on both of my forays into the Pickets. Not saying you shouldn't do it, just that you ought to be sure what you're getting into. From what you've said about your experience/technical knowledge, the traverse may be a big step up for you. Making little careful steps, failing gracefully, and trusting my gut have all been important to making soloing reasonably safe for me. It can be a hard place to back out of if things go badly. Coming from the East Coast, I found essentially everywhere in the Cascades to be stunning; you don't necessarily need to hit the Pickets in order to have a phenomenal trip. Just step out of your car at Cascade Pass while Johannesburg drops car-sized iceblocks a half a vertical mile and you'll know you're not in Manhattan anymore.

Been flying quite a bit lately with an all-passive (nuts, hexes, tricams) rack to ~2" and a double rope/helmet, leaving the nut tool at home. Nary a mention at any airport. (That said, I'm flying tomorrow, so this could be the jinx.)

Thanks, DPS! I've pulled other cars before, just not on a dynamic line that I wanted to save. The blanket trick is an essential. Compulsive ice-chipping and careful packing of bramble under the tires let us drive the car out of the ditch this morning. I'm still curious, though the question is now academic: How do you know? I imagine a dynamic rope can hold 0.5 kN for days without any obvious degradation, but I wouldn't climb on a rope that had been left with a 9 kN static load for even a few minutes. Are there any test results for dynamic lines left under considerable static loads (~3-4kN) for long periods of time (hours/days/weeks)?

Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah - I figure if I start to push up anywhere near the rated tensile strength, I'm starting to accumulate the equivalent of a big fall or more. There's a reasonable chance we'll get this car out with ~4 kN or less of force. Using just one pulley, attached at the car, would step that down to a 2 kN (~400 lb) load in the rope, which seems like it should be within the normal working loads for a climbing rope. Now that I know that comealongs might be had for <$50 + the cost of some haul webbing/wire rope/chain, I'm exploring that option too...

I'm off visiting the family for Xmas. We accidentally dropped an SUV into a ditch tonight after an enjoyable backward driveway slide. I've got an 8.5 mm double rope and more than enough hardware to rig a 6+:1 haul rig. I'm aware of the tensile strength limits for the rope and that overzealous haul systems can reach them. Any guesses as to how much of a static load will start to degrade a half/double rope from a climbing/dynamic perspective? I like the rope. Edit: Whoa. Comealongs are cheap.

That's cool. Thanks!

Thanks for saving us the trip! !

There are now two on concrete posts, in addition to the wall-mounted one that's been there for ages. The wall is a public park.

Cross-post from TAY. Event is tonight (Tuesday). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- When: October 26th, 7-9pm. Where: Feathered Friends, Seattle What: I am presenting case study of an avalanche on Kendall Peak last April that left me seriously injured. It will be an educational slideshow, considering the incident and the decisions and actions that lead to it. I seek to share my experience so others may learn and hope that it will spark discussion and get people start thinking about snow safety as the season approaches. There will be a raffle with some great prizes. All proceeds go to King County SAR, who gave me a free life-saving heli ride. Of course, cool liquid refreshments will be on tap. Hope to see some TAYer's there! Cheers, Dan Otter

Great information, it's a useful supplement to things I'm reading elsewhere. As hemp22 suspected, I'm hardly wedded to a "90%" number. Thank you!

How long do the modern variants of high strength fibers retain ~90% of their rated strength, when kept unused in a cool, dry, and dark location? I've spent a few hours searching the web and have found few empirical breaking strengths with anything approaching reasonable statistics. It looks like the manufacturers would prefer that webbing be turned over every 1-2 years. I'm, in principle, a big fan of the lightweight runners and slings that are now available, but I worry about aging. I tend to do, at most, a few alpine climbs with a very light rack and a few roped-up trips on glaciers each year, so I'd like to get 4-5 safe years out of my investments. I'm considering expanding my rack somewhat and some gear, like Tri-cams and sewn runners, comes with the choice between nylon and Spectra/Dyneema. Which is going to give the safest (and lightest) bang for the buck between now and 2015? Thanks!

There are essentially two groups working on gravity at UW - I work for the other one (at CENPA on campus). If you're curious about what they're doing in the tunnel, read on! What's a fifth force? So far as science is aware, there are only four forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force (important to some nuclear decays/neutrinos, etc.), and the strong force (what really holds a nucleus together). Experiments like the ones done at Index are looking for tiny forces (weak, even compared to gravity) that would be due to some new physics we don't yet know about. If there is a grand unified theory to be found (one that tacks the theories of all four forces together into one package), then it's very likely that a "fifth force" exists, but it's going to be really feeble. How do the experiments work? These experiments are a search for materials that are pulled by gravity a little differently than their inertial mass would suggest. In everyday life, we're very accustomed to the observed fact that something with lots of inertia (hard to move if you push on it, even if it's on wheels) is also very heavy (gravity pulls on it hard). Physicists do not know why this is true. This notion, called the "equivalence principle", is a key foundation of General Relativity, but it's only based on observation. Searches for a fifth force, then, look for a gravity-like force that depends on the composition (protons, neutrons, feathers, yo mama, whatever) of a piece of matter but not its inertial mass. This Equivalence Principle turns out to be really true: If you drop any two materials in vacuum, experiments at UW have shown that the difference in their acceleration is less than ~0.0000000000003%. Why Index? The experiments done in the tunnel there look at forces that pull sideways (gravity attracts all things toward one another; it doesn't just pull "down"). It's therefore advantageous, for a gravitational experiment, to be near a huge cliff. That way, there's a whole lot of mass on one side of the experiment and you can test whether or not two materials are attracted differently toward it. It's also important to know what the cliff is made out of, since the strength of any observed fifth force will depend on the cliff's composition too. Furthermore, precision physics experiments like underground caves and basements where the temperature/environment is very stable. I don't work in their lab, so I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "Radioactive Materials" sign is there to discourage vandals. Most of the materials involved in gravitational research are as innocuous as tiny chunks of aluminum and titanium. Thank you so much for helping to fund this kind of work (our lab costs about $0.003 per US taxpayer per year to run). On the good days, it's as good as putting up a first winter ascent. In return for funding basic research like this, occasionally you get things like GPS, which are pretty rad, and facts like those stated above.

Awesome. Thank you!