forrest_m

"honey, technically, i'm home but actually i'm lying on the couch all day..."

no, no, don't you know that all bigshot math types always make arithmetic errors, that's why all the discussions end with "calculating the final answer is left as an exercise for the reader."

Dale - I haven't done it, but Passenger gets really good reviews from everyone who does it, there's good pitch-by-pitch beta here. Independence on Lib. Bell would be right up your alley. It's got 4 or 5 pitches of pretty high-standard free climbing (or moderate aid. extensive beta here

when climbing in alaska and other places where your stove is literally your life, i usually carry a second pump for this reason. it's not a huge weight penalty if you have more than one fuel bottle anyway, since you can just put pumps in both instead of caps. for extended trips, XGK/white gas will eventually end up being lighter than cannister stoves, but (assuming you can make your cannister stove work in cold conditions) a cannister setup is definately lighter for trips of less than 4 or 5 days. this is tempered by my experience that, even with a heat exchanger or copper-tube heating setup, it is impossible to use all the fuel in a gas cannister in cold temps. OTOH, i've never had an XGK become non-functional while there was a drop of flammable liquid within reach.

if you retreat upwards, will real climbers still think you are a failure?

oh, definately the time i met W to go to index at 7 am the day after another buddy's bachelor party. i had about the worst hangover EVER, and was operating on about 2 hours of sleep, but a true climber never lets his partner down. only sheer iron willpower got me through that day, it was a testament to the human spirit, i tell you.

To paraphrase a guy I used to climb with "climbing offers the same kind of personal growth as combat, without requiring you to kill anyone." He was a vietnam vet, so i guess he'd know.

i have dex in my high altitude kit for emergencies, i.e. coming down with symptoms but weather/distance/yak strikes prevent you from losing enough altitude. i don't believe in depending on it long-term (though i believe it does work prophylactically) because when you run out, it's worse than never having taken anything, but it can be a life-saver if you need to buy time.

The route more-or-less is the buttress parallel to the DEB on the S. Spire. The description in the Beckey guide is pretty good, too bad the route sucks Only recommended for the washington pass completist - if the DEB is 4 stars, the E. Butt of the North is minus 2. Lots of traverses, gravel, trees and not-very-good rock. Crux is on the second pitch, thin crack with lots of kitty-litter rock that doesn't feel very trustworthy (I pulled on gear for one move rather than risk falling on gear I thought would likely rip). Lots of traversing and low angle ground, then another hard (but short) pitch over a small roof into a chimney. After some more easy ground, another, slightly harder chimney, then easy ground to the top.

there it is!

i found that the nozone works pretty well if you put on the hypalon sheet on the back but leave the two bottom buckles un-attached. put your two skis together through, tighten, away you go. i(.e. your skis are on the opposite side of the pack from your spine.) it puts the weight a bit further back than mounting them on the sides, but it a sleeker package for bushwacking, so there's pros and cons.

i broke my fibula a week before my high school graduation. i put hand on the railing of my friend ryan's ground-level porch and vaulted over, a shortcut to the streed i'd only been doing ten times a week since i was 8 years old. only this time, his mom was doing some gardening and left a small hand trowel on the ground. foot hit trowel, leg slid out away from me, crack, ouch. i was on crutches for the whole graduation shindig.

it's important to remember that traits like "intelligence" are not being "pursued" in and of themselves by the process of selection. in fact, from the standpoint of evolution, the people who are "just smart enough" to survive and reproduce are well adapted to their environment. wasting effort on continually upping IQ beyond that required to thrive is just that - wasted, i.e. there is little evolutionary pressure that would cause this to happen. this is neither good nor bad, it simply is. lest you be too worried that our species is going down the tubes, remember too that there can be more than one stable reproductive strategy within the same species. Just because one strategy leads to more offspring doesn't mean that the other is in any danger of dying out, but rather the ecosystem is stable with a certain percentage of individuals pursuing their various strategies with varying rates of fecundity. So, you could argue that western technological humans are developing into multiple strategies where for certain people, it makes more sense to concentrate their resources among fewer offspring (leading to a stable and self-perpetuating concentration of wealth & influence and the consequent control of resources) while others spread their resources thin to maximize their number of offspring. these divergent strategies can be stable while also being interdependant: it takes millions of wal-mart shoppers to support every sam walton, but the social and economic sytems that allow poor people to purchase 50,000 calories at will are generally controlled by the concentrated wealth folks.

back when i rock climbed a lot more, i never taped up, 'cause once you have the callouses, it's all about the same. OTOH, i recently spent a week in the valley after barely climbing all summer. i taped religiously (though sparingly) because i figured i would not otherwise be able to climb many days in a row in order to take advantage of my short vacation. after climbing 7 days out of 8, my hands are still as smooth as a baby's bottom, so mission accomplished in that regard. interesting to note the different ways peopls tape up. i always make the "glove" style, which takes a bit longer the first time but then can be reused every day for about a week and don't slide downwards. (just replace the 3" long strip at the wrist each morning). my partner prefered to just wrap circles around the palm and back, which i hate because my palms sweat, and you have to totally re-do it every day. i saw this spanish guy in the grocery store who looked like he was making boxing gloves, dude must have had an entire roll of tape on his hands... as for finger tape, having torn both ring finger tendons, i almost always tape the knuckle prophalactically. this is kind of like anti-aid, as it actually reduces your crimp strength (because you can't bend the finger as far to get your weight over the pad), but it beats injuring yourself in the gym. i used to just make a "ring" on each side of th knuckle, but daler showed me a much more effective method of using a continuous thin strip (like 1/3 the width of the roll), making a loose ring below the knuckle, then pulling tight as you cross over the back of the knuckle, loose ring above, tight cross again coming back down.

the 1.6 is an average based on the friction between various parts of the system in a "typical" setup. YMMV - overhanging sport climb, probably pretty close to the "ideal" of 2. lowering from the top of mountaineers dome with the rope running across 50' of low angle slab? anchor would be lucky to feel even 1 (i.e. bodyweight of the climber)