forrest_m

lots of ice around, on the slabs down low, even down at the road, anywhere where there's normally running water. but up high it's been too cold and nothing is melting enough to form water ice. but what do you mean "just" neve? neve rules! um... we're not too smart? the book calls the SE ridge an easy walkoff, and it leads down much closer to the hut. also, there were tracks from earlier in the day leading down and we knew that the makers had done the descent before. if i had it to do over again, i probably would choose the aussie couloir.

originally posted on rec.climbing in 2001. without rc.com's net nanny edits. google groups

This is a major loss to our community. Ben’s accomplishments were amazing, but what really made an impression on me was his attitude that seemed to say “no big deal, just me and my friends having fun.” I first met him when Marshall and I were putting together the mountainslide festival a few years ago. We were looking for people to fill the “local” slots and he emailed me to say that he had some photos of “skiing some pretty steep stuff in the cascades.” He came in with a tray of slides and blew us away – the only show we scheduled with absolutely no need for further discussion. I hope to remember Ben as a guy who was out there for the right reasons – not to impress other people (although we couldn’t help being impressed), but just because it was what he wanted to do.

The descent down the SE ridge served up a full serving of suck, though, about 1,500 feet of down front-pointing on more perfect neve. We made one rap from just above the shoulder as darkness fell, though parties ahead of us had downclimbed while it was still light out. hey ade, is a tricky reminiant some kind of wily cow?

lamplighter/heaven's gate thread from may

i didn't put it together about the stronger beer until the next day... i knew i was hammered, but thought a nice, 25 minute walk home in the cold air would sober me up... i couldn't figure out why i kept feeling more and more drunk and not less...

I'm guessing that would be expensive. creating slides from large digital files can be done at most of the professional-type photo places (I like Ivey, some people prefer prolab, there are others). the quality depends on the quality of your original digital image, but can be quite good. runs about $10 per slide, with price breaks for quantity down to around $8. adds up quick if you are trying to do a lot.

david - digital projectors do exist that have similar image quality to a slide projector, but they cost tens of thousands of dollars. the relatively inexpensive projector we had last night(not that inexpensive - i think similar models sell for around $800 - $1000, plus you need a laptop to run them) is mostly designed for making powerpoint presentations, "our top three sales objectives for this quarter are..." while quality is improving, i think it will be several more years before dig. projectors in the regular consumer market can compete with slides for image quality.

just staggered into work, i'm getting to old to drink that much on a weeknight! good times, thanks to everyone who helped put it on, nice to put some more faces to names.

i may be totally mistaken, but i thought i heard that he went on to develop the msr tent line? msr tents maybe that's why msr uses the ugly red & brown colors?

anyone know a WFR class offered on an evenings + weekends schedule? seattle area a +. i'm just not willing to use up half my yearly vacation to do an 8-day course.

personally, i'd find it hard to jump into a hard workout after the relaxation of a sauna or hot tub, but there might be something to the stretching + heat. isn't that the theory behind those "hot box" yoga places? i asked my yoga teacher about it once, but she was so incensed by that Bikram guy's over-commercialization that she forgot to answer my question about the method itself... for avoiding soreness (post-workout), i've had a lot more luck with the hot-cold-hot-cold shower than the hot tub. YMMV, but the theory is that by constricting then dilating your blood vessels, you supposedly are pumping waste products out of your system. plus, i have a shower at my house but not a hot tub - but the hot tub sure feels better after a day of skiing!

jesus, bug, give me credit for some level of humility... nevertheless, while my survival skills are not in the same league as someone like Nanook, practice has taught me that under certain combinations of temperature and type of snow, building an igloo is more difficult than some other kinds of snow shelters. for example, around here, where you often have a combination of soft snow and not-very-cold temperatures, the only way to get decent blocks for building is to stomp out a "quarry" and wait for it to freeze up. in the time that this takes when it is 30 degrees out, you could dig three caves of equivalent size. OTOH, when it is cold out, the quarry forms almost instantly and the igloo almost builds itself because the blocks adhere to each other as you place them. i suspect that an Inuit would not build an igloo just because he "could", but rather would choose whatever was expedient for the situation in which he found himself. of course, in balmy 30 degree temps., he might not bother to make a shelter at all. my comment about nanook's death was more related to the harshness of his environment.

i don't know, i think i've just watched the matrix movies too much the last couple of weeks (gotta get ready for revolutions!)

i actually did this just the other day. not only that, but i actually tracked the knife long enough to let the handle spin back to me so as not to catch the blade. i ended up down on one knee with the knife only an inch or two off the floor. i was alone in the kitchen, but i swear, for a second there i could hear the cheering of a full stadium... "what an amazing save, the crowd goes wild!"

amen. good snow = easy igloo, bad snow = impossible igloo and frustrating coldness despite his amazing survival skills, nanook starved to death two years after that movie was made. website the arctic plays for high stakes. on a totally unrelated topic this is my 500th post . i guess i can no longer consider myself an "occasional user" (jon, you'll be hearing from me via paypal...)

Cloud Walkers by Paddy Sherman, about the generation of brits that emigrated to british columbia after WWII. Don't know if it's actually great literature, but it was one of the two books about climbing that my high school library had, so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. (Harrer's The White Spider was the other) I strongly second the recommendations for Breaking Point, Eiger Dreams and Sherman Exposed. It thought This Game of Ghosts was anti-climactic. You realize that Simpson has to be a tough mother because he's so darn accident prone. Though you gotta love the part at the end where, injured again, being lowered down a big alpine face again, his partner turns to him and hands over his pocket knife.

"are you ok right there? i have to take you off for a second..." "dude! you're the hand!"

so W and I are sitting in Lisa’s tent at basecamp and one of the junior guides for the company that’s contracted to support the NG team comes in, he’s getting ready to carry a load of digital video cartridges up to the 14K camp. He’s planning just to run up with the stuff in the pockets of his jacket instead of carrying a pack, so he takes it out of the boxes and protective packaging and puts the bare cartridges in the pocket of his down parka. (The packaging was ridiculously oversized, for each audio-cassette sized cartridge, the cardboard and plastic was approximately the size of a brick). Turned out the joke was on him, though, because the cameraman wasn’t willing to waste time shooting onto possibly contaminated medium, and doug had to run down the next day and repeat the 7,000 vertical with a new batch…

let's have a show of hands from everyone who has ever used a tensioned sky-hook as lead pro.

Matt - I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. If you would like to share more stories about Ryan, I think many of us would feel privileged to get to know him just a little, even if it means coming to share a tiny part of your sadness as well. Forrest

I appreciate the thoughtful responses. I’ve been thinking about this since last night, and here’s maybe a clearer way to explain what I’m trying to get at. In any kind of risk-management plan, there’s usually some variation of the equation: P (probability of something bad happening) x T (time exposed to danger) x C (consequence of something bad happening) ________________ = R (total risk) Now I suppose some people who are very analytical may actually think in these terms in the field. Speaking for myself, however, its much more common to simply have an overall, gestalt sense of what R is, based on previous experience. It’s usually obvious when P increases. As someone noted, you’d have to be blind not to have your stress level go up when a storm rolls in. What I think is less obvious is when C increases, as in my forgotten jacket example and Fern’s forgotten beacon example. In both cases, P and T stay the same but R is increased (by how much is a different discussion, I think?). I find personally that I am far more sensitive/conscious of increases in P and T than I am to C. But I am coming to believe that this is a form of self-deception that I would like to reduce.

Jopa - I guess this depends on whether your objection is personal or philosophical, i.e. I don't feel qualified to judge other people vs. I don't feel ANYONE should judge other people. If the former, I think you can just follow the system. Go to jury duty, tell the truth when they ask you questions, and if you truly believe that you can't judge others, it is unlikely they will let you do so. If the latter, then I suppose civil disobedience would be justified. But I don't agree with that proposition, so don't ask me how that might be accomplished...

Jay – Thanks for the clarification, yes, that’s what I meant. Dane, I think you’re getting caught up in the semantics of the word accident. I don’t disagree that climbing (and life) are inherently unsafe and you can never eliminate the unforeseen. Sometimes shit does happen and all the preparation in the world won’t prevent it. Nor am I trying to make up any kind of “system.” I’m just interested in discussing judgment in alpine situations, particularly the decision to continue on or to retreat after some unexpected occurrence. Here’s another hypothetical. Two guys go up for a quick ascent of Liberty Ridge. They are trying to slip in ahead of an oncoming system, so they go super light. After spending the night at Thumb Rock, the weather is already changing, but they decide to push it to the top anyway, which they do, summiting in bad conditions. They are soon soaked by the wet snow, but they are able to find the descent. By the time they arrive at the car, every item in their packs is awash in water and they can no longer stop moving without beginning to shiver uncontrollably, but they are essentially fine. My point is that climbing Lib. Ridge in bad conditions isn’t - in and of itself - a bad decision. It depends a lot on the skills and experience of the climbers. But if they had set out to climb knowing that they would be climbing in those conditions, they might have brought different gear, a shovel to dig in, whatever. Once the bad weather happened, and they continued upwards, they were much closer to the edge than they had originally planned to be – BUT IN MANY CASES THEY WOULDN’T THINK OF IT IN THOSE TERMS. They might think "good thing we're strong enough to push through this added difficulty" but they might not consider it in terms of "I hadn't planned to push my limits today." I’m not saying that continuing up was right or wrong, just that it changed the equation. I’m trying to learn to be more conscious of moments when the equation changes, rather then letting them slip by without me really noticing. I’m wondering if other people have thought similarly.

CM pick only requires 1 allen wrench, there is enough friction between the female part of the bolt and the soft aluminum of the head to hold it in place. The advantage of the separate bolt system is that you can swap the whole thing out. My partner did the "tighten my BD tool with the other one" thing on a fairly serious alpine route and stripped the threads, which are on the tool head itself, i.e. impossible to fix in the field. He had to finish the route with a shaky pick which shatters the ice something fierce. On a CM, if you carry a spare bolt assembly (which weighs nothing, I keep one attached to my spare pick in case I drop something), you wouldn't have this problem. Seriously, I've never seen anyone try to deal with a loose or broken pick without having two hands free, either they a) place a screw and hang b) pull out their third tool or c) gut it out to the end of the pitch and fix it at the belay. Also, although the pulsar and axar are being phased out, the quasar picks have a second set of holes that fits these tools, so don't despair.