forrest_m

Dryad’s thread about reactions to risk and injury brought to mind another line of thought I’ve been having lately about risk assessment and acceptance. People who write about extreme-level single push climbing note that you have to be prepared to turn around if the slightest thing goes wrong. I think this also applies to less-than-cutting-edge ascents in lightweight style as well. Suppose that at the base of a the NR of Stuart, I discover that I’ve forgotten my shell jacket. The weather looks great, so I keep going. The climbing is within my abilities and the route goes without a hitch. I descend and head home, another casual day in the mountains. Or was it? In climbing safety systems, we rely on single redundancy. We make anchors so that any one component can fail but not necessarily to resist the failure of two separate things simultaneously. Similarly, on a alpine climb, you generally assume that if one major thing goes wrong – weather goes to shit, an injury, getting way off-route, lost or forgotten gear – it may be a PITA, but you will probably be ok. However if two or more of these things happen, you will have an epic. If you are strong, skilled and/or lucky, you may survive an epic, but the outcome will be in doubt. I don’t have any problem with accepting a certain level of risk – that’s what climbing is about, and it’s a very personal decision what your tolerance is. But what I think it’s important to understand that if you set out, or keep going, in the face of one of these incidents happening, you have cut your margin of safety WAY down. You have already spent your redundancy. In hindsight, I can see that through ignorance or self-deception I have often miscalculated what the risks are and ended up accepting a level of risk greater than I had intended. To get back to my forgotten jacket, since the weather is nice and I don’t need the jacket, it would be easy to continue on thinking that nothing has really changed. But the reality is that my risk assessment SHOULD change. Had I deliberately left my jacket behind, I would have gone into the climb with a completely different mindset. My point is not that it was inherently dangerous to climb without a jacket, but rather that my calculation of what degree of risk I was accepting should be different. Finally, I think it’s important to be wary of negative feedback: “nothing bad happened, so it must have been safe.” To repeat myself one more time, it’s not that I think consciously accepting risk is bad, it’s the accidental assumption of risk that I try to avoid.

I’ve made this analogy before, I couldn’t find it with the search… I was a dinner party a few years ago and ran into a climber I knew. The conversation turned to a recent climbing accident. A non-climber listening in accused us of being morbid by discussing the details, but then another guy chimed in who was a commercial pilot, ex military pilot. He thought it was the most normal thing in the world. He explained that in aviation culture, pilots are encouraged to report even minor mistakes that didn’t lead to an accident, and discussion of accidents and close calls made up a large part of pilot shop talk. In his view, it was this ravenous dissection of incidents that kept aviation relatively safe – considering that it is an inherently dangerous enterprise. Obviously, some of the post-accident chatter (climbing or flying) is Monday morning quarterbacking of the “it wouldn’t have happened to me” variety. Nevertheless, in a lot of cases, the cause of an accident is not obvious. Usually, more than one thing has to go wrong before someone gets killed. If we are to learn anything from these incidents, we have to analyze them. It’s not as simple as just “don’t repeat the mistakes.” I think the key is to try to be a bit humble – how many things have you done that make a funny story now that would appear foolish if they had happened in the prelude to a serious accident? At the same time, I think it is important to try to maintain a certain level of decorum in this kind of discussion. I personally know of one accident after which the parents of the deceased spent weeks scanning the internet for any mention of their son. My guess is that this is not uncommon.

Bug – I’m really interested in your perspective. I’ve heard many people say that they didn’t feel they could justify hard climbing anymore after they had kids. But it sounds like you don’t buy into that. (I don’t have kids, yet, but for my wife it’s definitely when, not if). I can imagine having less time for climbing in the future, but I know for certain that I’m not going to be happy if I give up serious routes, either. I feel like it is the intense self-centeredness of pushing my limits at certain times that gives me the energy to be able to be good at my job, good at my relationships, and, I hope, good at being a dad. My wife sometimes asks me to think about her when I’m making decisions on a climb, but the truth is that I don’t. It doesn’t enter into my thoughts at all. I don’t think “gee, if I was still single, I’d cross this avalanche path, but since I’m married…” I’m completely focused on getting up and down, on keeping myself and my partner safe. Good judgment is good judgment whether or not anyone is waiting for you back home, right?

JayB – My observation has been a bit different than yours. I have seen a lot of “sports ADD” too, people who climb for a few years, even obsessively, but the give it up to move on to the next thing. Some people wrap their whole life up in their sport of choice. Being talented athletes, they may climb (or do triathalons or SCUBA dive or…) at a fairly high level. But when they realize that, though talented, they will never be at the elite level, they move on, looking for the thing that they are good enough at to justify centering their life around it. However, my experience has been that people who climb seriously for more than 5-7 years tend to be lifers. Is this because climbing is engaging mentally as well as physically? Or because it functions well as a metaphor in every day life? Even if work/kids/etc. prevent them from actually getting out much, they tend to still self-identify as climbers. When circumstances permit, they roll back into the game. I admire a lot of these guys – I have a friend who is teaching his grandson to tele ski. How cool is that? BTW, I do not personally know anyone who has given up climbing permanently as a result of losing a friend in an accident, though I know several who thought they would for a time.

or they don't because they quit skiing at the age of five because skiing in the east sucks so bad.

Maybe this is a once-in-a-lifetime incident, but I broke some flicklocks when I pulled them apart to use as tent stakes. The flick doo-dad fell off one pole. I watched if fall, but the powder was so deep I could not find it. I eventually made a repair by making a tourniquet out of repair wire. It worked, but, of course, the pole was no longer adjustable. It was the only time I had used them – they were borrowed from a friend. OTOH, I have had the same pair of screw-type poles for 14 years and they still work fine. Again, the danger is when you pull them apart to use a tent stakes or whatever, you should unscrew the plastic expander and keep it somethere safe before you jam the pole into the snow. This is the cause of many screw-type pole failures. Many people I know backcountry ski with fixed beater poles – they never slip!

Matt – I always wear a helmet at Castle Rock. I wear one working sport routes at Smith. I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE! And if anyone looks like a gaper with a helmet, it's me. I have this euro version of the petzl meteor, blue with neon yellow computer graphics that makes me look like an extra from the movie Tron. I though climbing was about individuality? I could give a shit if someone else thinks I look dumb. I’m not sure what the difference of opinion is here. Will you stipulate that virtually all activities in life, including walking down the street, would be statistically safer with a helmet on? If so, then it comes down to a personal determination of how much safer and if that added security is worth the inconvenience, discomfort and or other disadvantages of helmets? If I read you correctly, you are saying that you think that many people who otherwise would wear a helmet while climbing are discouraged from doing so because of fashion? I.e., people make this calculation of risk vs. cost, believe that a helmet is the right thing, and yet don’t follow their instinct because they are worried that they will look like a dork? And that further, you believe that this does not apply to skiing because skiing helmets make one appear “hardcore” – that is, in your opinion, most people’s risk vs. cost analysis of skiing is that helmets aren’t worth it, but that some people choose to wear one anyway as a fashion accessory? Obviously, it’s true that many people are overly worried about what others think about them. It’s unfortunate when this overcomes someone’s judgment on safety. Do you think anyone disagrees with this statement? Getting back to ski helmets, I don’t understand how anyone can seriously postulate that they don’t reduce your risk of injury. Of course they don’t eliminate injuries. Duh. You may make an informed choice not to wear one – as I said, I never wear one backcountry skiing because I’d rather throttle back than wear one – but I’m still doing it knowing that I’m increasing my risk. Maybe it’s only a small increase, but I’m not going to try to convince myself that “oh, a helmet wouldn’t do any good anyway.” That's just adolescent rationalization.

I'm not disputing your facts, it sounds like you've looked into this more than I have... but doesn't this seem a little strange? Just from a common sense perspective, compare that to a bicycle helmet, which is generally cut higher and weighs less, but would seem to be designed for similar sorts of impacts, i.e. being catapulted off the bike and hitting a curb or the street. Hard to believe that the ski helmet is only good to 12 mph...

I like helmets for lift skiing, though I don't always wear one, because I tend to ski much faster than in the backcounrty. Nice for trying to push my limits skiing bumps on tele gear. If you are skiing fast, I don't see how you are less likely to hurt your head than, say, mtn. biking through the woods. You couldn't pay me to single track without a helmet. OTOH, I never wear one in the backcountry. It's too hot, I tend to ski much slower, the snow is almost always much softer and I find the decrease in awareness of my environment is a greater danger than smacking my head. As for helmets climbing, I have done tons and tons of climbing without a helmet, but these days, I wear one almost always when on lead. Just last weekend, I took a long sport fall at Smith and got flipped upside down by the rope running under my foot. (My fault, I know, and I was aware of it, but fell before I could fix the problem) Anyway, even though the route was overhanging, I whacked the back of my head and was glad to be wearing a helmet. With the very lightweight helmets now available, I don't notice that it negatively affects my climbing ability. I often TR without one, and hang out at the base of crags without one (but never at Vantage!) but that's about it.

whoa there, ban the union? maybe send in some strikebreakers with baseball bats, eh? what recourse does a union have besides the threat of a strike? it's the very basis of collective bargaining. just how are the kids harmed? they do the same number of days, just later in the summer. teachers do a hard job for shitty pay and they often take an extra load of shit because they take the wellbeing of their kids very personally, but it seems to me like they finally said enough is enough.

Dru, your question is revealing in its lack of understanding of general principles. The relationship between image quality and file size (regardless of file format) is mathematical and not dependent on your software. The following is grossly oversimplified, but hopefully is helpful. All the formats we're talking about are raster graphics formats, i.e. they’re essentially like a sheet of graph paper with each square called out to be a certain color. Each square of the graph paper is called a "pixel" The factors that determine a file’s size are resolution (i.e. how big are the squares in your graph paper) and pixel depth (how many color choices are there for each square). For example, for black and white images, you only need 1 bit of information per pixel (is it on or off). For gray scale or color you need to save more information per pixel of graphic. .bmp is the dumbest form of graphic information, basically a simple x,y coordinate system with a color designation for each location. .bmp (short for “bit map”) is limited to the system palette of colors. .gif is very similar to .bmp, but the format allows different pixel depths. .gif’s can be very large and high quality or small and low quality, depending on pixel depth. .tif is rather more sophisticated. No display, print, or scanning device can actually create the millions of distinct colors that make up a high quality image. Instead, they use a combination of a couple of simple colors to create these many different colors (red, green and blue for your screen and scanner; cyan, magenta, yellow and black for most color printers). Therefore, if your graphic format actually names the final color for each pixel, each individual computer will have to figure out some way to convert these colors to RGB, and since this is software driven, the same image will print and display differently and, even worse, will slowly morph as it is passed from machine to machine. So what a .tif does is stores the data in the more basic form of channels. A typical .tif has 3 channels, each a grayscale image in which “black” represents 100% of the basic color (red, green, etc). A program like photoshop combines these into a single composite to make them easy to see, but the data remains separated into discrete channels and is thus “uncontaminated” by the idiosyncracies of the software you have chosen to view it in. .tif is not limited to 3 channels; it is typical in the print industry to use 4 channels, one for each color of CMYK ink. The image is scanned in CMYK and printed in CMYK, and color remains constant from initial scan to final print job regardless of the different computers and monitors that are use in the design process. .tif files can also save additional channels that can be used for masking images (i.e. to lay a jacket over a photograph in a catalog) or to allow for various special effects. .tif is generally considered the “best” graphic format because of it’s high fidelity, but its disadvantage is large file size. The .jpg format by definition includes compression technology. When you save as a jpeg, the machine scans the photo for areas of similar color, and then instead of going pixel by pixel, it saves a mathematical description of regions of similar color. In this way, it gains a huge size advantage over .tif files. Two .jpg files that are the same resolution and pixel depth can end up being of different size, because a photo of, say, a crowd of people is less amenable to this kind of compression than, say, a sunset, because there are many more small regions of different color. Jpegs suffer from the same problem as any other compressed format, because it is “lossy.” Small anomalous regions will disappear and the photo will be increasingly “smoothed” over time as it is opened and re-saved. This is apparent, for example, in photos with large areas of color gradation such as skies. Look closely and you will often see that the sky (or ocean or snowfield) becomes “banded” because the jpeg engine has divided what was a smooth transition into discrete bands of color. When the computer asks you to pick a “quality” level when saving the jpeg, what you are doing is deciding how finely the regions are defined. A “highest” or “level 12” jpeg is little different than a .tif because the regions are very small; a level 1 can resemble abstract art. The jpeg format has gained prominence in recent years because the web puts a premium on “good enough” images that transmit quickly.

guggenheim bilbao was originally designed to be anodized aluminum, but just as it went to bid, the price for ti dropped, so they changed it at the last minute. it's really cool because the ti is lustrous even on cloudy days. the building is surrounded by water on two sides, which enhances that shimmery quality of light. photographs don't really capture it very well, i recommend that you all take a field trip. i see frank gehry as more of a sculptor than an architect - like the spanish architect Gaudi at the end of the 19th century, he makes marvelous, one-of-a-kind sculptural structures that people scratch their heads about. each one is a unique and interesting object, but they are so singular and expensive that the rest of the architectural world just kind of nods and moves on. i.e. whether you like his work or not, it doesn't really have much effect on the rest of the architectural world. gehry doesn't have much of a theory or polemic behind his work, he just does what he likes, so it's hard for other architects to coalesce into some kind of "school of." the new seattle public library, on the other hand is an important building. it is really in your face, a hyper-articulate building that both serves its program and raises questions about that purpose at the same time. it will force many people who wouldn't otherwise do so to think about the nature of public space and civic architecture. it's use of space and innovative structural and mechanical systems will be widely studied. many, many people will hate it, because in seattle, most people prefer polite buildings, but you know what? fuck those people. this town needs some shaking up.

dru, it's not free, but don't you have photoshop already? you can make animated gifs by putting each frame of the animation on a separate layer, then saving as a gif; i believe the easiest way to manipulate the animation is through the "save for web" command, but only your help menu knows for sure

you could also look here

another victim of the clevis pins here. out of 4 snowshoes, only one came back from my trip to alaska this spring with it's original hardware. the way MSR attaches the binding to the frame is LAME. fixed it with some 4mm cord. it wasn't so much the fixing i minded, it was the time it took while we hung out in the middle of an avy. exposed slope to do it... i like the classics because what i really want to do when showshoeing is stick the stupid things in my pack and do some real climbing, and they weigh less.

isn't a tarn a lake that is completely enclosed by rock? whereas a lake may be in dirt, sand, etc.? speaking of lakes and LOTR place names, isn't there a Galadriel's Pool somewhere in the cascades? i can't for the life of me remember where, though...

Harry – I think your list of peaks Fred Beckey has not climbed is interesting, though speculative… interesting, mostly because like most people, I simply assumed that Fred had climbed everything. (That’s a joke, by the way). However, when you start throwing around statistics about how many peaks he’s climbed, you sound a little ridiculous. You’re counting solely from the published record? That would be like saying that the only climbs any of us have done are the ones that we write TRs for on this website. It implies a level of precision that it doesn’t sound like you can attain without Fred’s journals or cooperation. Just to take one of your examples, how can you definitively say how many times he’s climbed Mt. Si? And the last time was in 1946? Come on, get real. More than likely, he’s been up it dozens of times over the years, but hasn’t felt the need to publish it in the AAJ.

Caveman – I, for one, appreciate that you defend your friends, but in this case I’m not sure what you are getting so upset about. The fact that Beckey is a very competitive person is hardly a secret. His secret black book, all night drives with blindfolded partners, and scooping first ascents in the Tetons, Sierras, the desert and the Cascades are the stuff of legend. If I were writing a biography – and it seems that Harry is – this is what I’d really be interested in: what drives a man to dedicate his life to a relentless quest for the unexplored. With regard to the Ragged Ridge names, is it simply an oversight or is an anomaly that reveals something about his character or some episode or relationship? This is what makes a biography an interesting read and not a boring hagiography. Asking these questions does no disrespect to Fred’s unparalleled legacy. Nothing could do that.

i'm with texplorer, only climbed a few things but they were a-OK. top 3: south ridge of hunter (AK) east pillar of slesse nw face of NEWS with my wife, her first "alpine" climb

this is just the kind of thing that would be a perfect article in the Cascade Alpine Journal - someone could research all the history of routes and try to piece together a comprehensive topo of the s. face. just a thought.

i apologize in advance for the long post, i kept thinking of new things... According to Bruce Barcott's "The Measure of a Mountain", there are literally dozens of different native words that may have been applied to the mountain. He lists 48 different native words that could be the origin of the "Tahoma/Tacoma" name that we think of as the "native" name, since the word that has come down to us is the transcription by english/spanish/russian/whatever speakers of a word with a strictly oral tradition. Further muddying the waters, there is some doubt whether the leading candidates for this name are of local origin, as some linguists have claimed to trace the Tahoma word to words adopted from east-coast tribes, or even japanese or russian words. From his account, the Geographic Names people were not opposed in principle to renaming Rainier with an appropriate native name, but were simply unconvinced that Tahoma WAS the most commonly used native name in pre-contact times. Re: the renaming of peaks whose naming is of more recent vintage, I agree that the FA parties choice of names for previously-unnamed features should be respected, but not exclusively. I would agree with Dru that really undescriptive feature names are open for debate. For example, I have heard people propose replacing the prosaic "Glacier Peak" with a more meaninful "Mt. Beckey"... In some cases, it is perhaps not necessary to involve the authorities... look at Denali where despite the persistence of the "official" name, nobody refers to it as Mt. McKinley except the park service. On the other hand, I think that we should be somewhat cautious about renaming features that were named after persons. The names might not mean anything to us, but some time in the past, it was given as a memorial to someone and it is abusive to the concept of memorializing to change the name of something just because its namesake has otherwise been forgotten. As has been noted already, many of the native words used as peak names were descriptive terms that didn't necessarily refer to the landmass to which they are currently assigned. I don't think that native names that come to light in latter days necessarily should displace the names of 19th century politicians - both are legitimate history - although I agree that many of the native terms sound more interesting to my ear, regardless of their meaning... Ultimately, I don't think there's a rule that fits and each name should be considered on a case-by-case basis - which is more or less that the geographic names boards do... Re: Harry's position about offensive place names. There is a Dark Creek in Renton that was proposed for a name change a few years ago. Apparently, it had been named in the 1880s for a former slave whose farm was located alongside it, and since the origin of the name was the offensive term "darkie," the wash. st. board. was proposing changing it. However, the descendents of the original farmer were located and objected to the change, arguing that even if the origin of the name was offensive, it was the only extant reminder of their ancestor, and they didn't want it to vanish from the earth. More specifically relating to Harry's comments, I simply don't understand the argument that the trade language itself is somehow an illegitimate source for names in the area where it was once commonly used. I think it is a bit patronizing to assume that the users of a trade language - whether native or not - were some kind of "noble savage" above the use of profanity and sexual innuendo, or somehow unable understand it, or that such language only exists because immoral europeans "bootlegged" it into the trade language. Furthermore, I highly support the long tradition of recognizing the threatening nature of mountains by naming them for devils, monsters, sins, unpleasant emotional states and moral perils. This is as old as mountains (think "eiger"). Finally, some disclaimers: I should note that my only source for the Rainier info. is the above-mentioned book, which as far as I can tell is itself based on secondary sources, so this argument may be suspect. Nevertheless, I think it is likely that a peak as prominent as Rainier would have been named by many different tribes. The Dark Creek episode was related by the speaker in a seminar on historic preservation - I'd have to do some research to determine if it is in fact apocryphal, but in any case, the fact that it seems plausible serves to illustrate that these things won't always be obvious.

another vote for the colchuck balanced rock. it's huge, it's flat, and you climb right up underneath it. it even has some cracks that go out the underside... also a lot of roofs on the east side of lib. bell massif, but mostly "stepped", i.e. cascade ceilings on independence route. another big roof

deadline for posting? how do you collect the5$? do we post them in the NEW TR CONTEST FORUM?

I always think those weird geographical anomalies are cool – like the imperfect impasse (where it appears as how god took an 80’ square-bit router to the backside of Whatcom peak), or that little valley just before you drop over into cub lake on the dome peak approach that just seems to be running perpendicular to the direction you think it should… Nice work, wayne, you’re Mr. long ridge traverse this summer…