forrest_m

Sounds like maybe all the climbers escaped, but some are still "in hiding" up in the mountains: from Ananova.com: Climber Haston safe after Himalayan rescue British climber Stevie Haston is reportedly safe after escaping from armed rebels in Nepal - but his French-born wife is still trapped on the mountain. Along with 11 members of the Slovenian expedition they were seized by the gunmen while returning from a climb of the 22,145ft Ramtang Chang peak. The Maoist gunmen demanded £4,000 for their release but the climbers escaped before the ransom was paid. They managed to descend a perilous cliff where rebels could not follow them. After they then went into hiding awaiting a Nepalese army attempt to airlift them out of the region by helicopter. But the rescue mission was called off because of a build up of rebel troops in the area and renewed violence. Expedition organisers then acted on their own initiative to rescue their colleagues after learning one of the climbers was taken seriously ill. A small private helicopter was engaged to fly to the group to try and pull at least the injured man to safety. Both Haston and the leader of another expedition, Gregor Kresal, were collected along with the injured man. In Haston's case he only agreed to leave his wife because he was the only one with extensive medical training - and he had to accompany the injured trekker.

TLG – ok, I did some homework, and you are right that the quad & 4x4 are not the same, however I can personally attest to the fact that the 4x4 does indeed have teeth up at the shaft end of the pick. well, not teeth, exactly, but a series of little spines that curve around in a half-circle. my understanding is that the quad & 4x4 are the same except for the pattern of attachment holes, but since I can’t find pictures on the CM website of the two, I can’t “prove” it, though I take the play-on-words of their names as strong corroborating evidence.

matt, i hear what you are saying, and i know other honorable attorneys who are compensated via the continency system... it's really the only chance any regular person has of taking on a large corporation - if you had to pay your attorney yourself, a misbehaving company could easily just delay you with legal shenanigans until you run out of money. on the other hand, we are all familiar with examples where a "sharp" lawyer was able to squeeze out a huge settlement for ridiculous or seemingly frivolous personal injury suits. the success some people have had with this seems to have bred a culture in which people seem to sue very quickly, not because they wish to redress a wrong or resolve a dispute, but rather because they see it as a possible get-rich-quick scheme. do you see any way to retain the checks-and-balances aspect of the tort system while reducing the ambulance chasing? or is a certain amount of ambulance chasing part of the price of the checks & balances (the way nazi parades are part of the price of freedom of speech/association)

when i was 14, my friend and i ran outside after watching a kung-fu movie on afternoon tv (pre-vcr days), ran across the porch and tried to replicate a stunt from the movie by doing a flip over the porch railing. we didn't plan this, or talk about it, we just started running and did it. except that we forgot that the ground was about 3 feet lower on that side of the porch, we both broke a leg. dragged the mattresses down from my friend's parent's bed to make a trampoline in the basement. only we couldn't get them back onto the bed in time to not get caught because my buddy bounced so high that he knocked himself unconscious on the low ceiling rafters. same basement, a few years later, same kid throws an m-60 down the toilet thinking it would cause a cool geyser of water. which it did, along with several thousand dollars of damage. once we were wisiting some cousins who lived out in the far suburbs. i was tagging along with cousins & friends, they were all about 5 years older than me. they decided to play redneck roulette with a bow and arrow. the wind caught the arrow and it hit the neighbor lady 3 houses down in the leg. i was young enough that my parents considered me more victim than perp., so i didn't get busted, but boy was that stooopid.

in another thread, ibex wrote: quote: And so I thought to myself.... Do you give them a fish, or teach them to fish...? In the upper right corner of your screen there is a "search" hotlink that will allow you to search the posts on this board. not trying to be a jerk here, but it would take me as long to look up the thread as it will take you. a search under "colonial" in the "north cascades" board will find you some info.

jj221 – sounds like you and your climbing friends will have a blast. the problem for your hiking friends is that the logical climbing basecamp (probably the col above dorado col, by deacon’s tower) is several miles across a large glacier from any non-technical terrain. ok, it is not the most heinous glacier in all the world, and people do often walk around on it unroped, but it is one of the largest icefields in the cascades and it is quite thick in places (i.e. deep holes) and there are certainly crevasses between your base camp and anything that could be considered “hiking,” even the off-trail, burly kind of hiking it sounds like they enjoy. if you are set on sharing a base camp, one possibility might be to camp low on the eldorado side, basically just as you emerge in the first alpine basin above the boulderfields. from here, you could climb eldo, the triad, maybe torment, while your friends could do some cool hikes/scrambles to boston basin and back, and out to hidden lakes peak (this is basically the reverse of the alternate approach listed in the nelson guide). these would both involve a fair amount of challenging navigation. then maybe they could go back down to the road and head up to the cascade pass region for a few days while the climbers go high and to dorado needle, early morning spire, etc. why not teach your hiking buddies about crevasse rescue? then you can share a real climber’s basecamp and they really can spend some time poking around the icecap, which is mostly not very steep and quite large? Lots to explore that way, Klawatti, Primus, Tricouni Peaks, etc.

a few thoughts: it depends a lot on the proportion of loose to solid material, but at the easier end of the spectrum, there’s a lot to be said for dynamic stability. I see a lot of people get into trouble on 3rd class by trying to make every step totally solid. Instead, if you just assume that almost everything is loose, you can move more safely by moving quickly. You can safely use loose footholds if you are dancing across them – by the time they collapse you have already moved on. A lot of times in 3rd class gullies, I think the best way is often to dart quickly from side to side, from stable island to stable island, and damn the torpedoes in between. your mental state is more like skiing than climbing. When it gets steeper, I’m a big fan of descending facing out as long as possible, you make better time and are more secure in many cases scooting down on your butt, even on a lot of 4th class, because you can see where you are going. You are safer from pulling off loose holds because you are palming down in most cases, not pulling outwards as you would be if you were facing in. I think the key to descending this kind of terrain safely is to be in good enough shape that you are still mentally and physically agile on the descent. You get into trouble when you get to the top and think “great, I’m done now.” [ 10-11-2002, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: forrest_m ]

<pointless rant> You tend to think of evolution as always leading to the most efficient solution, but that’s not really true. Actually, evolution involves a lot of trial and error, with a lot of mistakes. For example, there are those peacocks with the huge tails. The tail actually slows them down, makes them more vulnerable and the biologists figure that the reason they evolved was to impress the female birds, i.e. “hey, baby, I’m so big and strong that I can drag this huge tail around and still outrun predators.” But every so often, a bird is born whose tail is just too dang big and they end up as dinner. That’s what the new quark makes me think of. I picked one up in a shop a few weeks ago, you know, swinging at the air and all, and I was shocked at how awkward it felt, it’s *really* top heavy, in fact it’s rather difficult to hold it straight up in the air. I realized it was because the leashless bolted mixed M8 crowd doesn’t actually swing their tools, they just set them gently on edges and such. But it kind of made me sad; for the last many years, ice tools have been evolving in a way that made them both more efficient and more beautiful. I mean, the previous version of the quark just felt sleek in your hand, slipping behind the wheel of a porsche. I can’t speak to how well the new quark works, it probably climbs like no tomorrow, but it sure is ugly. </pointless rant>

around here, there’s always someone who disagrees, and today, mountainman, it’s me… the book 100 hikes in the alpine lakes says that aasgard pass is boring and tastless, and dangerous too. the snow creek trail lets you experience the enchantments in the right order, rising gracefully through the alpine zones rather than jumping abruptly into the alpine. ok, really, though, for prusik in a day, I’d go snow creek every time. why? because, at the end of a long day, I don’t want to think, or watch where I’m putting my feet, I just want to slog. I’m literally looking for a “no-brainer.” Snow creek lets me slog mindlessly and the angle is easier on the knees. plus what caveman said about early season not needing anything more than tennies.

or use rigid insulation to get the same R value - it's more expensive, but if it's only one bathroom wall, the total square footage is probably not that much.

aren't dewalt tools now just black & decker with a yellow paint job? i have several contractor friends who bitch about how their old dewalts lasted forever, but since they got bought out, the quality has gone way down. actually, i still use a *gasp* corded bosch drill for most stuff around the house, for me the most important part of "power tool" is "power."

workin on a professional jobsite, i loved the cordless tools. the best part was, there was this huge rack of batteries lined up in a charger and the new guy on the crew (a position i had recently graduated from) was in charge of making sure that they were always charged. fast forward a few years, forrest the homeowner blew through the entire charge on both batteries - TWICE IN ONE WEEK! GRRRRRRR! how much work you gonna get done with no juice?

quote: You have couch surfed most statesto add to this one: you feel no shame calling someone you met at camp 4 two years ago at 10 pm as you're passing through town in order to ask if you can surf their couch also, you call friends with full time jobs and "just don't understand" why they can't leave for nepal with you in ten days, i mean, come on, it's only for four weeks, they'll hardly miss you...

i imagine you get dinner for your $, it is a banquet. like a lot of banquets, the idea is to raise money for the organization involved, so it costs more than an equivalent meal in a restaurant. if past experience is any guide, the bar will be "no host" (i.e. you're on your own for booze).

quote: I've decided that this is my favorite climb in Washington, excluding Yosemitei didn't know yosemite was in washington. did we annex it through some tim eyeman initiative or something?

i hear cavey is a toothophile...

ted, you’re probably right, hell it’s all voodoo to me… actually, I think the cycle of hyperbole has yet another layer, because the way I understand it, governments in poorer countries who get hit hard by el nino (peru, columbia, etc.) use the NOAA predictions (which as you note are simplified & glorified in part to ensure continued funding for NOAA) as the rationale to ask for additional aid money from richer countries.. to “go for the gold” in your words. card houses atop card houses!

high tolerance for suffering combined with a short memory. Only half kidding, actually what I think makes a good partner is finding someone who is motivated to do the same things you are. If your goals aren’t in line, one of you will be frustrated and the other pissed off… a great partner is amped to do the same routes as you, over and over, regardless of how tired, scared, etc. you both got last time. Also, someone who can Deal With Shit while Keeping Their Shit Together (especially when Shit is Falling Apart). But the trick is figuring out who is going to be able to do this without actually suffering through an epic.

terrible ted wrote: quote: "El Nino" has some slim meaning for dry farmers, fisherman and graduate students of oceanography and atmospheric sciences but, as a practical matter, it's useless for weather forecasting.ted, your point is well taken about el nino forcasts not being much use for planning your next climbing trip, but i think these forecasts are a lot more useful than you seem to think. In fact, the program is often held up as an example of the kind of "practical" science that appeals to politicians who might balk at "basic research." "weather forecasting" includes a lot more than predicting clouds or sun for next weekend. arguably more important are long range forecasts - and the el nino forecasts have become some of the more reliable in this area - which are what governments and other organizations use to make decisions like "how much money do we allocate to emergency services this year." NOAA's el nino prediction program has been credited with saving (or helping to save, anyway) thousands of lives and billions of dollars over the last decade by allowing both wealthy and poor nations all over the western hemisphere to be more prepared for weather fluctuations. what does this have to do with climbing? well, nothing. but since my wife works in the NOAA el nino prediction lab here in seattle, i feel obligated to set the record straight.

dear k.rose, maybe this is stating the obvious but perhaps it is because you have 7 posts and the Cpt. has several thousand and therefore people "know" him and "care" because they are "friends?" sincerely, forrest_m

IIRC, in the intro to Sky Valley Rock, it says that the cliffs themselves are all state DNR land? I don't know about the parking lot. I was under the impression that this had all been resolved a few years ago when some crisis was resolved when the access fund determined that it was state land? But according to Greg, someone posted here recently that this was not the case. Can you give me a pointer to the thread you're talking about? I'm being dense and can't seem to find it...

golden horn looks pretty sweet from across the valley. i don't know how bad the rock can be, everything else around there is at least decent. (he says, trying to conceal the sandbag behind his back). on the summit of hardy, we found a film cannister with a note in it saying someone had done a complete ridge traverse from GH to Hardy over Methow Pass - that sounded neat.

a old man and his wife are having problems with their sex life, it just isn’t what it used to be. so the man goes to a sex therapist for advice. the therapist tells him to hire a young man from the neighborhood to come to their house and wave a towel over them while they make love. the man is a bit puzzled, but he picks a strapping youngster and gives it a try, but it’s no use. no improvement. he goes back, and the therapist sighs, and says, well ok, have the young man make love to your wife while YOU wave a towel over them. this seems to work much better, and soon the young fellow brings the mrs. to a screaming orgasm. the old man is very satisfied with himself, and taps the young man on the shoulder and says smugly: “now, sonny, THAT’S how you wave a towel!”

yeah, but the weatheroffice reports for jasper are always like "mix of sun and cloud" or some ambiguous thing like that = robson and the icefield make their own weather and the weather dudes don't have any idea. they're pretty good at telling you when it's for sure gonna a be bad but lousy at predicting when its for sure gonna be good.

I think denny mt. is more euro: skip the approach by taking a chairlift right to the crux of the route, then ski down.