forrest_m

from this year's submission guidelines: i read the implication of this was that it was gonna be free, but i guess it's not clear either way...

pinky rest is removable and nests inside the shaft - so that you can whip it out at the belay if necessary for the next gnarly pitch. (as long as you don't mind fidding with an hex wrench...). what i can't figure out from the pictures is if the shaft is completely bare or if it has some kind of grippy texture.

the small sizes are awesome for horizontal cracks - often too good. one out of every three routes at the gunks has a fixed red or pink tricam. the preceeding sentence contains at least one exaggeration.

got it in one. most winters, it's a waterfall all year

another vote for the home depot $9.99 safety glasses, i like the yellow lens 100% UV ones. i find it is imperitive to put cat crap or similar lens de-fogger on them; unlike your nice sunglasses, they don't have any fancy coating or anything, and are prone to fogging unless you make a preemptive strike... the price is right, eh?

ade, a review of the literature reveals that what we climbed was kiddie cliff/oh tannanbaum. as someone said on another thread, "not that it matters now, but..." kiddie cliff had formed a continuous curtain directly over the cave, in addition to the normal lines to the right & left. it was pretty foggy and hard to see much, but we did get a look at hotline, which was a long ways (at least 20') from touching down. the chockstone (i think that's what it's called, up high on the summer trail side) looked fairly fat. but i'm sure it's all just wet rock now.

A somewhat grimmer footnote to this story is the fact that after making it through this grueling ordeal and returning to england, many of the men ended up in the military (WWI was in full swing by this point). something like half the survivors of shackleton's epic were dead by the end of the war. maybe they'd used up all their luck? as for book recommendations, i recently found in the used bookstore Everest: The West Ridge and The White Spider . The first is a counterpoint to the "official" book from the first american ascent of everest - tom hornbien and willie unsoeld did their dutiful part on that traditional expedition, and then after the flag was raised, ran off and made the first ascent of the west ridge, a much more difficult objective, along the way achieving the first traverse of everest and the world's highest open bivy. The white spider is an account of the history of the north face of the eiger. A little stiff - translated from german - but pretty gripping stuff.

it's a way of distracting you from our super secret avatar identiy/idendities.

central asia institute www.ikat.org building schools and such in rural pakistan, run by climbers southern utah wilderness alliance www.suwa.org ground zero in the bush administration's efforts to open up wilderness areas to extraction. oh, and almost forgot, kuow & kexp. support local public radio!

i know this goes against the light-is-right ethic a bit, but the best thing we brought up denali last june was a lightweight teflon-coated 14" griddle and a bottle of olive oil. nothing tastes better when you're cold than fried food! some favorites: tuna melts - tuna from envelope (not can) on bagel with cheese, use pot lid over the top to ensure even melting burrito - dehydrated beans + instant rice + raindeer sausage + cheese, fried crispy, mmmmmm gyro - dehydrated hummus (!!!!!) + cheese + chicken from envelope (not can) it's not just that it tastes better than glop, it's a change of tastes and textures. olive oil is very high in calories, also. the weight of the griddle among six would be insignificant. we just brought the bottle, but i have a friend who saves weight by filling a platypus with olive oil for expeditions. as for buying food, i'd say it's foolish to bring much stuff with you. anchorage is a modern city, y'all! i brought a few cases of gu with me, and bought everything else there. the fred meyer on northern lights (?) is probably the best all-around grocery store, they have bulk foods and also energy bars by the case. denali overland and their competitors will drive you there and wait while you shop!

another data point, i'd agree that the solar flare should be all you need. (i might have a different opinion if you were going in april or something). one note on using lightweight bags per colin's suggestion, keep in mind that with a lower-volume bag, it may be warmer NOT to wear a ton of clothes inside if your layers are so bulky that they start to compress the down from the inside. i've often found it warmer (when trying to extend the season of my summer bag) to drape a jacket over like a blanket than to wear it inside.

hey 9596 - is this what you're looking for?

it's not cathedral (cathedral is much more pointy), but based solely on the 14 mile clue, i'm also guessing paysatan. amphitheater, maybe? maybe remmel peak or somewhere around there? come to think of it, it does look kind of like a reversed photo of grimface.

am i missing something? where is the hate being expressed? if the supposed conflict is crusty bc-only curmudgeons and saggy-pants wearing terrain park-only jibbers, how do they ever come in contact with one another? and anyway, does the backcountry-only skier still really exist, or is it just an urban legend? my experience is that even the most troglodyte types recognize that the lifts are useful for building skills, even if you hate everything else about ski areas.

i had never climbed pure ice on monos until this year - i had my m10s in mono mode for mixed climbing at the end of last year and was too lazy to change them around... i liked them a lot on early season ice, because it seemed to make it easier to aim between chandaliers. however, i did find that sometimes they were more tiring and/or less stable because the mono point can "roll" to one side or the other, especially when placing the foot in pre-existing steps or projections instead of kicking straight in. i'm intruiged by dru's suggestion - i have never tried the "offset" configuration of the m10s, sounds like it might be the best of both worlds. in general, i have found that i like vertical points for west coast ice (read: "not that fat"), because i seem to be able to be more gentle with delicate, not-that-well-formed or brittle ice. this may simply be the skill of the user, rather than the merits of the equipment... i agree with dale that if the ice is fat, it can be less fatiguing with horizontal front points, especially if the foot placements are pre-existing or has long stretches of lower angle ice (i.e. alpine). [FWIW, i use a pair of older charlet horiz. front points, i forget the name, but they are contemporary with the switchblades but have a much better secondary/tertiary point.] i really prefer vertical points if there's going to be any rock climbing involved, i definately feel like i can be much more precise. maybe the main difference here is simply that dale, will, rafael et. al. have a different definition of "fat" than i do?

NOLSe wrote: NOLSe, of course i meant that in the european "Last Great Problem" sense of a classic line that has seen lots of energy and attention over the years, with enough failure by strong parties to get a reputation. There is always a next last great problem. Try to keep up, would ya? BTW, nice going colin & mark.

proud attempt, dave & wayne! that's definately one of the Last Great Problems of the cascades... are the rumors true that wayne has an entire rack stashed in there? one question, were you hoping that the lower part would go fast enough to send the whole thing in one day? or were you hoping that it would be good enough conditions to just do a multi-day single push type ascent? it sounds like you didn't have bivy gear.

the rainier winter access thread reminded me of this one, has all the earmarks of a real urban legend (i.e. sounds vaguely reaonable, but i was told by someone who was told by someone, etc.) so, we all know that the road to paradise is the highest plowed road in the state, allowing access to all kinds of great winter recreation. this use is now so well established that they would be hard pressed to stop plowing, but that's not the real reason the road began to be plowed in the first place. the way i heard it, as a cost saving measure, when it came time to build the current paradise visitor's center, the park service simply reused the design from a vis. center in hawaii or some other warm climate, a round building with a concave roof form. they then discovered that without running the heat all winter to melt the snow that the building would collapse. the road was originally plowed to haul heating oil up there all winter. i'm pretty sure i don't believe this, but don't it make you think "well, it COULD be true..."

k&j, i think mike's response was pretty thorough (not to mention timely). "the people that I pay, not only from climbing fees, but also tax dolors" are taking the time to respond to you, individually, multiple times, on an internet forum, within 24 hours of your original post. what more do you want? in regards to the road. it sounds to me like no one has an objection to the road opening early per se (after all, when it doesn't snow, the gate is often open all night), but that they have looked at the issue and don't have the resources to expand the opening by plowing more. what more is there to say? you may be willing to accept "drive at your own risk" but do you really think the park service is going to sit on their hands if you drive off a cliff? the issue that i have a bone with is the hours for climber registration in summer. this wouldn't require huge infrastructure changes, just scheduling a few more hours for a ranger to be on duty until later (9 or 10 pm) on friday nights for maybe 10-12 weeks from early june through august or so. extra 4 hours x 12 weeks x $25/hr = $1,200/year, seems like that could be reasonably accommodated, even assuming that you would have to tack on 50% of additional administrative costs and other overhead. (since i try to climb rainier like once every 2 or 3 years, this is not at the top of my personal list of pressing issues...)

the essential guidebook for index is Sky Valley Rock, self published by Daryl Cramer ("sky valley publishing"). VK's leavenworth book is excellent as well. i am eagerly anticipating the new tieton book, i'm ready to upgrade from my 3rd generation photocopies of the long-out-of-print previous book... all of mcclane's squamish books are great, all guidebook authors should be required to take a class from elaho press on how to do a guide. the squamish select is probably all you need for occasional roadtrips from seattle, there's always someone around who has comprehensive guide book if you need more obscure route beta. the smoot climbing washington book, while somewhat convenient because it collects many areas in one book, does have a number of errors (what guidebook doesn't?), but i think the main reason people don't like it is that there are those who say that it relies too heavily on the work of other guidebook authors. if true, this doesn't speak to the usefullness of the book so much as to the ethics of supporting such tactics with your purchase...

i'm not interested in your used underwear, but it's nice to see W back on the board...

dru wrote dru, are you sure that wasn't in yosemite in 1975? blake wrote: blake - but people are writing books and making TV appearances all the time, claiming just that!!! maybe the vast conspiracy is protected by drowning out the whistle-blowers in a sea of static...

i wasn't having any luck (i thought because the thread must have had a non-obvious title or something), so since it was a thread that i had posted to, (which eliminates 99.9% of all posts on the board) i used the "view all user posts" from the users list (on my own userid); since i knew the approximate date (early november 2002 ), i figured it would be easy enough to scroll through all my posts for that month (easy for me, maybe not so easy for a high-output poster like dru), but it only gave a total of 200 responses, extending back only about a year. i seem to recall something about the old archives being down because of the upgrade but they will slowly come back? anyone know if that's true?

maybe i'm just way behind the times here, but i was searching for an old thread (nov '02) and could not find anything older than about mid-'03. are the old threads gone? not really important, just trying to satisfy some curiosity on a slow afternoon...

"strong terrain" might be going a bit far... i like sun peaks, i've been there twice with my sister's family (2 kids under 10) and it's great for that... but it's really a cruising mountain. a quick look at their website claims 33% black diamond runs, but a lot of those are pretty blue-ish if memory serves. on the plus side, it's a really easy place to go - it's cheap, you can park once and never move your car, it's quiet at night because there's not much traffic... my biggest sense-impression of the place is FLAT. heck, one of sun peaks' claims to fame is a 5-mile long easy blue run. i don't think i made a single turn, but it was great for playing tag with my 7 year-old neice.