Alex

Only men would be dumb enough to suffer schweaty balls for 5 miles rather than appear too "girly" and slow their compadres down with a quick break to shed some layers.

For Trogdorth's schedule nothing will beat Canmore for easy ice on the cheap. Fly into Calgary, get el cheapo rental car, get a couple nights reserved at The Drake or other such establishment, and climb easy ice nearby for 3-4 days: Easy ice routes that are not av threatened near/in Canmore: Rogans Gully Junkyards Grotto, His, Hers Johnston Canyon Easy ice routes that are not av threatened within an hour: First 2 pitches of Louise Falls Masseys in Field Easy ice routes that are not av threatened within 2 hours: Shades of Beauty Snivelling Gully Two Oclock Falls Bow Falls So many others!.... Yes, you might encounter crowds. But you will also do more climbing for less driving than anywhere else, I wager. That said, Pont Rouge sounds like a cool suggestion, too!

Canmore for easy ice or Vega$

personal preference imagine the scenario: its cold enough to wear a down puffy (which means its -15 C or colder!!!) but wet enough for you to want a shell. which means its snowing like hell. Now. You want to wear puff? imagine taking off shell, getting damp from falling snow melting on warm fleece, put on puff, put on shell which is now also damp on the inside..belay for 30 min...oh time to climb! Take off shell, puff gets wet anyway before you can stuff it in your pack, your underlayers get wet because you didnt have shell on while stuffing puff in pack, now shell is damp some more because your underlayers got damp and it got damp too, put shell back on, oops, got to adjust harness, meanwhile your leader is looking at you from the top of the route like you suck, because while you are doing this extra 5 minutes clothes adjustment, (s)he is freezing ass off.

most people who are ice cragging dont really care much if the jacket gets damp, as you'll be back in the car in a few hours. Additionally, if its wet enough out to wear a hard shell, most people wear their shell under their harness and therefore will wear their puffy only at the belay, over the shell anyway. unless you are climbing locally while its snowing, it just wont be that wet... so my advice is with those 2 things in mind: buy a cheap, functional, "nothing-special", low-profile down or synth puffy. mine is just a marmot down sweater with no hood, its cheap (70$ at the time, 1997?), compressable, trashable, warm enough.

The Alaska Range.

yes, but not me

Sat new house hunting Sun old house fixing if we dont get alot of snowpack, this summer its gonna BURN!

id consider it, which is more than i am doing right now knowing the picks are not replacable.

which is what i was talking about, H202?

Here is NYC007 on said pillar: Pretty sure thats H202 in lean mean conditions

It will mean drought for the summer, actually. And probably an early season for alpine rock, but piss-poor conditions for approaching.

Those are BRS X-15s. The BP has a different spike, as well as a "molded" hour-glass shaft, not an oval shaft. Not that they are bad or anything, they are just a different (older) product line altogether. They are selling on e-bay for 50-100$ a set. HTH!

RGDW was in last Saturday, albeit very thin at the top. I would be surprised if it was still there now,... http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=9036&sort=1&cat=505&page=1

i'd like to see a pic of the BP that doesnt have a modular head.

You've got to be kidding...? The only agenda for the second term iis setting up Jeb Bush - 2008. Mark my words.

Dru dammit you spoiled my onsight!!!

Dave, thanks for once again reminding me why I dont come to Pub Club more often

So,....the reason this is in Spray is because "The DaVinci Code" rubbed off on you and made you a retard?

answer: you were in Cody, foo! go back to Cody, foo!

Now thats what I'm talkin' about! "Mostly cloudy with a chance of rain. Rain becoming likely northern cascades late. Snow level 9500 feet. Afternoon pass temperatures near 50. Southeast wind in the passes 5 to 15 mph."

What confused me was that the Washington Ice Guide describes this as two pitches I think when it's actually half a rope length. No idea, it certainly is half a ropelength. Without the book in front of my I can't tell you if or why it would say 2p. There is another route, called "Not Quite a Plum" that is closer to the Rap Wall that you climb in 2 pitches, however. Same side of the valley, its on the summer approach to the Tooth where it starts climbing up to the Rap Wall after it traverses above Source Lake. Its marked on the map in the book as "WI3+", without a name next to it.. HTH

I have an Iomega SuperDVD USB burner, and use the MyDVD product that comes bundled with it on WinXP Pro SP2. The first week I had it it was nothing but trouble, but if you stick with it, it can all be worked out. One of the interesting issues I found was that if your PC does not come with a built-in DVD player (like mine), chances are you wont have DVD (MPEG3) codecs. This means you will have to buy a software package that includes a software DVD player (Windows Media player does not come with MPEG3 codecs!) that includes the MPEG3 codecs. These start in the 25$ range. In general, MyDVD works fine out of the box and lets you build menus and submenus, and burn in all common DVD formate, however there are certainly some gotchas that might cause problems, mostly hardware related (harddrive bit twiddling, all info is discoverable with Google), but also Windows Media Player 10 is not recognized by the installer for MyDVD, so you might have to roll back to WMP 9. When it comes to DVD burning, the media is actually pretty important: a slight scratch makes a burnable DVD unusable. So treat them gently. Also, LOTS of HDD space and high speed HDD makes a big difference in perf: everything is cached to disk before burned to DVD, so if you are burning a single layer DVD you still need minimum 5 GB free HDD space, preferably defragged. Some geeks here at MS use Nero and swear by it, but my understanding is that Nero doesnt have an interface to create menus, kind of limiting the "family" appeal. They also tend to be guys who buy 80 GB external drives and store their data that way for the most part, until they want to burn something specific. Something to consider, for sure. I believe MS actually has its own product called movie maker, but I have not tried it. Another person to ask is philfort, of MtnPhilms....www.mtnphil.com. Alex

dude, its only mid-january! some ice climbs can form in as few as 3-4 days with decently cold temps

Trogdorth, the Kiddie cliff is literally a few hundred yards due S of where you guys were, up the hillside a few hundred feet. Reality is its probably completely gone, now, with the rain.