gregm

oh no! erik called me gay! now i'm going to go home and cry! waaaaaaahhhhhhhh! what can i possibly do to prove my masculinity?

maybe rocket robin should team up with the ambiguously gay duo?

is that dancing baby from ally mcbeal or something?

i got tired of itchy and scratchy.

before anyone hikes up there i bet they've got a video camera hidden in a tree and you show up on this show that's a cross between candid camera and america's most wanted. i saw something like that where some guy was stealing a bicycle.

does anyone know how ice climbing conditions are on narada falls right now?

belay slave - silveretta 500's are $155 plus shipping at http://www.telemark-pyrenees.com/e_index.htm get those now and buy a pair of real rando boots later. yeeeesh.

quote: Originally posted by hakioawa: I'm not a huge fan of the Dynafit binding system. It is light. And tough too. But it awfully difficult to get into and switching the heal hight is a pain in the . my $0.02: spend 5 minutes practicing on your living room floor and you will never bend over to switch heel hieght again (you use your pole tip). still tricky to get into; marking a line where the holes are with a sharpie helps greatly though. my size 9 feet lazers with thermoflex liners weigh 7 lbs, my friend's size 8 feet TLT 4s with thermos weigh 6 lbs. i can't comment on differences in hiking-climbing-skiing because lasers are the only AT boots i've used. the lazers aren't as comfortable hiking as my T-3 tele boots, but that's a much lower boot. i'm very happy with the way the lasers ski. i have a beater set-up for climbing boots.

quote: Originally posted by erik: i was referring to the ski patrol and my friends who are on it. so i think your sarcasm is lost. whoa! erik has friends who are SKI PATROL?! hello, brush with greatness, i'm in awe!

i wrote the article. i'm not interested in having a flame war but i'll attempt to answer some of the questions raised here. phil and i assumed when we first booted up it that people probably skied it all the time. given it's easy access and moderate angle we didn't think it was a big deal. mike adamson emailed us saying people had been skiing it for years and were calling it the slot couloir. we were not surprised. i originally submitted the article last may or thereabouts. it was originally somewhat longer and went into great detail about how we got the route out of beckey, skied it, found out other people did, and so forth. they asked me to trim it down for a "peaks and passes" segment; a brief description of backcountry skiing people do in different parts. they asked me to look at other "peaks and passes" stories and make mine similar. i attempted to comply with their request by making it a simple but entertaining description of some dudes going backcountry skiing, and in so doing left out the "slot couloir" name and a lot of other details. it didn't seem important given the nature of the subject matter; it's just another line. i had already sent them my final draft when i happened to flip through an advance copy of martin volken's book at second bounce. i had originally entitled my story "enigma gully" as a descriptor of our experiences. couloir made the title "discovering enigma gully". i don't think they were implying a first descent. in summary: 1) i don't were all this first descent allegations came from. 2) volken's book wasn't out when i wrote the story. if i had known it was coming out yes it would have been useful to people to call it the slot couloir. 3) given the nature of the story i think who did the first ascent is a technical detail most readers would be uninterested in. other "peaks and passes" stories don't include that kind of thing.

another tele vs AT debate. yeah yeah yeah. BORING!

quote: Originally posted by dyno merchant: damn it! that's my dad, you bastards!!! yeah dyno my boy, i've dropped too much baby batter in these parts to keep track of it all. so how ya doin ya little bastard? and do what your mom tells ya to, ya hear.

i thought gander mtn was just heading to the congo to get some first ascents in.

[ 01-23-2002: Message edited by: gregm ]

very interesting. i was up there yesterday. about 1.5 feet of new snow from the past couple days. we dropped down the north side of the ridge and i dug a pit just below the ridge. isolating a shovel sized column it sheared cleanly at three seperate depths as soon as a cut the back and *with no added weight*. i took this to be very bad avi conditions and we stayed in the trees and low angle. what struck me as very peculiar was that despite that very slidy shovel test we weren't sloughing anything off and saw no natural slides. i attributed this to the cooling trend. my partner was having gear problems and we were back at the car by 2:00 so maybe we missed it.

i found an advertising blimp. it is about 8 feet in diameter and 20 feet long. it weighed about thirty pounds but i strapped it to my pack and have it at home now. i like the "dr evil" feeling of having my own blimp.

seattle fabrics - 87th-ish and aurora. gore-tex, other breathables, fleece, the works. still no schoeller or epic, but just about everything else. patterns too.

quote: Originally posted by philfort: photos of-Mt Rainier/Lib Ridge/Carbon glacier-Serac in the Coleman glacier-A peak in the St Elias range-Same peak from a different angle-An underwater sea slug (a co-worker's hobby is scuba)-a secret project -canadian flag-a few small photos of other stuff like friends drinking, sand-skiing, etc... what? no pictures of me?! jerk.

you can make a "picket quiver" by finding/sewing a sack ~5" by ~ 20", attaching it someplace to you pack or whatever, and stash them in there. makes putting them away after use a lot easier. it's always a bit of a hassle. dan larson just holds them in his teeth because he is a burly ass dude.

look at their range compared to similar cams; i think the rock empire ranges are somewhat smaller. i have also heard the triggers are sticky or awkward or something.

the stat i heard is if you are completely buried in an avalanche and you are wearing a beacon you have a one in three chance of survival. your odds are higher (~50%) if the people looking for you practice beacon searches every week, like ski patrol. i think the statistic takes into account that 1/3 of avalanche fatalities are due to trauma, and that if you are buried more than 10 feet deep you are pretty much fucked no matter what. yes body recovery is a good reason to wear a beeper. every year there are search and rescue units using up their whole annual budget to find a dead dude.