AlpineK

Your personal experience may be true, but it's hard to tell what's up with the dude you gave as an example at the start of this thread. He could have been passed over for cause he was too smart for the system, or he could have been a stuck up pain in the ass.

Hey veggy do you want some to go with your Seriously though there haven't been a lot of truely new posters for a while; maybe a little shake up will help in the end.

Exactly...I think he might have come off as stuck up in the interview; also the highschool kids might have ate him for lunch. Maybe they were just letting him down easy.

Alcohol, Carbs it's all sugar. You want iron eat beef, preferably Canadian mad cow.

I would just like to say here that cotton is the fabric of the future!

What do you need to know? 100% carbos, and on good beer they tell you the alcohol content.

Umm Fairweather JayB and Peter Puget are still here. Maybe they just haven't had time to spray recently.

Climb: Union Peak-Descent of the NW face Date of Climb: 1/25/2004 Trip Report: This season Cman and I seem to be on a roll. We’ve been out in the bc 3 times this year and each time we end up slogging a lot more than skiing. This Sunday was no exception though we did get some skiing in. We decided to ski up Union Peak just east of Stevens Pass. Cman showed up at my place about 6:30, and we headed out. On the way to the start of the ski we ran into Ken4ord and Dave Schuldt who were getting ready to ski Arrowhead peak. At our trailhead we found that someone had broken trail for us! We cruised up the road and ran into a group of what looked like 20 first time winter campers. Some of them looked a little surly from spending their first night out in the cold, so we kept going. At the first hairpin we ran into a couple guys who had been breaking the trail and passed them. Eventually we made it to the ridge above Rainy Pass where we were treated to a nice view of the south side of Jove Peak. At the summit of Union we took off our skins and started our descent. We should have looked at the map and stayed more to the right but where’s the adventure in that? Anyway we ran into a couple cliff zones that we had to avoid, and eventually we skied down to the flats. From there we skinned up. Instead of following the route description we skied up to a flat bench on the ridge coming down from Union Peak and had a nice ski through the trees till the slope flattened out again. From here we skinned up to Union Gap and skied back down to the road and then out to the car. Overall I would say that this was an interesting tour involving some interesting route finding, but we didn’t think any of the slopes were worth going back to ski again despite the nice powder on them. Gear Notes: Skis and boots, shovel and transciever Approach Notes: There's a well broken trail on the road right now, but there are places where we were breaking through 2' of powder. Avy conditions were low to moderate. There was a layer of ice from the previous warm spell

Spearhead Traverse

CrackB, The only time I climbed Condor we skipped at least every other bolt, and we only belayed at every other station. As far as what’s going to happen well not much directly, but I wont be climbing the route again, and if anyone asks me about the route I’ll tell them that it’s overbolted. That’s really too bad since the situation of the route and the quality of the rock would otherwise make the route a multi-star climb that I would repeat and recommend. Chopping sounds like work, and I have better things to do with my spare time; in addition I’m doubtful that I could do a good job chopping the bolts that I don’t agree with. What I would like to see happen as a result of my complaints is that folks who set routes put more thought into bolting. I don’t agree with people like Pope, but I do think that too many bolts are a bad thing and detract form the overall character of a route. Also overbolting give ammunition to people like Pope and gives them a bigger soapbox to stand on. As far as rubbing salt in a wound by bringing up the name of a route and a route setter, well too bad. The route setter chose to make a public statement with his route. If he were an architect or a playwright critics would review his work. If they didn’t like it they would say so publicly. Nobody would be telling the critic that he couldn’t say anything because the artist or whatever had put a lot of effort into his project and loved it like his wife. I’m with you route setters when you say that people like Pope and Dwayner create a hostile environment that you don't want to be involved in, but when you are obviously unwilling to take mild criticism that’s when you loose me.

Rudy, I’m well aware that the criteria I’ve set out are not something you can put a yardstick up against. If one person says a route is overbolted, well I guess you can take that with a grain of salt; however if a lot of people say a route is overbolted then there may be something to that. In the case of the route I gave as an example everyone I know who’s climbed the route says it’s overbolted. As far as someone being really good at bouldering; well that’s what they’re good at, and if they can’t lead a multipitch 5.10 then they aren’t a 5.10 climber despite the fact that they’re really talented at bouldering.

America is a conglomerate of a lot of different cultures. Whithout Chinese laborers who would have built the railroads to the Northwest? What's wrong with more excuses to party anyway?

I'm resting this evening after a couple long days. Sunday is ski day.

For 90% of my news I listen to NPR ( Fairweather) The rest comes from random sources including stuff people post here.

I'm well aware you are a dick, Dick. I think you are confused with what I said. I haven't made one single personal attack on a route setter. What I did say is that one route setter established a route that has way too many bolts and belay anchors. If a route setter can't take comments like that without throwing a fit then I think that they are the ones who are too thin skinned. You exagerate quite a bit when you start talking about climbers taking dirt naps. If you or others set bolts 40' apart off the deck on a route where the first pitch was either the crux or almost as hard then the route might be underbolted. However if you place a bolt every 6' on a 5.7 pitch where the crux of the route is 5.10 then you've overbolted. Sure you can skip bolts, but I would say that it takes away from the routes aesthetics. If you establish a 5.10 route then you should bolt it so that a 5.10 climber can reasonably climb it without getting wigged; you shouldn't bolt it so a 5.8 climber can hangdog his/her way up the route.

I would think that pope would be up in arms at NASA preparing to drill into a rock on Mars.

I fail to see your point Dick; especially since we've never met. As far as I can tell, since you've never shown up to any real life event and identified yourself, you are the real cyber tweaker. Furthermore I have never gone on anything resembling an antibolt diatribe. I prefer trad, but I have no problem with rap bolted routes. If you really want to have a debate Dick then you shouldn't attack folks the way you complain others do. While I've never put up a route I have climbed for long enough to recognize well set routes from poorly set routes. Since I brought up Lealand and Condorphamine I may as well continue. I think it's great that folks like Lealand have the energy to set routes, however the act of route setting opens them up to being critiqued. Before I climbed it I heard from everyone I talked to that Condorphamine had way too many bolts, and when I climbed it I felt the same way. Lealand deserves some negative feed back on that route in my opinion. I've never done it, but I hear that Lealand's route on Garfield is not overbolted. I'm interested in checking it out. I'm already impressed with the drive Lealand has to set a 20? pitch route. So Dick why don't you come out from behind your computer sometime and meet some of us.

Condorphamine is a good example of something that deserves to be made fun of. The route is fun, and I don't have an issue with the rap bolts, but I do have an issue with the huge number of bolts placed on the route. When it becomes a game to see how many bolts on a pitch you can avoid that's when things have gone too far. Guys like Pope and Dwayner have created a hostile environment for people who use bolts on their routes, however I think guys like Leyland deserve to be made fun of for overbolting. I worry that some of the routesetters are so thin skinned that they can't take a bad review of their route, yet at the same time I think some of the anti bolt diatribe is driving away route reports.

I've used vbl's a couple times. Basicly you have a thin liner sock with the vbl over the top and then a regular sock over the top of the whole thing. This works fairly well when the temps are cold. Keep in mind that you want to have some talcum powder to dry out your feet every night.

That's ok I've got more important fish to fry.

I think there isn't as high a burden of proof for civil stuff, but you should ask a lawyer.

Missing teeth are only an asset to the boys you purchace bj's from.

low threshold for entry into the 'profession'. btw: i have done 'tree work'. cut and split firewood. i believe in natural gas now. It's true that a lot of people think all you need is a pickup and a chainsaw; however there are professionals out there. Here's a good place to look

If I had a dime for every person who told me they used to do tree work I'd be rich. Who knows how much experience the guy had. That being said there are all kinds of funky situations you can run into where unexpected things happen. On friday I cut down this hemlock where the roots had started to pancake and the tree was resting in a fir at a 45 degree angle. I figured the tree would fall over when I cut it out of its resting spot in the fir. Instead the whole stem swayed and shifted 10 feet to the right when I cut it free. I had to come down to the ground to fell the remaining 60' stem.

My head hurts.