AlpineK

Yep a fun New Years eve and some excellent powder to ski on New Years Day. Happy day

Actually astronomers now believe that interstellar space is made up of dark energy. In fact the vast majorty of the universe is dark energy.

Choke on a chicken bone...

Not so Ken, Back about 6 years ago two friends and I managed to get up to Fairy Meadows when some other group backed out. We drove to Golden via the Idaho panhandle. At some point I managed to come down with a bad case of diarea, so I mostly remember having to stop the car every half hour or so to deal with the situation. The next day we met up with the helicopter pilot and the other group that was headed into the hut. Everyone in the other group was from the Seattle area and they all had PhD's in microbiology. Since we were all tree guys there was this undercurrent of smart guys vs the blue collar dipshits. Also there was this French Canadian guy on the trip; he doesn't figure into the story other than we all wanted to throttle him after the first 2 sentences out of his mouth, and I still wouldn't mind doing so. Anyway the first day in to the hut we did some short runs around the hut, but on the second day we headed up above Freindship Col looking for rad shit to ski. There was about 8" of nice light powder on top of a slick surface of spring snow. At the col we saw this cool face on Sentinel Peak. The face looked pretty cool; 50 degree slope above a shrund. We headed up to the top of the peak. I was still feeling a little under the weather, so I was dogging it up the peak. The group of microbiologists were about 15 minutes behind us following our tracks. At the summit I decided to go first to check out the slope. I made a couple turns through a rocky area at the top of the slope, and then I thought I would try and cut the slope to see what happened. I made a cut and everything looked cool, so I started to make turns. On my second turn I heard this loud crack and saw the slope start to slide. I tried to head down and to the side to get off the slab, but as I skied I could see the fracture line opening up really fast in front of me. Eventually I got pushed over by the snow so I was riding the slab head first down the slope. Instinct took over and I proceded to try and self arest. I managed to get my feet below me and then I could shove my hands through the slab and arest on the solid layer under the slab. I came to a stop and the slab took off. Since I had safety straps on my skis, I didn't loose any of my gear, so I just sat there with my feet dug in to the hill. Everything got real quiet after the slide stopped then I heard my friend John yell at me from the top of the peak. He said, "Hey Kurt did you just shit your pants?" Anyway I managed to get my skis on and then we skied the stabilized slope. The microbiologists wouldn't ski the slope even though it was clearly safe. I think they viewed us a potentially dangerous for the rest of the trip. We had a great time without any incidents for the rest of the trip, and we skied the face on Sentinal one more time near the end of our stay at Fairy Meadows. That's my only encounter with a slide.

I want you to give me 20 push ups... now soldier!

You guys can justify it however you want, but you're carrying one more thing than you need to. A shovel works good enough as a cooking platform. How much other useless crap do you guys carry? Light is right.

I told you not to touch that voodoo doll you found.

Good times, damn good times

There's nothing wrong with this approach if you're going a short distance to a base camp, however for longer trips it's good to have each piece of equipment you carry perform multipul tasks.

I did it in five, and scored higher than you! All those self help classes and the high paid personal trainer are really paying off for you.

Metal shovels make a good place to set your stove; plastic shovels don't.

Nothing is too stupid for spray Trask

I would say that limb is more likely to fail during a heavy loading event: wind, ice, snow. It is a good example of how trees can grow around constrictions.

I think a real IQ test would take a couple hours not 15 min.

My pickup is my least macho rig

I remember that test. That was the final straw for old Tomcat. He blew a fuse when the test said everyone was smarter than him, then he got banned for good Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Yeah, but it's funny

Meet the Feebles One of the first movies done by the director of LOTR

We use things called friction savers, 2 metal rings and a piece of webbing. If you used those, rappelling would get expensive fast. When we use them there are rigging techniques to get them out of the tree without having the device fall to the ground and become damaged however I could see this becoming a possible nightmare situation on a long climb with multiple rapps. Basicly you can use Dale's set up if it makes you feel good, but I'll still be using the clasic method.

A friend of mine, who snoboards, bought a split board and hated it. I've never seen him on skis either.

I believe the problem we have is Bush and Cheney being owned by the oil industry. Eventually insurance companies are going to start getting pissed when enough of their profits go to pay for cleaning up extreme weather events. For those of you who can't wait for warm weather around here try and remember that our consistant supply of drinking water and hydro power are directly related to the snow pack in the cascades. I hope you enjoy paying for fancy bottled water to flush your toilet.

If you think everyone who posts here sucks and the mods are even worse then why do you keep posting? If you don't care why do you even respond?