Alpine_Tom

Serving on a jury when called is part of your civic duty, so serve already. Do you try to weasel out of voting too? it is only a duty if she accepts it as such. It's a civic duty whether she accepts it or not. I expect you're the sort of guy who bitches about the results juries return, but are too important to pull your part of the load? There are plenty of ways of getting out of jury duty (saying your name is Trask, claiming you've got a sick kid or plane tickets, just not showing up) but without a willing jury pool, there's no justice. Everyone I know who's sat on a jury has come back really glad they had the experience. (I've been called but never chosen.)

Hey -- battery powered jackets, only $695! Christmas is a commin'.

I'm not a Mountie, but Dan Larson told me that in the Basic Class, they required them to always tie in with a bowline on a bight. (For glacier travel, anyhow, I don't know about on rock.)

So why is it exactly that no one makes Goretex tents? That seems like a pretty obvious application.

So, doesn't that mean that there's a 67% chance that temperatures will be normal or lower than normal? Unless they're trying to say that temperatures will by 33% HIGHER than normal (which doesn't sound like what the accompanying text is trying to say) this looks like one of those content-lite maps publications like USA Today like so well.

I got one this summer from PMS. I haven't taken it on an overnite yet; I took it up Shasta, and a couple of other one-day outings. It's certainly light, and I like the side pockets and the platypus pocket. The top pocket is a pain in the ass, though. My rational for the top pocket is to put the small heavy stuff I want to be able to get to conveniently -- headlamp, glasses, sunscreen, etc, etc. But the top pocket is connected only with straps, and so if the pack isn't really full, it doesn't stay up there properly, it falls over on the side. I sewed a velcro strip on there, and that helped some, but if the pack isn't very full, it feels more secure to just remove the top pocket and stash it inside the pack.

That's what Nelson says in volume II: "Ascend the trail-graded to a nearly perfect 10 percent grade in anticipation of a road across Cascade Pass..." (p.139) It sure didn't feel like a 10 percent grade to me, though, more like nearly dead flat. The road from Longmire to Paradise is 6 percent, and it feels steeper than the Cascade Pass trail.

They are plenty on eBay, but probably going for $150 or so.

Personally, the idea of rowing across the ocean solo would scare me WAY more than the prospect of climbing any of those peaks, or even bicycling solo across Asia. Is it your intention to haul your bike and gear on the boat, a la Goran? It's hard to imagine hauling that much food, let alone 200+ pounds of bike & climbing gear, on a one-man rowing dinghy.

Hmm. This wasn't very well thought out, Erden. Are we supposed to turn this into a "TNF sucks" thread, or an "REI sucks" thread? Good thing you're not doing one at the Mountaineers clubhouse too. Before the mud starts flying, congratulations on a great start.

You sure you wouldn't get her one of these? I think John Sharp might be getting this for his oldest kid...

Okay, but it WAS Joe Peschi. Playing pretty much the same character.

Actually, I think it was Joe Pesci in "Casino." What do I win?

Went up to The Tooth on Friday, with Matthew. It was drizzling at the trailhead, but NOAA had "promised" that the rain would stop by afternoon. The snow started about the time we got to the Source Lake trail, and up in what Nelson calls the "Great Scott Bowl" at 4400' there were accumulations of 6-8 inches, with more coming down. Looks like the fall climbing season is over. We saw someone's 'project' there just above the trail; a red rope dangling down from an overhanging wall.

If you're serious about this, it seems like the prudent thing to do would be to try the ride up there now, some weekend day, to see what it's like. YMMV, as they say. Then you'd have a much better idea what you'd be up against. If I were doing something like this, I'd probably do the ride portion during the day, and budget most of a day for it. Bring a sleeping bag and bivvy sack. Find a bivvy spot someplace on the lower mountain and sack out until, say, 4:00 AM. Then do the summit, come down. That'd put you back at Timberline noon or 1:00 or so, and you should be able to bicycle home before dark. I don't ski, but you can get from the summit to the parking lot in 2 hours on foot without pushing it. Saving the bulk and weight of hauling skiis on a trailer 110 miles up to Timberline and back down would more than make up the difference in time saved descending with skiis.

Well, a happy ending. I got this e-mail back from Adventures Edge: Wow! Yes, those are our rental crampons. They went missing a few months back and we just figured they were long gone. Thanks for tracking us down and for your honesty. We'd be happy to have them back! Please mail them to us at the address below. So I'll be sending them out in the next day or two. I hope the guys you ran into get their charges credited. Thanks for helping with this, ridehikeclimbski.

Mt. Pugh also has some nice fall colors this time of year. I took this picture mid-september of 2000.

This could be them, although it looked to me like someone had left them there next to a cairn. But they look like rentals, and that's about the right place, and they look like they might have been sitting out for a month or so. Any idea the name of the shop, or contact information for the guys?

The evil empire's fall sale catalog came in the mail the other day, and they've got their Mistral schoeller pants on sale for $75. Apparently it's mandatory now, so I guess I need a pair, and this is a pretty good price. I've heard various things about some brands pilling and whatnot; does anyone have any experience with REI’s schoeller, plus or minus?

I hiked up to Vesper basin last week, and the trail up there is pretty lit up with red and yellow. I'd expect the hike up to Lake 22 is pretty nice too.

The same thing happened to much of Iceland; the Vikings who settled the island brought goats, who grazed down the grass; the dirt blew away, and what was rugged meadows is down miles of bare rock.

I didn't notice that at the time, but yeah, when I did it a few years ago, my time was a lot closer to yours than what shows up in the book. I guess he assumes poor conditions, slow climbers, stopping for lunch, rigging running belays, route disareements among the party, etc, plus extra time just to keep you safe. (For Sahali, he says it takes 1-2 hours from the Boston/Sahali col; it's actually more like 20 minutes.) I've noticed with Beckey's route descriptions, the easier the route, the more he pads the time: a climb like Mt. Pugh or Del Campo I will do in 2-3 hours less than he says. The harder routes are more accurate. I assume the reason is to protect the novice (who tend to do the easier climbs) so if he gets off route or messes up, he won't end up benighted. And, I suppose, to protect the guidebook writer from liability.

Another option: mountain madness offers Alpine Climbing and Rock Climbing classes. They don't do either Cruiser or Constance (according to their website) but I expect you'd get a lot more direct instruction, and a lot less messing around with hiking up Mt. Pugh with your ten essentials, standing around waiting for someone to inspect your bowline-on-a-bight, etc. They offer a 4:1 or 3:1 student/instructor ratio. I expect the best reason for going through the Mountaineers is to meet potential climbing partners (which is why I was going to do it a few years back, but never did.) You can get much of the same matching up here, in the Climbing Partners forum.

I guess UW competes with Bally's and 24 Fitness too, huh? Not to mention the Husky sports teams competing with the local pro teams, UW drama productions competing with the Rep, ACT, and so on. It's a scandal -- someone PM Newstips!

Thanks. That was an interesting article. Here's a picture I took of that area a few years ago, in August. When I was up there in June of this year, it was all still under snow.