Alpine_Tom

Where's Dan Larson? Working?

Any idea what they charge for a single ride lift ticket, and how early they start? Every time I've been on Hood, we've started well before the chair lifts were running.

I second MattP's recommendation: the Lone Tree Pass route is just wanderin' thru the trees for most of the way. The Whitehorse Glacier route is far more aesthetic. You do pay for it with an hour or so of pretty stiff bushwhacking at the start of the climb, though.Last time I was up there, I went up the Glacier and down via Lone Tree Pass, and there was lots more evidence of slides on the descent than the ascent.It is a big climb though; get started at dawn to avoid a descent through that bushwhacking in the dark. [ 01-02-2002: Message edited by: Alpine Tom ]

This is something I've agonized over a lot. I've got a mostly-manual Olympus OM-PC about twelve years old, with a 28-200 Tamron lens that I've taken some good shots with, but it's big and bulky (especially the lens). I also use an Olympus Stylus P&S that's small and simple to use, but frustrating, as mentioned above. One thing that really infurates me is that it almost always tries to use the flash, unless you manually shut the flash off every time. This fouls up the exposure, of course. And, you can't change the f-stop, see the shutter speed, or anything. I've been intrigued by a couple of AF SLRs: the new Minolta Maxxim 8000, which is supposed to be the lightest-weight SLR available (and has a partly metal lens mount) and the Nikon N80, which looks really slick, but is bigger. One thing I've read is that if you get the Nikon, don't get the 28-80 lens that they offer with it; it's pretty poor quality.You might look at (www.popphoto.com) which uses the ultimatebbs software, so there's lots of discussion threads about this-vs-that. Unfortunately, the camera question is one of almost complete trade-offs. If it's small and lightweight, it's going to get banged up more easily, and have a darker (mirror) viewfinder. If it's good quality and has lots of useful features, it's going to be heavy and bulky. Oh, and expensive. But whatever you get -- ALWAYS take spare batteries, and know how to change them. My first time on Rainier's summit, my camera batteries died immediately after the first summit photo. On the way down, there was a spectacular multiple lenticular cloud formation that I would have loved to get some shots of.

Look at http://climbingwashington.com/features/wahighestoverview.htm

I don't think they ever close it, in the sense of gating it. I've been up there in late December, and March-April, and never seen a gate. But I doubt they plow it either, which makes sense since it's a dirt road most of the way up. I've had to park and walk the last mile or so in late winter. Maybe they should install the telepherique at Red Bridge.

http://www.adventuroustraveler.com/bookdet.asp?pf_id=18332&referer_id=OSN1For the climbers on your Christmas list

quote: Originally posted by nolanr: So far as I know wolves don't attack and eat people either, in spite of what probably 99% of cattle and sheep ranchers in Montana and Wyoming would tell you ('cause they're all deluded liars who are living in the dark ages still when it comes to the actual behaviors of predatory species...oops, sounds like I'm about to get off on a rant there). According to the folks at Wolfhaven in Tenino, there is no documented case of a wolf attaching a human in Noth America. I've also read (in a Audobon magazine, I think, in a doctor's office a few months ago) that there are more coyotes in NA now than when Columbus showed up, since wolves keep the coyote population down.

That's surprising. A buddy of mine did that a few years ago (with a radial arm saw) and the doc said they normally didn't reattach the fingers, because there was no feeling afterwards, and it ended up being a hindrance. I guess the technology's improved.

DOT announced yesterday that it's closed, from seven miles east of Diablo Dam on the west side and 14 miles west of Mazama on the east side.

I guess my verbosity obscured my opinion. I think this attack on Afghanistan is counterproductive. Bombing a country that’s been brutalized beyond comprehension for two decades isn’t going to accomplish anything to make the U.S., or the world, safer. It’s a stupid, arrogant, misguided effort to DO SOMETHING, DO ANYTHING, even if all it will do is prompt more attacks, which will provoke an “I told you so” response from the US government, and a continuing cycle of more bombs, more deaths. We’re now embracing nation-building, (having carefully learned exactly the wrong lesson from Daddy Bush’s failure in Iraq) and we’re going to put in power in Afghanistan a ruling cabal that’s as violent and brutal as the Taliban (Hey, we armed bin Laden, and we armed the Taliban, we’ll just keep on doing it until we get it right.) And it’ll have no effect on terrorism because the money comes from Saudi Arabia, and they’re our buddies; we can’t do anything to offend them and their oil. Note that the Saudis have refused to give the US government information they’ve requested on the identities of the bombers, some of whom were Saudi citizens. I don’t want my kid’s gradeschool to be bombed, Panther, but a “war on terrorism” seems like the most likely way to CAUSE that to happen. If Israel and Ireland are any example. As far as my comments on the effects of bombing, PP, they didn’t come from an SDS position paper. The allies commissioned the Strategic Bombing Review after WW2 that came to essentially those conclusions: bombing doesn’t demoralize civilians, it just pisses them off and encourages resistance. Bombing London would have never won the Battle of Britain; only a land invasion, which Hitler never contemplated, would have done that. What to do? Bush “demanded” the turn over bin Laden, and they agreed, conditionally, to send him to a neutral country, etc, and Bush’s response was “we don’t negotiate.” We were willing to send the Locherbee (sp?) terrorists to a neutral country for a trial, where they were convicted. Odd that W has so little faith in international law. No, I’ve never actually been shot at, Caveman. Does that invalidate my opinions? The war’s being run and supported by draft dodgers and deserters (Dick Cheney, Trent Lott, Dennis Hastert, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey all managed to avoid any military service, and Bush went awol from is ANG unit.) So clearly prior military service isn’t a prerequisite to join the fun.

Jon, the idea that bombing people is going to destroy their morale is one of those myths that has been disproved over and over again over half a century: bombing was going to bring England to their knees during the Blitz, it was going to destroy the morale of the Germans, it was going to prevent heavy losses in any number of island invasions in the Pacific; it didn’t work in Vietnam, it didn’t work against Sarajevo, it hasn’t worked in Cosovo. Hell, there’s hardly anything left to bomb in Afghanistan besides bomb craters and Red Cross warehouses, but we want so desperately to believe that bombing will “break their will to resist” because it’s high-tech and safe (to Americans.) If I were a tiny bit more cynical, I’d say it’s such a popular idea because it maximizes expenditures of weapons: bombs and high-tech missiles and high-tech planes, and makes tons of money for the defense industry. I certainly support the idea of a war against terrorism (and I am as horrified as anyone by what happened Sept 11), but I just can’t get past the breath-taking self-serving hypocrisy. Suddenly we’ve discovered terrorism, as though Sept 11 is the first terrorist attack in history. (I guess it was, since it’s the first one against Americans, which is kind of the same thing.) Terrorists have been mutilating people by the thousands in Sierra Leone, where was the outrage? Israel-backed terrorists killed on the order of 10,000 civilians in the Sabra and Shahila refuge camps in the West Bank in the 80’s, where was the outrage? Thousands of civilians were killed in East Timor over the last couple of decades by our allies the Indonesians, hundreds killed in the weeks after the election two years ago, where was the outrage? In response to the “ethnic cleansing” terrorism in Bosnia during the last Bush administration, Donald Rumsfeld said “we don’t have a dog in that fight.”Since the Taliban came to power they’ve been treating women like animals, forbidding them access to schooling, medical care, or even the ability to go out in public unescorted, and brutally murdering women who some man perceived “violated” these rules. Where was the outrage then? George W. agreed to give them $45 million this spring after they agreed to say that raising opium was against the teaching of Islam. (Remember the war on drugs? It was in all the papers for a while.)‘course, none of those people were white, and probably none spoke English, so it’s hard to get too worked up about it. This is different. So now we’re cozying up to Pakistan, which is run by a military coup, and we’ve abandoning the sanctions we put in place in a (probably futile) attempt to limit their nuclear capability, because they might be able to help us at the moment. And we’ve got China, who’s been using terror against their own population for 50 years now, on our side in the “war on terrorism.” So, what the fuck is this supposed to accomplish? We kill everyone who lives in Afghanistan, or has ever lived in Afghanistan (or until we get bored and leave first, after all, the Olympics are starting up again pretty soon) and that won’t change the nature of Islamic fundamentalism, all it does is provide further proof to them of the evil of the west. Pakistan is full of fundamentalist schools, where children are taught the same hatred of the west that Osama and his buddies expressed. It’s strong in Indonesia too, as well Iraq (where W’s daddy suckered Saddam into invading Kuwait after telling him the US “took no position” on Iraq’s claims on that bastion of democracy and freedom.) All over the Middle East, poverty and resentment are building up the appeal of this militant extremism, and we're going to stop it by killing people who think dying for the Prophet is the way to heaven? Some moron (in the National Review, I think) opined that we need to invade them and forcibly convert them to Christianity. Setting aside the remarkable cynicism of that idea (Christ isn’t about salvation, He’s about crowd control) about 1/4 of the world’s population is Islamic. That’s a lot of people to invade and kill or forcibly convert.

Thanks, Dennis. I ordered a rope (flat 4.95 shipping!) and it got here in a week. Great service, great prices, cheap shipping. It may be that this is just end-of-season closeout stuff, but I'll take it.

quote: Originally posted by plexus: The best advice I got from him was, if you live to 30, you'll be alright. I don't know, it seems like the early 40's is the most dangerous age for a climber. Scott Fischer, for instance, was 42. Those two guys that disappeared hiking up to Camp Muir in the fall two years ago were in their early 40's, and pretty experienced. I don't know if there are any statistics (like, in Accidents in NA Mountaineering) about age, but it seems like the last few years (since I hit 40) I've noticed that a lot of experienced climbers seem to make their last mistake in their early 40's, when they start to slow down physically, but are resisting it.

The Seattle Public Library has the Fairweather film. It's pretty surreal in parts... at the end, there's a long shot of Wickwire walking, alone, pulling his sled across the glacier, and the narrator saying something about the grimness of being the only survivor. But who was filming it? It's also got a ten-minute short of a climb of "a cascade peak" with no narration, no talking, nothing but the sound of climbers huffing and puffing.

Anyone have any experience with these folks? They've got some pretty attractive sale prices going at the moment. That "too good to be true" warning bell is ringing in my head...

This: http://www.everestnews.com/everest3.htm is usually a pretty reliable source for news of this nature. Nothing there.

quote: Originally posted by Terminal Gravity: I've read over 10 books that have dealt with 5/10/96 on Everest and am still curious about something. If J Krakaur was so much stronger than all of the other cleints and had to wait around (resting) why did he just let people die instead of helping. My recollection from reading the book when it came out (I don't own a copy) is that he didn't say he was stronger, but he was more experienced than most of the other clients. He also said, in a way that sounded like he was assigning some blame to himself, that when he got back to high camp, he was so exhausted he crawled into his tent and let the guides handle the rescue. And that, this was to him one of the negative effects of being on a guided climb: a willingness to let the guides do the work. If it'd been a "normal" climb with just him and some friends, he'd never have let himself leave the rescuing to others. What I've heard about climbing at those altitudes is what mattp says: you don't behave like a normal climber, even if you think you will. People leave others to die so they can summit, ignore other expeditions' accidents, ignore turn-around times and oncoming darkness. By all accounts, a monomania to get to the summit at ALL costs is part of the Everest effect. I think that this is one area where it can truely be said that you can't evaluate what others did there, if you haven't been there yourself. FWIW, reading Into Thin Air certainly changed my view of Everest. Previously, I'd thought that getting the opportunity somehow to climb there would be like winning the lottery -- the chance of a lifetime. After reading JK's account of his experiences up there, I lost all my desire for going up there. (But, I'm getting old...)

quote: Originally posted by Ropegun2001: There are a few documented cases where the harness makers hold the harness user liable for not using the rappel/belay loop during a harness failure. Is that documentation available? Online, like?

I tried to drive by, thinking they were next to Ballard Hardware on Ballard Ave, but couldn't find them. They're not listed on the Qwest DEX website. Who can help out with address or phone number?

quote: Originally posted by mikeadam: You can use Dan Aylward's method and attach some track spikes to the bottom of your tennis shoes and then climb TNF of Mt Buckner. Worked for him --should work for you. I have the engineering specs he sent me if you want them. Anatoli Boukreev wore track shoes with spikes on the lower slopes of Everest. If it's good enough for him...

quote: Originally posted by sexual chocolate: Alpine Tom. I recently heard about Guns, Germs, and Steel. What is that about? Basically that, in the development of human history, geography was destiny. He starts off the book with the question: why did soldiers from Spain conquer Mexico, rather than vice versa? Sounds sort of silly, but a great deal flows from that. He addresses: why agriculture developed so quickly in the Middle East, and why is spread so much more rapidly in Eurasia than in the Americas; why China, with superior technology (printing, gunpowder, the compass) was overtaken technologically by Europe, why so few animals are fit for domestication, and how that affects the development of agriculture, which in turn enables the development of standing armies, as well as the development of culture. Why communicable diseases like measles and smallpox arose in Eurasia but not the Americas, with the effects we all know about. This guy is an anthropologist, and one of the ideas he seeks to discredit is the one that different peoples have different tendencies (Mexicans are lazy, primitive tribesmen from New Guinea can’t understand capitalism, Japanese can imitate but not innovate) and it seems like he does so extremely well. The first chapter, as I recall, was a bit slow, but it just got better and better. The chapter on writing was particularly good. I could easily go on for ten pages, but I will, with great effort, restrain myself.

Most of my "reading" has lately been books on tape, to use my bicyle commuting time effectively. I thought Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers was excellent; it's about the American revolutionary generation. Finally did Cold Mountain that way, and it was worth the read. Another book that really changed the way I look at the world is "Guns Germs and Steel." Also available on tape. Currently working on both Stephen Jay Gould's "Dinosaur in a Haystack" (I recommend ANY of his essay collections; there's about ten) and Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel" which is a bit slow so far. I too can sit for hours perusing guidebooks, going from Beckey. It is odd how they never get boring, even if you know what the route description is going to say. I think that once you've climbed a peak or route, you get a whole different perspective on the route descriptions around it. You see a really cool peak from the top of another one, and dig out the books to see what the heck that was. If you're an active climber, your perspective constantly changes, and you look differently at the same routes. You can also (fun with Beckey) compare an early edition with the current edition, and see how the descriptions have changed.

I didn't think Krakauer came across as arrogant in "Into Thin Air." He talks about when he was younger, how he and his buddies joked about the S. route on Everest being the Yak route, and how they were "real climbers" who wouldn't sully themselves on it. The reality, as he reports, is that you can't imagine how brutally hard it really is. That doesn't sound to me like arrogance. Sure his view of things is different than Boukriev's (sp?) and reading the two books together gives a real Rashomon-like effect. Boukriev has his own axe to grind, and is pretty defensive about lots of stuff (people joking about him, calling him "sneakers".) A bigger theme in ITA is how much different it is to be on a guided climb. K talks about getting back to his tent after the summit day, as all the shit was happening, and just climbing into his tent, leaving the rescuing to the guides. He's aware that he would never have done that if there weren't guides. That's part of the destructive effect of guided climbs; they encourage even strong, experienced climbers to abandon their ethic to the guides. I don't see how you could come away from ITA thinking that guiding on a place like Everest is a good idea. I liked Eiger Dreams quite a bit, and liked the New Yorker article that turned into Into the Wild (which I never read.) I wonder if what bothers climbers about K is that he wrote a best-seller. I knew dancers who really resented seeing women walking around in leg-warmers, back in the 80's when they were the fashion. And climbers who've done their thing is obscurity, even around here, suddenly hear couch-potatoes on the bus discussing "what went wrong" on Everest as though if THEY were there, they'd have done things differently. If Into Thin Air had been a niche book, like Touching the Void (still the most riveting climbing book I've ever read, still I can't put on crampons without thinking about the crampon on his broken leg catching on the fabric of his pants and grinding the bone!) I doubt people would have the strong feelings about it that they did.

quote: Originally posted by lizard brain: I haven't looked at king5, but here's what the Times says about it... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134354135_dige15m.html That was a sobering list of catastrophes. I'm glad they didn't include photos.