Alpine_Tom

How many stupid mistakes can you find in this picture? One September weekend a few years ago, partnerless but not wanting to waste what might be one of the last nice weekends of the year, I headed up to a route Beckey calls the north face of Mt. Dickerman. He calls it class 3 with one short class 4 section and I figured, it’d be challenging but well within my abilities. If not, I could always down-climb it, and hike up Mt. Forgotten instead (it’s on the same trail.)I hiked up the trail, found the proper gully (eventually, after spending half an hour on the wrong one) headed up. I was clearly the only one up there in quite a while – there was so much loose rock I swear I set off rockfalls just looking at rocks too hard!Proceeded to get off-route. Badly. Before long I knew there's no way I could down-climb it, I had no idea where I was but I kept looking up and seeing what looked like easier ground about ten feet up. No? Okay, ten more feet. Okay, then, ten more feet. It was typical crappy cascade dirt-rock, where if you grab a handhold too firmly it comes off in your hand; even if I had a partner and a rope and pro, it’s hard to see what good it would have done, besides slinging the occasional tree who’s branches I had to burrow under.I had a cell phone in my pack, so I comforted myself thinking “well, if it gets too dire, I could always call 911” although how a helicopter would get me off that face is hard to envision. If I could get cell service. The whole way I was assuming I’d pop my head up at the summit, and see a bunch of berry-pickers (it was September) but when I got to the top, it turned out (as Beckey actually said, if I’d actually read the route description closely enough) that I was about a mile or more north of the actual summit, so I got to wander along up and down the rocks of the ridge to the summit which was in fact teeming with berry pickers. Did I mention I ran out of water at the start of the gully?Took the Mt. Dickerman trail down off the mountain. And of course, my car was still at the Mt. Forgotten trailhead, a couple of miles away. I tried to hitch a ride on the highway, but no luck, then a mile up the road to my car.No real damage except for a few scratches and scrapes. Talk about an excess of luck outweighing an excess of stupidity!Later that winter, I hiked up Mt. Forgotten, and tried to spot my route. I couldn't, really, it all looked too irresponsible to think about. [ 01-10-2002: Message edited by: Alpine Tom ]

for the last couple of weeks, when you try to go there: http://www.nps.gov/mora/home.htm the site doesn't respond. Now there's a message that says "Due to conditions outside our department, the National Park Service has suspended operation of www.nps.gov until further notice. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working to restore service as soon as possible." Anyone know what's up? Budget cuts? IIS virus?

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This is so cool. Ropegun just justified all the time I've spent here during work hours! I'm doing software support research!

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...