dberdinka

I'm no physicst but there is a HUGE difference between a suborbital vs orbital flight and the resulting reentry. To achieve orbit a vehicle has to reach some insane speed, I want to say 16,000 mph (I could be wrong). The Rutan vehicle reach Mach 3 or about 2,200 mph. Upon reentry a vehicle like the shuttle has that much more speed to blow off through braking i.e. friction with the atmosphere. Hot! Hot! Hot! What the guy did is certainly cool but it's a LONG way from orbital entry/reentry.

Man confuses own penis for chickens neck, dog eats it BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A elderly Romanian man mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it, the state Rompres news agency said Monday. It said 67 year-old Constantin Mocanu, from a village near the southeastern town of Galati, rushed out into his yard in his underwear to kill a noisy chicken keeping him awake at night. "I confused it with the chicken's neck," Mocanu, who was admitted to the emergency hospital in Galati, was quoted as saying. "I cut it ... and the dog rushed and ate it." Doctors said the man, who was brought in by an ambulance bleeding heavily, was now out of danger.

Nice work and great photos. How were the roads getting in there? Was it the Chehalis tank-trap junk?

I have a Silent Partner that I've used quite a bit for both aid climbing and free climbing. It feeds great! In fact it feeds rope better than most of my living, breathing climbing partners. Furthermore you'll never look down while sketching at the crux and see it digging around in the pack for another Snicker bar. How well it feeds depends highly on what type of rope you use. I use 10.5 mm Stratos for bigwalls. It feeds like shit when I'm trying to do free moves, the rope is just too stiff and thick. In the past I used a 9.6mm Marathon while free climbing, with that it fed great, in fact it fed damn near perfect. A relatively new 10mm rope would work fine for free climbing, Sterling Marathons are very durable for the diameter. As you'll be jugging a lot that's a good thing. One thing a SP does not do well is top-rope. If that's your bag use something else. When you start out rope soloing you will quickly find that it's 75% rope management and 25% climbing. It can be an entirely frustrating experience at first. I'd also say it shares as much in common with free-soloing as it does with roped climbing. Be careful, think hard about the systems you use, have fun. $135 is a steal.

The only hairy mountain devil I saw was Gene. What exactly is Ragged Ridge? The headwaters of the Sultan River are indeed incredible (this is the valley Static Point slab is in). The potential for ice routes was noted, with large plateaus above steep cliffs. There is a prominent spire on the south side of valley you can see from the Static Point approach. It's backside, facing northeast, is an incredible wall. Looks excellent and near impossible to get too. It was great fun to experience so much cool topography so close to home.

The crags near town, over by the nude beach if I remember, are overgrown ass. Go to the mountains.

Climb: Tang Tower-Sine your Pitty on the Runy Kine Date of Climb: 10/3/2004 Trip Report: Back in March Chuck posted a TR on climbing Static Peak with Klenke. Chuck and Klenke explorerate Static Peak and a good time was had by all! Several photos were posted of rugged granitic peaks encircling the North Fork of the Sultan River. Of particular interest was a collection of spires and buttresses located two or three miles east of Static Peak. On a map they sit due south of Boulder Lake with the highest summit having an elevation of about 4800 feet. Their south faces looked enticing with long sweeps of clean white granite. Unfortunately getting there looked to be a bitch. As one person said, "I have stared at that picture for years, it...haunts me. If you survive the ten foot high brush and prehistoric ferns, pot farmers and the local Sasquach, a most heavenly reward awaits the faithful. ( the bigfoot part is true...)" On Sunday my buddy Gene Pires and I finally got around to giving these peaks a go. As neither of us brought a camera I'll have to make due with a thousand words. I woke up way too early and met Gene in the pre-dawn hours in Monroe. We headed east to Sultan where we followed the Sultan Basin Road about twenty-one miles to the Boulder Lake Trailhead. Its's about four miles to the lake on a great trail that gradually switchbacks through some stupendous old growth. Once you leave the lake the suffering commences. The entire area is inundated with thick brush. It's friendly, no thorns, just a jungle of head-high alder and huckleberry everywhere. We thrashed around the south side of the lake for about fourty-five minutes (Gene estimated it at five hours) aiming for its southeast corner. From here a long boulder filled draw led up to a 4480' col maybe a third of a mile to the east of our objective peak. The south side of the col was steep and we found ourselves doing two short raps from stout trees. This was all taking a lot more time than we had expected, the feeling of commitment was growing and the anticipation level was high. Traversing down and across more thick brush and granite slabs we turned a corner and could finally see the walls and buttresses we had come for. They are big and complex. There are sweeping buttresses, scraggily ribs, slabby bowls, steep headwalls and solid towers. The rock is clean white granite much like Static Point but has features reminiscent of Exfoliation Dome, heavy on the overlapping dihedrals and corners. We staggered past a large smooth buttress and continued until we reached the main drainage below the highest summit. The final headwall of the main summit was steep, broken and general unaesthetic however clean slabs led up right towards a beautiful tower. We christened it Tang Tower after our favorite black, crime-fighting, super-hero Pootie Tang and decided to head that way. We simulclimbed about 400' of 5.0 slab to a point below a rock rib that separates the slabs below the main summit from those below Tang Tower. We then trended right, climbing three rope-stretching pitches of friction slabs split by intermittent cracks to the left edge of where the tower steepens. Gene led a long, exciting pitch following a thin crack up a smooth face to a hand crack and a belay. The final pitch consisted of more thin cracks and friction followed by a traverse right to a prominent left facing corner split by the only finger crack around. Easier climbing led to a suitably small summit. We had climbed about 1400' of rock in six pitches. The crux was probably 5.8+ though most of the route was considerably easier. The rock was clean, solid and compact. About a third of our gear placements were knifeblade or lost arrow pitons. They were critical for protection particularly at the cruxes. It was a good climb, not great, but good, the line is just a little too indistinct. We called it "Sine your Pitty on the Runy Kine" III 5.8+. To descend we scrambled down exposed third-class blocks on the east ridge until we could follow a mossy gully down to a talus field on the north side. Steep forest and more intense brush thrashing got us back down to Boulder Lake in maybe an hour. We reached the car at twilight twelve hours after leaving. Plenty of potential back in there, but the epic thrash to reach it will relegate this area to the realm of Cascade esoteric a. If you’re a jaded alpine titan who's done it all and have a (long) day to spend in the mountains it might be worth checking out. If anyone has a better image of these peaks let me know! Gear Notes: Medium Rack. Bring some knifeblades, lost arrows and a baby angle. Approach Notes: Cascade Classic!

The guy is a waaaay left but the following should appeal to all. Ted Rall on the right to vote

Some people think it's FUN! SAVE IT FOR THE SHOWER! RATHER THAN FUCKING UP THE MOUNTAINS

That's a poor arguement. 5.14's have firmly been established for what 20 years now? We all got left behind a long time ago! Very few climbers are strictly against all bolting. I think a lot of us believe sport climbing, the focus on technical skill via the use of bolts to reduce and practically eliminate objective risk, has it place. I wish I could climb 5.13 sport and am impressed by people who do. I think many of us find a distaste in what I tend to call "comfortized" routes. Climbs put up not in the pursuit of technical difficulty or of self-reliance and adventure but rather to offer a "safe" "polished" "guarenteed_success" experience. They tend to be overbolted, overscrubbed, overequiped and generally controversial among climbers, land managers and other user groups. Infinite Hubris, Condormorophine, the retrobolting of Quine Conehead Memorial Route etc are good examples of what I'm talking about. Route like this suck. They do nothing to advance the sport, they do not challenge, they do not force us to improve, they do not force us to understand our abilities and take responsibility for our actions. They are ackin to wackin off. The following quote from the 1972 Chouninard Catalog best illustrates the problem many of us find with modern route development.

"Monkey want a peanut?" "Oooh, monkey hungry, give monkey peanut!" I listened to the debate. As a rabid liberal I was a bit disappointed at first as it seemed like a draw. Bush did an excellent job of staying on message, i.e. "John Kerry changes his position to much" Kerry took long to defend himself on that issue, BUT eventually he did. Kerry voted for the authorization of force to give Saddam reason to comply, however going to war should have been a very last resort. If you track down what Kerry said on the senate floor (posted around here somewhere) prior to voting for authorization of force he makes the point eloquantly. Kerry closed strong with his critque on nuclear proliferation. If Bush really feels like that is the most important issue you gotta ask why he has done ABSOLUTELTY NOTHING about it in 4 years. North Korea has developed nukes during Bush's tenure, Iran and Brazil are both on the verge. Iraq DID NOT HAVE A functional nuclear weapons program. On top of all this not enough is being done to secure loose nuclear material in the former USSR. and Greg_W.."Kerry injured himself twice to get medals"..get back to reality if you want anything you say taken seriously.

The primary developers of the course (i.e. bolters) were "from Colorado" as I was told. It seems that some last minute hiring of climbing guides from several local outfits occured to be used in support/cleanup roles. Evidently concerns were raised over what was being done and were summarily dismissed.

It isn't climbing talk but it isn't spray either (not yet ).... October 2nd is the deadline to register to vote in the November 2nd general election. If you've never registered do it now, if you've moved so much you can't remember where you vote re-register. You can download a registration form at the following link, then you'll need to mail it in. http://secstate.wa.gov/elections/ Better yet there seems to a voter registration booth on almost every street corner. It takes all of 30 seconds to fill out the form. If you miss the October 2nd deadline you can register in person at a county court house until October 18th. Of course once you're registered don't forget to actually vote on November 2nd!

Good point. As I was told by a friend who was given work on the X-Dome part of the leg, the coure designer went out of his way to choose trailess areas for the race so that participants would have to do more orienteering. He theorized that many areas had been stomped into oblivion. Would be interesting to see the impact to other legs of the race as well. Should be of particular interest to enviromental groups including the guys (the other non-climber guys) who are unhappy with IB!

Ummm...yeah the BC is alright around 542 (that's the highway). The amount of killer accessible terrain is huge. In winter you'll do most of your touring starting from the upper parking lot at Baker, everything else is just too long of access on snowed-in logging roads. Don't despair there is plenty to do. Only problem is almost all of it is above treeline, on bad visibility days you're best off inbounds. Long Day Tours not to miss Lake Ann Butte Coleman Pinnacle There are tons of steep lines in the Bagely Lakes Basin, 15 minutes from the parking lot, you'll probably spend lots of time in there Other cool shit. You can leave a car at the Nooksack River Bridge elevation 2000' and do a number of tours with up to 3700' vert of skiing starting from the upper parking lot (elv 4220') that end up in the Anderson Creek Valley. Get out a topo map and start picking lines. The best is probably the NW Bowls of Mount Herman, 50 deg headwall to 2000' of open bowls to secret coulior in the woods. Sweet, Sweet Death Coulior on the East Face of Barometer is exiting as well in the right conditions. Other great touring areas include all aspects of Goat Mountain. The hidden glacier on the north side is incredible skiing. With the first big dump of the season you can get turns in on the heather meadows of Excelisor Ridge accessed from Damifino Lakes. Then there's Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan......

I think that sounds like a good framework. However first there needs to be some evidence that there was heavy and unnecessary impact to the area. I have heard several first person accounts now of the impact and it sounds BAD. They need to be documented and there needs to be some sort of photographic evidence as well. Lets get that information together first and then present a case should one exist.

The following link gives a bit more detail on the company that organized the event and it's CEO. California Sports Marketing/Dan Barger. The guy is an accomplished climber, I'm sure he's aware of the impact his event would have. http://www.csmevents.com/company.html

As far as I can tell during an "Adventure Race" such as this participants have there hands held while doing "extreme" activities. In this case they were required to use a fixed line and jumar as they hiked up the granite sidewalk. Their jumar and rappel setups were rigged by professional guides and everything had a safety backup. Experience or responsibility for oneself were not prerequisites. Evidently the impact was significant. A letter writing campaign or similar might be in order to prevent other crags, Upper Town Wall, Snow Creek Wall etc from being thrashed on for such "adventure races" in the future.

Maybe I missed the discussion in the last two weeks but I'm a bit surprised not to see anything on the impact of the Subaru Primal Quest Adventure Race on Exfoliation Dome and the Clear Creek Area in general. One leg of the race required the approximately 280 participants to follow a fixed line up the Granite Sidewalk, then jumar 600' long static lines up the "headwall" of rock possibly between Jacobs Ladder and Rain Man. At the top they were switched to a rappel setup by hired guides and retraced their steps back to the logging road. As it turns out a number of friends of mine who work in the guiding industry for several different outfits were involved in the rigging and general support work. I was told that...... Approximately 30 bolts were placed for anchoring 12! 600' static lines on the headwall along with all the other lines used to access it. About a dozen of these bolts were placed on the Granite Sidwalk and below the headwall. All bolt hangers were removed and about 1/3 of the bolts were pryed out and expoxied. In addition 1/4" buttonheads where used to anchor edge padding on the headwall. Considering the onionskin like nature of X-Dome there were probably numerous edges to pad. These were in theory all removed. While there are already LOTS of bolts up there, the placement of bolts for short-term use and their incomplete removal seems like really poor form. Of greater real enviromental impact, evidently there was no waste management. I was told "people were leaving their dookies and TP everywhere" With support staff, TV crews, guides etc thats probably 400 people in the area over a 36 hour period. No honeybuckets, no nothing. Of course the irony in all this is that Subaru is also a Principle Partner of the Leave No Trace program, evidently those ethics weren't applied in this situation. X-Dome is somewhat of a sacred place for many us. Remote, adventurous, pristine. Kinda makes my skin crawl to think of the blast of commercial exploitation it just experienced.

Returned home on Saturday night after honeymooning on the Na Pali Coast of Kauai.

Quit your whining......

After reading the bogus poll thread I couldn't help myself....

Woaww! Were in the hell did you come up with this bit of trivia?

What? In person wasn't good enough? A good approach would be to do an easy wall first then decide from there what’s next. You and Frosty should be competent enough to do any of easy wall climbs in a day. Prodigal Son, Spaceshot, Touchstone Wall, Moonlight. Though a common strategy is to fix two ropes then climb it the next day. Personally I think Touchstone wall is the most fun. Moonlight and Spaceshot are both striking but boring. Prodigal is fun too, lots of fixed gear. Do Touchstone if it’s cool and cloudy, Prodigal if it’s hot. If that goes well the next step up is something like Lunar Ecstasy, Desert Shield, Swoop Gimp or the Lowe Route on Angels Landing. They all go clean at C3. I can vouch for Lunar X, it’s really friggin good. Two full days with a portaledge bivi. The first couple pitches of Swoop Gimp were unreal, overhanging micronut seam. Supposedly not as classic up higher though? If you want beta on hard routes e-mail Joe Puryear. He’s very helpful and I get the impression he’s done more than a few, a lot more! For harder aid routes bring LOTS of HB brass offsets, particularly the #4, #5 and #6s. Doubles of aluminum offsets and offset aliens wouldn’t hurt on any of the routes either. I wouldn’t miss the free climbing either. Up by the Tunnel a good day would be to do Ashtar Command and The Headache. Both excellent, solid and well protected. Iron Messiah is another trade route that’s supposedly good. You need rest day activities. Go canyoneering, just do it! Bring a beater rope you don’t mind getting sandy. www.canyoneeringusa.com has lots of good info. Spry Canyon is incredible and can be done without wetsuits there is very little swimming, just bring a change of cloth and two ropes. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! Keyhole Canyon to Pine Creek Canyon makes for a very fun day though crowded and you’ll probably need wet or drysuits. The list goes on. Kolob Creek and Imlay Canyon are both excellent, long canyons I did overnights in. Or just go for a walk up the narrows. If you just want to go for a day hike the Middle Fork of Taylor Creek up in the Kolob Canyons is very scenic. Free camping is about 7 miles west of the park just off the highway along the Virgin River. Generally pretty quiet. Ask at the gear shop or canyoneering shop in Springdale for directions if that’s not enough info. In springdale everyone eats at the Bit & Spur though it doesn’t quite do it for me. The Pizza and Noodle House is a-ok, so is the little Mexican place Oscars. If the weather is ass there is some fun climbing down near Saint George 45 minutes away, or it’s only 2.5 hrs to Red Rocks. I’m jealous I want to be in Zion

A lack of road and trail maintenance is rapidly curtailing access to a LOT of peaks, particularly in BC. In the states we are lucky to have a Park Forest and a Forest Service that seems to have a mandate of maintaining logging roads throughout the Cascades, contrast this with Canada were road access is hit or miss as washouts and decommissioning seem to be rapidly reducing access to some really great climbing! Of course, it's happening in Washington as well just not on such a large scale. Here are some peaks I've climbed in the last 5-10 years where access has become significantly more difficult. Jesus! it's almost every peak I've climbed in SW BC. Habrich - logging road now blocked several hrs hiking below TH to "Life on Earth". Slesse - Road blocked by landslide 1.5 miles before old TH, bridge washed out and trail rapidly deteriorating. Rexford - Access to either side is at least several hrs more hiking than it was 5 years ago due to bridge removal on east side and landslide on west side. Old Settler - I drove to within 45 minute hike of Daphenie Lake (sp?) maybe 4 years ago. Now it's a 4 hr ? hike up the road. Chamois/Les Cornes/etc. - Logging company pulled out, now you need to get a key (Hey Dru! ). Spur roads below peaks are RAPIDLY overgrowing with slide alder. Roads I drove up 5 yrs ago are now bushwacks on foot. In the states, 10 years ago you could drive almost to the base of the West Ridge of the North Twin Sister. Now road blockages and gating have added 5 miles of slogging to get to the same point. Squire Creek Road is perminently blocked a mile or two from the trailhead and access up Clear Creek Road seems endangered as well. Following last falls flooding how many other roads in the Darrington area are now blocked far from once accessable trailheads? A lot I bet. I'm rambling, the point being is that access, particularly in BC, seems to be deteriorating in a hurry for a lot of worthy areas.