nolanr

RURP, You are yawning, yet you are still posting to this thread? Hmm...that don't make no sense. Don't like, don't read it. Start your own thread about big wall climbing. Oh, whoops, you already did that, didn't seem to get much of a response. Maybe it caused someone else to . I have spoken.

Oh yeah, as far as the lynx hoax...I hate to say it, but maybe the ends justify the means. I've heard spotted owls don't live exlusively in old growth forests. But they got turned into a nice little political cause to stop some logging in NW forests. That's the way things work. I think plenty of times the people on the side of big business and resource utilization have used poor biological evidence to try to get their way.

Yes, I drive a car. Lots of times I'm the only one in it. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe it does. I've thought of that before. No matter how wacky they may be, I'm glad there are radical environmentalists, because there are plenty of people at the opposite end of the spectrum. Right now, there are plenty who would rush in to ANWR, change it forever, and maybe suck enough gas and oil out of it to last 6 months, a year, whatever. There are actually people pissed off about the concept of National Parks because those resources are "locked up." Dammit, do you know how many million board feet are in Olympic National Park? We should be firing up the chainsaws and clear cutting it right now! I just don't buy into capitalism and the free market economy being the ultimate justification for anything and everything. Ed Abbey had a great phrase, something to the effect of "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." And humans. Look at how many people are alive today. Look at the demands for resources. Anything that doesn't get set aside will be consumed, if not now then soon enough. I honestly think a day will come when National Parks, Wilderness Areas, etc. may get opened up to resource extraction, if certain people who wield power deem that the demand is great enough to justify permanently altering and possibly destroying something beautiful that was meant to be set aside and left untouched. I'm a realist, I realize there needs to be compromise and a balance between conservation and resource utilization to meet basic human needs. But I think if you look at human history, conservationists have won a few battles, some of them fairly significant, but they're definitely losing the war.

I didn't realize the Olympics were noted for big wall climbing.

Well RURP, this is the spray section, so the relevance or importance of any topic is pretty much defined as nill. You only enter if you want to, and then the spraymeistering and fun begins. And chocolate chip cookies were DEFINITELY the best my mom used to make when I was a kid. I have spoken.

If Simpson and Wickwire teamed up, wouldn't that mean Simpson would be a goner for sure?

Hey, back to the original topic, I was at a climbing gym Sun. morning, and they were playing some techno or something. Sounded like shit! Didn't inspire me to climb. It was annoying. I don't really need music to help me climb, just like I didn't need music to help me lift back in my musclehead days. I seem to recall, on alpine climbs it's usually pretty quiet, maybe some wind, maybe some human voices or birds calling. Indoor climbing is a really poor approximation of the real thing anyway, but I don't see where a thumping driving bass even enters into the equation. But I've been known to not share the majority opinion before.

I'm w/ Alpine K. We've got several hundred years of blatant resource over utlization and no regard to the environment in our country's history, and now a few decades of the pendulum swinging back the other way w/ the environmental movement. If you're keeping score at home, the environmentalists are still way behind.

Ooh, feeling feisty are ya Will? I gotta admit it, I can't stand jazz, never have liked it and probably never will. That's just my taste preference. Not to say all those folks you mentioned aren't talented and influential. I'm not gonna argue music theory w/ you either, cause I think I'm outta my league. I pretty much break it down this way: I like it, or I don't. I couldn't care less about chord progression, melody, harmony, so on and so forth. [ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: nolanr ]

Hey, you're not THE Norman Clyde are you? Of early Sierra climbing fame. Thought that dude died a long time ago.

Angeles is pretty fun in winter, not difficult. I did it last year w/ very little snow on the ground, from Hurricane Ridge parking lot. There's some pretty steep gullies and a little bit of exposure in places if you do a roundabout ascent like I did, making it way harder than it needed to be. There was snow on the road several miles below the trailhead to Royal Basin at the end of October this year. It probably melted out pretty fast, but the potential is there. I've seen snow come down to about sea level around Sequim or Pt. Angeles before. But I agree, Royal B. would be pretty cool if access isn't a problem.

I shook the hand of a guy who knows Willie Unsoeld's son this weekend. I'm famous!

Gotta dig thru the archives and bring this one up to the top again. Okay, I admit it, I was weak, it was crappy outside, and I went to a climbing gym. And I even had fun. But I didn't wear pink spandex or anything Prana. My buddy had some tennis elbow acting up, so he belay slaved and I totally wore myself out in an hour and half or so. No grip strength. But what I really wanna know is...why the hell do they even bother naming routes in a climbing gym? How pathetic is that?

If people always stopped themselves before saying something really stupid, we'd be missing out on a lot of good sprayfests.

Wickwire's lucky, it's all the people that've climbed w/ him that've had bad luck. Of the terminal kind in several instances.

Will, Relax, I was just stirring things up a bit. I used to listen to butt rock in my younger days. I can listen to some of this, some of that. If you really wanna argue about music, nobody in the last 100 years or so can hold the jockstrap of Vivaldi, Bethoven, Bach, all those dudes. I can guarantee you nobody is going to be listening to Snoop Dog or Limp Bizkit or something a couple centuries from now. It's called staying power bro. The longer it hangs around and stays fashionable, the better it must be.

The only real musicians play accoustic. Sampling, remixing, whatever the hell is plagiarism. Let's call it what it is. Snoop Dog, Kid Rock and the rest of 'em are all laughing their asses off 'cause they know they got no talent and they're rollin' in the dough. What a country we live in.

I don't think hardly a day goes by, any time of year, any kind of weather, weekdays, doesn't matter, there's at least 1 person stumbling around somewhere on Pilchuck. If you're into skiing there's a nice steep chute, couple hundred feet down the SE side. Saw 3 dudes ski it last spring, worked for plunge step/stand up glisade too.

Cougars and bears and foxes, oh my! Saw the ass end of a cougar disappearing into brush roadside on the Mt. Loop Highway east of Granite Falls. Unwary car campers by the hundreds nearby. Also saw tracks I'm pretty sure were cougar amidst a gazillion elk tracks in the Goat Lake basin, Norse Peak Wilderness Area (you have to qualify that statement, I know of at least 3 Goat Lakes in WA). If you're in the Paradise Inn parking lot around dusk, keep your eyes peeled 'cause I've seen a little fox cruising around that area a couple times. About that increase in coyote population. Part of it, too, is that most of the top of the food chain kind of predators (grizz, wolf, cougar) have been pushed to near extinction throughout most of the Western U.S. The coyote was too wiley and adaptable to get rid off, and they happily stepped into the void to become the top predator in many areas. Damn humans need to quit interfering and let nature take care of itself.

Went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton several years ago. Saw coyote, fox, bison, and elk, but no wolves or grizz. I don't think we ever hit the Lamar Valley, which is supposed to be the prime viewing for wolves.

I think I invented a new sport yesterday, I call it snowshoe jumping. Walked up the backside of a huge boulder, packed down a runway, then "Geronimo!" Jumped off several different sides, a little higher each time, probably 10', 12', 15'. Pretty fun. You could add backflips, helicopter maneuvers, etc. and it'll end up in the next Winter X Games on ESPN 2.

Was out there yesterday, beautiful conditions for 'shoeing. Sinking in about a half a foot or so it you're breaking new trail, but there's several well established tracks up to Source Lake, a few skiiers heading up higher.

Phillfort, They may plow early in the winter, but once the snow really starts flying they just kick back and watch it pile up. Deer Creek is where the road usually officially "ends", I don't think it's gated, they just put up some cones and a sign or something. And they take their time in the spring, too, usually let it melt out most of the way before they plow. I can remember not being able to drive out to Barlow Pass until June or July in a recent year.

Oops, that last comment was related to one of the other threades.

For what it's worth, back when I was lifting all the time (not as training for climbing, just for the sake of lifting) I think my forearms were overstressed and my grip strength was kinda weak. Basically anytime you're hanging on to a bar or dumbbell, your forearms are going to be working. I ended up having to use those wrist wrap things for bent over rows or shrugs for the traps, otherwise the target muscle wouldn't even get fatigued before my grip gave out. I'm surprised some of you aren't feeling it in your lats when you do pull ups. That's definitely the primary muscle involved. There's tons of accessory muscles helping out, but you simply can't do a pull up w/out the lats.