sobo

A little bit off-topic, but I just finished a great book by Greg Mortensen, a former climber who now builds schools in the way-backs of Pakistan and Afghanistan, to provide girls and boys of Islamist belief a secular education, as opposed to the education that they might get from a fundamentalist madrassa. It's a promise he made to a village chief after being rescued following his failed K2 attempt in 1993, and his own way of waging the War on Terror - one school at a time. Three Cups of Tea, a really good book, and it reads fast. Not yet out in paperback. Pair this book with Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah and Ahmed Rashid's Taliban and you get a pretty good picture of why the Middle East hates us so much.

Yeah - but only if you haul beer in your backpack. Yeah, but I thought you'd draw the line at ice.

That's one of my all-time favorite Clint dialogue exchanges.

Naaahh, just let him keep on burning... alive.

Field-castrated, sans anesthesia, then allowed to bleed dry would be my selection for a proper sentence for this parasite.

Muffy, you are so much fun to play with. I bet you were the most popular kid on the playground in your day. Seriously! And I mean that in the nicest way. You've got a thick hide girl, and that's the way I like 'em!

check my edit... last line, above ^^

So does this mean that we're not part of the Rebellion?? (2 + 2 Muff... c'mon, you can do it...) you are asking alot of me today sobo don't tease the blond girl we are on a different wave length because i am not following Think Star Wars... Mike Gauthier = Evil Dark Lord (cc.com title) => Muffster say "...fortunate enough to have you on our side" => we follow the Evil Dark Lord => allied with the Empire => opposed to the Rebellion/Jedi/etc. => we are not part of the Rebel Alliance. :nurd: :nurd: :nurd: QED Studies show that frequent sexual activity improves the brain's capacity for deductive reasoning. Better go get some! 8D

So does this mean that we're not part of the Rebellion?? (2 + 2 Muff... c'mon, you can do it...)

I'll second that sentiment! Mike asked all the right rhetorical questions of the media "shark", and kept the blood out of the water. Of course, The Evil Dark Lord is going to get a bashing tonight when O'Reilly opens his show with "Head Climbing Ranger at Mt. Rainier NP shrugs off pointed questions about much-needed climbing regulations." Lastly, Hood ain't "Mike's mountain." Gator's got plenty else to be worrying about right now, I'm sure, then to be explaining to La-Z-Boy mountaineers how rescues/costs are actually conducted/apportioned. The job of education falls to all of us!

I'm not a religious person - haven't been for several decades now - but I do know the pain that comes with a loss such as this. Please know that you have my deepest sympathy in this time of your grief.

you don't even remember... "snif"

OK, then... Happy Ramahannukwanzdrumas to you and yours! (we know who's gonna chime in here soon, now don't we... Is he still there, or are you two done being frisky for now? )

Hey, TuffGirl! Happy Ramahannukwanzmas to you and yours, too! (I think I've included most everyone, right...? Wouldn't want to come across as un-PC, now would I? )

My toughest climb hasn't happened yet. It's coming up this Monday morning, when I'm gonna have to haul my sorry ass out of bed and go to work (after doing the presents thing with the kiddies) to make up for all the time I've wasted on this board over the past two weeks on the Hood thing. Edit: Are we still doing :pagetop:s here, or is that passe' now?

Excellent writing and portrayal of the facts in that statement and the linked headline article, iain. :tup: And weighty thanks for you and your crew getting it on up there these past two weeks. :tup: Now, take a break!

Point taken. Whenever we, as members of Central Washington Mountain Rescue, make a pitch at a public education venue, we always try to throw in a little bit of what the AAC report concludes (a lot of folks had already come to the same conclusion, it was just never put in print so clearly and for public consumption). And I always find a way to inform the audience that they aren't paying for anything "extra" that they wouldn't have already paid for in their taxes before I hit them up for a donation. Of course, I'm only reaching a small segment of the population... On the other hand, a lot of people (~1M) came to this site recently not knowing a lot about climbing or SAR/mountain rescue. I'll be the first to admit that now that the rescue has been called off and the effort has shifted to recovery, a lot of these people will just go away. The opportunity to educate those people is now lost. However, I made the post in my other thread (with the AAC report link) in the hopes that at least some of these newcomers (and non-climbers) would see that thread, read the report, and become educated. Perhaps they may even help to spread the word around the office coffee pot and higher up the food chain of public consciousness. And that's why I used the subject line that I did - to grab their collective attention while the incident is still fresh in everyone's mind.

Jeepers, peeps! Who rated this thread 5 stars?? wfinley: That Oregon SAR annual report looks incredibly well done. I just scanned through the whole 114 pages. Requires printing and further study over the holidays...

wfinley: I think you're quite right. The mods can delete all my ranting and just leave the link, if they feel so inclined. I will not be offended, as my hide was tanned long ago. michael: What you've been told is also correct. It's money we as taxpayers have already spent by the time we file our returns, and the military would spend it on training for rescues anyway if it weren't for real rescue operations. And they really do like doing the "real thing" as opposed to training for it. That's been my experience for as long as I've been in SAR/MR.

Redirect those assholes to this thread.

This question always comes up by some ignorant, self-professed mountaineering "expert" after a high-profile, dramatized, media circus event like the recent Hood operation. It happened after all the falderal on Liberty Ridge a couple of years back, and on Hood before that. Maybe it's ignorance of reality, maybe it's just the "armchair mountaineers" out there wanting to hear their own voice, I don't know, and frankly I don't even care. What I do care about is that the real information gets out there. I've been chasing around this board over the past few days posting a link in almost every thread where the subject question gets asked. The link re-directs to the AAC's detailed report about the real cost of rescues and who are the rescuee groups most often requiring search and rescue, and I got news for you armchair climbers out there: It ain't us! So, for the record and to any BarcaLounger mountaineer who asks this question, or to those of us of whom this question gets asked and you want to know what to tell these "experts", I give you the link to the report. Climbing Rescues in America: Reality Does Not Support "High-Risk, High-Cost" Perception Please, people... let's end this sort of stupid opining now. You know who you are.

Of course, Jackson's got it right. He read the report.

It's all here in the AAC report. If the 8 pages of reading might cause you armchair mountaineers out there to miss the lead-in of the next installment of Rosie's show, just skip to the Executive Summary.

nodder Hey! It ain't werkin' no mo'!

Oh Crikey! Here we go again! I get so phuhkin' tired of saying this over and over and over and over and over ad nauseum. I'm just going to link to this other thread. Sixth post on Page 2. Now STFU, asshat!