jja

Good suggestion catbirdseat. Couple of more points on fossil. 1. It's not as bad as everyone says. 2. Bring a mountain bike for the logging road 3. WC crack is a 5.7 crack just to the right of the prominent cave on the first wall. It's a great first gear lead.

Your knee still hurts Craig ?? shit and I was going to call to see if you wanted to go again

David, I've got version 2.6.8 Click on File, Print Map ... (move crosshairs to center of image you want), Export Map to Disk ..., Choose Jpeg Best, Jpeg Good, or Jpeg Fair from the pulldown and give the file a name (you don't need to include the file extension, ie .jpg). For more control instead of using "Export Map to Disk", choose "Copy Map" which puts the image on the clipboard, then you can paste it into a graphics program of your choice, where you can choose compression ratios, image size, etc .. Wayne, As far as I know the ubb code only works with .jpg and .gif

left the army a couple of years ago now so things may have changed, but the climbing gym at ft. lewis is a converted raquetball court. Judson Lang runs it and is a climber and all around nice guy. You don't need to be in the army to climb there, but you do need to be able to get on ft. lewis, which pretty much means either being a soldier, or having a job on post. almost forgot, besides the indoor gym there is an outdoor freestanding wall that the sf group owns. you ain't getting on that one.

Hey, the guy came in second at Ouray - if it's good enough for him .. On the pick thing, yeah they get 'em for free, but I noticed on my own picks that being aggresive while getting them into cracks doesn't do nearly as much damage as a gumby swing into rock on an ice climb. After several laps on my tools (quarks 'B' pick) they only needed a little touch up.

I went to the ice fest ... fairly low attendance but I had a great time regardless. Bernard and Catherine really tried hard and did a good job with the limited amount of time they had to prepare and poor ice this year. They're psyched to put on a big(er) event next year. (Catherine even climbed Waite for Spring - says she's hooked ) Saturday night was Rob Owens slide show and door prizes, because of the low attendance (maybe 30) nearly everyone got something .. ice srews, axes, gloves, backpacks, I got a new petzl helios helmet. After the food and slide show it was off to the Reynolds for some discounted brews and exagerated epic telling. The real draw for me though were the clinics. Saturday at Marble with Scott Semple and Sunday at the Rambles with Rob Owens. The instructor ratio was fantastic because of the low turnout so what was supposed to be half day clinics turned in to all day affairs. With Scott the big thing I learned was to stay in better balance under my planted tool and to concentrate on the left tool/right foot - right tool/left foot dynamic. Something I would of never thought of by myself - completely eliminates the barn door feeling, especially when placing a screw on the steep. The mixed clinic with Rob was an absolute revelation. Watching one of the best mixed climbers in the world opens your eyes to the possible. The big lessons here for me were: 1. feet, feet, feet, climbing is always about feet! 2. quiet tools. 3. be really agressive looking for(or making) placements 4. I'm really weak. 5. I love leashes Number 3 suprised the hell out of me. Watching Rob do a demo climb, he just whacked away at the rock with almost as much force as an ice placement while looking for placements in cracks. The other big surprise for me was a complete willingness to totally weight a torqued pick - no worries he says they don't break. There were the usual gear demos, with BD and Charlet/Petzl on hand. BD has a new jaws like atc coming out, and the Fusion leashless tool. We also got to swing the ergo and try all the different crampons etc.. On leashless tools I could really see the advantage, especially on the mixed. I had one sequence where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing ... Drape the tool over your shoulder, pull on a jug with your hand, place the tool in a crack, match hands on the other tool and then switch - really sweet. My problem with leashless though is I can only do this for about 10 feet or so, then I'm sooo pumped without leashes ... take!!! Couldn't stay for monday, had to work (bummer!) Thanks to Audrey, James, Tanya, and Elliot for being great partners!!

took me a second to figure out why these pics look so great ... climbing under that bright blue sky must of been the bomb !!

The replacement gloves I got worked great this past weekend. The seams are showing no signs of undue wear. I'm sure it was just a bad pair I got before. Now that they haven't fallen apart on me, I can honestly say these gloves rock. the ice flows seem to have all the advantages of thin gloves like the drytool, but with a little bit more warmth and knuckle padding. My hands never got cold (well it never got below ~25F) and I really think the thin palms kept my hands / forearms from getting too pumped on long steep sections. FWIW, I'd recommend these.

I'm leaving around 4:30 Friday and will be back Sunday night - just chip in for gas.

"Alcohol contains calories, but drinking alcohol doesn't lead to weight gain, according to extensive medical research, and many studies report a small reduction in weight for women who drink." Check it out here woo hoo !!

When you design one let me know, I'd love to get a pair. Seriously there's a design compromise here. Warm and waterproof means bulky. Thin and nimble means cold and wet. I'm sure some gloves are better than others at getting the design right, but there is no one perfect glove. Consider instead two pairs, one thin and light for tough leads. When you get to the belay, pull on your parka (yeah right in this weather) and your heavy gloves or over-mitts, and settle in. When it's time to climb again, jump back into your action suit twight-like and be on your way. There's a discussion on gloves right now in the gear critic, which is probably where this post belongs.

Do you know who carries these?

These gloves aren't supposed to be waterproof, I was thinking of using seam grip just as reinforcement. But you're right, if this new replacement pair only lasts one weekend, I have wasted my money.

and the seams are holding up ok?

Certainly not worth a 6 hour drive for just this and marble ...

Used these gloves ice climbing this past weekend. The seam joining the leather palm and the fabric on the right thumb had a 3" blow out, the same seam on the left thumb had about 1/2" of seam give way. I didn't abuse them in any particular way other than climb in them. At first I thought the funky screw head on the grivel 360's caught the seam and ripped it open while placing gear, but then the left thumb started to go to. Brought them back to marmot mountain in bellevue and they exchanged them for me, and are sending the others back to cloudveil. I don't think it was any particular manufacturing defect though, just maybe a bad design. I think I'll seam grip the seams around the thumb on the replacements before I use them, and hope for the best. Other than the small bit about them falling apart they're really nice gloves.

So do we reveal the true nature and hidden life of one of cc.com's sprayers? or do we keep the dark secret in the closet - so to speak.

hey fromage, did you hear any thing recent about any other ice? nobody that I asked had any beta other than marble/rambles. I'm probably going back next weekend and am going to shoot for oregon jack or something in bridge canyon plus marble again (got to lead icy bc this time). That group of 7 in the van were ok guys, their leader colin was cool, but every body was complete newbies, so the hack-o-rama was to be expected. At least they kept it confined to that one area. On saturday they were on the lower pitch of the right rambles with one tr setup and everybody else bouldering on the bottom ramp - that's 14 swingin tools. It didn't look like they were going to get out of the way, so I rapped right through the middle of em rude-euro style.

Lillooet update: We were a little bit worried when the rain started around Vancouver and continued through Pemberton on friday night, but it tapered off by the time we were on the duffy lake road. It turned out to be a fairly good weekend. Rambles - both left and right lines are sort of in. The top of the second pitch on the left has no ice. On the right there's plenty of ice on the first two pitches. The gully leading up to the upper ice has no snow and only patches of ice in it. The upper ice itself was leadable (by me that is) in only one spot. Plenty of fun though on all the other thin ice / rock bits on tr here. As we were rapping off met up with a party of 7 (yes seven) from bellingham. Nice guys, but an awful lot of them. Synchronicity - whole sections of it are missing. Carl's berg - had ice, looked thin, but I'm sure there are plenty that could do it. Marble - waite for spring area on the left has lot's of different lines, none of them very fat. the gang of 7 pretty much owned this area. The deeping wall/farmed ice (how do you distinguish the routes if it's all one wall of ice?) has plenty of ice and plenty of lines, some hacked up with hooks all the way up, some with overhangs onto curtains, some real thin weeps. Icy bc first pitch has two lines, the left is thinner and steeper, the right is rampier and thicker. the second pitch has ice but water is flowing/splashing pretty hard all over it. the third pitch is reported in, and looks in from the road but we didn't go up there. by the way, if anybody goes to the mile-o, check out the ice climber log. There's some _very_ interesting, albeit anonymous comments in there about one of cc.com's more prolific posters - something about climbing his mama. thanks to ryland for a fun weekend, -john

Oh it's an online poll, those are really really reliable right? kinda like the polls we have here.

Thanks caveman, one more stupid question: What book?