jja

It's good enough for me. I think the saving grace this weekend is that the weather systems are more typical this time compared to last weekend - meaning the weather is from west to east - rather than the screwed up east side disturbances. LEAVENWORTH...METHOW...WINTHROP NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPOKANE WA 400 AM PDT WED MAY 26 2004 .SYNOPSIS....SYNOPSIS...UNSETTLED WEATHER WILL REMAIN OVER THE AREA TODAY AND CONTINUE THROUGH MOST OF THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK WEEK... AS A SERIES OF COLD FRONTS MOVES FROM WEST TO EAST OFF THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND INTO THE INLAND NORTHWEST. FRIDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A 30 PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN AND MOUNTAIN SNOW SHOWERS. LOWS NEAR 40. SATURDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY... HIGHS IN THE 60S SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY WITH A 30 PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS. LOWS IN THE LOWER 40S. HIGHS IN THE MID TO UPPER 60S. SUNDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A 20 PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS. LOWS IN THE LOWER 40S. MEMORIAL DAY AND MONDAY NIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY WITH A 30 PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS. HIGHS IN THE MID TO UPPER 60S. LOWS IN THE LOWER 40S. TUESDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A 30 PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS HIGHS IN THE MID 60S TO LOWER 70S.

Nelson decided to try dry tooling, with rock shoes on his feet and leashless ice tools in his hands. He had modified one tool for the crux by bolting a Pecker micro-piton to the pick. Using these tools, Nelson, who has redpointed 5.13+ and M12, was able to “free climb” the pitch on his fourth attempt. .. I doubt this is going to catch on

yeah, but he only lost one to cancer, so they had to superglue on a little vortex generator to compensate for the asymetric drag.

when I was stationed in germany me and a bunch of my genius buddies rapped out of a fourth floor window in our barracks with the rope tied to a door handle we were so shocked the cq didn't catch us we did it again aussie style. ahh, young and stupid

It's called artistic license. You know good prose just doesn't write itself. by the by, I'm gonna be at index tomorrow afternoon. After I get done with my project (is it ok to call a 5.9 a project?) you'd be more than welcome to ropegun me around the lower wall.

oh shit, that's too funny

Nice Pictures Todd, looks like a stellar trip on the mountain

So the week started off promising enough, with a partner lined up and plans to do something alpine. Maybe forbidden, or something at the Pass or wine spires. As the week wore on the weather didn't look too promising. Well then we'll just shift gears to Leavenworth - the sunshine capital of WA state, with 300 days of the big yellow a year - or at least so says this place. By Friday the tentative plan was the South face of Prusik, with a back up of just finding some dry rock in the icicle if the long hike into the enchantments looked like it would be wasted effort. Well by Friday evening we decided to bail even on that. By Saturday mid day I've done all the running around errands I needed to do (even went into work - ughh!) and was itching to get out. So I decided to rescue the weekend by hiking up to colchuk and doing the NBC. Spent the night at the trailhead trying to get some sleep in my car. It rained all night, fairly hard at times. When the clock went off at 3:15, I shut it off and bailed on the idea of doing the NBC in what was either going to be heavy rain or snow, and decided instead on a leisurely hike up to the lake and the dog route up to the summit. So at 5:30 I leave the car, by 7:30 I'm at the lake sitting on a boulder taking this photo in the pouring rain. Hmm, don't even have the motivation to slog up the dog route. Heading back down to the car I find myself in a surprisingly good mood for some reason and start singing along to my mp3 player as I hike out in the downpour. Well one of my fav' don't-tell-anyone-I-actually-like-it songs is playing, and here I am doing my best american idol version of gwen stefanie: This world is forcing me To hold your hand 'Cause I'm just a girl, little ol' me Don't let me out of your sight I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite So don't let me have any rights Oh...I've had it up to here! So I come around a corner in the trail and there I find two day hikers laughing their ass off at the sight and sound of an idiot running down the trail in the rain singing, "I'm just a girl". Told them that I was glad that I could make their day, and started singing again as I continued past. Driving out of Leavenworth I run into Tim and Alex leaving the drip wall because it's too wet. ... I wonder how that conversation went: Alex: you know Tim, it's been raining all night and part of the morning. TimL: yeah I wonder where we could find some dry rock? Alex: hey I know, lets go climb at a place that has a natural flow of water, you know something that's an ice climb in the winter. TimL: Hey, let's go to the drip wall, that ought to be dry !! Spent the rest of the morning hanging out in town at the renaissance basement restaurant drinking coffee, eating greasy food, and telling climbing lies. Tim and Alex headed off in search of dry rock and I headed home. What a suck weekend.

Seriously though, a few weeks ago (the ski in weekend) at the pass all the east and south stuff was mostly dry. Ledges on the sw rib of sews had snow on them (but the route stayed dry), the s arete downclimb was mostly snow free, the easy sw routes (becky, overexposure, rapple grapple) on liberty bell were dry. The north side of concord was all wet though, and the NW corner of news had a patch of snow that's in the alcove above the offwidth that was melting down the route, but the w face route looked ok. Thadsboner and Skyclimb were there last weekend and I think joshK was going to do the n face of burgandy this weekend. Maybe they'll know more.

Hey mike, here's a pic of the north face of dragontail from this morning. Hope it helps

never mind .. I'm outta here.

What'd you have in mind? I'm about to head off to solo Colchuk, but would rather get on some rock in leavenworth if it's dry. Give me a call, 425.896.2632 -john

It'd be super cool to catch on video an eagle swooping down and carrying off a small animal - like your dying lamb. I wonder how much it could lift, maybe 10, 15 lbs? my view is much less majestic, I'm looking out over a sea of empty cubes. where'd everyone go? why am I still here?

I've got a pair I bought last year. I've used these things maybe 8-10 times so far. I use them mostly for approaches to summer alpine rock climbs. They've worked great for that purpose. I've got the model with the plastic bale front and rear and it's secure on even soft tennies. (although the whole setup feels mo better with a stiffer shoe). The rear bale has a small bolt and nut that you can move to a different hole to change the size for different footwear, I was concerned at first that this was a potential failure point - but I haven't had any issues with it and it seems burly enough. Only negative so far: The bales are really stiff and don't collapse into a nice neat little package for carrying like the stubais. click me

Hey I'm the resident skinhead on this site .. you might think you don't have much dru, but you've got w00t quanities of hair compared to me but i clippered it all off 2 days ago! I bet that oh so kewl sideburn to jawbone captain kirk facial hair thing you got goin' on stands out real perty now

Just to be clear this means 5.5 miles from the right hand turn at the gas station (a 76) that bug mentioned. Barney's rubble is a small laid back granite outcropping just off the road (will be on your right) with a bunch of short cracks, directly across the road from it is another roadside formation called bruce's boulder (easily distinguished by giant steel tr anchors on the top).

Hey I'm the resident skinhead on this site .. you might think you don't have much dru, but you've got w00t quanities of hair compared to me

what else would she be doing there?

other thread

... so which one are you ?

I DID NOT NEED TO SEE PICS OF MALE ESCORTS ... although the i liek milk page was pretty funny

check this thread

navigate to the pic you want in the gallery, right click it, properties, then copy out the url of the picture in the properties tab (not the url of the web page you are in). then make your post, click on the image tag in the post page and paste in the url you copied from the pic.

umbilicals are only aid if you hang on them, and it looks like the grivel bungee things you linked to would place you about 4' below your tools if you tried to hang on them. much easier and just as quick to flip the rope over the head of a well stuck tool and call take .. not that I would ever do such a thing

I've got the quark clippy thing. I started using towards the end of last season. I like it ok. Unclipping goes super quick and easy. Clipping back in you can do a super slick flick of the clippy thing and catch it with your fingers and clip back in real easy - or the flippy thing doesnt' work, in which case you have to either orient it correctly in your hand with your teeth, or up against your chest. Not to big of a deal, and I suspect I'll get better at it. One thing I didn't expect was the hassle they can be when not actually on the pitch, ie at belays, during snow slog sections, where the f* did i put those damn things - stuff like that. I suppose that will come with experience though. So at least for me the CM clippy's are better than the stock quark leashes, but not quite as good as I thought they would be. Have'nt used any other system to compare. Got to tell you though the first time I unclipped and switched tools to get around an awkward bulge I felt like such an ice hero. Granted it was only honeyman falls