Discussion Topic |
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 18, 2007 - 12:08pm PT
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Crimpies Happy Thread & Chiloe’s Odd Photo Thread got me thinking.
One of the things that make me happy is seeing my good friends indulging creative ways to enjoy the mountains.
Most of us are white middle class kids who somehow felt the pull of the wild and have for a lifetime infused our gentrified souls with this essential roughness & beauty.
I think of Doug Robinson pulling the Oklahoma boys out west for teli turns, Galen Rowell swapping his hot rod for pins & jumars. In my minds eye I see Mike Graber reaching into Clevenger’s wedding cake at Soda Springs in the Meadows. Leif Patterson spreading his arms to the heavens upon reaching green grass fresh off the mountain or Jody’s dad’s Teton memories.
So post up & reposts of good stuff welcomed!
Pictures, stories, memories, ideas, fears, joys, struggles, goals...
What does the mountain lifesyle look like for you?
‘Could be your honey shoveling the porch, some wood going into the stove, your favorite out house, some skis on the tuning bench, a tent set up deep in the woods set aglow by the light of the Svea , a treasured sinewy trail or ridge, a Baltoro porter’s wizened face, some sharp tools scratching away at blue water ice, or calloused fingers crimping those joyous plates in the Buttermilks.
Not all challenge & triumph, often the quiet, subtle or whimsical notions typify the mountain lifestyle.
One of the more inspiring, creative, & playfull engagements I’ve seen in a long while,
Below John Dittli on secret ops in the High Sierra:
Photos courtesy Dittli Photography
http://www.johndittli.com
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spyork
Social climber
A prison of my own creation
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:10pm PT
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Sweet! Was that ice as good as it looks in the photos?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2007 - 12:18pm PT
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Dunno Spyork, I'm just sitting here in the mountains looking at them pics on my computer!
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:23pm PT
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Taking my wife up a 300 ft. FA on an obscure little face in S. Texas, a 3 day canoe trip in the Chugach Mts with my older kids and drying out our stuff in a cozy camp near the top of Johnson Pass in the Chugach with my wife and all four kids. All four of those kids humped packs over a 26 mile pass, the youngest was only five at the time! Recent examples
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:26pm PT
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This thread smells like a winner...good idea Roy!
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dit
Mountain climber
eastside
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:28pm PT
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--Was that ice as good as it looks in the photos?
Yep. All just a dream now, buried in a blanket of white...
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:35pm PT
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That skatin' looks fun.
One from Labor Day in the Absarokas.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:51pm PT
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photo: B. Weaver
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Dec 18, 2007 - 12:59pm PT
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Tom, zat lass one in tuck?
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Dec 18, 2007 - 01:02pm PT
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wyo...
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Dec 18, 2007 - 01:16pm PT
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dec 18, 2007 - 01:20pm PT
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 18, 2007 - 01:21pm PT
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These two seem to like it.
Sangre de Christo
Soar like a Eagle.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 18, 2007 - 01:41pm PT
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In 1980 I was a white middle class punk living in the city (Chicago)looking for a way to escape. I got a summer gig as a volunteer back country ranger in Olympic National Park. I escaped. After a summer of wearing a uniform I got a gig as a guide (i.e., tripod and lens schlepper) for a National Geographic photographer. Somehow I ended up in a book. I used to coin I earned to move to Yosemite. I've been blessed to be living the mountain lifestyle evah since. Yo.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 18, 2007 - 02:36pm PT
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For one thing, we have a lot to pay forward.
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Darren D.
Social climber
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Dec 18, 2007 - 03:15pm PT
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The Climb:
Two Hours Later:
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Dec 18, 2007 - 04:17pm PT
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cowpoke
climber
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Dec 18, 2007 - 04:23pm PT
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more on the paying forward theme
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2007 - 04:56pm PT
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A eulogy I wrote for Walter Rosenthal sums up a lot for me:
It's been awhile, I'm guessing circa 1976 or 77, back in a Kelty shop in Glendale CA, Vern Clevenger gave a slideshow on Mescalito and my teenage climbing pal and I attended it like it was Christmas morning. At the time Vern was one of our heroes, given his defining legacy as a prime activist in Tuolumne Meadows.
To a certain degree, Vern used Walter’s good-natured presence on the climb as a comic foil for the story; partly due to Walter’s overall relaxed, good nature, (he said that Walter had a good book to read, just in case they decided to kick back for a day) and specifically because Walter chose to climb in Lowa Triplex, which was the standard high-altitude mountaineering boot at the time. Vern said Walter’s explanation was quite simple:” I'm going to be standing in slings, so what does it matter?” Vern had plans to try to free climb as much of the climb as he could, I don't think Walter cared so much about it and given the report of their ascent that proved to be a more applicable perspective. Vern had maybe one free climbing picture which Walter took of him laybacking an expando flake.
In spring of 1980 I moved to Mammoth Lakes, so I could pick up some mountain travel skills and be closer to Yosemite. I didn't know any climbers up there. I was buying a block of chalk in the pharmacy and Hugh Burton's wife, Kathy Dermitzakis, pegged me as a climber and introduced me to the boys: Marco Milano, Bob Finn, Chuck Cochran, Vern and Margaret Clevenger, Kevin Leary, and Walter Rosenthal.
At the time, Kevin and Walter were sharing a tiny Airstream trailer in the trailer park, out where the golf course now sits. Also there were Marco and Bob sharing a trailer, a nice guy named Jim, who in later years I got to work with at Tamarack Lodge and then Vern & Margaret together in a trailer, where I rented the second bedroom.
They all took me under their wing, which included employment on Bob Stephan’s hard-working drywall stocking crew. At the time Walter was primarily a skier, the rest of them shared enthusiasm equally split between skiing and climbing, but my time with those boys and my defining memories of Walter in particular, are all about the days of the “Drywall Dogs”.
Make no mistake about it: even though Marco was our foreman, Walter was our spiritual leader and Chuck was his lieutenant. These appointments were entirely impromptu of course, more a generation of character than anything else. On a tidy notepad in his pocket, Walter always had the immaculate count as to where the numerous sheets of drywall were to be stacked and he anticipated logistics. Walter was the science officer, (incessantly reading Scientific American), while Chuck, when not giving me shite for being young and bow legged, told uproarious stories in his signature drawl and sought to uplift team morale.
Every morning, we’d go to Schatzees Bakery, where Walt, smartly dressed in a dark blue short waisted jacket, wool pants, and stiff leather mountain boots, would see to it that we all had plenty of coffee, and he was the last person to suggest, “perhaps we need a few plugs for the road?”, a “plug” being a buttermilk doughnut, by weight and density, the highest caloric value doughnut a person could buy: essentially a gold brick of dough, butter and sugar.
That infectious laugh! One of the bigger jobs we worked on was Aspen Creek: this gargantuan palace, in its construction phase like the vacuous bowels of a medieval castle, with endless passageways, multiple enclosures and great lofts, was peopled with tough carpenters ambling proudly about with their framing hammers dangling from twin nail bags like loaded six shooters. He and Chuck would get us to race down the long hallways, up the stairs, in teams of two gripping double bundles of 12’ 5/8" drywall sheets. This became entertainment: and Walt's resulting laugh was more like a hearty exhortation, a sarcastic gulping, it sounded like he was drinking in life with large throatfulls. We worked very hard and owing to the dynamic, cheerfully so.
When a friend of mine, a climbing partner, Jerome Carlian died that summer, Walt, not much of a drinker, bought two Coors talls and sat me down on lunch break to be sure I was okay and talked with me about it, looking after my sense of the whole thing and checked to be sure I didn't feel any guilt, a feeling which he said can be quite normal when one suffers the death of a friend.
About midsummer, Tom Carter and Alan Bard joined our team and the resultant dynamic expanded hilariously! Carter was always humming reggae tunes, while Cochran would cut him up about it and Bardini was just looking for a way out to get back to the guiding, which at the time was being done for John Fisher at the Palisades school. Also joining us was a very large black man named Marcus, who I later beat out in an eating contest, including ribs, corn, potatoes and pie. Little 135 pound Bob Finn could also out work him in terms of sheer load carrying capacity, which was really something to watch. Marcus knew we were just a bunch of crazy white boys.
In the fall, we all showed up for work one morning on a crystal-clear, beautiful day. Our collective tone was ambivalent; work energy low, appetite for the Sierra light and raging aspen's very high. Walt & Chuck held a pow-wow, then Walt quietly went over to confer with Bob Stephans. He came back and declared the successful outcome of a congenial mutiny! “We’re taking the day off boys; and we are first going to the Bishop Golf Course driving range (Chuck's bid), then we'll have a nice day hiking up Paiute Pass".
Since spring, we’d all been working so hard together and it was largely Walt’s sense of timing and care for the morale of his team that sparked a wonderful day of hooky together. We were all pretty stimulated by the end of the day and we barreled down the trail from Paiute Pass en masse, running headlong through the aspens in a tunnel of brilliant red leaves.
Via Con Dios Walter,
Roy
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dec 18, 2007 - 06:12pm PT
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That's so cool.
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BadInfluence
Mountain climber
Dak side
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Dec 18, 2007 - 09:32pm PT
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spend a litttle time on the mountain
early Nov. great trip by myself w/ 2 lbs of wild sokeye smoked salmon and some tasty greens to go with.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 18, 2007 - 09:34pm PT
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I like the influence of that photo!
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Dec 19, 2007 - 12:15am PT
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Super thread kids! Jay, magnificent shots man! Really feel what made me try this in the first place...
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Anastasia
Trad climber
California
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Dec 19, 2007 - 12:54am PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 19, 2007 - 02:44am PT
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Dec 19, 2007 - 02:57am PT
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Damn, now there's a gem or three!
That's one able looking gable. I live to have the enrgy that photo suggests.
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clustiere
Trad climber
Rock Ridge/ Oakland CA
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Dec 19, 2007 - 03:18am PT
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Cowpoke I truely miss that scenen from my childhood. The profile lake scene.
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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Dec 19, 2007 - 07:40am PT
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Thanks Roy brother, your threads are always an invitation to what is the best in all of us.
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cowpoke
climber
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Dec 19, 2007 - 08:53am PT
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Clustiere, I'm glad the pic brought back fond memories.
Whether it is genes, environment, or the two combined, there does seem to be something inter-generational about celebrating the mountain lifestyle. I've often wondered if people had watershed moments in which they recognized the mountains were for them...or maybe some were embedded in hills their whole lives and never considered otherwise.
For me, there were a few early life moments that stuck out, but primary was an epic family canoe trip through the boundary waters at age 5.
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screelover
Mountain climber
Canuckistan
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Dec 19, 2007 - 09:13am PT
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Wow, nice thread to start the day.
Brings back memories of places and the great people we've shared them with.
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cm
Trad climber
The City, OK
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Dec 19, 2007 - 09:50am PT
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana
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Dec 19, 2007 - 10:59am PT
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What's that line from Pink Floyd..."Skating on the thin ice of life?". something like that. Anyway, that looks FUN!
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Jobee
Social climber
El Portal
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Dec 19, 2007 - 02:17pm PT
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Wow..that was nice! I second everything that was posted above, I celebrate the fact that I actually know some of you great people due to "Celebrating the Mountain Lifestyle".
I will go outside, step onto the porch and take in a great deep breath of fresh clean mountain air!
A salute to my life and you all!
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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Dec 19, 2007 - 02:50pm PT
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sunrise on laurel
Climbing with friends is high on the list...
new plans...
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland: what's not to love?
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Dec 19, 2007 - 03:42pm PT
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Jaybro: hell yeah! Fantastic run of photos.
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L
climber
The Late Great Planet Earth
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Dec 19, 2007 - 06:11pm PT
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What an incredible thread!!!
Tarbaby--you're the best!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2007 - 07:50pm PT
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Well thanks L, ...and well over a hundred other people are best too;
And that's only to mention the few I happen to I know.
How many folks in all the walks of life can say they enjoy a core group of aquaintances & friends whom they've known since High School and still, to this day, with whom they enjoy a steady, even daily, rapport?
That's seems to be one of the foremost & most valuable attributes of the mountain lifestyle.
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Mimi
climber
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Dec 19, 2007 - 08:46pm PT
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Hey Walleye, is that you with Karine on that summit?
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 19, 2007 - 09:14pm PT
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five star thread
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 19, 2007 - 09:17pm PT
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1963
My parents decided to drive to Alaska from Chicago. We made it as far as the Black Hills in SD.
Sitting on my first softrock summit.
Paying it forward 38 years, me and the Little Twister cragging sea stacks on the Olympic coast.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2007 - 10:10pm PT
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Mountains!!!
Only thing better,
Is Women AND Mountains:
...unless you're a guy, with an ego, and Lisa is in your mtn running race:
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Dec 19, 2007 - 10:25pm PT
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 19, 2007 - 10:26pm PT
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no,
Helga is mine!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2007 - 10:36pm PT
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Hmmm,
Her name is Lindner,
I wonder if she's Chris's distant relation?
Anyhow,
That pic is from the book: "Hazards in Mountaineering".
Go risk it fellas!
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Ammon
Big Wall climber
El Cap
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Dec 19, 2007 - 11:22pm PT
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Awesome thread!
Friends and family are the most important aspect in my mountain lifestyle. Cheers!
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 19, 2007 - 11:54pm PT
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ten star thread - awesome pics.
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Ammon
Big Wall climber
El Cap
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Dec 20, 2007 - 12:51am PT
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“Get that camera outta my face… what are ya new?”
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dec 20, 2007 - 12:53am PT
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Ammon
Big Wall climber
El Cap
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:12am PT
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:14am PT
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killer pics...as usual Ammon.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:34am PT
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Ze women climbers, eh, they ROCK in ze mountanes.
realmojede
Montana Liz
Secret lady, secret location
Molly--free solo (just kiddin')
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:38am PT
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Now those are awesome pictures Ammon.
And how about that one of Rich, hahahaha lol.
He's fukin classic. Hahaha
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:41am PT
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More Montana Liz!!!........what a great smile she has.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:45am PT
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Only TKingsbury can fill your "Montana Liz" smile jonez--sorry, feelio.
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nita
climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:53am PT
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Yeah, Great pictures Mr Ammon! I love the reflection in your sun glasses...and no nose hairs.
edit: I meant- the reflection in the sun glasses...
EDIT: Hey, where are your pics? red X's
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Ammon
Big Wall climber
El Cap
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Dec 20, 2007 - 02:21am PT
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Thanks- but, that's not me ;) I just took the pic.
Edit: Yeah Werner, he's super classic... a good man for sure.
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the-shoe
Trad climber
Santa Clarita, CA
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Dec 20, 2007 - 03:35am PT
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Mimi
climber
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Dec 20, 2007 - 10:16am PT
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Walleye, now I recall who you are. We did the E Butt of Middle right? We started at around 2 pm and had a great time.
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Dec 20, 2007 - 11:56am PT
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it's all about the PBR tallboy, in a svelt bovine FISH coozie.
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cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
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Dec 20, 2007 - 01:21pm PT
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Nate D
climber
San Francisco
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Dec 20, 2007 - 03:12pm PT
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scuffy b
climber
Stump with a backrest
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Dec 20, 2007 - 04:10pm PT
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Cintune, what is that object in your Photo?
Is the engraving from Little Mother on the Morderberg?
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Dec 20, 2007 - 08:40pm PT
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Now, That, is a positive thread!
but Scuffy raises a good question...
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Dec 20, 2007 - 09:04pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 20, 2007 - 10:07pm PT
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Incredible contributions here!
I went anaerobic following Jaybro's run,
And Gosh Ammon, no foolin, you rock da house with quality.
Well, a runner up to Women & Mountains,
And an old standby, yeah baby:
Booze & Mountains!!!
But way, way out ahead of that, and just a nic behind Women & Mountains:
Booze & Friends & Mountains!!!
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tdk
climber
puhoynix
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Dec 20, 2007 - 10:08pm PT
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three generations, mt. ralston, desolation wilderness
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cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
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Dec 20, 2007 - 10:34pm PT
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scuffy b:
>Cintune, what is that object in your Photo?
It's a rustic Appalachian sushi boat....er...hanging from the porch rafters until it was needed, later on that evening.
>Is the engraving from Little Mother on the Morderberg?
Don't think so; I found it awhile back with no identification,pretty sure it's a pic of Henriette d'Angeville, the first gal to summit Mt. Blanc. Not 100% on that, but I can't think of anyone else it might reasonably be.
This thread is a real treat to come back to every few hours.
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 20, 2007 - 10:42pm PT
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amazing pics everyone - great stuff!
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 20, 2007 - 11:23pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 20, 2007 - 11:40pm PT
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Dave Tapes
Trad climber
Silverado CA
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Dec 20, 2007 - 11:43pm PT
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Roy once again you initiate a thread that typifies what this forum is all about. Mountain sports, and the lifestyles that come from them, provide us with the experiences that, define us and fulfill our lives. We are a fortunate bunch. Everyone of us should spend as much time in the mountains as possible.
In the spirit of sharing the fun.
Mathis last year
Ride hike to Cloudripper
View from Cloudripper
Dempster Highway Northwest Territorys
Lake in BC Canada
Basin Mt Sking
Buttermilks
Laguna Beach
Liberty Ridge Rainer
East side flowers
The happys
Alaska
The big Stone
I think I'm getting carried away.
DW
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2007 - 11:56pm PT
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Yep I agree
This thread is a winner!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 11:48am PT
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Photo Tom Carter
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 02:13pm PT
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Here's a couple seminal shots, personal favorites,
Which hang deep in my memory as archetypal celebration of mountain & soul:
Leif Patterson, "celebrating the site of green grass at Urdukas" just moments [Edit: "months"] before he would die,
Galen Rowell's photo from "In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods"
from Desnivel
And from Mineral's recent post of Ned Gillette:
photo Galen Rowell
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crøtch
climber
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Dec 21, 2007 - 02:54pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 05:52pm PT
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AKDog & myself in '74,
It was his idea to start climbing.
I was skeptical, & little did I know, about that time, Hot Henry was wearing much the same hat:
I'd hardly grown into my feet:
And a reprise photo of us at the end of '06:
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 21, 2007 - 06:39pm PT
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this thread rocks.
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Dec 21, 2007 - 06:42pm PT
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Yo Tar...always loved that Picture of Lief Patterson...but how did he die moments later?
Great Thread by the way.
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CFetterolf
climber
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Dec 21, 2007 - 06:50pm PT
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Here is a shot of my wife Katie on half dome.
Katie again celebrating in the Needles.
Me slacklining in the Gunks.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 07:16pm PT
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 21, 2007 - 07:25pm PT
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The photo of Leif at Urdukas (sp?) was taken by Galen Rowell during the 1975 American K2 expedition, in July. Leif greatly appreciated nature in all its guises, and was a wonderful companion. He, his son Tor, and another young man died in a climbing accident in December 1976.
Nice thread, tarbuster & gang!
Edit: The photo was published in "In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods", Galen's book about the expedition. It was also used in other ways, which I can't remember.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 07:33pm PT
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Hey Anders, how 'bout a spot while I negotiate this fissure, ...eh?
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 21, 2007 - 07:42pm PT
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In the Park.
Mountains made of Sand.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 07:55pm PT
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Sand indeed...
THE WATER OF LIFE
I have made a few forays into the ridges and valleys which stretch downward from the Continental Divide. While enmeshed with the ancient folds of those high ramparts, I seek a state of absorption and exhilaration loosed from my core. Those places act upon me. My challenges and plans are matched with a set of highly developed expectations, all keeping me tuned in. So all that marvelous experience is well anchored, it unfolds almost on its own.
Then, during the quiet mornings, I saw the water in its various forms.
Randi and I were feeling our way across the darkened trail and reached the edge of Loch Vale. The forest comprised small strands of blackened trunks which grew blacker still as the reddened waters of the Loch rose up from a still born night. The watery fire made from this affair was most brilliant in its emergence. The trees, their slender lives were accounted for each one by the generosity of deep red blackness served upon the water. I will always remember our encounter with such a visual masterpiece enabled by the gracious waters of the Loch Vale.
After her passing, I visited a little tarn that lives amidst the icy world in the cirque below Flattop's northern flanks. I came upon it early one morning and paused to say hello to this clarity huddled and vibrating in the wind. Not so much placed within the dimple of highland, but rather more upon it, clear as a crystal diadem this pool was made as if barely leashed to the earth. As the wind fluttered it so it appeared free to communicate itself to realms unconcerned of gravity. I thought it both receptive and communicative; a living prism carefully placed and charged as a lens within the Cosmos.
Yet another early morning, from beneath Hallett Peak I surmounted a brow of trees overlooking the silence of Emerald Lake. The waters were slightly teased by a steady breeze. The fringes of the lake were peopled by various parties who held gentle position at the water's edge; all were quiet and I felt they were in a reverent abidance to the mountain song. I checked my breathing for fluidity and economy. I sought to minimize my intrusion of foot fall and breath. In this fashion I carried on, passing through and by, struck by the sermon of the lake. I continued on from Emerald Lake to gain the thinner air of the Great Divide. Standing up into the brilliant winds and gold burned grasses of a continental peneplain I loosed some of Randi's ashes to the winds. They were so dry. All her water gone. The water cycles around and crystallizes, melts, flows, evaporates, rains, sustains, nourishes, and erodes. It is a malleable and transformative stuff, with tension and fluidity, reflectivity and conductivity. Some of it found its way out into a tear up on my cheek.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 08:18pm PT
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Randi Eyre, Cima Piccola
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 08:24pm PT
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This painting sits above our window, as we eat, lounge, live here on the mountainside...
Pastel of Alaskan coastline, Kachemak Bay, by Randi Eyre
"If ya got eyes, best you use 'em while the light yet flows"
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 21, 2007 - 08:57pm PT
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 21, 2007 - 09:03pm PT
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Mother teaching some mountain skills.
One of most beautiful cirque in the lower 48.
This is ready to blow...La Concepion, Ometempe
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 21, 2007 - 09:21pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 09:56pm PT
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Yippee!!!
Among many others, that view of Capitol N Face is dreamy.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 10:12pm PT
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T Gordon, man about town:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 10:18pm PT
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 21, 2007 - 10:28pm PT
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Tarbuster Whympers for more....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 10:56pm PT
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Mimi
climber
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Dec 21, 2007 - 10:59pm PT
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hahahahaha!
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 21, 2007 - 10:59pm PT
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What ya thinkin man?
How to get back down?
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Euroford
Trad climber
chicago
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Dec 21, 2007 - 10:59pm PT
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i never feel more alive than i do up in the mountains!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2007 - 11:05pm PT
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I'm thinkin':
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
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hossjulia
Trad climber
Eastside
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Dec 21, 2007 - 11:22pm PT
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following this path, first, a potty break
then, some wildflowers
oh, don't forget to look up!
A 10,000' flower garden, complete with leering dog.
My Shepard Max, begging for some lunch.
and the end/start of the road!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 22, 2007 - 12:42am PT
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Cool truck Hoss!!!
Only in the mountains...
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
www.happyninja.com
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Dec 22, 2007 - 12:52am PT
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great pics! esp. tarbousier's, and, excuse me, but i have a jacket just like that.
i love being in the mountains. i am living in the mixed conifer belt, so i'm on the lower part. (foothills basically) but i go up higher at least once a week, whether i need to or not, even if it's just for a little bit, to watch the sunset :) i am so lucky that the "mountain lifestyle" is my everyday life :)
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Dave Tapes
Trad climber
Silverado CA
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Dec 22, 2007 - 12:53am PT
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Mountain life.
Copper Canyon Mexico
BFE Nevada
The Alaska Range
The big one
Friends and Family
High Sierra beauty
Finger Lake
The joy of scrambling
DW
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
www.happyninja.com
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Dec 22, 2007 - 01:15am PT
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the best thing about the mountains... is the people living in them. so many genuine hearts :)
"in [cities] you can find your way out of crisis with a spin doctor and a few evasions . . . but the most artful sleight of hand won't get you down a steep ridge in a lightning storm; power games and paper trading won't help you cross the river and stay warm at night. only your most honest and best traits will help you when you go out and test yourself in the wilds: judgment, patience, strength . . . and character."
mark harvey
"these beautiful days must enrich all my life. they do not exist as mere picture-maps hung along the walls of memory, to brighten at times when touched by association or will, only to sink again like a landscape in the dark; but they saturate themselves into every part of the body and live always"
john muir
in the mountains...
"everything is flowing - going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty - making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams, carrying rocks . . . while the stars go streaming through space pulsed on forever like blood . . . in Nature's warm heart"
muir
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 22, 2007 - 01:30am PT
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Hella Holla!
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
www.happyninja.com
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Dec 22, 2007 - 01:41am PT
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"It seemed to me that the Sierra Nevada should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning above the icy peaks . . . and thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen."
muir
"real eyes realize real life"
always
in winter, we stay cozy and warm by the woodstoves we heat our homes with...
we love the trails outside our doors...
we love morning times at the cute cafes...
don't forget how we love those mountain kisses!
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 22, 2007 - 01:45am PT
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Classic lines from a classic movie:
You'll do well, Del; providing you don't get into trouble with all that hair.
Ain't this somethin'? I told my pap and mam I was going to be a mountain man; acted like they was gut-shot. "Make your life go here, son. Here's where the people is. Them mountains is for Indians and wild men." "Mother Gue", I says "the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world," and by God, I was right. Keep your nose in the wind and your eye along the skyline. I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 22, 2007 - 02:02am PT
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
www.happyninja.com
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Dec 22, 2007 - 02:40am PT
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i have made so many sacrifices to be where i am right now, sleeping in my truck some nights, sleeping on the floor all semester (but i took 18 units so i didn't really sleep much anyway) because i didn't have a bed until two weeks ago (altho i'm still sleeping on the floor every now and then because it's best for the back)... i've gone against the grain and done many things in an unorthodox way... and it's all worth it. i would trade nothing for being here now.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Dec 22, 2007 - 09:50am PT
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This’s another fine thread you’ve gotten us into, Roy.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 22, 2007 - 11:18am PT
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Fisher Towers, 1971:
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 22, 2007 - 12:02pm PT
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Mountains sometimes are more than a destination to play or climb...they are a lifeline to the people who lives near or in them. Scared Taos Mountain is such a place.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 22, 2007 - 01:52pm PT
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Nederland CO, Tarbuster command post:
Lisa, just up the hill a piece (I try to keep up):
A view out the window:
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 22, 2007 - 07:24pm PT
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Western Brook Pond in Newfoundland, 1999:
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Dec 22, 2007 - 08:03pm PT
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For myself, living the mountain lifestyle was about the people that I had met along the way...The camaraderies we shared through the fun times and not so... This photo that Tar had posted a while back personifies for me some of this. Some really great friends enjoying a time, and a laugh together. (left to right, Connie Tobia, Roy McClenahan, Russell Walling, myself, and Dimitri Barton)
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:38am PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:40am PT
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Crazy Mountains from the way back machine
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:42am PT
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Big Horn Mountains 1988?
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:45am PT
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Big Horn Mountains 1980's
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:58am PT
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Colorado
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 11:15am PT
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Wind River July 4, 1985
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cowpoke
climber
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Dec 23, 2007 - 02:43pm PT
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museum -- heck ya! lovin' the big horn shots!!! Heart rate accelerated, pupils dilated, and palms started sweatin'...awesome!
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 09:40pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 09:42pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 09:44pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 09:46pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:20pm PT
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Keep on celebrating here..
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:21pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 10:28pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 23, 2007 - 11:13pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2007 - 12:55am PT
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Sacherer & Crew,
by Glen Denny:
A young John Gill,
from Master of Rock:
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Fletcher
Trad climber
Varied locales along the time and space continuum
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Dec 24, 2007 - 04:32am PT
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Good shite here. Another best thread ever. What I love about this one is that folks are letting the images speak for themselves. What words can do these images justice? Sometimes the image says it all.
You folks get it! Truly a celebration. Thanks again Tarbuster!
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Dec 24, 2007 - 04:36am PT
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Yes, this is a joy!
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BadInfluence
Mountain climber
Dak side
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Dec 24, 2007 - 08:50am PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 24, 2007 - 09:47am PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2007 - 01:18pm PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 24, 2007 - 10:42pm PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 25, 2007 - 10:17am PT
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Museum, it took me a minute to recognize those two dramatic peaks -- the Crestones from Kit Carson?
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Dec 25, 2007 - 10:48am PT
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Chiloe, yes, that is correct about 10 years ago. From Unnamed 13,980'.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 11:10am PT
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What a treasure trove of images everyone!
...And in particular, just one more reason why "The Museum" is a fittting handle for one Tacoan.
We've been many of the same places Museum and you've highlighted a few which I recognize but have not yet visited.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 11:14am PT
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Merry Christmas mountain lovers,
From a snowy Nederland this morning,
We'll soon be out in it...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 01:43pm PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 25, 2007 - 04:01pm PT
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Tar -- that cover shot of DuMais' guidebook had nostalgic value for a useta-be Notchtop specialist.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 25, 2007 - 04:56pm PT
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Mini Bob (my son, Adam) and the real Bob in Ecuador on the top of Pinhincha.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 10:58pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 11:08pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 25, 2007 - 11:10pm PT
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Anastasia
Trad climber
California
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Dec 25, 2007 - 11:18pm PT
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Eddy, a Mammoth Mtn. Cat.
Beauty of hiking through the woods.
The Glorious El Capitan.
One of the thieves that regularly raid my backyard in Santa Paula. He is just a baby...
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 25, 2007 - 11:24pm PT
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the classic
A-Basin
spring - it's comin'!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2007 - 10:12am PT
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Is that label maybe a representation of the Chouinard/Carmen collaboration?
(looks like a lower volume forerunner of the Baltoro rucksack)
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2007 - 10:15am PT
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adam d
climber
CA
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Dec 26, 2007 - 10:51am PT
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on the North Face of Gothics, Adirondacks March '05
and on the descent of True North
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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Dec 26, 2007 - 01:13pm PT
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Nice to see some skis on this thread. Here's some bits and pieces of my "Mountain Lifestyle"
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 26, 2007 - 01:48pm PT
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Banjo pickin bump
(I hate having to go to work when there is snow a-piling up the hill.)
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Dec 26, 2007 - 02:16pm PT
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Hardly Visible
climber
Port Angeles
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Dec 26, 2007 - 04:15pm PT
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A few shots of wanderings in the Olympic mtns.
Mt. Pershing
Royal Basin
Royal Basin Billy
Mt. Ellinor nanny
Snow Dome on Mt. Olympus (dark streak in snow is 1980 St Helens ash)
Blue Glacier Mt. Olympus
Deception Basin Mt. Mystery
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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Dec 26, 2007 - 05:58pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2007 - 09:54pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 26, 2007 - 09:55pm PT
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 26, 2007 - 10:00pm PT
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RE:
" Is that label maybe a representation of the Chouinard/Carmen collaboration?
(looks like a lower volume forerunner of the Baltoro rucksack)"
hey Roy U R dead on man -
I never heard of that label?
but know of the collaberqtion - we all do...
how bout it!!!
Peter and Dave Carmen's
contribution to the canon of
killer mountain climbing gear:
Tar....
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 26, 2007 - 10:03pm PT
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another bump 4 the incredible pix upthread - omg
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Dec 26, 2007 - 11:48pm PT
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hossjulia
Trad climber
Eastside
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Dec 26, 2007 - 11:59pm PT
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Roy, thanks for the Walter story, I've heard much the same from Finn.
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Dec 27, 2007 - 12:43am PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 27, 2007 - 10:05am PT
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Right coast represent ....
On a snowless early-December day, a few years back, we had the summit of Chocorua to ourselves.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 27, 2007 - 11:26am PT
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hossjulia
Trad climber
Eastside
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Dec 27, 2007 - 03:57pm PT
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What a cutie!! Miss him.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 27, 2007 - 09:56pm PT
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marky
climber
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Dec 28, 2007 - 12:27am PT
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Hermann Buhl. What a badass.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 28, 2007 - 11:39am PT
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Another crisp sunrise this morning:
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JOEY.F
Social climber
sebastopol
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Dec 28, 2007 - 11:29pm PT
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I'm glad Tarbusters threads are going strong!
MMM,,,Breakfast!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 29, 2007 - 12:15am PT
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 29, 2007 - 08:01pm PT
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Get em smiling in the mountains young bump.
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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Dec 29, 2007 - 09:44pm PT
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This is a great thread! It's the kind of thread that has most of us checking Supertopo when we first turn on our computer.
I have been lucky to spend a fair amount of time in the mountains.
The following are some pictures from recent times to celebrate my good luck and to thank the people I've been fortunate to be with.
Here's to a Happy New Year with plenty of outdoor adventures for us all!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 30, 2007 - 01:30pm PT
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 30, 2007 - 02:24pm PT
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Looking for good stone in Glacier National Park bump.
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Ricardo Carlos
Trad climber
Off center, CO.
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Dec 30, 2007 - 07:28pm PT
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Roy
You sure seem to be getting that MT lifestyle today! I picked up a hitch-hiker at the bottom of the canyon this afternoon. Feeling sorry for him I gave dropped him off at Black Forest.
I still pick up hitchers in the mountains, mostly I do
Keep up the pictures so us Flat Landers at 5,000’ don’t forget.
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Dec 30, 2007 - 07:39pm PT
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A bumpadoodle do...
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 30, 2007 - 07:46pm PT
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Another Sunday afternoon scanning session, the mountain time machine set for 1968.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 31, 2007 - 11:47am PT
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So you were in High School about then Chiloe?
Looks like the N Face of the Matterhorn out yonder.
During my Junior High/High School Years:
When I wasn't in the mountains, I was thinking about them:
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 31, 2007 - 03:52pm PT
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During my Junior High/High School Years
So you really started young. The light didn't dawn on me until about 16.
Self-portrait at 19:
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Willoughby
Social climber
Truckee, CA
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Dec 31, 2007 - 08:46pm PT
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 31, 2007 - 10:20pm PT
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Read it and weep...
Los Altos, Calif.
December 3, 1960
David E. Pesonen
Wildland Research Center
Agricultural Experiment Station
243 Mulford Hall
University of California
Berkeley 4, Calif.
Dear Mr. Pesonen:
I believe that you are working on the wilderness portion of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission's report. If I may, I should like to urge some arguments for wilderness preservation that involve recreation, as it is ordinarily conceived, hardly at all. Hunting, fishing, hiking, mountain-climbing, camping, photography, and the enjoyment of natural scenery will all, surely, figure in your report. So will the wilderness as a genetic reserve, a scientific yardstick by which we may measure the world in its natural balance against the world in its man-made imbalance. What I want to speak for is not so much the wilderness uses, valuable as those are, but the wilderness idea, which is a resource in itself. Being an intangible and spiritual resource, it will seem mystical to the practical minded--but then anything that cannot be moved by a bulldozer is likely to seem mystical to them.
I want to speak for the wilderness idea as something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people. It has no more to do with recreation than churches have to do with recreation, or than the strenuousness and optimism and expansiveness of what the historians call the "American Dream" have to do with recreation. Nevertheless, since it is only in this recreation survey that the values of wilderness are being compiled, I hope you will permit me to insert this idea between the leaves, as it were, of the recreation report.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there--important, that is, simply as an idea.
We are a wild species, as Darwin pointed out. Nobody ever tamed or domesticated or scientifically bred us. But for at least three millennia we have been engaged in a cumulative and ambitious race to modify and gain control of our environment, and in the process we have come close to domesticating ourselves. Not many people are likely, any more, to look upon what we call "progress" as an unmixed blessing. Just as surely as it has brought us increased comfort and more material goods, it has brought us spiritual losses, and it threatens now to become the Frankenstein that will destroy us. One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, to remain, insofar as we can, good animals. Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples; for while we were demonstrating ourselves the most efficient and ruthless environment-busters in history, and slashing and burning and cutting our way through a wilderness continent, the wilderness was working on us. It remains in us as surely as Indian names remain on the land. If the abstract dream of human liberty and human dignity became, in America, something more than an abstract dream, mark it down at least partially to the fact that we were in subdued ways subdued by what we conquered.
The Connecticut Yankee, sending likely candidates from King Arthur's unjust kingdom to his Man Factory for rehabilitation, was over-optimistic, as he later admitted. These things cannot be forced, they have to grow. To make such a man, such a democrat, such a believer in human individual dignity, as Mark Twain himself, the frontier was necessary, Hannibal and the Mississippi and Virginia City, and reaching out from those the wilderness; the wilderness as opportunity and idea, the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men. For an American, insofar as he is new and different at all, is a civilized man who has renewed himself in the wild. The American experience has been the confrontation by old peoples and cultures of a world as new as if it had just risen from the sea. That gave us our hope and our excitement, and the hope and excitement can be passed on to newer Americans, Americans who never saw any phase of the frontier. But only so long as we keep the remainder of our wild as a reserve and a promise--a sort of wilderness bank.
As a novelist, I may perhaps be forgiven for taking literature as a reflection, indirect but profoundly true, of our national consciousness. And our literature, as perhaps you are aware, is sick, embittered, losing its mind, losing its faith. Our novelists are the declared enemies of their society. There has hardly been a serious or important novel in this century that did not repudiate in part or in whole American technological culture for its commercialism, its vulgarity, and the way in which it has dirtied a clean continent and a clean dream. I do not expect that the preservation of our remaining wilderness is going to cure this condition. But the mere example that we can as a nation apply some other criteria than commercial and exploitative considerations would be heartening to many Americans, novelists or otherwise. We need to demonstrate our acceptance of the natural world, including ourselves; we need the spiritual refreshment that being natural can produce. And one of the best places for us to get that is in the wilderness where the fun houses, the bulldozers, and the pavement of our civilization are shut out.
Sherwood Anderson, in a letter to Waldo Frank in the 1920s, said it better than I can. "Is it not likely that when the country was new and men were often alone in the fields and the forest they got a sense of bigness outside themselves that has now in some way been lost.... Mystery whispered in the grass, played in the branches of trees overhead, was caught up and blown across the American line in clouds of dust at evening on the prairies.... I am old enough to remember tales that strengthen my belief in a deep semi-religious influence that was formerly at work among our people. The flavor of it hangs over the best work of Mark Twain.... I can remember old fellows in my home town speaking feelingly of an evening spent on the big empty plains. It had taken the shrillness out of them. They had learned the trick of quiet...."
We could learn it too, even yet; even our children and grandchildren could learn it. But only if we save, for just such absolutely non-recreational, impractical, and mystical uses as this, all the wild that still remains to us.
It seems to me significant that the distinct downturn in our literature from hope to bitterness took place almost at the precise time when the frontier officially came to an end, in 1890, and when the American way of life had begun to turn strongly urban and industrial. The more urban it has become, and the more frantic with technological change, the sicker and more embittered our literature, and I believe our people, have become. For myself, I grew up on the empty plains of Saskatchewan and Montana and in the mountains of Utah, and I put a very high valuation on what those places gave me. And if I had not been able to periodically to renew myself in the mountains and deserts of western America I would be very nearly bughouse. Even when I can't get to the back country, the thought of the colored deserts of southern Utah, or the reassurance that there are still stretches of prairies where the world can be instantaneously perceived as disk and bowl, and where the little but intensely important human being is exposed to the five directions of the thirty-six winds, is a positive consolation. The idea alone can sustain me. But as the wilderness areas are progressively exploited or "improve", as the jeeps and bulldozers of uranium prospectors scar up the deserts and the roads are cut into the alpine timberlands, and as the remnants of the unspoiled and natural world are progressively eroded, every such loss is a little death in me. In us.
I am not moved by the argument that those wilderness areas which have already been exposed to grazing or mining are already deflowered, and so might as well be "harvested". For mining I cannot say much good except that its operations are generally short-lived. The extractable wealth is taken and the shafts, the tailings, and the ruins left, and in a dry country such as the American West the wounds men make in the earth do not quickly heal. Still, they are only wounds; they aren't absolutely mortal. Better a wounded wilderness than none at all. And as for grazing, if it is strictly controlled so that it does not destroy the ground cover, damage the ecology, or compete with the wildlife it is in itself nothing that need conflict with the wilderness feeling or the validity of the wilderness experience. I have known enough range cattle to recognize them as wild animals; and the people who herd them have, in the wilderness context, the dignity of rareness; they belong on the frontier, moreover, and have a look of rightness. The invasion they make on the virgin country is a sort of invasion that is as old as Neolithic man, and they can, in moderation, even emphasize a man's feeling of belonging to the natural world. Under surveillance, they can belong; under control, they need not deface or mar. I do not believe that in wilderness areas where grazing has never been permitted, it should be permitted; but I do not believe either that an otherwise untouched wilderness should be eliminated from the preservation plan because of limited existing uses such as grazing which are in consonance with the frontier condition and image.
Let me say something on the subject of the kinds of wilderness worth preserving. Most of those areas contemplated are in the national forests and in high mountain country. For all the usual recreational purposes, the alpine and the forest wildernesses are obviously the most important, both as genetic banks and as beauty spots. But for the spiritual renewal, the recognition of identity, the birth of awe, other kinds will serve every bit as well. Perhaps, because they are less friendly to life, more abstractly nonhuman, they will serve even better. On our Saskatchewan prairie, the nearest neighbor was four miles away, and at night we saw only two lights on all the dark rounding earth. The earth was full of animals--field mice, ground squirrels, weasels, ferrets, badgers, coyotes, burrowing owls, snakes. I knew them as my little brothers, as fellow creatures, and I have never been able to look upon animals in any other way since. The sky in that country came clear down to the ground on every side, and it was full of great weathers, and clouds, and winds, and hawks. I hope I learned something from looking a long way, from looking up, from being much alone. A prairie like that, one big enough to carry the eye clear to the sinking, rounding horizon, can be as lonely and grand and simple in its forms as the sea. It is as good a place as any for the wilderness experience to happen; the vanishing prairie is as worth preserving for the wilderness idea as the alpine forest.
So are great reaches of our western deserts, scarred somewhat by prospectors but otherwise open, beautiful, waiting, close to whatever God you want to see in them. Just as a sample, let me suggest the Robbers' Roost country in Wayne County, Utah, near the Capitol Reef National Monument. In that desert climate the dozer and jeep tracks will not soon melt back into the earth, but the country has a way of making the scars insignificant. It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs. Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value. Roads would be a desecration, crowds would ruin it. But those who haven't the strength or youth to go into it and live can simply sit and look. They can look two hundred miles, clear into Colorado: and looking down over the cliffs and canyons of the San Rafael Swell and the Robbers' Roost they can also look as deeply into themselves as anywhere I know. And if they can't even get to the places on the Aquarius Plateau where the present roads will carry them, they can simply contemplate the idea, take pleasure in the fact that such a timeless and uncontrolled part of earth is still there.
These are some of the things wilderness can do for us. That is the reason we need to put into effect, for its preservation, some other principle that the principles of exploitation or "usefulness" or even recreation. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.
Very sincerely yours,
Wallace Stegner
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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More scanner discoveries ... this one appears to be a phuzzy photo of the cover of a North Face catalog, perhaps their second or third one.
Photo taken in 1969. Anybody got the original of this sign of the times?
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tradcragrat
Trad climber
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Just to show the mountain's don't have to be so far from home.
My friend took this photo of Cannon and it's one of my favorites.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Jan 26, 2008 - 10:16pm PT
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Chiloe, I believe I Do know where there is an original of that one in an archive, in North Eastern Wyo; not @ Frank's. I will check it out. I suspect that that original location, almost depicted, on telegraph ave in Bezerkeley is where the term "Swami belt" was coined.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jan 26, 2008 - 10:43pm PT
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Jaybro, I don't remember what the story was with that North Face catalog photo, but no doubt it had one.
As I recall the very first NF catalog was (apart from the gear) all about a recent ascent of Half Dome's NWF,
hence their company's name and logo.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 10:49pm PT
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Hey,
It's Saturday Night!
If Ya'll arn't out, and I see yer not,
Post up some pictures darnit!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 11:01pm PT
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Oh Yah, Blin/Kat: The "Japsickle" Incident.
I Remembers' that...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 11:18pm PT
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Here's a lil' "2002" spirit for yah:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 11:23pm PT
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.. and no Doll, your hair looks exquisite and your are, were, as always, divine!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 11:46pm PT
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Ok, everybody, er...some of us,
Prefer a little Shipley-Drive FA:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 26, 2008 - 11:56pm PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jan 27, 2008 - 01:28pm PT
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Waiting out the heat of the day.
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scuffy b
climber
Stump with a backrest
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Jan 27, 2008 - 06:13pm PT
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eKat, is that a Dachstein?
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
one summer dream
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Jan 27, 2008 - 08:27pm PT
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blinny, i need to tell you that i really can't handle how bitchen' that photo is.
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Standing Strong
Trad climber
one summer dream
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Jan 27, 2008 - 08:37pm PT
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and the white navy pants! i love it.
i really wish i'd been there during that era. i feel like i was born in the wrong time. i would have fit in so much better into that other crowd. you guys were so cool.
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Risk
Mountain climber
Minkler, CA
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Jan 27, 2008 - 09:59pm PT
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Great Thread Roy, Thanks much. I'll remember to post more here when I get a slide scanner.
At home with Russ Tanaka, Bug Camp
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cowpoke
climber
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Jan 28, 2008 - 11:04am PT
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one of my favorite mountain towns:
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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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(Grossman photo)
(Bachar photo)
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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My Dad, far left, 1920’s
Here he is with his new Kelty about 1960, Onion Valley. Look at those cars!
High Sierra Music Festival, July 4th weekend, Bear Valley 1997
Camping
Dancing Mid-afternoon
Greg Brown
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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3-1-08
Snow shoeing in the Big Horn Mountains- fantastic.
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sween345
climber
back east
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Finally went up to the tower at Skytop. It was my daughter's first time x-c'ing.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Nice!
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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3-1-08
Nice open western forest for Chiloe..
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roslyn
Trad climber
washington
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just catching up on this wonderful thread. Thanks for the Norman Blake pics. I was just talking to my teenage daughter about Norman Blake. She's learning guitar and i had to play some of his tunes on the old stereo. he's definitely my favorite flatpicker. my all time favorite album, yes album, is Nashville blues.
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cowpoke
climber
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early summer snow at Vedauwoo a few years back:
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Nice open western forest for Chiloe..
I love all the photo threads. Right now I'm in a nice big midwestern college town
with no forests of any kind in sight. This time tomorrow, perhaps, I'll be back in
my nice un-open, bushwhacking-if-you-step-off-the-trail eastern forest, taking my dog for
a walk.
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Snow shoeing 3-8-2008. Very nice. Still 30-48".
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Mar 15, 2008 - 09:29pm PT
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Snow shoeing again 3-15-08. Still 1-3' of snow. These are the last snow shoeing pics this year. I promise.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Mar 17, 2008 - 01:00pm PT
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I guess my love for the mountains started with Alpine skiing. I started out between my dad's legs at 3 y/o and got in about 20 straight seasons. Then marriage and a relocate to AK resulted in a hiatus for a few years. But, we figured the kids would enjoy the same experience.
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jbar
Mountain climber
Inside my head
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Some pics I took for a friends website. I never learned how to sell anything so I just did it for a free ride.
I have a good story about how I got stuck on the mtn for days in a storm after he left me there. "You sure you're gonna be o.k.?"
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2008 - 12:39am PT
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sweet little green machine too.
let's here the story?
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jbar
Mountain climber
Inside my head
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Yeah, LOVE that copter. The green is awesome. He had a smaller MD a year before but ended up autorotating it down to the glacier. It was a loss after it was recovered but nobody was hurt.
The day after I was dropped off was beautiful. Perfectly clear morning at 2 a.m. I made the summit of the mountain but I was terribly slow. It was supposed to be summer but it was an odd year and we had full winter conditions. You can tell just by looking at the size of the hanging glaciers. Postholing all the way down late in the afternoon while hogback clouds were blowing in from the NW. It was a white out before we hit the glacier. Snowing and blowing gusts up to 60kph. We worked our butts off trying to get around the glacier. My legs were cramping up from breaking trail with a heavy pack and constantly plunging up to my waist and working my way back out. My partner took over lead and immediately punched through a snow bridge forcing us to retreat and take a more conservative route. Dark came and the shelter was close yet still so far away. We considered digging in but I could see the shelter through breaks in the clouds. I thought I could see a light from time to time but we were the only ones out there when we left. After a long push and lots of determination I was relieved to finally climb up the metal stairs and into safety. Turns out a couple of Irish climbers had come up early in the morning and were watching our struggle all afternoon. They had hot tea brewed for us when we got in. I was too embarassed to admit I was wasted so I drank the tea and tried to be civil. The weather worsened, the shelter moved back and forth with the 120kph gusts. We were all stuck inside for 3 days. We had 1 day of food left plus snacks and the Irish guys had nothing. They were poor and had planned to bag the mtn and head back the next day. I scrounged around through some junk that had been left. I relished the opportunity to show off my poor man's culinary skills. Ther was a huge hunk of perpetually frozen butter in a box along with a zoplock of some floury stuff, an onion, a can of tuna and an apple. Turns out my guess that the flour stuff was pancake batter was correct. I made cakes and sauted the sliced apple in butter before adding my two packs of GU vanilla gel to make a sauce. It was awesome. The can of tuna and onion mixed with a pack of lipton teriyaki noodles to make a gut wrenching fuel that would take us over the col and back home.
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City, SD
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Nov 22, 2008 - 12:23am PT
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Bump...
Baldy at Mt Rushmore
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Nov 22, 2008 - 06:02pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 22, 2008 - 07:59pm PT
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 24, 2008 - 03:49pm PT
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So many great photos on this thread, and the last one not least.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 24, 2008 - 03:52pm PT
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Seems appropriate to revive it on Christmas Eve.
Celebrating a father-daughter ski outing yesterday:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2008 - 04:52pm PT
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A couple days ago in Colorado's Indian Peaks:
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perswig
climber
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Dec 24, 2008 - 07:19pm PT
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Wearing wool knickers, Chiloe? (and is your power back on?)
Great to have snow for Christmas.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 24, 2008 - 07:26pm PT
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Hah, not wool or knickers, some technofabric pants w/gaiters (& knee-deep snow).
We got power, I'm happy to say, although it's been freezing drizzle all day here today.
Good thing we caught the perfect conditions yesterday.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Dec 24, 2008 - 07:29pm PT
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Roy, ice skating out across that flawless frozen lake looks about like the greatest thing I've ever seen.
Merry Christmas!
JL
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2008 - 07:41pm PT
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Yes John, that is pretty cool by my reckonin' too.
Credit goes to John Dittli.
Merry Christmas to you!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2008 - 09:40pm PT
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A little modest mountain town Christmas adoooo...
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Dec 24, 2008 - 10:14pm PT
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This is so awesome. Thanks everyone!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 24, 2008 - 10:35pm PT
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very, very nice skip!
'love the flowers!!!!!!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Dec 25, 2008 - 12:50am PT
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Wow Skip. Beautiful.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Dec 25, 2008 - 12:58am PT
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a pad for all seasons. You are a fortunate person, Skipt.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 28, 2008 - 02:15am PT
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Some Christmas lights on the outskirts of Boulder Colorado:
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 28, 2008 - 08:15am PT
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Living in Nederland, the mountain lifestyle is everywhere you look!
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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May 29, 2009 - 01:04am PT
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View off the front porch
some Olympic mountain work scenes
some yard work
Olympic mountain play
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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May 29, 2009 - 10:39pm PT
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Let's see if we can apply a little more thread rejuvinator;
Mt. Olympus
Some North Cascade stuff
Coast Mountains
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
North of the Owyhees
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May 29, 2009 - 10:42pm PT
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Meow!
Or somethin'...
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goatboy smellz
climber
groove tube hell
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May 29, 2009 - 10:50pm PT
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Good stuff Kevin, keep it coming.
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
way, WAY out there....(OMG)
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Jul 10, 2009 - 10:48pm PT
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Dude...the campfire.
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goatboy smellz
climber
लघिमा, co
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Jul 10, 2009 - 10:53pm PT
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dude vedauwoo, come on down, we have a winner!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 10, 2009 - 11:06pm PT
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Vedauwoo in August, almost, no doubt, warmer than Indian Creek, That thanksgiving! pretty much, fer shur! Though we will have to work at it to have it rock as hard!!!......
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goatboy smellz
climber
लघिमा, co
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Jul 10, 2009 - 11:19pm PT
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That fire was before the tempest hit on the second weekend, rain or shine there's no excuses not to be there this time around.
Shadows of Brutus taught me that lesson to never put things off till next year.
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
way, WAY out there....(OMG)
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Jul 10, 2009 - 11:21pm PT
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I'm gonna do my best to be there, ya'll.
I like the Sherman.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 11, 2009 - 12:37am PT
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Now here's a thread I'm glad to see come back.
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Russ Walling
Gym climber
Poofter's Froth, Wyoming
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Jul 11, 2009 - 12:51am PT
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Me in the death zone (anything above 3000ft) last week
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 11, 2009 - 12:55am PT
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Looking rather, er, "distinguished" nowadays you are...
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Russ Walling
Gym climber
Poofter's Froth, Wyoming
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Jul 11, 2009 - 12:59am PT
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I'm channeling Rick Ridgeway and Tom Platz
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dfrost7
Social climber
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Jul 11, 2009 - 01:17am PT
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So, when you look under the door in the restroom, this might be what's above the shins, eh?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 11, 2009 - 01:27am PT
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Mountains of Muss-cle™
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City
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Dec 11, 2009 - 09:26pm PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2009 - 10:42pm PT
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View from the porch this fall:
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Dec 12, 2009 - 12:29am PT
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City
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Jan 30, 2010 - 10:03pm PT
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Looming crappy weather...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2010 - 11:49pm PT
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"Larkspur"
I love that your home has a name Cragman!
Tandems are super fun.
The June Lake Loop is a really nice ride.
I completely missed those additions by Dick Erb: WOW!!!
(And special thanks to museum for bumping this up here and there when we seem to need it most...)
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2010 - 11:55pm PT
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Lisa back on the skis after a full year of marathon training:
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jan 31, 2010 - 12:18am PT
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SUPER STUFF EVERYBODY, WOW!
Yes, I to missed those editions by Dick Erb...awesome.
That's a great shot by Museum to, sets a mood, takes you back to similar situations. Something special about being in a tent with a good rain-fly in the mtns...money/time well spent.
Awesome Cragman, your side of the hill is where it's at!
This thread should never die, let's keep it up front.
You guy's could pull out individual photo's that you have already posted and give a little history, story, how long ago it was etc.
Thanks Again!
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Footloose
Trad climber
Lake Tahoe
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Jan 31, 2010 - 12:45am PT
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A great thread, thanks for pulling it up!
Tarbuster wrote:
Mountains!!!
Only thing better,
Is Women AND Mountains:
Hey Tarbuster, I'm into language AND I'm into girls, too, so I'm curious...
(1) How'd you come up with your avatar. I like it! I've been wondering
a long time now: Any meaning to it? (I tried to google it, alas, not much there.)
Even so I'd bet there's many a story to it. But what meaning?
(2) Lastly, who's the sweetpea in your post #47, the one below the ice climber? Who's she belong to? :)
Is she yours?
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Jan 31, 2010 - 02:31am PT
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Mongo like mountain flowers!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2010 - 12:07pm PT
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Footloose:
1) My avatar/handle Tarbuster:
I just made it up and have no idea what it means.
I too had to google it to try to understand; and only came up with pages about a product that cuts tar & sludge.
Kind of has a cowboy twang to it...
2) Post Number 47:
That woman is Sue Wint, photo credit goes to mutual friend Charlie Fowler.
It gets the all-time highest number of hits out of my photobucket, according to their stats.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Jan 31, 2010 - 12:43pm PT
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a sea kayak on a fresh water lake?
c'mon man, muscle up,
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Jan 31, 2010 - 01:00pm PT
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Horse Creek without any horses
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the museum
Trad climber
Rapid City
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Jan 31, 2010 - 07:13pm PT
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Sorry if posted previously..
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Hoh man1
I'm going to Cragman's house and brewing up some hot chocolate, With marshmallows, who's in?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Jaybro......stay away from that employee infection on rosneaus shin....rotting johnny
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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beatiful place and views cragman.
i have lived in some cool places but i am now in a desert, damn i miss looking up at the mountains and all the inspiration i received from them.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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look at that dihedral. wow
i named my oldest daughter after this peak.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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and my youngest daughter will always go by makalu.
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xtrmecat
Big Wall climber
Kalispell, Montanagonia
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Friday I had to get out and stretch the legs. Went up on a ridge to watch the sunrise, and then mosey up a little higher to look for a good lunch spot. Found one.
This was the nondramatic sunrise. Chilly too.
The summit ridge was too icy to take my neighbor, Fred safely to the summit, so we just put up with the sunshine off of the snow, and found a little hole to take on lunch.
The views get to looking all the same in winter.
Enjoy, we did.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 23, 2011 - 10:08pm PT
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bump for the thought of mountains in the spring!
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Scole
Trad climber
San Diego
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hashbro
Trad climber
Mental Physics........
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Jul 12, 2011 - 03:26pm PT
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super inspirational thread...
thanks Roy and everyone else who is posting; keep it up!
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Brian
climber
California
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Jul 12, 2011 - 05:53pm PT
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Bump for one of the best threads on this site. I'll add some photos later...
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Gilroy
Social climber
Boulderado
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Jul 15, 2011 - 11:33pm PT
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TMJesse: Cool pic! Thas' gonna be me!!!
I hope,
Gilroy
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frog-e
Trad climber
Imperial Beach California
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Jul 15, 2011 - 11:49pm PT
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cool stuff homes...
'
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frog-e
Trad climber
Imperial Beach California
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Jul 16, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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celebrate...
for we are all part of the same dream
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frog-e
Trad climber
Imperial Beach California
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Jul 16, 2011 - 12:17am PT
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haha!
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frog-e
Trad climber
Imperial Beach California
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Jul 16, 2011 - 12:44am PT
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have fun out there, everyone...
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland
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Jul 17, 2011 - 06:41pm PT
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right back attcha frogie!
Brutus and Em, Chief photo
Black Mamba & friend
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland
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Sep 28, 2011 - 09:35pm PT
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Chipeta Park
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pocoloco1
Social climber
The Chihuahua Desert
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Sep 28, 2011 - 09:47pm PT
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goatboy is living wright
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 28, 2011 - 10:00pm PT
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Sep 29, 2011 - 12:53pm PT
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For me the best thread ever on ST, thanks everyone!
Celebration year after year, love the mountain life.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Sep 29, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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Shameless bump for added photos, again great thread everyone! Thanks!
Berg Heil!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(by all means post up)
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 29, 2011 - 05:18pm PT
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chasin the swirl around candi cane,
i drilled myself into firm dirt.
life hones the spirit
and when my resolve cracks
i shove a hand jam in and make the most of it.
the land of norway spun my dna helix
like the cane of candy. i cannot stand still
as i unwind 1 million or so years of genetic memory.
my little mountainettes:
she takes the wheel when im seeing double,
pays my tickets, when i speed.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Sep 29, 2011 - 06:56pm PT
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Beautiful family Chuck, we are lucky men living where we do and having what we have.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Sep 29, 2011 - 07:03pm PT
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I think my dad taking us to the Sierras most weekends had some sort of influence on my lifestyle.
Some older pics
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Sep 29, 2011 - 07:10pm PT
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Some newer pics
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 29, 2011 - 07:22pm PT
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hey charlie wanna go celebrate the mountains tomorrow?
lets scrap work and split to the leap,
the center wall is open now.
give a shout.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Sep 29, 2011 - 10:49pm PT
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CV, I'll be up over the weekend likely both days, work calls tomorrow or should I say the search for work.....send me a PM.
Tolman, great days to remember....fine looking crew, keep it going!
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cowpoke
climber
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Sep 30, 2011 - 04:10pm PT
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For the last six years, we've lived a solid 2 hour drive from the mountains. We just got a place that backs up against conservation land, however. A whopping 312 ft in elevation (highest point in the county...for reals), has us at least feeling like we're living the mountain lifestyle, once again.
On Tessa's morning hikes to school, we stop to investigate mushrooms, consider why poison ivy only grows on one side of the trail, and wonder if anyone else boulders on our secret little 20' granite "domes."
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Sep 30, 2011 - 04:34pm PT
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I passed it on to my daughter, she does a little rock climbing but mostly camping, hiking and she shreds on tele skis!
Nice views outside of Leadville
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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These folks know how to travel...
And their friends don't even spit!
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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Oct 15, 2012 - 09:56am PT
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View from the back deck.
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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Oct 15, 2012 - 10:10am PT
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Brainard Lake w/ Nurse Ratched
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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Oct 15, 2012 - 05:32pm PT
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Clean up on aisle 5.
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cowpoke
climber
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Jan 23, 2013 - 05:42pm PT
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Sunrise from the Mountains
Anna Katherine Green
Hung thick with jets of burning gold, the sky
Crowns with its glorious dome the sleeping earth,
Illuminating hill and vale. O'erhead,
The nebulous splendor of the milky way
Stretches afar; while, crowding up the heavens,
The planets worship 'fore the thrones of God,
Casting their crowns of gold beneath His feet.
It is a scene refulgent! and the very stars
Tremble above, as though the voice divine
Reverberated through the dread expanse.
But soft! a change!
A timid creeping up of gray in east--
A loss of stars on the horizon's verge--
Gray fades to pearl and spreads up zenithward,
The while a wind runs low from hill to hill,
As if to stir the birds awake, rouse up
The nodding trees, and draw off silence like
A garment from the drowsy earth. The heavens
Are full of points of light that go and come
And go, and leave a tender ashy sky.
The pearl has pushed its way to north and south,
Save where a line spun 'tween two peaks at east,
Gleams like a cobweb silvered by the sun.
It grows--a gilded cable binding hill
To hill! it widens to a dazzling belt
Half circling earth, then stretches up on high--
A golden cloth laid down 'fore kingly feet.
Thus spreads the light upon the heavens above,
While earth hails each advancing step, and lifts
Clear into view her rich empurpled hills,
To keep at even beauty with the sky.
The neutral tints are deeply saffroned now;
In streaks, auroral beams of colored light
Shoot up and play about the long straight clouds
And flood the earth in seas of crimson. Ah,
A thrill of light in serpentine, quick waves,
A stooping of the eager clouds, and lo,
Majestic, lordly, blinding bright, the sun
Spans the horizon with its rim of fire!
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jan 23, 2013 - 05:52pm PT
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mhay
climber
Reno, NV
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Jan 23, 2013 - 06:12pm PT
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cowpoke
climber
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Feb 15, 2013 - 05:38pm PT
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cowpoke
climber
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one of my fave for the BBST theme
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jun 13, 2013 - 04:04pm PT
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Well worth another bump for more enjoyment at work!
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jun 13, 2013 - 05:01pm PT
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My Dad, who recently turned 88, has enjoyed the mountains all his life. We did a few hikes together last week.
The road to Brainard Lake was still closed, so we turned that into one hike.
He's a geologist, and everywhere we go he sees new mysteries. Along the Morrison Slide trail:
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jun 14, 2013 - 12:51am PT
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Chiloe, great to enjoy some mountain time with the gentlemen I would assume introduced you to it all. Thanks for sharing, I can only thank those who showed us their appreciation and passion.....for me it was my dad as well.
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beefcake of wide
climber
Nederland/GulfBreeze
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Jun 14, 2013 - 06:35pm PT
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Kat heading up the largest in Great Sand Dunes.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Bump into Summer
First swim of the year in a lake yesterday
Celebrate
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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You would not believe how bad it this year--fells like the Wind Rivers!
Well- this is about all I can handle- time to go back underwater. Good thing I have a snorkel.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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bump
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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have you ever traveled with a fool?
one who just doesn't regard the thunder?
one who keeps her forehead clenched
behind a stream of angry words,
despite the fact that the mountains are speaking?
i have.
and i regard that person as a vexation.
not a good mountain mate,
them whom travel with
their senses shut.
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goatboy smellz
climber
लघिमा
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Aug 27, 2014 - 04:45pm PT
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The chickens have better living conditions than the ski bums in Jackson .
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KabalaArch
Trad climber
Starlite, California
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Aug 27, 2014 - 06:56pm PT
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cintune
climber
Colorado School of Mimes
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Mar 31, 2016 - 11:27am PT
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Bump for the mountain lifestyle. Visiting with the kids last week in Upper Dream Canyon.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Mar 31, 2016 - 01:45pm PT
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mar 31, 2016 - 03:36pm PT
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Pleasant places and smiling faces.We be stylin'.
Best thread on the internet, Roy Toy!
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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Mar 31, 2016 - 03:46pm PT
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^^^ That house hasn't changed a bit. Cool shot.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 2, 2016 - 12:28pm PT
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A room with a view!
Rocky Mountain National Park, and Longs Peak from Trail Ridge road.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Livin' the life. Goodonya Roy.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 2, 2016 - 01:08pm PT
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Rocky Mountain National Park, Trail Ridge road, looking into the Never Summer range:
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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Great shot on a great road.Thanks Tarbuster.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 2, 2016 - 07:21pm PT
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West side of Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Lake:
East Inlet trail:
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Now that looks like real living!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Desert bighorns long cnyn Utah 11/16
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 3, 2016 - 08:22am PT
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A sleek blue whale makes its way into the Rocky Mountains, Nederland, Colorado:
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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elegance with 389 cubes and 4 bolt mains...
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Sweet '66.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Reilly... You should get out more often...
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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We took a break from the Sierra last summer.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 3, 2016 - 03:39pm PT
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Ha ha! T Trad:
Good call on that Eiger Sanction stock photo stuff.
I used to own some of those in 8 x 11, which I acquired in Hollywood just a year or two after the flick came out.
Now I have access to them again. You the man.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Gotta love the friendly locals...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 3, 2016 - 05:38pm PT
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Loving all this stuff from the European hinterlands!
Keep them coming, folks.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Deux chamoises...
Une Chamonoise...
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Roy, it's a veritable Bond museum up there. My kid's didn't understand....
I recall the scene of events as the tram arrived at the undercarriage of the tram station, but it's been modernized and lacks the huge cable wheels in the movie.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 3, 2016 - 06:59pm PT
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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My bro, well known at Copper Mt, with his homie World Cup Champeen Aksel Lund Svindal!
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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lift towers ... they don't lift themselves
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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The museum...Where's the last pic from...Looks familiar...Reilly....can your bro score me a case of red klister from those norskis..?
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the museum
Trad climber
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Ski pic with DK and LS is at the Black Mountain Nordic Club ski hut near Burgess Junction Wyoming. Super bowl Sunday 2016
the museum
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2016 - 07:09am PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2016 - 07:11am PT
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2016 - 07:12am PT
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Cima Piccola, Dolomiti:
Cocktail napkin:
Post climb debrief:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2016 - 07:35am PT
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Tarring it up on il Spigolo Giallo!
Kinderspielplatz, with a view...
"Uehli, I got you!"
Pretty sure there was a troll in there...
Sometimes the locals can be a little pushy...
But when all else fails the Illuminati are there for us...
And you thought we have a bolting problem?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Super pictures...Disappointed to see Tarbuster in the dolomites without the cowboy hat...That's bullsh#t....Did customs confiscate it...?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2016 - 12:14pm PT
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I know, right?
WTF ... total bullsh#t.
Steamboat Lake, Colorado:
Gotta love ski areas in the summer. Very green and relatively quiet.
Mt Werner, Steamboat:
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Here begins the salad bowl for my cow...not the toilet for your dog ;-)
Photo courtesy Bill McConachie
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 5, 2016 - 02:55pm PT
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hamie
Social climber
Thekoots
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Lotsa "green" ski runs at Mt. Werner, Steamboat. :)
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Edge
Trad climber
Betwixt and Between Nederland & Boulder, CO
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Almost home, 8100'.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 07:25pm PT
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Used to have an old BMW 2002, and it suffered decrepitude of many of the peripherals. It was challenged in mountain driving situations, but we pressed on!
Example: as the heater core began to die, the window defroster was completely inadequate. Drove through some ice rain in Left Hand Canyon, in the mountains above Boulder, with the windshield turning into an ice rink. Hard times. After that, I screwed an old chalk bag into the console and put a small propane torch in it. On the tip of the torch, I put a flame spreader, and focused it on the interior of the windshield. Problem solved!
Then the window washer spritzer motor died. Spent one evening on the Peak to Peak highway, coming back from Beaver Creek, trekking through 6 inches of deep powder. (Always ran good winter tires, so forward motion wasn't the issue). Had a spray bottle in a gloved hand at the ready, and periodically spritzed the window with that workaround to get us home. No way we wanted to stop and pull off the road in snow that deep!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 08:02pm PT
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A little hardened infrastructure never hurt anybody!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 08:04pm PT
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And then there's the more serious variety ...
Cinque Torri, Cortina D’Ampezzo:
Those euros really know how to party with the lodging opportunities!
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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No one runs a Thread like Tarbuster. Thanks everyone for the great pics and info. Happy Holidays enjoying the mountains, snow, ice and each other. Cheers, L.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 7, 2016 - 09:02pm PT
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One of my all-time favorite places to hang out, tip a cocktail, and breathe in the view.
Panorama Point, Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Colorado.
One of the most underutilized gems of the state:
Picture from Google images.
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