Got gear

I helped drive the economy today at Beyond's 50% off sale, buying things I didn't really need... 45$ for a windstopper fleece jacket, $50 for some light softshell pants, and 80$ for a softshell jacket (which is 50% the heavyweight WB400 Schoeller and 50% the light stuff - interesting). This was the first clearance sale I've ever been to where there was actually a big selection of stuff that fit (take note Marmot, REI, etc...).

So I felt like I'd tell everyone - it's what consumerism's all about. (oh btw, the pic was taken with my D70, which I got back a few days ago, fixed free of charge - guess I'm still stuck with 6 megapixels for a while)

Back in August...

The aforementioned snow in New York state, from a few posts back:



My brother is a mechanical engineer, not a computer engineer, so it takes a month for him to send pictures over email...

Me and my nephews "looking cool", after having come out of some caves.


The red eft form of the eastern newt:


(eft is a good Scrabble word).

Lords of Lame

What do you do when your partner can't leave town until 2pm? Go anyway and hope things go smoothly...

Checking the time shortly before encountering a non-trival section on the traverse and bailing...



As I found out later by looking at a picture, turns out we were only a short distance from the beginning of the nice part of the climb. So we should have gone for it... oh well.

The ultimate lameness... top-roping 5.0 slab after a quick hike to the summit.



But at least we got to watch the sun set over glittering Puget Sound, the Olympics and Vancouver island. And we did summit, in defiance of a Mountaineers party member (with requisite 10ft ice axe) we met on the way up - who when told we were trying to beat the sun to the summit - disapprovingly said the mountain would win.

It was pitch black by the time we made it back to the lake where Ed had stashed two double-size australian beers.



They held much more buzz than anticipated, and so we were forced to spend another hour there watching the stars, the milky way, and meteors. Not a bad way to spend an evening.