Osprey says this pack and its 28-liter and 52-liter counterparts will replace their Exposure Series when it comes out for fall, and it was designed using feedback from "mountain guides, professional alpinists, and weekend craggers," which makes sense, because I couldn't find much wrong with it over a couple weekends. And I'm not just saying that because they sent me one to test out and see if I liked it. I like it.
Wow, seems like ages since I've had time to blog. You guys even know I was gone? Of course you did. You've had to suffer through eBomb's juvenile banter. And for that, I am sorry. So lets move it up a notch to the high school level and chat a bit about running companies into the ground. Suffice it to say, I know one or two things on the subject. And it seems NAU management and investors do as well.
Some day soon, in business schools around the country, young little capitalists will be eagerly studying the HBS Case Study for NAU. It will outline how some really "passionate" people with no business sense, but ample self regard because they worked at NIKE and Patagonia, persuaded some wealthy schmucks with equally questionable business acumen to pony up $20M to fund a beautiful exercise in futility. Because not only did these trendsetters have a dream to create a socially responsible business that gave back to the community and sourced product that didn't take from the community, but they also wanted to start not 1, but 3 businesses: a clothing company, a retail brand, AND an online store. And, gee, if it hadn't been for the "bad economy" they'd have been just fine. I tell you what, there's something to be said about going quietly, because once you start explaining yourself, it just gets embarrassing for everyone involved.
Now, granted, I know nothing about the details. I'll wait for the case study to come out. But on the surface, it's a perfect example of where lack of focus will get you. Bankrupt. And in my mind, it's yet another example of Milton Friedman's famous axiom; "the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." Because if you're an investor reading the farewell on the front page of NAU and see stuff like, "in the current highly risk averse capital market, we simply could not raise the money to move forward" and then a few lines later you see, "hey we gave away $223,000" to the community, you gotta just bang your fist into your head and say, "I'm dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Stupid. Stupid." Whether it was straight from the bottom line or some kind of reverse tax on products or even just donations from customers doesn't matter. Point is, you were a start-up, and instead of focusing on the business, which in ANY environment is a tough task, you were focusing on stupid shit.
Again, who knows what the details are, but I doubt there will be many companies rushing to mimic the business model. Nor investors. But whoever buys up the assets, if they're smart, could have a solid chance (given the demand for anything remotely "green") of creating a real company, that's good to the environment, good to their employees, and good to the investors. If they remember Uncle Milt's words, that is. Shed a business or two and focus on making money, not saving the world. The latter you can do all you want when you become as big as Patagonia..
The Year of The Bike continues to move ahead in full force. Everyone's doing it. Even bimbos. Bush. Now Pamela Anderson. Just goes to show, biking is for EVERYONE. No intelligence needed. Egalitarian, it is.
BEIJING - An Olympic flame reached the top of the world Thursday.
Live television footage showed a Chinese mountaineering team holding up a specially designed torch — separate from the main Olympic flame — along with Chinese and Olympic flags on the peak of Mount Everest.
"One World, One Dream," one of the climbers said on the approach to the peak, repeating the slogan for the Olympics. "We have lit the torch on top of the world," another climber said.
When he unveiled the idea for Mellow Johnny's, Lance said he hoped Austin could someday be like Portland, the awesomest place to be a bike commuter in America, and wants his shop to promote bike commuting. The shop will have showers and locker rooms, and once gas hits $6 a gallon, won't have to work too hard to promote bikes as a mode of transportation.
The shop opens at 7 am, and Grand Opening day will feature special guests, book signings, giveaways, and more. Come and discover a shop for people who ride bikes, want to ride bikes, or just think about bikes. You should really see this place.
Don't quote me, but I'm betting Lance Armstrong might be one of the "special guests."
Want to help research Acute Mountain Sickness? The Altitude Research Center at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine is looking for some guinea pigs. If you're 18 to 40 years old and have no current medical problems, you could have a new gig. Test subjects will be compensated. The only catch? You can't go above 7,500 feet for two months.
Truly amazing what is happening on Everest. The south side is basically closed, there are soliders in base, not just Nepalese, but
Chi-knees. A soldier is at camp 2, with a gun. I cannot believe this is happening for the torch on Everest sham. Truly imperial behaviour by China, as always. Boycott now. Read more here via K2climb.net.
It is extortion to pay for your own persecutors," leader Guy Cutter told Stuff (NZ). Radio restrictions were enforced between BC and high camps. “The Army alleges security reasons we can’t really understand; what we do know for sure is that our Sherpas are far from safe, risking their lives without contact with BC,” said Gnaro.
I found out about this web site last summer when I was planning my first trip to Alaska, but I didn't want to blog about it until I was sure it was going to be around for a while. Now that their first show is up for this year, I'm pretty sure it's a go. Scott Slone, who hosts all the short Alaska HDTV videos, has put together a bunch of Hike Of The Week videos -- all pretty much dayhikes within a couple hours of major Alaska towns, and they're well put together. A good way to kill a couple hours, whether or not you're planning a visit this summer. Here's a link to the latest Hike of the Week, Archangel Valley.
Found this slide show on Wired: Survival Gear That's Just Crazy Enough to Work. Feel free to disagree with me, but I think there's only two or three things I'd put on the list of "Stuff I'd Ever Use." The first item on the list is the Hanging Cocoon that Rocky was taking jabs at seven months ago. I like the Grundig Eton Survival Radio, the Life Saver Bottle and the personal locator beacon (which isn't exactly a new idea), but a lot of this stuff is destined for the Armageddon Edition of that SkyMall catalog you find in the backs of airline seats. Especially the Urban Skiff.
Well, it was Earth month, Earth week, hug a tree day, but this past weekend was the GoGreen Expo in NYC. I passed by it and apart from a lot of volunteer types signing up people for various eco-petitions, it seemed to be a fizzle. It was in Midtown at the Hilton, so there was a lot of passerby traffic - but mainly tourists as evidenced by their numerous A&F, Victoria's Secret, Gap, and BR bags. Dood, there's a line to get into the A&F on 5th, focking ridiculous. Sigh* The weak dollar, what can you do? Kinda sad, flying out of JFK on Sunday, all these Europeans with those expandable chi-knees type shipping/garments bags taking back the booty. By the way, for a stellar ETF, EWP has been an outstanding pick for me. While this article has it being risky, and I see it as currently overvalued by 25%, wtf, it's only money. Once the Macedonia of European economies, Spain is amazingly the leading economy and crushing perennials France and Germany. What has happened? Mainly La Marcha has stopped being indicative of Spanish culture. Unfortunately the suburbanization of Madrid, Sevilla, Barcelona, and Valencia has led to major industrial parks outside of the usual 'business' city centers. In short, culture has completely changed from old school city focused to 'get in your car and drive to the movies in a Korean minivan' type crap. Still, Spanish chix are amazingly easy. More here about the GoGreen Expo via Outside mag and then the actual link.
The Big Apple turned green this past weekend as the inaugural Go Green Expo invaded Manhattan.
Speakers, exhibitors, business leaders, and members of the media spent the weekend listening to panel discussions, participating in a business summit, even attending a Friday night gala featuring an eco-conscious fashion show at the New York Hilton.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of curious people attended the event, one of the largest green product expos in the country, all checking out the latest innovations in green living. Two hundred and fifty booths lined three floors of the Hilton, with exhibitors hawking everything from chemical-free paint to organic-cotton mattresses to hemp jeans.
At the last OR show, I wondered where Jetboil was. I asked their PR folks, who were attending the show, and the answer was- getting ready to launch Helios, their new cooking system. As always, I am intrigued by all things that make fire and are shiny. My Helios, which arrived in the mail yesterday, is both. Initial impressions- this is not a backcountry system- at 28oz, it’s a beefy car camper. But, it makes an even cooler sound and has a better looking flame than the PCS, and gets MUCH hotter much quicker. I had to take the damn thing outside to let it cool off!
Back in 2006, they launched a nine-part initiative intended to make them America's No. 1 bicycling city. Apparently it worked -- the only other LABC Platinum-level city is Davis, Calif. (pop. 63,000) Here's the master list if you're wondering how your hometown ranks.
In Denver, where they keep talking all this crap about making the Democratic National Convention in August the greenest convention ever, it pretty much takes about seven years to get a bike lane put in. We're roughly the same size as Portland, but a ho-hum Bronze.
In the old man's Ford behind the bushes till I'm screamin' for more Down the basement lock the cellar door And baby Talk dirty to me
It was just a matter of time. climb_ca's favourite group, yes Poison. Anyway, some pretty amazing things going on at Everest. Yes, we all know about the Chi-knees and their antics, but apparently banners, obviously Tibetan, and including national flags are not to be flown and that's just the beginning. More here via K2Climb.net.
The flag affair Silvio Mondinelli reported that his team was instructed to avoid hanging (Italian) flags on top of their tents.
Doesn't stop there my friends.
First Everest climber down for Tibet A young, unguided American climber was kicked off the peak last week after police searched his backpack and found a Tibetan banner in it. The climber had little funds and bicycled around the area. He will now probably also lose the ten thousand US dollars in Nepali royalty fee he paid for the ascent.
And of course, military airspace.
China controlling Nepal’s air space? An increasing number of climbers report sketchy air flight situations. One who tried to rent a helicopter said that the Chinese are now in control of all of Nepali air space and only officially Chinese sanctioned flights are permitted. Another team reported, “we were supposed to fly to [Makalu] BC today, but we can’t get green light from Nepal’s government. Apparently, the Chinese are pressuring to avoid helicopters to charter foreigners to and from Everest and Makalu, located just 22 km, away.”
While I don't believe in mixing politics and ... well anything, a boycott of sorts for Beijing 2008 should be considered. Perhaps a day of media protest, i.e. no Bob Costas for a day, NBC pulling its coverage, dunno. The gross and blatant actions of the Chinese government shouldn't be tolerated, but they will be, as it is just a matter of time before the 1.6b person market opens up to worldwide corporate development; the Olympics, a few dead monks here and there, and squat toilets will be overlooked.
Yuji is my kind of guy. I mean, this is the kind of climber who spent years training in order to onsight El Cap. How’s that for a goal? I’ve got goals like- maybe one day I’ll aid my way up The Nose. Yuji wakes up and tries to decide which El Cap route he’ll onsight this year. While he’s never accomplished this goal, he came damn close several times. So, at 39, what’s Yuji up to these days? Oh, nothing much, just firing off a pair of V14s within a week of each other. Yeah, he’s really slowed down!
The Adventure Blog pointed out this Messner interview video and we managed to sit through it. Barely. But we're glad we did, for a few reasons. First, Messner mentions that the best climber in the world right now is Steve House, but then almost as an afterthought, kind of mumbles something about Humar, but its clear he's just being polite. He then goes on to talk about his various mountain preservation efforts, capping it with a bizarre metaphorical description of mountains:
"Mountain are something religious. Divine. They show there is a possibility to go from earth to heaven. We will never reach heaven. But there is a possibility to go high up and see everything from above."
The whole interview is actually very Admiral James Stockdalesque. Remember him? Ross Perot's running mate. Who am I? Why am I here?
We're a couple days late on this, but our crack reporters were out for the weekend. Before we present you with the latest in media hysteria, let us remind you that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than being eaten by a shark. Though, perhaps swimming in the same general vicinity where this poor guy was chomped, might not be the best idea. Continuing with the lottery analogy, guy was just unlucky to win the wrong one. Read about the fatal shark atack in San Diego last Friday.
Diving. Never really got into it. I guess when I'm climb_ca's age and can no longer stand up without scratching my balls and groaning, I'll get into it. It's also really expensive, the destinations, the gear, plus it it's not very portable, I mean with a pair of slippers and a chalkbag, you can climb anywhere. Here's something for those of you who have disposable income because at 1.5k, that's a lot of scrilla.
The DATAMASK contains a miniature liquid crystal display (LCD) panel, proprietary Digital Optic System, microprocessor, depth transducer, wireless cylinder pressure receiver, diver replaceable battery, and controlling software. The miniature LCD allows you to keep your eyes focused on the dive while presenting critical dive data including: current depth, elapsed dive time, cylinder pressure, and dive time remaining. The Digital Optic System provides a clear, highly magnified image of the LCD, which is viewable regardless of environmental conditions and may be seen clearly by the vast majority of people, regardless of vision.
So David Bertelsen has hiked the 5-mile, 4,158-foot elevation gain Finger Rock Trail to the top of Mount Kimball in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson almost 1,170 times. That's not even the news in this Arizona Daily Star article. The news is that he's recorded more than 100,000 observations of floral blooms and recorded every plant he's seen while hiking for the past 24 years, and scientists say what Bertelsen's seen over the years is a microcosm of what's happening on a large scale because of global warming and drought. Bored by that kind of stuff? Well, tip your hat to 11,700 miles and 4,864,860 vertical feet hiked.
Well, it is green week, Earth Day, all that. The focus, as oil prices have reached almost $120, on alternative fuels is almost an obsession now, and rightly so. climb_ca and I joke about my Land Rover limited edition with 28s and Louis Vuitton interior, but the fact remains, it sits undriven, I drove a total of 2.2k miles last year and that's including a few trips to the Valley. Style, my friends, remains paramount for me. Enough about me, I wish we could find a better solution, but unfortunately the majority of the US feels entitled to a car, a gun, and tax payer subsidized home loans (uh, the government bailout of the banks that underwrote the CDOs and CLOs is being paid for by you, well more me because I'm loaded). Don't even bring up the stimulus check. The problem with bio-fuels is that they are incredibly inefficient to produce, what it takes to make ethanol is ridiculous, the fact that foodstuffs are used to make it even worse. As many parts of the world suffer from lack of food, does producing ethanol from potentially life saving corn make sense? Those jackasses in Nebraska would say yes, those of us on the coasts with further education would say no. More here about the moral implications of using food products for SUV juice.
Addiction, it is said, often blinds those so afflicted to the moral and ethical considerations of behaviors intent on satisfying their habits.
In our present oil addiction we so fervently have embraced corn ethanol as one solution to our petroleum dependency we have neglected to question the ethical and moral propriety of using food for fuel.
In 2005 we put about an eighth of the entire U.S. corn crop into our gasoline tanks. Those plump, golden kernels, once destined to become snack chips or cereals or tortillas or sweeteners, instead were converted into 4 billion gallons of ethanol and used as an additive to 150 billion gallons of gasoline consumed that year.
This year the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates farmers will plant a near-record 90 million acres of corn, the largest crop in 60 years and up 15 percent from last year, as the nation's farmers cash in on surging demand and prices.
Doing the math, the entire 2007 corn crop would produce about 36 billion gallons of ethanol, slightly more than a fifth of our annual gasoline needs. But gasoline accounts for less than half our daily minimum petroleum requirement of nearly 21 million barrels of oil per day of which 60 percent must be imported.
A couple hiking in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson last Saturday were attacked by a rabid bobcat, but finally killed it after a 10-minute fight.
The couple fought off the bobcat, but it continued attacking, chasing them up the mountain and jumping on Rich Thompson's back.
“I hit it with the backpack over my shoulder,” he said. The cat fell to the dirt and lunged again. “It attacked me again, and I threw it down.”
Finally, Thompson took out his geologist's hammer and killed the animal.
If I was Rich Thompson's kid, I'd be pulling out the "oh yeah, well my dad killed a bobcat with a hammer" every time some other kid suggested that his dad could beat up my dad.
Osprey
When he unveiled the idea for 
Found this slide show on Wired: 
dollar, what can you do? Kinda sad, flying out of JFK on Sunday, all these Europeans with those expandable chi-knees type shipping/garments bags taking back the booty. By the way, for a stellar ETF, 
At the last OR show, I wondered where Jetboil was. I asked their PR folks, who were attending the show, and the answer was- getting ready to launch 
Yuji is my kind of guy. I mean, this is the kind of climber who spent years training in order to onsight El Cap. How’s that for a goal? I’ve got goals like- maybe one day I’ll aid my way up The Nose. Yuji wakes up and tries to decide which El Cap route he’ll onsight this year. While he’s never accomplished this goal, he came damn close several times. So, at 39, what’s Yuji up to these days? Oh, nothing much, 
We're a couple days late on this, but our crack reporters were out for the weekend. Before we present you with the latest in media hysteria, let us remind you that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than being eaten by a shark. Though, perhaps swimming in the same general vicinity where this poor guy was chomped, might not be the best idea. Continuing with the lottery analogy, guy was just unlucky to win the wrong one. Read about the 
Diving. Never really got into it. I guess when I'm climb_ca's age and can no longer stand up without scratching my balls and groaning, I'll get into it. It's also really expensive, the destinations, the gear, plus it it's not very portable, I mean with a pair of slippers and a chalkbag, you can climb anywhere. Here's something for those of you who have disposable income because at 1.5k, 
obsession now, and rightly so. climb_ca and I joke about my Land Rover limited edition with 28s and Louis Vuitton interior, but the fact remains, it sits undriven, I drove a total of 2.2k miles last year and that's including a few trips to the Valley. Style, my friends, remains paramount for me. Enough about me, I wish we could find a better solution, but unfortunately the majority of the US feels entitled to a car, a gun, and tax payer subsidized home loans (uh, the government bailout of the banks that underwrote the CDOs and CLOs is being paid for by you, well more me because I'm loaded). Don't even bring up the stimulus check. The problem with bio-fuels is that they are incredibly inefficient to produce, what it takes to make ethanol is ridiculous, the fact that foodstuffs are used to make it even worse. As many parts of the world suffer from lack of food, does producing ethanol from potentially life saving corn make sense? Those jackasses in Nebraska would say yes, those of us on the coasts with further education would say no. More 
A couple hiking in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson last Saturday were 
