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Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 9:09 pm
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 1:16 am
Snowcaving? eek How cool is that!? ... I mean, the rest of it doesn't sound cool at all, despite the fact that you are fairly adorable, if difficult to understand, when you're delirious. But snowcaving... maybe it's just because I live in a part of the world where snow seems about as fictional as the Easter Bunny, but that sounds awesome. whee
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:40 am
Problem with snow is wet+cold=miserable after a relatively short period of time, even with decent snow cloths.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:33 pm
I don't get cold, so I wouldn't be miserable. ... I'd just suddenly have hypothermia, and be very confused. xp
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:15 pm
Bayer: The trick to that is to know exactly what to do, and when. Like, switching clothes when you get the chance to remain dry. Kara: Why, thank you! blaugh I do try. Well, it doesn't snow a huge amount here, but up on Rainier it's pretty good. This trip, however, sucked. We went up to about 5000 feet, so maybe a third of the way up the mountain. My group got sent ahead up the mountain, which was pretty cool...except that I had no idea where we were supposed to go. We hiked maybe half a mile - which doesn't seem far, but it was uphill, and every step you sank in up to mid-shins/knees, and the air is really thin and it's hard to breathe. So we went for a little, then turned back and went to the other group. Turns out we had hiked right past our site. So, we went up this really steep, powdery hill, then started building snowcaves. Now, I've been snowcaving twice before. The first time, I got frostbite and was completely miserable. Not sure why I went the second time, but it too was horrible. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I was persuaded to go on this one too, and guess what? It blew. We started building our cave. The design was pretty good, although not the one I wanted. It would keep us warm, at least. However, as time went on, it became increasingly obvious that this wasn't going to work. See, snow is a unique building material. If you dig down far enough, it's compacted, and has a strength between hard cardboard and wet cement. Pretty durable, and damn hard to cut when you have to lie horizontally and cut in a hole that's as deep as you are tall, and barely tall enough to fit you. Long story short, my extremely claustrophobic self had a b***h of a time doing the work for my bigger, although inexperienced comrades. The cave wound up being way too small, as in, not tall enough to be able to roll over in, and barely wide or deep enough for us. Then, as the night wore on, we discovered not one, but two leaks in the ceiling, as it began to RAIN. The tarp we had placed over the entrance hole filled with water, thus closing us in for fear that we would flood the tiny cave and drown. Now, combine the thin air with my sudden nervousness and persisting claustrophobia, and I could hardly breathe. We decided to just abandon ship, but we could only get one person out at a time. As luck would have it, the only person able to move enough to escape was my friend, who is not as small or graceful as I am, and to top it off, he was baked out of his mind, in an attempt to make himself comfortable. So anyways, we had to trust him to get out from underneath this tarp, with a downward bulge in the middle, and then let us out. It took us about an hour, but we finally made it out. I was the last one out. Now, if you've ever been on a mountain, you'll know that there are few to no windblocks; hence, the temperature with windchill was about 10 degrees. And it was raining. Not only that, but on a mountain it gets dark early, and when it gets dark, I mean dark. I'm an avid camper, but this is some dark dark. We headed downhill to the bathroom. On a mountain, the bathrooms are kept at a constant 80 degrees as an emergency retreat, so we figured we'd be warm. None of us had a watch, so we had no clue what time it was. Not wanting to wake up the others of our party, we figured we'd settle in, since wakeup had been scheduled for about 7. IT WAS 11 PM. Turns out we had retired early, and less time had passed than we thought. So we had to kill 7 hours in a bathroom. I wound up sleeping on a sink. I'd actually rather never think about it again.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:42 pm
O.O I actually have nothing to say to that, aside from... I am very, very sorry.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:46 pm
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:34 pm
Pssh, Joe, I know how to handle snow.
And I would NEVER go snow-caving.
You can put a tent on top of the snow. >_>
That sounds absolutely horrifying, though.
Fortunately, I've only ever gone with scouts, who no one would ever trust to actually build a snow cave.
Stupid Boy Scouts.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:39 pm
Dude, first of all, tents don't work because of the increased wind on the mountain. Secondly, I went with Scouts too. We're just hardcore like that.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:48 pm
WAITWAITWAIT.
You went with Boy Scouts.
And one of your guys was high on drugs.
The heck kind of Boy Scouts are those?! Boy Scouts are immature pyromaniacs equipped with knives they don't know how to use, not hard-core drug-heads!
And tents so would work if you had stakes and heavy stuff to put in them.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:41 pm
Jokerman-EXE CENSORED: Why, thank you! blaugh I do try. Didn't she want you NOT to post her name?
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:20 pm
Venom: Uhh, no. She said it was cool like, a month ago. And I've been doing it for a while, soooo... Bayer: While that may be true of the younger boys - with whom I have very little, unwilling connection - this guy is only barely connected to the Scouts. And really, dude, you have no idea. The wind would bite right through a tent.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 10:06 pm
Bayer: Really. What he's saying makes sense. I don't have much experience with snow, but I do know a thing or two about camping in high winds. Tents=No. That's just how it is. Venom: I did say it was cool. You guys don't even know if it is, in fact, my real name. ninja I have many aliases... All of them feared... mrgreen Joe: ... THat website was awesome. I spent like an hour and a half just reading everything, and then my mom kicked me off to go eat dinner. Anyway, point remains. FTW.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 10:52 pm
Jokerman-EXE Venom: Uhh, no. She said it was cool like, a month ago. And I've been doing it for a while, soooo... Bayer: While that may be true of the younger boys - with whom I have very little, unwilling connection - this guy is only barely connected to the Scouts. And really, dude, you have no idea. The wind would bite right through a tent. Ah, okay. Also. Jokerman-EXE While that may be true of the younger boys - with whom I have very little, unwilling connection - this guy is only barely connected to the Scouts. Jokerman-EXE While that may be true of the younger boys - with whom I have very little, unwilling connection Jokerman-EXE the younger boys - with whom I have very little, unwilling connection GOD it's easy to read homoerotic subtext into anything BSA related.
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Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 7:20 am
Alex: ...*facepalm* Kara: I know, right? I'm addicted to that site. I think it was Alex that got me started on it, actually. tvtropes.org, for anyone wondering what we're talking about.
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