Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board How'd you pick you handle?

Welcome to the board Prince! Maybe we'll see you somewhere in the Whitney region?

The kids in my scout troop (T134) started calling me a lot of different things and this one stuck. I answer to almost anything...within reason!

I use the sun for most of my cooking on the sunny days of
the year. I will be trying my new oven at a higher altitude in Lassen Park soon.

No one has brought it up, but we need more posts on this important thread and it's obviously relevant:

Whatever happened to the famous mountaineers who used to post here. Remember Andreas Hinterstoisser? I think that George Mallory came back from the grave a time or two. And, of course, Ed Viesturs was a regular here for a while.

Alan, are you sure you want to go back to the old times? There was also Tammie and a long list...
PLEASE don't invite them back.

Good point, Steve!

Notice to all dead mountaineers: I did not invite you back.

If the real Ed Viesturs wants to post, that's ok with me, but he'll have to use another name because someone got his. Richard Piotrowski was in the same boat but I think he got his back.

By the way, Steve C, how did you pick your handle?

AsABat,
nice story. Must have been frightnening to face losing eyesight. A friend's wife went through a similar issue having parts of her lens replaced. A miracle they can do so much with something so small and intricate.

OK, OK. Was that named by someone with a lisp who didn't like the town? ...nevermind

BTW,
http://www.freakingnews.com/Weather-Pics-35332.asp

  What can I say? I'm a geek, and have no sense of humor or imagination whatsoever.  

...by the way, I'm calling post #100 right now. Nobody posts after #99, so I get the #100 slot.   ....Ok?

Whereas I, creative genius that I am, get credit for dropping the space between "n" and "K" in mine.

#100 for you? OK with me!!

Message #96. Reminds one of bad 60's music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/96_Tears

Coming off of a sunrise on Whitney last summer I came down against the current of the headlamp snake winding up the mountain. I stopped many times to say hi, talk, give a quick trail report when asked and sometimes an introduction. Occasionally folks would say their name, sometimes they would offer that they read or wrote on the board, whereas there would be instant recognition based on previous posts and instant familiararity. I've come across a few I recognized in pictures, know their handle but not their name. Added to the social nature of the experience.

Bob R, concerning the last sun light on a 48-state mountain, it looks like Bob K. is correct. Remember our o' formula, 1.22 times the square root of a mountain's height in feet? The answer is the number of miles to the horizon. Based on this simple formula, if someone had perfect seeing on the Pacific Ocean while looking due east on Mount Olympus' latitude, Mount Olympus could be spotted from 126 degrees west longitude. Mt. Rainier could be first seen from about 124 degrees 50.5 minutes west longitude, and Shasta could be spotted at 125 degrees west longitude. Thus, the highest (biggest) longitude wins the contest, which is Mt. Olympus.

Since this is so afield from "handles," I thought I would at least mentiion mine. My parents had the great idea to name me after my dad, except adding "II" to my name, because they did not want to call me "Junior." But, to avoid any confusion when my dad's first name was called by my mom, they decided to call me by my middle name. After being called a life time by my middle name, Wayne, I've concluded that parents ought to make a child's first name the name they always use. Anyway, just my opinion...

I can't resist, I have to add mine: I live in Carlsbad, CA and my first and middle initials are CC. Laughing my head off at this thread. Love it.
BTW, off topic, thanks to AlanK for the tip to take the Bear Flat trail to Baldy (SoCal msg board). Wish I had stopped to think: Hmmmm 6000 ft elev gain over six miles....hmmmmm...let's compare that to MWMT: 6000 ft gain over ~12 miles....this Bear Flat deal might be challenging. I made it anyway and had a blast, but am still nursing a strained achilles.
-Cathy

Wayne, thank you. So I surmise that Shasta is the answer for California. And Florida...?

Well, Bob R, I guess we need to get a handle on the first light in Florida and the last light in California!

As a boy, living with my military family, I used to live about 30 miles from the towering high point of Florida--all 345 feet of what used to be called Britton Hill, but has since been renamed Lakewood. This high point, however, is approximately 25 minutes too late for the first ray of sunshine in the Sunshine State! It looks like the palm trees (well, probably skyscrapers) of Palm Beach get the first rays of the morning sun in the state of Florida.

As far as California is concerned, unfortunately, beautiful Mount Shasta is not the peak of last light at sunset. Apparently the mountain that gets this honor is in the coastal range called King Range, and the peak is called KING PEAK, with an elevation of 4,088 feet. This mountain is south of Punta Gorda, the most western point in California (I think), and southwest of Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

Now, I hope we all have a handle on this!

Wayne,

Thanks for all your research on this, although I think your past efforts on the 97 switchbacks, and mountains visible from other mountains, hold more interest in this crowd.

So, Katahdin, Olympus, King and some skyscraper in Palm Beach. Done the first, will someday do the next two. I'll need Spidey's help with the fourth.

Glad you were up to handling this task.

Not to mention, my one-time AE of Edmund Hillary.

We may go "off the deep end" on occasion now, but anyone who remembers the old days (around the turn of the century) will remember how vicious things were back then. Sir Ed only made an occasional appearance during times when the flaming got so bad that a nasty response was warranted.

With a little more thought, we see that Mt. Olympus isn't completely correct, i.e. it doesn't have the last sunset every day of the year. If we take into account the tilt of the earth's axis relative to the ecliptic plane, King Peak (courtesy Wayne) in northern California will have the last sunset in the winter because it is at a sufficiently more southern latitude than Mt. Olympus in Washington.

What a bunch of deep thinkers on this board! (Thanks, Bob K.)