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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 09:12 AM
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Greetings, all!
It will take me awhile, but I plan to read every one of the Alberta trip reports.
New Orleans is a trifle shy of mountains, to my regret. At one time, I lived in Colorado, but family brought me here, and then I went and married a design engineer who works at Northrup Grumman Ship Systems. Last time I checked, there weren't too many shipyards in Alberta, so here we are until my husband retires.
I love mountains, and love reading about hiking. To my regret, an accident has made it impossible for me to do, but I still enjoy participating vicariously.
I'm currently working on a future history which is anchored in the Canadian Rockies.  One of the main characters is an experienced hiker -- well, knowledgeable about Colorado! -- but new to Canada.
I had the pleasure of two weeks in February and two weeks in June of 2004 for research, and had a magnificent time. I planned to come back, but there was this Hurricane, name of Katrina, in 2005, which rather put a crimp in vacation plans. Other family issues, plus yet another hurricane in 2008 (Gustav) put other crimps in plans to return.
Fortunately, I have my books, and the Web, but I still want to return! Of course, research can be dangerous. One day, I had a huge pile of books pulled out, interlaced with maps, all balanced precariously to the right of my keyboard. A new shipment of books from Rocky Mountain Books had arrived, and I had one open on top of the pile. It was very nearly ready to precipitate the entire mass onto the floor. My husband wandered in, took a look at the new title, and collapsed in his chair, howling with laughter. The new title? Avalanche Safety!
In any case, I hope you folk won't object to a non-hiker who sincerely loves mountains finding a corner to read and appreciate, and probably ask questions from time to time.
-- Marilynx (at a whopping five feet above sea level)
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Edited by - Marilynx on 05/28/2009 06:55 AM
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287 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 1:23 PM
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Welcome!
Living five feet above sea level would give me altitude anxiety! |
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 bandana wearin', pole huckin', view lovin', dog herdin', 4x4 navigatin', lake huntin', butt-slidin' bridge crosser, who enjoys postholing with an overnighter pack
Surrey, BC
Canada
4649 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 2:38 PM
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| Welcome Marilyn! Glad to have you here |
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in the valley, BC
Canada
1459 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 2:42 PM
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Welcome to CT! I'm sure you'll enjoy this most wonderful community. I'm sure I speak for most here that we all love the outdoors and would never mind sharing our love and experiences with someone whose interested.
I've always wanted to travel to your part of the world and explore so perhaps one day I may ask if I may gain some of your knowledge about New Orleans. 
Cheers! |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 3:48 PM
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quote:
Living five feet above sea level would give me altitude anxiety!
Heh. When I moved here from Colorado, I thought I was going to strangle on the thick air! Now I need to plan for a couple of weeks at altitude before trying to do anything!
It can be disconcerting to look north towards the Mississippi River and see a freighter cruising buy... above the level of our roof! And we're on some of the highest ground! |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 3:50 PM
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quote:
Welcome Marilyn! Glad to have you here
Thankee... glad to be here. I can tell I'm going to spend lots of time reading trip reports when I ought to be doing something else! |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 3:55 PM
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quote:
Welcome to CT! I'm sure you'll enjoy this most wonderful community. I'm sure I speak for most here that we all love the outdoors and would never mind sharing our love and experiences with someone whose interested.
<rubbing hands together with an evil chuckle> I can always think of questions to ask!
quote:
I've always wanted to travel to your part of the world and explore so perhaps one day I may ask if I may gain some of your knowledge about New Orleans.
Well, N'Awlins isn't what it used to be, before Hurricane Katrina. But there are some nice piney woods north of Lake Pontchartrain that would be worth looking at. Just bring plenty of mosquito repellent, and don't come in August or September, which are the most active months for hurricanes.
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Alberta-based choss climbin', flame throwin', rappel lovin', ass talkin' hater who doesn't like "Gumby" for a descriptor
6302 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 4:58 PM
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| Welcome to the board. Feel free to take a browse through my profile as I have a few trip reports up from hiking, scrambling and skiing. I suck at writing so they are a bit more on the picture side of things. All from the rockies. |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 5:41 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by time2clmb
Welcome to the board. Feel free to take a browse through my profile as I have a few trip reports up from hiking, scrambling and skiing. I suck at writing so they are a bit more on the picture side of things. All from the rockies.
Thank you! I've just finished taking a fast browse through all twelve of the primary pages for things which might apply to my writing.
I need to go back and work on that one really long thread of trip reports. I'm sure I saw some other reports I was particularly interested in there, though I haven't quite figured out how to book mark individual messages within a thread in this Forum software. (Firefox will happily mark a page, but not an individual message. Though I may just not have sorted this software out: every Forum is different.)
Pictures are spectacular for many things -- but I shall warn you (and everyone) that I have no qualms about asking lots and lots of questions! (I would rather ask questions and learn, than assume, and get the information wrong.)
-- Marilynx
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Alberta-based choss climbin', flame throwin', rappel lovin', ass talkin' hater who doesn't like "Gumby" for a descriptor
6302 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 8:47 PM
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| oop..didn't realize that you were researching for writing. Thought you were just a writer that was looking to kill time lol. In that case my tr's would be pretty useless to you. |
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Calgary, Alberta
67 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 9:12 PM
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| I was moved by your letter of introduction. It's inspiring to hear from someone that although distant from the mountains is so impassioned by them. |
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877 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 9:25 PM
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Welcome Marilyn! I hope our trip reports inspire some great writing!
I lived in Dallas from '03-'06, and to this day regret passing up a few opportunities to visit New Orleans before Katrina. |
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Calgary, Alberta
Andorra
3796 Posts |
Posted - 05/27/2009 : 11:04 PM
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That sure is going to take you quite a while!
If you're looking for more specific information, a few other people's personal websites could be useful.
We're usually happy to help if you do have any questions, especially if you post them in the discussion forum. :)
Enjoy the reading! |
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Calgary, Alberta
Canada
617 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 06:55 AM
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Welcome! I'm sure you'll find plenty to read here and elsewhere. 5ft above sea level eh? I bet it's easier to run there than in Calgary! (Aren't we over 3000 feet above sea level or something like that?) :)
Vern |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 07:01 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by time2clmb
oop..didn't realize that you were researching for writing. Thought you were just a writer that was looking to kill time lol. In that case my tr's would be pretty useless to you.
Really excellent photo sequences can be as good or better than someone else's writing for my purposes. After all, then I can see what you saw, and try to run it through the point-of-view (POV) of whichever character I choose to put there. And you do have a couple of the locations I'm looking for.... though being too inexperienced, I'll probably need to ask what I'm looking AT. |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 07:10 AM
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Originally posted by ryden
I was moved by your letter of introduction. It's inspiring to hear from someone that although distant from the mountains is so impassioned by them.
For me, it's hard to believe that anyone wouldn't be moved by the mountains. Though I remember a high school trip I took, from New Orleans, with all New Orleans locals, to the Pyrenees in northern Spain / southern France. A number of the "highways" were little better than fire roads, and they had us on these huge tour buses. One side of the bus was about six inches from cliff going straight up. The other side of the bus, the cliff dropped away to glorious depths.
The people who had lived all their lives with no mountains were terrified. I was ecstatic.
Maybe everyone should be required to see mountains... and oceans... and Wild Zones at some point in their lives!
-- Marilynx |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 07:20 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by dav1481
Welcome Marilyn! I hope our trip reports inspire some great writing!
I lived in Dallas from '03-'06, and to this day regret passing up a few opportunities to visit New Orleans before Katrina.
I hope your reports, in addition to being fun to read, inspire great writing as well! (I do so envy those of you who can go out there!)
Been told by an agent that Book One is commercially viable, but since we're working on a series, we have to finish several more before the project can be presented to a publisher.
Many people have expressed regret at not visiting New Orleans BK (before Katrina). The city is slowly recovering -- and I have hopes that people will work on the wetlands recovery. Because it was those "useless swamps" which were the city's main defense against storm surge, and too much of the wetlands have been destroyed.
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 07:33 AM
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Originally posted by vern.dewit
Welcome! I'm sure you'll find plenty to read here and elsewhere. 5ft above sea level eh? I bet it's easier to run there than in Calgary! (Aren't we over 3000 feet above sea level or something like that?) :)
Vern,
Calgary's 1,048 m (3,440 ft) above sea level downtown, and 1,083 m (3,550 ft) at the airport.
Slightly less than half of New Orleans is at or below sea level. (My Dad is a geologist, so when we moved here, he looked at a topo map and said, "We're locating here, or here." "Here" being where we are on the West Bank of the River, at five feet above sea level, "or here" being the Metairie Ridge, a high band on the East Bank.)
As for running, well, there's so darned much humidity here that when I first moved here, I thought I was going to need to grow gills to survive! So it all depends on whether, in your case, the added oxygen outweighs the humidity.
One of my major regrets is that almost no place in the city has bike trails, because in spring and autumn, we can have some absolutely perfect days for biking.
-- Marilynx |
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New Orleans, Louisiana
USA
301 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 07:41 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Rachelo
That sure is going to take you quite a while!
If you're looking for more specific information, a few other people's personal websites could be useful.
We're usually happy to help if you do have any questions, especially if you post them in the discussion forum. :)
Enjoy the reading!
I have every intention of enjoying -- and already am! I read fast!
Would you prefer to move this discussion over to the Discussion Forum? I hesitated about whether I should post my intro there or here, and sort-of flipped a coin.
I've been on-line since 1987 and participating in on-line communities since 1992 -- I moderate one community, myself, and started another, so I'd hate to mess up the house-keeping on this one!
-- Marilynx
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Calgary
165 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 08:08 AM
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Welcome to ClubTread and I am sure you will find lots of background and supporting material here. I really enjoy reading books where the details ring true because the author has done some real research.
I noticed this comment about photo sequences. quote:
Really excellent photo sequences can be as good or better than someone else's writing for my purposes. After all, then I can see what you saw, and try to run it through the point-of-view (POV) of whichever character I choose to put there. And you do have a couple of the locations I'm looking for.... though being too inexperienced, I'll probably need to ask what I'm looking AT.
It can be hard to follow some trip reports as one person never can take pictures of everything and sometimes you need to read three reports of the same trip to get the whole picture. In several reports I have put on Summitpost I have been able to gather pictures from friends which shows the trip sequentially. Examples are
http://www.summitpost.org/trip-report/441931/Mount-Smuts-Scramble-TR-and-Route-Discussion.html
http://www.summitpost.org/mountain/rock/459202/devil-s-head-ghost-river-can-rockies.html
http://www.summitpost.org/trip-report/461738/Devil-s-Head-West-Ridge-5-4TR.html
A very important concept in mountaineering is that conditions and timing have a huge effect on everything and control success and safety. The time of year, time of day, high/low snow year, melt freeze cycle, overnight freeze, good/poor avalanche conditions, wet rock, hours of daylight, storms, etc. make every outing a unique experience even on the same mountain.
Good luck on the research.
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Edited by - billk on 05/28/2009 08:12 AM |
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Calgary, Alberta
Andorra
3796 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2009 : 09:07 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Marilynx
Would you prefer to move this discussion over to the Discussion Forum? I hesitated about whether I should post my intro there or here, and sort-of flipped a coin.
I've been on-line since 1987 and participating in on-line communities since 1992 -- I moderate one community, myself, and started another, so I'd hate to mess up the house-keeping on this one!
-- Marilynx
Wow. In 1992, I was playing Wordmuncher.
As a general rule, Trip Reports is solely for posting reports on a trip, and Discussion is for anything else. Don't worry about it for this thread though. |
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Writer, Researcher
