G'morning Vern, 

 VH> Oh, you took the tourist course. :-)

Some tourist course - this was a School-Tramping-Club-teaches-the
pallid-English-immigrant-mountain-climbing time;  the worst part 
turned out to be their enthusiasm for toting ancient equipment 
everywhere for no real purpose. The snowaxes weighed about 5 
pounds each and probably spent summers creating suburban ditches 
in the hands of hard labour gangs...  digging into a snowbank far 
up the Snowdon look-alike, once, was their only use on that 
summit-strolling trip....

 VH> Believe me, once you've made and used your trowel, you'll FIND a way to
 VH> wash. :-)

I was remembering a piteous cry from a Signalman years later - 
"But there's no water..." - and his puzzlement over the followup 
advise about not using yellow ice or snow.

 VH> Actually, there was a good chance of that at first -- he was seeking
 VH> safe havens.  But the anti-war types convinced him we wouldn't have the
 VH> political will to come and get him.

Famous last thoughts...

 VH> There very well could be something like that -- especially if those
 VH> widely-dispersed goodies fall into the hands of Al Qaeda.

Or whoever the local `organised resistance' turns out to be;  I 
remember being very carefully told where and what to do should the 
Gerries ever over-run my hometown,  and we were far from being 
suicide-bomb zealots ....

:-)
 
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