Comments by himalayabound (page 3)

Excellent question, rattdog. In fact, most accidents happen on the way down, not on the way up. Why? You're tired, the excitement of reaching the summit is behind you, a technically difficult section is often more difficult on the way down in terms of footing, and you have a tendency to let your guard down compared to your state of mind on the way up. Good climbers remain very mindful of the fact that reaching the summit is the halfway point of a climb--not the finish line. You have to make sure that you have enough energy left to make it down before you continue to the top, and you have to be extra careful on the way down. Rob Hall (may he RIP), the Australian mountaineer who led one of the two U.S. teams involved in the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster covered in the book Into Thin Air (and died on that climb), said it best--"Any idiot can get to the top of Mt. Everest. It's getting back down alive that matters."

Very nice review, Hungry! Just one correction, the deal at Lust is the converse (and thus much better). Out of the $300 quarterly dues, you get $240 back in food and bev credits. The club keeps $60.

Angel's Landing is a spectacular hike and indeed pretty intimidating at the top. My family did it when my daughters were 7 and 5 years old. My 5-year-old loved it, but I remember well holding her hand in a sweaty death grip as we walked those final steps together along those chains and I had to lift her over a few of the gaps between the rocks on the final ledge. After Angel's Landing, since she wasn't old enough to go horseback riding with the rest our group of two families (I guess Zion considered THAT to be too dangerous for a 5-year-old!), we did the Hidden Canyon hike in Zion together, which turned out to be about as scary as Angel's Landing in a section where we had to do a long traverse along an extremely narrow ledge on a near vertical wall that had a chain to hold onto bolted into the rock and a several hundred foot drop below. It wasn't physically difficult, but you really had to avoid freaking out about the exposure on the traverse until reaching the hidden canyon above. Now at age 17, my daughter can lead a 5.10+ rock climb that I can barely follow. They catch up and surpass us before you know it! Maybe I shouldn't have started her down this path, but at least I've met the Chris Rock standard of responsible parenting by keeping her off the pole! 😁

Glad you enjoyed my story, azdd. For what it's worth, climbing those cables up the back side of the Half Dome in Yosemite still ranks as one of my most memorable climbs. To be honest, it was also objectively one of the most dangerous--essentually aid climbing with no belay. If your hands cramped, got a little too sweaty, or you just made a mistake, and you let go of those cables, you were guaranteed history. I generally try not to take such "all or nothing" risks, but I didn't have as much experience, had no idea what was going to be there when I got to the final 900 feet and got caught up in the same "well, I'm not going to have come this far and not summit" feeling that a lot of people experience in that situation. In case it wasn't exciting enough when I did it, there was a very out-of-shape woman (I guess today she'd be considered thicc) who was half way up the cables frozen in a panic and wouldn't budge from her spot. It therefore required stepping outside of the cable track to the side to get around and past her and holding onto only one cable while doing so. On my way down she was still there! Today I would have done my best to guide her down and belay her with my body, but that kind of maneuver was way above my pay grade back then. I still feel bad about it 30 years later (although I know she eventually made it off the Dome in one piece--at least physically). I found Yosemite to be a strange park in that it was so paternalistic with some risks (way too many signs warning about getting washed down Upper Yosemite Falls crossing over the tiny trickle of a stream toward the top of the climb while basically invited you to have a go at killing yourself on the Half Dome). As for Elmer, skydiving is the type of risk I would never take because of a personal rule I have always followed in my extreme sports adventures. I am willing to take certain high risks that depend upon my own training, skill, experience and judgment, but I'm not a fan of my life depending upon the proper functioning of a piece of equipment (like a parachute or bungee cord). Now I know someone is going to say something like, "Well, don't you drive a car and take airplanes?" My response is of course I do, but I don't engage in those activities for the experience or adrenaline rush--rather, they are just a means to carry out more practical day-to-day tasks. For my "recreational" risk-taking, I try to be more selective in the types of risks to which I voluntarily subject myself. Regardless of how I might rationalize those decisions, however, most "normal" people will still think I'm a fucking lunatic for doing any of this shit. Just ask my mother!

Climing Mount Everest has been a life's dream for me since I read Into Thin Air in 1997 and became intrigued with the daunting nature of the goal (hence my TUSCL handle!). I love hiking, rock climbing, ice climbing and high-altitude mountaineering. Back then I was 37. Now I'm almost 63, so, while I refuse to take it off the bucket list, I realize the achievement of that goal is extremely remote at this point. Over the years in between, I have climbed Mt. Washington (NH) in February, summitted Mt. Rainier twice, Mt. Baker, Grand Teton, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and 5 peaks in the Bolivian Andes over 17,000 feet, culminating in a summit of Nevado Illimani at 21,201 feet. I had two daughters in 2003 and 2005, and my high-altitude climbing career took a back seat to being a responsible parent. By the time I could have realistically re-entered the game, Mt. Everest had become such a complete shit show (way too many inexperienced climbers who had no business being there, climbers stealing each other's oxygen and other equipment and sabotaging other teams, bottlenecks at the Hillary Step creating a death trap of hours-long waits at 28,000+ feet, etc.) that the risk of failure elevated to the unacceptable numbers that you cited. I may be a fool, but I'm not suicidal, so Everest is pretty much off my list at this point. I have gotten to experience the feeling of being far, far above where the vast majority of the world's population will ever set foot in the Andes and stepping carefully over deep blue crevasses creating abysses of hundreds of feet deep, and I am eternally grateful that I have had those experiences. The Himalayas can wait for another life. Now my risk-taking tops out at seeing how many hot dancers in their 20s I can enjoy OTC without running into Alex Forrest!

I agree that Piper is incredibly beautiful and gives off a very sexy vibe. That said, I find a VIP with her underwhelming relative to the high expectations that tend to follow from her appearance. The last time (and it will be the last time) I did a VIP with her, she flat out told me that she "doesn't do any of that stuff the other girls do." Aria is of Portuguese descent (although I'm not totally sure if that means "the Old Country" or Brazil).

Maybe it's Scrubby under a new alias?...

Fair enough, Tetra. I'm in no position to dispute how 9 out 10 folks on this board define an ROB, and if I have provided an ROB alert for that 90%, then I'm glad to be of service. For what it's worth, and based on other designated ROB alerts I have read here, I considered that concept to require some kind of active deception (i.e., negotiating price x up front and then telling you it's x+y either once you've paid the house fee and entered the room or when "settling up" at the end, arguing about it and causing a scene (or worse, involving club management) and/or promising x experience and not delivering (either at all or without extorting a previously undisclosed up-charge). Haze did none of that, and arguably it was equally "my bad" for following my preferred SOP of just seeing where things lead. Did I significantly overpay? Absolutely. Did I walk away feeling angry and cheated? Far from it. But that's just me. It was 30 minutes of GFE paradise that still makes me smile. This is unregulated capitalism at its best, and she has every right to explore what the market will bear. She won't have me as a repeat customer, and I trust she will discover that I was an anomaly that she won't be able to replicate sufficiently to make her current pricing expectations work. Last but not least, we each have our own elements of good fortune and crosses to bear. In my case, I can afford to blow an extra couple of Benjamins here and there as long as I don't make too much of a habit of it. What I cannot afford is getting involved in an "incident." That would be "game over" for me, and that does have an impact on how I personally handle my mongering.

My M.O. is actually very similar to Haywood's. I don't discuss/negotiate the experience prior to "crossing the threshold." Everyone has his own fantasy to pursue that makes clubbing worth plunking down his hard-earned cash, and mine is that each experience is a real date, with the added bonus that you can talk about topics with a gorgeous woman you met 5 minutes ago that it could take months (if ever) of a "real" relationship to broach. For me personally it totally kills the mood/vibe to treat the experience like I'm ordering Subscribe & Save items from Amazon. Half the fun for me is not knowing exactly what's going to happen in the room. Have I ever gotten "burned"? Not in the sense of getting into anything remotely approaching an unpleasant confrontation with a dancer. Has it ever turned out that there is a gap between what I offered at the conclusion of the session and what the dancer expected? Yes, on fairly rare occasion, but my approach when that happens is to pay a little more than I had planned to (usually not what is asked, particularly if is truly ridiculous), and that dancer has just lost a potential long-term friend and benefactor. I think that rarely happens because (1) I choose carefully in the first place (avoiding clear nonstarters that I read about on this fascinating exchange of sociological research), (2) I have a feeling that I'm above average on the magnanimity scale to begin with (I usually do an hour and pay between $400-$700 to the dancer depending upon where the experience falls between perfunctory/disappointing and "if I died right now, it's been one awesome ride"), and (3) I'm very respectful and treat each dancer as a real person (just as if it were a date) and not as a "stripper" and that goes a very long way with the woman worthy of VIP time. A quick specific example anecdote to illustrate. I was approached by Haze about a week ago--a fairly new addition who is about twice my height and quite attractive. I probably would never have initiated with her just being a little intimidated by the height thing, but she seemed really fun, smart and sexy, so we had some great conversation at the bar for about a half hour. Finding no info about her on this site and my spidey sense urging a bit of caution, I took her upstairs for a half hour (limiting the time is my way of limiting financial risk when I not feeling totally confident because it's the first experience or otherwise. I had a VERY nice time with Haze. She is NOT an ROB. That said, as we wrapped up she said, "It's my bad, but I know I should have told you in advance that I charge $600 for a half hour." I told her that was way above what I usually pay, but how about $500, which she accepted without argument. I was going to give her $400, so it wasn't a huge deal to me one way or the other. The end result, however, is that that is the last dance I will do with Haze, and it's her loss. Just bad business from my perspective. Finally, I can tell you that, more times than not over the many years I've been going to Desire, dancers like Haze come back to me, and I take a pass. When they ask why, I politely tell them they charged more than I can sustain on a repeat basis, and virtually to a person, they have offered to reduce their prices to what I thought was fair to give it another go. Some of those very dancers have become favorites at the club and good friends who stay in contact both in and out of the premises. Who knows? Maybe even the Haze will dissipate and turn into a bright sunny day!

I can attest to the veracity and accuracy of Greenshirt's review of Carmen because I have spent a fair amount of time with her myself over the last year or so. I think Green's description is dead on, and I would describe Carmen the same way. I too personally find her very attractive in that natural, understated GND way. She isn't pretentious, doesn't wear makeup (or much if at all) and isn't surgically enhanced (which I really am not a fan of). She's very smart, is a wonderful poet (she just published a book of her poetry that I thought was amazing, although she is understandably torn about marketing it at the club since she used her real name), and is just flat out one of the sweetest and most genuine women I've ever met at one of these clubs. I fully understand that she's not everyone's type since she's not going for the fashion model look, but as Nelly said, that's a plus for her fans!

My guess was Charlotte, Jenna, Piper, Reign and Vida.

I think Alexis is one of hottest, most seductive-looking dancers at Desire--really nice legs and butt and stunning eyes. I agree, however, that I have never seen her leave one of her regulars for long enough to even catch her eye, nor does she seem interested in "broadening her network." I guess good for her that she's got such a solid set of starters that she doesn't even need a bench.

Thanks, Nelly, I believe Shelby is correct as that name now rings a bell, and your description is dead on.

Also, BTW, I am a Lust member, and it's not open on Sundays, so there goes the theory that all the hot babes might have ben hanging out upstairs.

I assume we are talking about yesterday, and I was there too on the way home from a business trip and stopped by around 4 pm. I had the same initial impression and was going to bolt to give the Foxy a try but was tired from my long drive and wasn't motivated enough to leave. In addition to the girls mentioned, I saw Julissa (Asian brunette with nice slim figure whose just not my personality vibe), Tessa (light-skinned AA with an outstanding body and even more beautiful face), Angie (cute, athletic AA who can spin around that pole like no one I've ever seen), Maya (sp?) (very cute pale white spinner who strongly resembles a young Gwyneth Paltrow) and a cute, MILFy-looking woman whose name I don't know but always seems to be just sitting around by herself not making money. She has a nice, average body, cute, friendly face with a nice smile and is always wearing a black dress. I've wanted to get to know her, but there is something just a bit stand-offish about her that has always kept me from affirmatively approaching her (as opposed to making eye contact, exchanging smiles and leaving it at that). Anyone know who I'm talking about and have more info?

The $5 house cut is included in the $25/$35 lap dance price. I generally tip the $5 to the girl unless the dance is really perfunctory or lackluster since it's short money, and I usually find the lappers to be overenthusiastic "samples" to market VIP sessions. So whether or not you "overpaid" depends on how you choose to look at it.

Precisely the rule I was referencing OWG! Timeless wisdom!

Sadly I can l provide another data point that Piper was quite disappointing in the VIP. I did 30 minutes with her about two weeks ago, and while she was perfectly nice, sweet and a good conversationalist (and, yes, beautiful), but the bottoms never came off, and, while I didn't even ask for any, she flat out said that she's not an extras girl. For some reason I had the impression (I could have sworn from the one VIP I had with her about a year before) that she was more adventurous, but she was pure as the driven snow as far as my experience indicated. Following OWG's usual quip about the range of possibilities, I guess I'm not part of the "some" if she does some with some. She's so stunning that I can't say I regretted having done the VIP, but it was an experience that need not be repeated.

In fairness to crosscheck, I also agree that being a "regular" (or perhaps more accurately put, enjoying the benefits of "regular" status) is more of a qualitative than a quantitative concept. It's less about how often you frequent the club and more about what do you when you show up. If you engage the dancers in good conversation, have good hygiene, treat them respectfully and spend good money on them when they spend quality time with you, then you will be perceived as a regular in the sense that you will be remembered and given attention by the dancers with whom you interacted, treated well and had a mutually enjoyable experience. If you're there several times a week but don't do much more than throw singles at the stage and talk girls up at the bar for hours without doing a room, I don't think that really qualifies you as a "regular" in terms of access to frequent flyer benefits.

My interpretation was that Little Mike's last name was probably Johnson....

I agree with your assessment of Stevie's beauty--I think she's stunning in an interesting non-conventional way. I got off to a good start getting to know her about a year and half ago or so until I decided that her limits were a bit too limiting for me. That said, there is no truer principle that I have read on these pages over the years than YMMV. In my experience, there are descriptions of "participation percentages" and the like that I have often found to be completely inconsistent with my own observations--in both directions. I therefore reached the conclusion a while ago that, while the reviews are extremely interesting and addictively entertaining, they are data points to be taken into account as general guidance, but I am convinced that dancers make decisions based upon individual situations more than hard-and-fast rules. While it's always about money as a baseline, it's kind of fun that there's always some element of its being something more than that at the margins. Makes it more exciting and challenging for us!

I have never commented on anything before, but there's a first time for everything I suppose. I will just mention that I once exchanged digits with Nicolette having had a few fun sessions with her, and when I was at the bar the next time talking to another dancer, she blew up my phone with a bunch of nasty, threatening texts that really freaked me out. I stopped going to Desire for months after that to avoid drama that I didn't need, but I can tell you that it goes beyond a "business plan." She is ruthless in pursuit of exclusivity, and I wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole had I known in advance.

You captured it so perfectly. It's the entering a casino in Las Vegas--that feeling of excitement with colored lights flashing and everything bigger than life and the dream that, for a period of time, anything is possible. It's complete addictive.