chucK

"Planning" for contingencies . No matter what you post to these boards the next few days, when Larry shows at Bridge Creek or when some irate Mom starts going nutzo at 2am after asking everybody to shut-up for the 5th time, it's gonna be everyone trying to look small, like when the teacher is looking around to pick someone to read their report. Whoever gets "picked" is gonna be as lonely as those few folks who stick around to the end of a Pub Club and find $50 in the kitty to pay a $120 tab. The best "plan" for those contingencies is probably to be lying comatose-quiet in a puddle of your own vomit when it's time to pay the piper. Either that or, as you were hinting at in the other thread, have some people get there real early with a warchest and reserve every damn site at Bridge Creek for the weekend.

Matt, It sounds like y'all were practicing for getting to bed early at the rope-up as you have been clamoring for.

Yeah! That's right!! You can camp at Colchuck Lake or Snow Lake or Lake Vivianne whereever without a damn permit! I guess it'd be pretty difficult to lug that keg up to one of those places though . So in all this noise, it's getting difficult to find out exactly which campground is going to be the mob/riot/bust/puke/grovel scene? Could someone help me out here?

Went up to Static Point with Dave on Saturday. Noone else there I think. Climbed Shock Treatment. That climb is the real deal ! Every pitch above the Spacepond is excellent and the 3rd lives up to the hyperbole in all the guidebooks. Static Point is a great place. The climbing is fun (excellent provided you're entertained by the slabby stuff). It's rarely crowded. The scenery is fantastic. The approach hike is a nice warmup through some beautiful forest, and a scenic warmdown to end your day. To top it off you get to arrive home with your mud plastered truck sporting a bunch of foliage in the bumper!

quote: Originally posted by Off White: With any of those ad mailings that have a pre-paid business reply envelope, just take all the crap they sent you, add a little written abuse, include any other garbage you have laying around, and send it all back to them and let them pay for the postage again. According to my local postmaster, you can no longer tape those things to bricks to increase the postage due, but he gave a big thumbs up for including anything (legal materials only) you want in the envelope. Right on! I did that recently with something I got from the Republicans! Climbing didn't send any postage-paid envelopes 'cause Climbing SUCKS as they are strongarm deceptive marketeers.

quote: Originally posted by Dr Flash Amazing: There's usually some jingus fine print (isn't there always?) with those offers, like "We'll send you the free issue, then if you don't want the subscription, call us to cancel it, otherwise we'll assume you want the subscrip, and will bill you accordingly." Nothing on the original postcard. Maybe in future correspondence, but I promptly binned all those. I never take those deals where they give you all the free stuff but you have to cancel later if you don't want to get billed. My life is too much of clusterF to toss in a bunch of little time bombs. I read that original postcard thoroughly. No language implying that I must do anything to cancel. I don't mind all the little pleasant reminders that I'm "missing out on a great deal" (too much). But now that is getting threatening-sounding it pisses me off . Climbing magazine SUCKS , as do as all strongarm deceptive marketers.

Stefan, so sorry to hear about your accident. Heal up soon man! Many more peaks to climb!

...so I went through the mail today and got this unmarked envelope from FLA. It's related to some deal from climbing Magazine. A while back they write that they'd send me a free sample issue and I could subscribe or not. I say, "cool I'll fill out this postcard for a free issue of Climbing". They send me their yearly "Gear Guide" advertising bulletin. Now they send me notes every month or so. Now this one says that it's, "IMPORTANT YOU COOPERATE WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY." And I'd better get on the stick, "In the interest of maintaining your good credit rating with us". This is SO uncool. Loser lame lousy loosaphone dude . Do all magazines do this kinda crap? Freakin' strongarm tactics . I've never had this happen before. Climbing magaziners are stupid. That's what i say.

quote: Originally posted by haireball: it accepts 5mm accessory cord, which is stronger than the swage on the wired version. In 1979, I took a 30' winger onto exactly this setup at Smith. I have no reservations about the 5mm cord. Hmmm? So you're talking about 5mm perlon? I didn't think that was supposed to be anywhere near as strong as it should be to hold a leader fall. I think the shoelaces that came with my Synchros are thicker than that! I guess I better check out those specs again. Are you perhaps talking about that gemini or whatever, super-strength cord? That is the stuff that I thought was supposed to be strong enough, but I can't find it in any climbing shop in Seattle (unless I buy a 50 foot spool).

quote: Originally posted by RuMR: Bolts also don't alter the physical difficulty of the line, only the level of danger. In my mind there is a HUGE difference between a bolt and a chipped hold. I guess that is the essence of at least one of my questions. Why do you/we consider changing the danger of a line HUGELY different than altering the physical difficulty? As for the rock-damage question...how do you feel about the A0 bolt on Lovin' Arms? Surely this is somewhat analogous to chipping. It's an artificial hold! Caveman makes a good point. With chipping you could make the line as easy as you please. Almost no bottom limit. With bolting you can basically remove as much danger as you want but it would still be difficult to climb.

Black Dagger Dark Shadows

quote: Originally posted by JayB: Couldn't the same be said for pitons, cams in sandstone, etc? Seems like in both of the latter cases you're modifying the rock in order to avoid falling to your death. Well I would say it's the same with pitons left fixed. You have made the line easier. Sometimes the scarring from pitons makes the line easier. Piton scars have often been compared to chipping, and a big debate follows this line differentiating the motives of the chipper and the piton basher. quote: This seems less like an honest question than a rhetorical gambit in which you've attempted equate bolting with chipping to me. Well duh! Wasn't that line you quoted from me asking exactly whether that was the case? I don't have the "sinister" motives you want to ascribe to me though. I think that no matter what people say here, most use bolts and on some level accept them as status quo. Some do this more begrudgingly than others. In my post I am not saying bolts are bad. In fact, nowhere do I even write chipping is bad! My question is genuine. Assuming you accept bolting as legitimate, which I think I do (I certainly do implicitly accept them when clipping them), why do we draw the line so easily with chipping? Psychological aid versus physical aid? Why is one acceptable and the other not?

I'm sorta busy at work now ( ) and I don't have a lot of time to artfully pose this question of mine, or even think it out very carefully, but here's an off the cuff try... What really is the big difference between chipping a hold and placing a bolt? I mean: they both make the particular line easier to climb. In aid climbing I wouldn't think there'd be ANY distinction. As far as free climbing, one could make the distinction that a chipped hold helps you to actually move up the line, while a protection bolt is only for safety (though one couldn't make this distinction for an 'A0' bolt like on Lovin' Arms). Does anybody buy this? Even if you don't fall, the presence of protection bolts definitely helps one to ascend a line (in fact, I would posit that they help even if you "skip the clips", provided you have the option, i.e. are roped). I'm sure we can all reduce this to absurdity by defining chipping to be carving a staircase or escalator into the rock, but let's stick to the case of "artful" chipping, i.e. not very much rock removed. Is it the "sneakiness" of chipping that is at issue? Off White talks of "full disclosure". Obviously, noone will mistake a bolt for a natural feature. Would chipping be OK if the holds were obvious drilled holds, spray-painted purple? Anyway, lots of ways to attack this. It is an interesting topic to me. What are your thoughts?

quote: Originally posted by Toast: Yeah, but fer what it'd cost to buy a #3 Camalot, I could live on the beach in Mexico for a week Get real man . Do you wanna CLIMB or do you wanna just rot on some itchy sand ?

I know someone who got pneumonia after smoking frequently

get more sleep drink plenty of fluids lay off the "medicinal" herbs that are known to suppress immune response

You guys are all correct. I don't know what I was thinking. Slung hexes rock! Anybody wanna buy mine? Three dollars each. I'll sell the #1 for $2 because it's on a wire.

I have. It's hard to find. I guess you can get those slung hexes pre-slung nowadays. I'd go with that option.

Yeah, Fall is really nice up there

Yeah, and don't anybody get the idea of using the Snaffle icon anymore either

Geeze Matt, I was just trying to help Dave get a ride! I'm sure he could keep a sporto out of trouble up there. Seriously though, I gotta agree with you on all you write. I guess I was just thinking of sport climbing by the rec.climbing definition of "bolted so as to allow the climber to concentrate on the moves, not the fall". I think most of the newer climbs fit into this category (course I guess I found Gastroblast does not!). There really are so many more things associated with sport climbing that I didn't even think about, that you so ably pointed out. See Darrington with THIS GUY!!! Dave at Darrington [ 10-10-2002, 04:58 PM: Message edited by: chucK ]

Nevermind, it's working now quote: Originally posted by klenke: Phil's climbing site link didn't work. Did you put it in wrong? No dammit! It was working an hour ago (worked fine when I did the "preview post" thing. Then, once I post, they're unavailable. Uncanny! He's too damn smart for me ! [ 10-10-2002, 05:03 PM: Message edited by: chucK ]

Many of the climbs at Darrington have what I think is a sport-climbing flavor in that 1) protection is almost all bolts 2) the climbing is very well protected* * I must qualify this to say anywhere there is a move of difficulty about 5.8 or more. There are some pretty good runouts on easier terrain. It is unlike sport-climbing in that you have almost no use use for your arms. It is almost uniformly "trust your feet" territory.

OK all this non-climbing talk is 'causing me strain, so I've written up an off-the-cuff semi-retro TR for y'all. North Ridge of Kaleetan (9/20/2) -------------------------------- All images stolen from Phil Fortier's Mt. Roosevelt trip report I tried the Roosevelt-Kaleetan traverse as described in Beckey last summer. Roosevelt went fine, then after a bit of monkeying around (you actually have to go back down to the surrounding terrain to get to the "traverse") I made it to the extended North Ridge of Kaleetan. It started easy enough then got quite knife-edgy, then very loose. This was still doable for a little ways until a downclimb was necessary. Not wanting to put any force other than straight down made the prospect of testing holds on a downclimb too daunting, and I gave it up. Went and tried to climb the N Ridge of Bryant and couldn't get the nerve up for that, so finally walked over and knocked off the Tooth for the Nth time. I came back this year with a partner (from CC.com!!) thinking that with a rope, the loose traverse would be doable. Reaquainting myself with the spot I found myself to be in error. Since all the rock was loose, what good would pro do? A 100 foot pendulum didn't seem that much more palatable than a 300 foot freefall, so we bagged it, vowing never to return to this catwalk of choss. We hiked up through Melakwa pass and I summited by an easier route. Once on top, I scrambled partway down the N Ridge and found it to be pretty cool. Damn! Now I was hooked for another attempt! About a week later a friend asked if I'd mind helping shepherd some newbies up the Tooth. Hey sounds good! This gave me an excuse to head back up to "low-quality" pass. I hatched a plan to get up really early, go bag Kaleetan then meet the gang at the Tooth. Checking out the picture from Phil Fortier's site (enhanced to see the darker parts), I plotted scrambling up to the ridge via the West side of the knife edge. There were some trees in the picture, so it couldn't be that bad. Up at 5 am, walking the Snow Lake trail again, this time in darkness. Made it to the notch in the ridge around 9. As I scrambled down the west side of the notch I noticed how nice the rock was. A sorta sandstoney texture with marbled dikey stuff that gave it a hard rough, cheese-grater feel. Perfect for climbing! So I just started heading straight up the wall toward the lowpoint in the ridge, ditching my original plan of skirting south along the base of the wall then tarzanning up the trees. All was well early on. The rock was awesome and the going was good. Then, of course, as these stories so often go, the rock got worse and worse the higher I went and the more time I'd invested. I was finally about 30 feet from the ridgetop when it started getting downright scary. You know how it always looks like salvation is just 5 feet/one move away. Then you get there and it's just as loose. Well that was the case. Anyway, as you probably guessed. I lived and I topped out on the ridge, just south of the scary impasse that had stopped me/us twice before. The rock here was still loose, and the ridge sharp. I was humbled enough to perform the ol' chaval manuever, but it was cool, as I was in the sun and looked like I'd passed the worst. It turns out I was right about that. After the initial low ridge, the rock gets quite good. Lots of big spikey, solid, granite(?) pilars to weave up, around, over and through. I found an old ring piton at one point. Here I must differ with the Beckey guide btw as it says to skirt one obstacle on the left, whereas I only skirted from the ridgetop once, on the right. Traverse under an early obstacle through the trees. The Mountie description says something to the effect of "if you're more than 20 feet away from the ridgeline, you're offroute" and I think that was right on. When I finally reached the low point of my previous explorations, all butterflies subsided. The unknown was over, just fun scrambling up way-exposed solid rock. I topped out. Hung out for about 1/2 hour, then booked over to the Tooth. Found my friends still working on pitch 1. Did a lap there and hung out. Home for dinner.

quote: Originally posted by allison: quote:Originally posted by Attitude: My rack and harness gear for trad: 3 tied slings - single, double, triple belay gloves (Home Depot) 2 hero loops (6 mm perlon) Just ran across this post which proves once and for all that I am not the same person as Attitude. 1. I do not lead trad. How the hell would I know what gear goes on a rack? All's I do is take it off and hand it back to the person who put the gear in. 2. I would never, ever wear gloves when handling a line with a person on the other end of it. But more importantly, not it has been proven once and for all that I AM NOT ATTITUDE. Sorry to all who do not care for taking up bandwith. I am now done with this. You coulda just cut and pasted that stuff off of the mounties webpage perhaps?