mattp

Why is the world so cruel? The Bugs are twelve hours' drive from here.

Aha. Thanks, Ross. Good rock the whole way?

According to their webpage: Oregon: Kellie Rice Portland, OR kellie_rice _at_ beavton.K12.or _dot_us Oregon - West Tony Holmes Welches, OR nwwilderness _at_ aol _dot_ com

Furry Pink is on the W. Face of Snowpatch, somewhere on the wall below the left-hand summit as shown in this photo:

The Furry Pink Arete seems to be getting some attention lately, and your pictures look pretty good. How was it?

If you think he's a bonehead, Fox, and if that makes you disinclined to discuss this issue with him, simply ignore the discussion. Maybe this is a tired old topic for many of you. Fine. But maybe there are one or two people around here who might actually like to discuss it. Why not let them? Maybe there is nothing wrong with a thread where everybody tries to one-up each other with new ways to bash each other. There are certainly plenty of them, and lots of you folks enjoy it all. Maybe this is and should be "one of those threads." Maybe not. Maybe it was nothing but a troll in the first place. If so, I still say: why not let somebody take a stab at the matter?

Oh gosh. I'm so confused. You mean Rove is a bad guy after all? And Corn even said so? Fairweather: Help! I peed on myself and now it seems you didn't have your facts straight after all, nor did I. Any advice? How do I get the stain out?

He said "not to worry." I think he's a really nice guy, and very sincere.

Thanks for the warning. I called him to apologize for maligning him, and he said not to worry - then invited me to a little barbeque at his place.

Fairweather, if you scroll back through some old threads you'll see many places where I've admitted making incorrect assumptions or factual errors. The above excerpt includes a clear admission that prior assumptions were wrong, but if it will make you feel better I'll roll on the ground and pee on myself. I feel so small about having been so terribly wrong. Rove is really a very nice guy and I've misunderstood him all these years.

The Nation

It seemed to me that it was one of those awkward 5.9 cracks that you really were not at all likely to fall out of so much as struggle a bit to make upward progress. I am no off width expert nor a particularly bold leader and I didn't have any trouble leading it without any extra large gear.

What I think he said is that with the relatively low angle nature of the offiwith, the fact that it is in a corner, and with the existence of face holds, it is not as hard and scary as advertised. If you've recently lead a real 5.9 offwidth like the last pitch of GM at Index, you will laugh your way up it without having to bring along a #5 to slide up above you. Otherwise, borrow the #5.

You don't necessarily need a new device for skinnier ropes. If your rappel device doesn't create enough friction, you can run the rope around your leg, with or without a keeper biner on the front of your harness, and depending on how you rig it you can get as much friction as you want. Alternatively and maybe in addition, I find that using a 24" sewn runner on my rappel loop of the harness, so the rappel rig is high enough that I use my guide hand below the friction device, also contributes to easier control.

Yes, there was a reason for all the warnings about this particular malevolent flake.

In the case of the rope eating flake on pitch four of Dreamer, paying attention and trying to pull the ropes back out has failed many parties in the past -- it is not visually obvious before you toss your ropes unless you know about it in advance and that is why so many people warn of it here and in guidebooks. By now, however, it may have eaten enough ropes that the jaws of hell are clogged.

Yes, you should bring two ropes -- though I know people have made it with just one. I usually rappel via Safe Sex because it avoids the rope eating flake below the diagonal pitch four of the original Dreamer route and the additional sometimes troubling flakes on the Blue Crack pitch (pitch six), but getting over to Safe Sex from the upper rappel at pitch eight of the original Dreamer route is a bit of a pain and there are some bushes to contend with when you rap pitch four of Safe Sex. It is possible to walk off the back and make one or two short rappels with a single rope, but this is a nuisance. There is also a reported descent route down the crest of the buttress, north of The Fast Lane, but I have not verified this. Supposedly, it involves a couple of shortish rappels, but is much more efficient than rappeling the ascent route.

Ross' route sounds like Safe Sex. It is about 5.9 where you step up over a roof, clip a bolt, and then climb left and up, passing one or two more bolts to get to some loose flakes. The route at that point has two variations, with an easier variant moving right after stepping up over the roof. Further to the right of Safe Sex there is an old 5.11a slab route with a pitch and a half of bolts at about twelve foot intervals, Boomerang. This, however, is on a slab feature to the right of the Botany 101 dihedral. It is hard to imagine somebody traverssing from there onto Dreamer.

Ah yes, re-reading your initial post it is clear what you did. The right-hand buttress has a similar escape gully and the upper part of it looked seriously shattered; the first time I climbed it I took the escapt gully, the second time (with partners) we traverssed right to a large corner on this side of the upper buttress as seen in this photo. That left-hand buttress looks cool too. I'd gladly go back for that one.

Here are the triumphant tough guy tree climbers, atop Witch Doctor Wall:

Catbird, lets not get too excited about the tree climbing. Climbing trees is a big part of the experience on Sunday Cruise, and that is one of the reasons why I stated above that this is a route that I would recommend only to someone who really wants to climb that particular wall and doesn't want to do one of the aid routes nearby, or someone who is a real Darrington buff in search of new DTown experiences. If these sound like good reasons to do a climb, you may enjoy Sunday Cruise - otherwise, there are a half dozen better ways to get to the top of Exfoliation Dome. One thing about Sunday Cruise, though: it has the advantage of being shaded after about 11:00 am and this can be nice on hot days. Climbing trees is definitely not what I consider de riqueur for climbing in Darrington or, for that matter, anywhere else except sub-alpine peaks of the Cascades or similar ranges. Despite our best efforts yesterday, Sunday Cruise remains one of the dirtiest routes I have climbed anywhere. That said, here's another Darrington gem (and this is the cleanest pitch on the route, a top secret project on Upper Three O'Clock Rock): Here's another:

Here's the picture:

Having faith in god.

Say what? The only way you can learn to rappel is to rappel. It might be a good idea to belay a new rappeler, but any screwing around with a "practice rappel" that is anything other than an actuall rappel is really a silly waste of time, in my opinion. Seriously. Anybody can learn to clip a pair of ropes into a belay device and practice holding the rope with the right hand or whatever, but you learn absolutely nothing about the core of what is rapelling until you actually do it -- preferably on an overhanging wall. With many cliffs easily approached from above and below, Mt. Erie would be a great place to learn to rappel. Pick something with a huge overhang, and many people new to the activity will indeed be preying to god.

I climbed both that central buttress and the next one to the right - roped solo, in the mid to late '80's, and returned with partners to climb both routes a second time. I agree this is a recommended feature: excellent rock in a beautiful setting with a five-start bivy pond. I've got a picture of it at home somewhere. The buttress at left in Gary's photo which has a lighter colored flat slab on this side of it is the buttress right of center when you view the face from the NE. The central buttress is visible left of that, but the features do not clearly stand out. Rat: did you guys bear left and continue rock climbing to the summit, or take the obvious escape gully which is more straight up above the lower main part of the central buttress? I've done it both ways. I call it the Bill Stark Wall. Peg and Bill, who established the Scottish Lakes ski area and who named many of the lakes in the Enchantments, noted the wall on one of their mountain ramblings and reported it to Fred Beckey who added a cryptic note in his gudebook but never actually went to look at it as far as I can tell. Bill complained to me about this grievous slight, so I went and climbed it.