mattp

Why do you keep bringing this up, Lambone? I have explained why I avoid this discussion to you before, and i believe I've told you too that I have been specifically asked not to discuss this point with you or to discuss it on this board. I think we can still discuss whether it is a good idea to rat on a rat though. But maybe not.

Bug, I agree that bolts leave a permanent blemish in a way that violating a bird closure or a campground fee does not, and I think everyone here agrees that it may be rational to support a bolting ban but to think it is OK to violate a nesting season closure or to skip out on paying the camp fees (note my use of the word "may"). You seem to completely miss my point, though. I thought we were talking about whether we should rat on a rat and what our goals in doing so might be. I've been talking to the rangers around here for many years, and I believe they are much more concerned about and have a more consistent problem with most of the other violations I listed than with wilderness power drilling. This doesn't justify power drilling or answer the question whether you should rat on a rat, but it is directly relevant to our discussion. If our goal is to convince rangers that we as climbers are law-abiding citizens, I believe we'd make more progress by working to promote and enforce compliance with respect the issues that they are most concerned with. If our goal is to draw attention to bolting issues or to support law enforcement with respect to these issues, than we'd make more progress by turning in the bolters but not the permit violators or whatever.

I'm not arguing that if you violate one law you have no business supporting the enforcement of others, Lammy. As I understood your arguments here and in the past, you have said you believe that the problem with violating wilderness regulations with a power drill is bad not because of the result - bolts and bolted climbing - but that it is bad primarily or at least in large part because it threatens to make climbers as a group look bad in the eyes of law enforcement officials. The argument I heard was that it might be a good idea to turn them in so the rangers understand that not all climbers are "bad apples. Would you view it the same way when climbers make us look bad by playing hide and seek in camp 4, sneaking out of campgrounds without paying the camping fee, playing games with Larry the Tool over fee demo, building campfires during a fire ban, violating wilderness permit restrictions, or climbing on crags that are closed for nesting season? Maybe so.

I don't doubt that Merv honestly dislikes bolting inside and outside the wilderness but I think Kurt's point that we are talking about selective enforcement has some validity. Off White tried to make this point, too, and was rebuffed but I think some of those who sound as if they advocate turning in someone who uses a power drill are quite willing to violate a permit regulation and to brag about doing so, or to camp outside a designated area or stay longer than allowed in camp 4 or to raise hell with an obnoxious and illegal party in a campground when it suits their purposes - and some of these same individuals would be highly critical of anybody who sought to turn them in so that climbers as a group didn't look bad in the eyes of the authorities.

I may have said that is what I usually do, Catbird, but you should recognize that it has its limits. If you run backwards and stay on your feet you can often come out of a slab fall with not even a scratch, but in a longer fall I don't believe you are going to be able to keep up no matter what you do and the back peddling will likely only increase the chances that you're going to end up tumbling and getting really banged up because you're going to be keeping your center of gravity away from the rock. Also, the back peddlng may cause you to put a greater force or a more outward pull on a nut or cam placed behind some hollow flake or something. I do not recommend any "one size fits all" approach to falling on a slab. I am surprised when we read, every time this topic comes up, that slab falls are the most dangerous (or someting like that). Maybe I'm just not clear on what the definition of a slab is, but to me a slab is a smooth and low angle rock face and often on this terrain there is nothing to hit. I do not call it a slab where a climb follows broken terrain that happens to be less than vertical. I've never heard of any serious or even significant injury when someone fell of, say, On Line at Static (the climb known for total slickness with "gape like a fish runouts" where thirty footers are not uncommon), and I bet if you look at Accidents in North American Mountaineering you will find that serious injuries on slabs constitute very few of the serious fall-injuries reported. One other miscellaneous point I want to comment on is the idea that you should push away from the rock when you fall. I believe this is most applicable to bolt-proteted and overhanging terrain but that lots of times it is a bad idea. On any terrain less than vertical, pushing away from the rock may avoid hitting the ledge immediately below you but it is just as likely to increase the speed with which you strike the next one. Also, most of us protect as closely as possible below a hard move. Generally you want the pull to come downward on your gear, not outward. In all cases, the idea that a leader should try to keep their head about them is correct. When launching onto a hard move, look to see where the rope is or what you may hit if you fall and evaluate your pro - and then think about what you are going to do if you come off. There's a good chance that your reaction in a fall will be instinctive and this "analysis" will change little, but maybe you'll do better than simply reacting as you always do.

I thought you were leaving.

Sorry to let you down, Lambone. I'll try to be more entertaining next time.

Whatever, Caveman. Lambone, The trail to 3:00 Rock is a hiking trail. Hunters and mining history enthusiasts and other recreational users use that valley, and there are some mining claims as well. Climbers probably constitute most of the traffic, though. But again, you make a point that I can't follow. Are you saying that if we like to use roads and trails we have no right to complain about Fee Demo? If so, I definitely disagree. As I understand it, the program is not a very efficient money-maker on a national basis, but it does provide extra funds at the district level since much of the program cost comes from budgets that cannot be used for maintaining trails and roads at the local level. Aside from this, I believe it is just plain wrong for the Forest Service, BLM, and other similar agencies to have used so much public money building roads serving minining, logging, and grazing interests, and otherwise administered the giving away our public resources at a fraction of the true cost, while failing to find funds for hiking trails and roads to trailheads. I have had conversations with local Forest Service employees who have implied that they aren't too psyched about the program either, but it DOES give them some funding. Lastly, your comment about Larry-the-tool is really an odd one. If you had read much of the discussion on this board I think you would have seen it clearly stated that the guy was an obnoxious person to deal with quite apart from the policy that he was enforcing.

That's part of the hard man mentality on this board, Fenderfore. We like to beat our chests about how whatever we do is better than what anyone else does, and Alpine climbing is the real deal but everybody knows that gyms suck. When I saw Matt's original post about going to the gym with your pack I thought about adding that you should also take the pea gravel out and replace it with sharp rocks, make all the holds breakable, install a shower device that intermittently drops rocks and water on your head ... These "warnings" are accurate, but what may not have been adequately stated is that you can start with relatively friendly climbs and work your way into it.

Whatever, Caveman. Lambone, Nobody goes there after work even now, but even on a Saturday few would want to make the extra 5 or 6 mile journey to go cragging up there if the road were gated back at the Mountain Loop Highway. Also, in that environment I think we'd see the roadbed deteriorate and the Alders invade pretty quick and we might not be able to use bicycles in a few years. But I'm not following you. Are you suggesting that closing that road would be a good thing?

I'm not sure that it is fair to say that my friends and I are responsible for the road remaining open, JayB, because I don't know all the specifics of the management priorities and budget matters in the Darrington District. We have worked with them on this and other issues, though, and they have worked with us.

Right on, Crutch. I, for one, would love to read somebody's report of how they got sketched out on some 5.11 climb at a crag - or a 5.4 for that matter - if they had something interesting to say about it. But rarely do we read such reports here because most people fear that anything they post here can and will be criticized or they fear that saying "I got scared" will only make them look bad somehow. I know its human nature for many of us to read something on this board and focus on what we disapprove of rather than what we like about it, and maybe it should come as no surprise that we rarely see an emphatic statement in support of somebody else but a dozen times a day we read an emphatic post putting somebody else down. However, I think those who say "it doesn't matter" or "just ignore it" are missing the point. For most of us, it actually DOES matter what we read here, and few around here ignore it when somebody is attacking them. There is an element of good advice where we read "don't sweat it, bro – it's the Internet." In many cases, however, those who offer this advice are precisely the posters who actually go the most aggro when provoked and their anger is no joke even though they may try to pass it off as such a day or two later after they've regained their composure.

Lammy, maybe you don't want to talk seriously about the WCC cause that would ruin your thread. However, I'd say that if you believe it is the active bolters who are ruining access in Washington, those would be the exact people you'd want to include in an organization like the WCC because it would be them who you'd need to work with in order to change the situation. If you saw such a group forming, if you thought they were engaged in discussions with Forest Sevice officials or others who have some control over access, and if you actually cared about access to climbing in Washington, you'd want to get involved rather than sit on the outside and throw stones -- unless, I suppose, you thought that your stone throwing on cc.com was going to be effective at actually helping the situation somehow. Aside from the fact that it may make you feel good, do you think your rants here will either discourage these evil bolters or that a Forest Service official will read them and conclude that climbers are a group they can work with? I understand some of the anti-bolt arguments on this site, but lets think this through a little bit. The WCC is off to a good start and there are a lot of issues to address. You live in Oregon and have stated that you hope that at least one Washington climbing area is closed down. Even still, you are welcome to show up at a meeting some time and speak your mind. Anybody who lives around here and cares about climbing is more than welcome to get involved.

Lambone's leaving?

The guidelines for the route reports state: The guidelines for the Climbers' Board states: Off and Rad have expressed some of the reasons why there are different guidelines for the different forums. Spliffy's rant about poor climbing style, began with "could someone really be so stupid..." and ended with ... "un-fucking-believable." Personally, I think his approach went beyond the colorful and realistic that Bug describes, but that is neither here nor there. The fact is that he made some good points. They are now preserved for posterity in this thread on the Climbers' Board.

If that was your argument about Town Crier, Scott, it was lost on me. You wrote that replacing those bolts with new ones took all the adventure out of the route because subsequent parties would not have to be careful but could simply yard away. This, you said, removed the challenge and made it into a vertical hike. Perhaps a Town Crier compromise might have been to do as David Gunstone did on the East Buttress of South Early Winter Spire, and "strategically" replace only some of the bolts but leave at least enough for people to be able to "appreciate" the originals? Apart from bolt ladders, I can think of few situations where I would advocate this and I generally don't think I would advise it for what is often treated as a "training climb" like Town Crier. I think the East Buttress is a better setting for this kind of treatment. In general, I am not in favor of leaving "time bombs" on the rock. I'd rather see the rusty old bolts as souvenirs on somebody's mantel. But Scott notes a couple of places where he suggests that modern climbers don't need to use the old hardware and it doesn't constitute a hazard. When making such a call, I believe we should ask ourselves what the prospect is for someone, perhaps on retreat or in the dark, to actually rely upon the old bolt in question. I jacked out a few rusty old bolts with 20-year-recalled Leeper hangers on them just the other day because they were in an area where people rappel in the dark. Not infrequently, I have come upon newly installed retreat slings on old rusty bolts when there were relatively new ones or a good solid tree not far away. Another alternative for certain settings is to do as was done on Canary at Castle Rock and place a new one near the original, but I have always looked at the rusty spinners there and wondered why the guy who replaced them didn't use the old holes. You stand there, face to face with them, contemplating difficult moves and I find the rusty old relics visually obtrusive more than a fascinating bit of history.

Josh, Do you have one? I've read that despite the Zeiss lens they have poor optics or something and take slighty fuzzy pictures, and that they are "fragile" at least in the sense that the doors or plugs break off. Also, some say that large LCD can be more prone to damage in cold weather. Despite these quesiton, it seems like the most packed into the smallest, though.

It is indeed pretty cool to come upon historic relics sometimes and there is a time and place for them to be preserved. This is true not only in the Wilderness but even at roadside crags. I think many of us have seen the bolts on the East Buttress, the old ring pitons on Midway, or the huge iron rings at Index -- and thought it was pretty cool to see this little bit of history in our vertical museum. Thanks for pointing this out.

I am one of them, Lammy, but its all a matter of context. Again, the question was about an alpine rock climb. I know of very few alpin rock climbs anywhere (yes there are some but probably less than 5% of the routes out there) where bolts present a large visual impact.

I have put a lot of effort into replacing unsightly webbing heaps with chain and replacing shiny hangers with painted ones on rock climbing crags, but, yes, I believe they "can be" hard to spot. As I said, I don't know where his bolts are going, but most "alpine rock climbs" are not located where the bolts are going to be seen by anyone but a climber on the route in question. That person is not likely to be offended by the sight of the bolt he or she is looking to clip into. Unless there is a reason to worry about visual impact as in the case where this "alpine rock" is near a trail or it is heavily laden with hardware or something, I would not place a premium on camouflaging the bolts. Hot pink would be a little excessive, in my opinion. Jeeze.

Matt- The hike in from Rainy Pass isn't all that bad and you can make your trip vastly easier if you camp at the base and then descend right back down the route. If there isn't some kind of rain and snowstorm happening, that is. Given what I saw of you recently, you'll climb both up and down 90% of the route unroped. The campsite belowt he glacier is

You can get the "tuning fork" at an automotive tool shop. It is a "ball joint separator" or something like that. It is lighter than a crow bar. It will pull out old 1/4" bolts like butter, but not necessarily 3/8" ones. I don't know where your bolts are, but I would not use powder coated hangers for most alpine rock climbs where the bolts are likely to be quite few and far between. The damn things can be hard to spot.

If it is only an example, than the answer to his rhetorical ploy is obvious: there are at least a half dozen snowmobile parks between North Bend and Cle Elum. There is a downhill ski area in the Alpental Valley. There is a bicycle trail through the pass. There are hundreds of miles of hiking trails in the vicinity. They are building a new campground for the RV crowd, 13 miles up the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie. They've already made the concessions, and the allowance of this crag or even three more like it doesn't change that equation. It's a matter of management priorities, but there is not and has never been a valid argument that if they allow one activity they have to allow another that is completely different. There are literally hundreds of square miles of land managed specifically for snowmobiles in the immediate vicinity. Alpental Valley happens to be at the top of the pass, where short access leads to a crag that offers an opportunity for mixed climbing that will not severely impact snowshoers, cross country skiers, or downhill skiers who already use the area. Vastly less than 1% of them will ever see or hear about the Rap Wall. Unless, that is, some ardent trad climber on a mission goes really really far out of their way to stir up some controversy. Popes "example" just doesn't make any sense.

Pope, you made a similar argument where in the Squamish Gondola thread you suggested that those who tolerate or advocate sport climbing at Squamish have no right to complain about a proposed gondola on The Chief. I honestly don't know where you are coming from. To most of us, it is obvious that the impacts associated with climbing (even sport climbing) and gondola's and snowmobiles are different, and that these activities are not necessarily compatible. I bet a high percentage of those who engage in winter recreation in the Alpental Valley highly value the opportunity to go someplace where there are not snowmobiles whizzing by, and that most of these people have had and will in the future have no problem with a mixed climbing crag existing at "Rap Wall" or on another crag nearby. I bet, too, the ski area operators and the USFS would agree because the conflicts in the parking area and along the trail to Source Lake that would be presented by snowmobiles vastly exceed those associated with anything I could ever envision being associated with a climbing crag at Rap Wall. Are you really arguing that if we tolerate bolt intensive climbing we have no logical argument against opening up the same areas to snowmobiling and gondolas?

Joseph, You're talking about the subtext here of whether it is a good idea to suggest to newbies that the little details don't matter. You seem to suggest that it is irresponsible to encourage sloppy climbing habits or to suggest that there is not a right and a wrong way of doing things. You are correct. However, I believe it equally true that many if not most beginning climbers today seem overly preoccupied with the technical side of things. In a climbing gym and in many instructional courses it appears to me that they spend too much time worrying about such things as fall factor analysis or complex rope management systems or SRENE anchors or rigid communication protocols or whatever. I don't know for sure, because it has been a long time since I've taken any instructional courses, but I do see guides and instructors teaching workshops in the field and I have perceived a trend towards making things increasingly complicated and using more and more specialized gear where it is not even remotely necessary. Also, it seems to me that there is more discussion on this bulletin board about "how to build and anchor" or whether a certain knot is fit for a certain purpose than there are about "how to keep moving" or how do you discuss with your partner your wish to retreat in the middle of a climb. Generally with younger or newer climbers, I see them much more likely to waste time and even potentially to make mistakes with complicated rope handling, and I seem them wasting time doing nothing -- much more often than I see them doing something seriously wrong in how they rack their gear or set up a rappel.