mattp

Lum- My gibbs has no spring. It is not "spring loaded" the way I use that term. You are right that they have no handle on them and this is another reason why they have been largely abandoned in favor of something more like a jumar. So was there a general safety announcement somewhere about how they chop ropes? Aren't jumars and petzl ascender's also thought a poor device for shock loading (though maybe you can tell me they are a little better of an option).

I do remember using the Gibs both for self belay on a top rope, and for leading. I never thought it felt all that secure, though, and here again I always backed it up with a real knot. But what do I know -- the way I read this discussion, several of you guys suggest that I am nuts to worry about hitting things during a fall and there is no judgment call involved - I should always set my self belay so as to provide a "dynamic" belay because the dangers of the static catch always exceed those of hitting a ledge (the way I figure it, if I am on a wandering pitch or ridge climb and do as you describe, I may have 10 extra feet of dynamics in the system - and maybe more - before the end of the pitch). I don't remember any widespread announement that the Gibbs ascender was unsafe in any particular announcement, though I suppose there may have been one. My impression is that it just fell out of common usage in pretty much all applications. I believe the fact that it is not spring-loaded, and therefore feels less secure than a jumar, had something to do with this.

You don't know his brother. He just eats them.

Don't overlook the Washington Regional Weather Loop for a look at where it snowed overnight.

I wouldn't say it is necessarily a "bad" idea, but why not use a daisy chain or tie in with the climbing rope instead? I sometimes use one of my shoulder length slings as a personal anchor at a belay ledge or rappel station, and I think it is a good idea to carry a few of these even on a sport climb or where you otherwise don't really plan to use them, but I don't think I'd carry an extra loop of perlon specifically for this purpose. Are you thinking that your loop of perlon may come in handy for a rappel anchor or a prussik sling or something? In my view, you're better off carrying an extra prussik cord on the back of your harness and deliberately NOT using it while on belay so that it may be handy when you want to escape the belay or do something else with it.

Pure speculation on my part, but it looks to me as if the roads will likely reopen by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, what do you suppose the wave of warm wet weather that caused this avalanche cycle did to the ice climbs?

Cool. That is not bad for, what, 3,000 feet? I'm pondering having a go at Nason Ridge or something else in the area.

Eerie, I think you have probably been looking at Lichtenburg. It is that big open mountainside you see on the left, just past the Yodelin ski lodge. That big south slope that you see from the highway can be an excellent powder run sometimes, but you want a good snowpack to fill in all the little trees and for much of the winter, most of the open shots on that side of the mountain have pretty nasty avalanche debris in them.

I don't mean to be a pain in the neck, but I'm wondering how much snowcover was there in the lower clearcut? 2 feet or 4 feet? How much at the start of the logging road? Is there much "base" at that elevation, or just a few feet of unconsolidated snow?

How much snowcover was there in the lower clearcut?

Your choice of language here is a matter of what you are used to, I think. Personally, I find it easier to remember the distinction between "double" and "twin" because these are two distinctly different ways in which we use a pair of ropes, though you are correct that in a thesaurus I would find "double" listed as a synonym for "twin." Another way of saying this is that I am simply not used to using the half/twin distinction -- and this is because I only buy "half" ropes anyway.

You guys are making good arguments in favor of NOT tying in to intermediate pieces or only tying into some of them. However, I slightly disagree with something implied in one small part of Strickland's post immediately above: on most pitches I have lead with a self belay, there have in fact been several places where I could place a bomber multidirectional piece or pieces - and not just where there was a bolt or a fixed pin; indeed, unless I am carrying a hammer, I would quite likely consider two camelots stuffed tightly into a hand crack and equalized to be much more "bomber and multidirectional" than a fixed pin I had not been able to test. We are talking about judgment calls that really have to be made in the field, and I would not treat an aid climb at Index the same way I would treat an alpine granite ridge climb or a basalt crack climb. The point is you better be pretty good at placing and evaluating your gear, you begter have a pretty good sense of your limits, and you gotta think about what you are doing.

RE: "system failure" and tieing to each piece If you tie directly into each piece, you guard against the bottom anchor failing as well as the possiblity that you drop a rock onto your belay rope and damage it somewhere between you and the belay. It also limits the distance that you will fall more than simply running the rope through all your pieces. (If you search past threads you will see that I generally fear hitting ledges, blocks and other things during my fall more than I fear the "short catch" of the rope - and I recognize that this fear may not be rational for overhanging terrain but I think it is rational for sub-vertical terrain despite the arguments of some others on this site, and I also should say that I have mostly used "my" system in alpine rock climbing rather than wall climbs or crag outings.) If you tie to every piece, it also means that if you decide to bail, your high piece is more directly backed up by the one below it while you figure out what you are going to do. I like this system because, when soloing, I do not have a partner who can react and bail me out if I make a mistake or change my mind on lead --- it just feels more secure to me. It does sacrifice the dynamic characteristics of the rope in the event of a leader fall.

By the way, I agree with Strickland - a clove hitch would be a better call than a Muenter. And for got's sake, if you use a Muenter or a belay device, please use a back-up knot (it might even be a good idea if you use a clove hitch). But as I said already, I like the figure eight. However, there are plusses and minuses to using a belay device, a semi-sliding knot, or an unmoving one -- just as there are when deciding whether to thread or actually tie to intermediate ancors. Whatever you do, the key is to do what make YOU comfortable. I've done first ascents (unkonwon terrain) on what was (for me) challenging terrain this way. The system can work if you make it yours.

In the early '70's, I bet, he didn't have either a soloist or a "death modified Gris-Gris." I'm sure you will get all kinds of good advice here, and you can read a half dozen "tech tips" from the magazines or some latest John Long book, and I could be completely missing out on the latest "very cool" system, but I think the basic concepts are very simple: (1) set a very secure anchor, and tie the end to it, then start climbing with a rope tied to that very secure anchor and lead out on a figure eight knot or something else (maybe a gizmo backed up with an eight or some wil use a clove hitch), with more than enough "extra" there to get you past the next place you are sure you will be able to stop and place pro and hang around and reset your setup. (2) Place at least as many, and probably more, intermediate anchors (pro) as you would when being belayed. Think about it and read the books, then decide whether you want to run your rope through those anchors or actually tie to each one (comment: personally, I am not so concerned about "fall factors" as I am about some kind of system failure; I tie directly to each one). (3) At each intermediate rest, re-tie your back-up knot and check your self belay device if you are using one. Continue. (4) Repeat. Climb to the top of the pitch. (5) Set a very good anchor. (6) Rappel and clean. (7) Jumar or climb back up, using a self-belay and a back-up. It is "laborious" because you have to mess around with the knots several times during every pitch, and you have to rappel and re-climb each pitch. I take "rudimentary" to mean that he didn't have gizmo's, only ropes and knots and carabiners (I could be WAY wrong in this interpretation). If you want to head out climbing with only yourself as the belayer, be prepared to have to think on your feet, and be prepared to get scared. But in my opnion, it is a good idea to keep the complexities to a minium -- that way when you get scared you at least know that you are tied to something solid somewhere - with few links in the chain betweeen you and that something. Note too: the concept of the "self-belay" is best employed if you are rock climbing in a setting where you can actually get a good anchor before you lead from the belay. Do you folks who go climbing at Index when it is rainy and self-belay - you know who you are - have more refinement to add here? Do you perhaps do it completely differently?

At last report, there were some unattended forest products blocking the Clear Creek access road, not far off the Mountain Loop highway.

My brother, a strident environmentalist in North Dakota, has delt with him on some rangeland and wilderness issues, and says he's "genuine." I haven't looked at him closely enough to have much of an opinion.

Within the last couple of days, the Wall Street Journal ran a small article reporting that the body of Reinhold Messner's brother, Gunther (or Guenther), was found about 500 feet below where Messner reported losing his brother during the descent from Nanga Parbat. Apparently, the body was found three years ago, and "it wasn't clear why it took three years to determine the bones were his brother's." It does seem as if this may lend some support to Reinhod's version of events, and Reinhold says he hopes that this find will put the matter to rest.

I don't know how much of this you actually believe, but I can tell you that I know kids in Seattle Public Schools who are in excellent programs, and one of them is in an advanced placement program that she had to test into. They certainly have not cancelled funding for separte courses for gifted kids in the Seattle Public Schools anyway. And when was the last time you voted "yes" on a school levy, anyway? The current political fad of railing against the public schools for poor performance, while attacking them on all fronts -- most notably taking away their pocket book -- is a real travesty. Putting aside all the rhetoric about family values and vouchers and testing, the very real end result can only be that we are drastically reducing the promise of equal opportunities in America and weakening the competitive ability of our workforce. It is a shame.

I think I still have a few pieces of conduit in my basement somewhere. Along with the home made fluke and some home made hexagonal nuts. We used to think that making your own stuff and using cheap equipment that may actually have been manufactured for some other purpose was cool. Conduit had some of this stylistic/conceptual/idealistic sort of coolness about it, although it actually did work - at least for rapelling (I never took a fall on it nor do I remember hearing about anybody who did). Threaded screws were available since at least the early '70's and probably earlier, and I used them for any real ice climbing leading even in the conduit heyday (the late '70's?). I was and will never be much of a serious ice climber, though, so perhaps I really missed out on something.

I agree it looks like WA Pass granola. Lib Crack has its share of that, and the background might look like that early in the season. [Edit: Having ignored the above posts and dutifully declined to check out "properties" as you requested, I offered my guess, then "cheat" and I see that I can't tell chossy granite from chossy other stuff. I never was any good at geology. ]

I've run expire cookies many times over, and I still have it. I'm running IE, but I can't verify the version as I am at home now, not work.

This may be obvious, but I'd recommend that if you "tend to spend a bit of time in the brush" Schoeller may not be the best fabric. In my experience, the stuff is not well-suited to that sort of use. Go for Carhardt or Uniroyal and you can thrash through all the bushes you want without any "looping" or "pilling." Short of that, many other shell fabrics that are not extremely light will stand up to brush or other abrasive or sharp picking at the garment better than Schoeller (for example, traditional rock climbing involving cracks, chimneys, and sitting on ledges can also be hard on Schoeller, as can carrying ice screws on your harness).

I agree with all the posts that indicate it CAN be safe, and it may even speed things up a bit (I've done it for that reason and I've also rapped from the top of one of the South Dakota Needles, where it was "necessary"), but in general I'd say that it probably does not save much time to simultaneously rappel with your partner. I know that in my case, anyway, a lot more time is spent setting up anchors and pulling/throwing the rope than is spent actually on rappel -- particularly on steep terrain. Also, I tend to rap a lot faster, and to take less time starting and ending the rap, if I am doing it myself rather than "in tandem." For these and other reasons, some of the apparent speed and efficiency from having both partners rap at the same time is lost because they both rap more slowly and cautiously. Like I said, I've done the simul-thing when in a hurry. However, I find it much more of an advantage when doing low-angled raps. In that situation, it is impossible to throw the ropes all the way down, and a single rappeller has great difficulty sorting out all the tangles. You can save a big headache by having one climber look out for one rope, while the other looks out for the other (it helps to throw one rope slightly right, and the other slightly left). In this situation you may save a LOT of time and trouble by having two climbers rap together. Just be sure you are communicating well and hope to hell you aren't going to run into some "snafu" on the way down. One thing to note is that your "rescue" or "repair" options may be more limited if someone has trouble while doing the simulrap thing than if the snafu develops while only one climber is on rap and the other is at a safe anchor. The danger of having one let go or rap off the end of the rope or something while the other is still on the simulrap rope is obvious.

I am still having weird behavior on my "work" computer, running Win98 (and I use that term "work" loosely, as you know if you've looked at my log-in history). Multiple windows of cc.com, and erratic performance have been a constant issue for three weeks or maore.