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Everything posted by mattp
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A hard body plastic kid's sled is a great item for melting snow at a basecamp on the glacier. Even in relatively cool temperatures in Alaska, I've been able to generate quite a bit of water by shovelling snow into one of those things and rotating it so it was tilted directly toward the sun all day long.
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Yup, he's right K. Back wherever that was - page three? - we got sidetracked on issues related to visual impact and whether bolting on lead is the way to go. Remember? It's not like I said: hey Kassidy - don't answer K's quetion.
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Kassidy - Again, you lapse into debating little bits of ones statement like JayB's supposed suggestion that pin scars are OK, while sidestepping the argument here. Yes, he suggested that he thought you had indicated that pins are OK whereas bolts are not, but the point he was making is that many climbing practices other than bolting alter the rock. Just climbing on a new piece of rock will alter it in Darrington - even if you use a toprope - because you'll likely huck off a flake somewhere and leave a bright white scar where it used to be grey. Cleaning cracks for your low-impact nuts and cams is visually and biologically much more invasive than placing a bolt, and the establisment of new climbs anywhere in Western Washington has always involved quite a bit of biomass removal. The point here is that "altering the rock" may not be a viable standard.
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Last I heard, Cassidy, you had a grand total of one post that had been removed from the Rock Climbing forum. Did I miss something? Stick with us here - it is a new forum with a new moderator and maybe there are some "bugs" to work out.
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I agree that cleaning a crack or removing trees/bushes/other flora can be far more invasive than installing a bolt and I think you are onto something as far as trying to make the disctinction between modifying the rock to make it easier and doing so for protection in the event of a fall, JayB, but I'm not sure that your litmus test is going to hold up. Bolts are indeed added to make the route easier to ascend in places where most of us would consider them acceptable: blank bits of rock that are surmounted with a point of aid (for an example that most will find way "inside" the line, consider the original 10 or 12 bolt ladder - the only bolts installed - on the Salathe Wall on the Captain). On the other hand, pro bolts may or may not be acceptable, depending on your idea of whether the pro was necessary in the first place. I think it is probably always going to boil down to some kind of "situation ethics" where the rules - whatever they are - can serve as useful guidelines but they have to be applied with common sense and any specific call is likely to involve a host of factors not accounted for in the general rule. All of us know a bolting atrocity when we see one, but few of us will completely agree on exactly which routes are atrocities.
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Those disgusting people are called "local color," JoshK. Did they get in the way of your speed ascent or something? I agree that the springs were not one of Washington's finest, but I didn't see much harm in the fact that some people thought it was worth the five mile hike to soak in dirty brown luke warm water and camp somewhere where I had no interest in camping in the first place. On a couple of Spring ski trips, I actually found the springs clean enough (or apparently so) that I took a dip.
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I disagree with the idea that route reports need to be well written. An article in Rock and Ice magazine should be well written, but somebody's report that they climbed The Tooth and found snow plastered all over the rock need not be. I enjoy reading well-written route reports but the fact that somebody doesn't have time to edit their writing for three days - or maybe lacks the skill of an English professor - need not and should not prevent the sharing of information or the celebration of a good or not so good day in the mountains. To put someone down because they didn't meet your standard, whether your technical rock climbing standard or your standard for "good writing," is lame.
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You are right, RuMR, that Cassidy has not relied on much in the way of personally insulting rhetoric in this thread -- and if you look back about eight pages I think you will see where I criticized someone else for attacking him personally. And, Cassidy, if you are truly "the new me" and we might actually have an honest debate here, I'd welcome the day. However, where you say something that sounds pretty close to a blanket statement that modern climbers have no shame or whatever, it is indeed insulting. Similarly, where you cut and paste someone's arguments to twist what they said so you can try to make them look stupid or to rebut something they never said in the first place, and where you insist on your twisted cut and paste in the face of clear responses about how you have misconstrued things, you are annoying to say the least (though you might think that "insulting" is the wrong word). Like I said, I think you have some good points: with the growth in the popularity of sport climbing, we HAVE come to expect climbs to be better protected on average and most climbers probably DO have less interest in learning to risk their necks by running it out. It is also true, I think, that many of the more crowded climbing areas that suffer from erosion and other environmental damage, or conflicts with other user groups, ARE sport climbing areas -- but many are not. I also agree that the development of relatively safe gym and sport climbing has brought many new climbers into the sport so that, just by virtue of our numbers, we are seeing some new problems. And etc. Lets talk about actual issues rather than stick to tired old ideas like the assertion that today's climbers pursue dubious objectives that are clearly much more so than those of our forefathers in the golden ages of the '60's or '70's.
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Good morning, Mr. Kassidy. I suggest you heed some of your own advice: you can be an articulate guy and you actually have some good points. You need not resort to the use of unsupportable blanket statements and insulting rhetoric. Tone it down a bit and engage in a genuine discussion of the real issues and you might be able to salvage a little dignity here.
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Actually, I'd say there is most often very little "art" to it. You simply post something a little provocative and then sit back to see what response you get. Artistic quality lies in the degree to which someone can make good points in a discussion or keep us laughing with their clever quips or whatever, but "trolling" is generally speaking no high art. Occasionally we see someone pretty clever with a good hook, but much more often we see posts that are just plain stupid or offensive passed off as an "artful troll."
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WTF, Scott? I think it is RuMr who has been waxing eloquent about European rock climbing, not me. I have climbed in Europe, and I think it was pretty cool and in fact after I had grown bored by rock climbing around here, I found renewed excitement for the sport on the bolted limestone a thousand feet off the deck in the Verdon Gorge, but I don't think I have been spraying about that in this thread. Yes, I "admit" that bolting is becoming more problematic. I don't think I ever denied it. I just don't think that the end of the world is approaching - or at least I don't think that Armagheddon lies at Exit 38.
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Scott- In the mythical golden years that Cassidy thinks were so cool there was a heavy concentration of routes in places like the Gunks, and nearly every crack line at Index had an aid line if it had not by then been free climbed, but the importance of approaching rock climbs in sandals is definitely a modern fashion and I don't think that when it comes to face climbs there were any routes anywhere in the U.S. as closely packed as your average crag at Vantage and Exit 38. Personally, I like things to be spread out a little bit, and I enjoy longer climbs rather than 80 foot overgrown boulder problems. I also believe that we would have fewer problems with offending other area users or land managers if our climbs were further from trails and roads and generally more out of sight.
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Figger Eight- I agree with you that visual impact is a big deal. Other impacts associated with modern route development practices are also serious issues - like the way in which modern climbers seem to want to have 50 routes all on top of each other and they want them to be within 50 feet of a trail - preferably within 50 feet of the car. This results in crowding at the base, the areas get ground to the dirt, and we get in the way of other users. You could easily name a lot of other issues. But we are focussed only on the validity of bolts - without any reference to setting or density or safety or anything else - because our friend Cassidy here only has one program and it has crashed.
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I'm learning, but are you?
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Dru - I looked up "concise" and "brevity" and they seem to include some reference to actual ideas and content. Unrelated one-line put downs are nowhere in the definition of either.
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Maybe I can actually take a few moments to put some ideas together rather than just spray the first stupid comment that comes to mind.
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By the way - now that we have identified the visual impact as the real substantial impact of bolts in as far as they affect anybody other than the climber on the route in question, I'd put in a plug here for powder coated bolt hangers.
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There may have been some problems identified by hikers in las Vegas, Dru, but if some idiot sport climbers put up a line of bolts immediateliy above a hiking trail I would be one of those climbers who would join them in protesting. For the most part, at nearly all climbing areas in the country, this has not been an issue that was raised by non-climbers. And we talked about that Bend cave a month ago when yo umade the same statement and it was pointed out that CHALK was the problem there that led to the closure, not bolts.
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Scott - do you really have friends that can see bolts on Snow Creek Wall from the trail? That is some serious eyesight. I can see rappel slings on a tree or flake from the trail, but when someone replaces them with two bolts and some chain I can't see them.
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I'm with you on the self-centered and self-serving nature of many climbers, Scott, but most non-climbers see nothing wrong with bolts -- the people who get bent out of shape about this issue are almost exclusively climbers. And pretty much the only time it ever becomes an issue for land managers is when some climbers get into a row over it. That doesn't mean it is not a real issue, but your statement here is damn near 100% wrong. Like RuMR says - some of the peripheral impacts associated with sport climbing are real issues to folks other than climbers, but the bolts themselves are generally not.
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No, Alpine Tom. Very few of the route reports that are criticized have much or any chesbeating element at all but, even where they do, the main problem with chestbeating route reports is that the chestbeating police think they need to dump on the chestbeater. The sad reality here is that these chestbating police are for the most part the biggest chestbeaters on this board, when you really look at who says and does what around here.
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Actually, Mr. Fox, I think someobody else made a similar point to yours but with much more vinegar in their tone. The route reports forums are intended to be a place to discuss (among other things) what we like/don't like about climbs in our region - and I don't think a comment such as that one would be much of a problem if offered in proper context or with a modicum of respect for the initial poster. I don't remember the exact thread, though, and I'm sure opinions would vary as to whether that one or any other comment in any route reports thread was good or bad. My point is not that yours (if it was yours) or any other of the responses that I described was out of line -- I was making a comment on the general atmosphere.
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It was recently argued that nobody has ever trashed a beginners route report and that there is nothing negative in the culture of this board that would discourage less experienced climbers from posting here. I disagree. We recently discussed the Mount Hood report where the guy noted he got a snowcat ride and was flamed for it, and I think we already discussed the several-page assault of Scott for reporting that he skied whatever it was - 70 degrees? - at Stevens Pass. Also, I look back at the reports of Chair Peak from this summer and I note that while I have deleted the snidest of comments, what is left still gives the very clear impression that a simple climb of The Tooth is not worthy. Every single thread contains references to "I soloed it" or "it is really a good climb in the winter" or "I climbed it in three hours car-to-car" or whatever. Similarly, somebody reports an attempt of Silver Star (a 150 foot class III scramble) and the response is "you should have run up Burgundy" (a 5.8 6-pitch rock climb). For the West Ridge of Forbidden, one of the most popular routes in the state, there are few reports but all of those from this season deal with car-to-car speed or solo climbing the route and at least one of them contains the response "great -- another chestbeater report on the West Ridge". Similarly, when someone asked about the Sitkum Glacier not long ago (another of the State's most popular climbs) somebody responsd that it is a stupid route and he would NEVER climb it again because it was so boring. For Mount Adams, somebody asked whether he needed to bring crampons on the south ridge and he got a lot of good information but he also had somebody say "totally unnecessary – there is absolutely no exposure at all." What if somebody is proud of climbing The Tooth and thinks they weren't a complete idiot to go the wrong way around the pinnacle south of Pinneapple Pass and somebody else might want to know where NOT to go? Or the guy who attempted Silver Star - was he supposed to feel proud of his attempt on a scramble route when he was told he should have "run up" a technical rock climb in stead? Wouldn't this kind of thing tend to discourage people who are not strong technical climbers from posting their trip reports or even asking for beta? Is this why we have not a single route report from the Beckey Route this season? One report of a climb of the Emmons Glacier? Neither of these are "trivial" routes, in my book, and I bet there are lots of people who would like to read about them.
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TTT is right to say don't plan on it. However, if you wait until a time when it hasn't snow for a week and a half, you stand a very good chance of finding hardpack most of the way though there'd still be some snowplowing somewhere, in all likelihood. And long high pressure periods like that probably happen on average of three or four times every winter.
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Dru says he likes good trip reports but not bad ones. I agree. I bet everyone here agrees. But with the possible exception of the great Uncle Tricky, I bet we could debate for hours and hours about which trip reports we like and don't like. It is a shame people feel that they have to shoot down others for posting gaper reports or for chestbeating or whatever.