mattp

Somebody scratched a path through the washout and I believe they drove their regular car up there on Sunday.

Yeah, we've discussed metal wands vs. bamboo wands before and, like any other discussion on this board, there were those who stuck to their guns no matter what the other side said. Meanwhile, I was spouting off as to how I have never felt the need to use wands since the very first time that I went to try Mount Rainier in 1977, and I like glaciers and climb a lot of mountains in bad weather. People from both camps assaulted me for saying such a thing, but I'll say it again: learn how to navigate and leave the wands home -- or at least don't bring more than just a handful to mark some key crevasse crossing or something. Yes, it is probably a good thing that somebody wands the standard route up Mount Rainier and the wand police will pick up errant wands and so forth so that the path is marked correctly, but in most other situations where I see people using wands they are unnecessary and end up scattered about as trash.

Why would testing a clove hitch around a large diameter anchor be of any relevance? We use clove hitches on carabiners, don't we? That was one thing about Kurt's reference to "testing" the clove hitch that I didn't quite think was directly applicable -- he "tests" it on tree limbs that are much larger in diameter than a carabiner and have a textured and comparably soft surface, and he probably uses a static rope that has handling characteristics that differ from a climbing rope and this may affect the way the hitch grabs the tree limb.

Every pitch has a different character to it, and it is unique for a six pitch climb because nowhere is there any "truly easy" stretch or any "truly big" ledge system (after the first one). Also, it follows nearly a plumb line, and it is so cool how it tops out with no transition between near vertical wall and flat woods. Also, somewhat rare for Western Washington, there is only about 20 feet of veggie mess on the whole thing! Oh, and there are almost no bolts on it but it protects well pretty much the whole way.

BP described pitch 5 as 5.10c A0 or 5.11, but it should be noted that if you step out onto that face about fifteen higher, you can traverse to the crack/flake at 5.10b or so without any A-0. Because it was originally done the way that BP went, the topo and the route rating has been a little confusing on this point since the beginning of time. I'll add my vote for DH/LA as the best 5.10 climb around.

I used crack-n-ups successfully way back when, but it has been many years since I did any real aid climbing and I gotta say, they did send me pitching into space without warning a couple of times. I'm not sure they are likely to pop out and stab you in the forehead, but hard aid climbing just plain scares me anyway.

These beauties are in Mattp's museam of nuts: The left is an SMC camlock, and it was actually an "advanced" model that came out some time ca late '70's. It has channels on the straight side so it works somewhat like a tricam. The middle one is a (symmetrical) Chouinard hexcentric #6, purchased about 1972, and the right one is made by Peck and roughly the same vintage. Where's your picture, PP?

I'm not sure, but I think the ones in that old Chouinard catalog that you posted the link to may be "symmetrical" too. The text says they fit in three different attitudes, but the pictures look rather symmetrical. I'm going to have to go home and rifle through my box of old hardware and take a look to see if I may have some.

I have some old symmetrical ones that I believe were made by Clog, and also some that are round that may have been made by CMI or somebody like that.

I think PP may be right about that. I don't think I want to place my hex's in the "no twist" configuration mentioned by Lummox, at least not in anything like a parallel sided crack where the differences in the dimension between twist-right or twist-left and no-twist are significant. Sounds good on paper, though.

On the BD website I saw that it said they had four different configurations. Maybe that is where Lummox got the idea:

Actually, aren't they designed to be placed three different ways, Rod? I believe they have different widths for both of the different tilts to the normal orientation, and then a larger dimension if placed end-to-end.

Dru makes a good point about the hex's being just as solid as a cam (or more so in some respects) but I'm not sure about the weight assertion -- didn't somebody look it up and show that cams are as light as hex nuts in middle to large sizes? Anyway, I find that I am often more confident of a cam placement when I shove it into some dirt-filled crack that I have just excavated behind what may be an expanding flake. Whether I am right to place any confidence in what is really a piece of crap, well one could argue that point. And I don't remember what was the outcome when the technogeeks debated whether a nut or a camp put more outward force on that loose flake.

A small alpine rack for me usually consists of six or eight small stoppers and maybe a few tcu's or aliens, maxing out at about one inch or so. On a granite climb, I might add a red camelot and leave behind some of the tiny stuff. In the winter, I'd bring a couple of pins. I sometimes carry three ice screws for some schrund crossing or something, but I'm assuming you are talking about a predominantly rock rack in your initial inquiry. I don't find much use for pickets, though every time I say this I get four or five responsive posts arguing for how threat they are. For slings, I carry shoulder length ones and maybe a double-shoulder-length one for throwing around a large block or tree.

Yep. Seriously. They had information about the reroute up at the boulder field and stuff like that. It was not where you'd go to get to last year's log crossing, though, and it didn't stop ME from wandering around in the woods for ten minutes in the morning.

CJF- Go back and look at my post about 10 entries up. You'll see that I was referring to using the poles for kick and glide touring - which on my ski outings pretty much only happens when going slighttly downhill. Maybe you have enough energy/strength to kick and skate up hill or on the level with your mountaineering setup and a pack on, but I don't -- at least not for very far.

Well, yeah, there's that. But it even has a bulletin board and everything!

I'd call that Eldorado Creek approach pretty much of a trail, Mr. K. I don't think I'd say the same for Roush Creek, but I've never been that way.

The distinction between an "inside bowline" and an "outside bowline" is not know to most people. I'm not sure if I can explain it much better than Thinker did but if you tie a bowline and look at the tail end coming out of the knot, it can either be inside the loop that you have created or outside it - with both variations looking and feeling like a bowline. Mr. E may never have made the mistake of tying the "outside bowline" but in any knot class you will be told the "inside bowline" is better. I'm not sure, but it may be that we have all been told the inside bowline is better precisely because of where the tail runs rather than the fact that the knot is actually stronger that way. RuMR is on the right track here, I'd say. Strength is not the issue for your tie-in knot -- the possibility for knot failure and ease of tying/untying, and management of the tail, and things like that are much more of a concern.

There is a gate at a small "borrow pit" that seems to me was about at the mile post that you suggest, Paco, and you are right that it is really not all that far of a road walk from there to the Eldorado Creek trailhead.

In your thread, Paco said you can drive to within a mile of the Eldo Creek trailhead.

We'd probably vote for that gas tax here in Seattle sometime, Catbird. I never saw a tax levy I didn't like.

Be careful there, Jon. A bike racing friend of mine was training on Lake Washington Boulevard one time, and he angered some kids who came back and whacked him with some kind of bat.

I learned to ski in Massachusetts. My distinct impression is that they don't have any monopoly on icy snow on the East Coast, though. Even at Jackson I once encountered a five hundred foot high drop that was bluish ice.

ehmmic- the snow you will encounter in the backcountry is a completely different animal from what you area used to after skiing in ski areas. When it is deep, it is often bottomless rather than the more common eight (or even sixteen) inches over a hard base on a good day at the ski hill. When it is hard, it is often ice rather than some kind of "packed powder." And then there are a myriad variations of breakable crust, slush, slop, refrozen avalanche debris, bombed out woods, ..... Be prepared for some new experiences, but I would think you can head for the hills and probably have a decent time without thinking you need ski lessons all over again.