mattp

Do you need his email address? We've been talking about it in the super secret moderator's forum, and some have pointed out that yours could have been an interesting thread but you certainly have nothing to whine about along the lines of being unable to ask for beta. I'll tell you that I didn't delete it but I did kind of wonder if yours was a question that might have been more efficiently addressed in an email. Get over it, then go out and climb it, then come back to spray about it.

Those guys were having a bad day. But I fear that had the leader fallen near the top of the first pitch he probably would have died, too (though perhaps not his partner). Your tale would seem to support, or at least I don't think it is a rebuttal of, my thesis: if you are competent to place pro, it is not all that hard to construct an adequate belay anchor -- on pretty much any popular moderate climb around.

Lots of people worry about the construction of an anchor more than their placement of pro in the middle of a pitch, but I don't quite understand the concern. If you can place gear that you'd even remotely want to fall on, you can certainly place three pieces and tie yourself to all three of them when you get to the belay. If you don't equalize the anchor the best way or if you make a mess out of it when it could have been set up more cleanly, there will be no harm done. On the other hand, if you can't place pro adequately to catch a fall and you take a whipper, you might get hurt bad. It is hard for me to picture a scenario where one who can place gear for pro could not set an adequate anchor at a belay on any of the popular beginner's climbs that I know of.

I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing for a guidebook author to try to change some names of features in their book. In the Enchantments, I believe that Fred once adopted a few of the names proposed by Peg and Bill Stark even though the local District Ranger favored more institutional names like "Inspiration Lake" and such. There are enough "inspiration" lakes, points and peaks around, in my book, so some fantasy mythology naming scheme as proposed by the Starks (Gnome Tarn, Troll Sink, Naiad Lake, Sprite, Brynhild Lake, Lake Freya, Valhalla Cirque ...) is just fine by me. If Dru goes out and pulls down something really rad on some E. Peak of Mount Whatsit and he wants to add a Spraylord Spire to the next edition of the CAG, who around here would complain?

Indeed. He showed up.

The snow level has been below that lake since Friday, and it was a little wet over there this weekend. I'd expect at least SOME snow. Probably not much, though, and you might still find bare ground under some of the trees.

I would have even listened to your W stump speech. Sorry I missed it.

Actually, Veggie, he didn't need to be banned in the first place. He got plenty of warning and then he just kept playing chicken with the moderators. I didn't ban him and I'm not the one to turn him back on again, but I can tell you that I believe he'd be welcome to come back as Dwayner if he really wanted to. It might take a minor grovel on his part but, were he to come back, he'd be welcome to come back and rant and rave against bolting (he'd likely get shut down again if he resumed the same old tactics). In actual fact, however, I talked with Dwayner quite extensively about all of this and I am pretty much convinced that he doesn't really want to come back - at least not yet. For his own reasons, he is more interested in being the "poor me" victim of unrestrained moderators than in spreading his message. Meanwhile, maybe you can take up the mantle and tell us everything that is wrong with the modern sport climbing world. Though you raise what on the surface might appear to be a valid concern, I don't think Dwayner would have a legitimate complaint that someone might mock him. Anybody who has spent so many posts on this board engaged in ridicule and taunting just doesn't have much right to complain if they become the subject of someone else's sense of humor. Further, he doesn't post under his real name, and he frequently maintains that his on-line character "Dwayner" is a fictitional character anyway. Sorry.

Exactly what IS the point, Veggie? Fill us in.

Like I said, you ARE shy, falsely identifying yourself and revealing a fake bedroom. They have clinics for that, you know. Oh wait, there's this online clinic where your records reveal that you have been making progress. You made big progress by showing up at ropeup. (I don't think you would have had to take a big risk to have a short conversation with me about our respective roles on cc.com but, whatever, dude -- you made it pretty clear that you didn't want to have that conversation. I'll see you 'round.)

You'll never know what you missed.

Iain - why do you feel the need to post garbage that you don't want to be associated with? With a modicum of creativity and minimal effort you can post hilarious stuff that you are proud of.

Had you simply wanted to test for gullibility, you would have revealed yourself after the first day, me thinks. I spoke to several who were disappointed. You can rectify your sins at the next ropeup or other cc.com event and you might find that some of the uncool people are OK.

You might have had more people introduce themselves to you, Dru, had you been willing to introduce yourself. What was up with the the "I'm not THAT Dru" ? Were you embarassed to take credit for your spray-lord status or something?

Josh, this has been a pretty good thread. Probably more than most others on this board, it may even be worth a go-back-and-read. And I'd say that Harry's contributions here have been very interesting. If he is in some kind of personal competition with Fred or if he said something slanderous, that may be regrettable. I pretty much agree with Cavey about Fred's accomplishments, but there's been a lot of interesting stuff reported here -- stuff you won't find in Climbing Magazine -- and Mr. Majors has been a real contributor in this thread.

Depending on her sensibilities, Trask, maybe not. Go back to spray.

My guess is that Juneberg is legit. If I had just been to ropeup over the weekend, I'd probably check the site to see what it is all about. She may or may not be impressed with the welcome that she has received here.

It wasn't ChucK. It was this guy:

Flash, I don't support closing areas or trying to limit the number of visitors. I advocate trying to organize climbers as a user group and working directly with land-managers or property owners as much as possible -- just as has been done at Smith. Where we are causing some kind of impact, whether it be that our dogs tied up at the base of the crag are scaring hikers who come by with little kids or that our large numbers are eroding some talus gully or whatever, we have to try to take some responsibility for the matter or we are likely to be shut down. My major point here is that I think we will be more able to address any problems that may arise if we do not harbor some illusion that we are the "good" users and it is all those other people (motorcycle riders or loggers or horespackers or whatever) who are ruining the place. I hear lots of climbers ranting and raving about their right to have access to our public lands without showing any apparent appreciation for the fact that their exercise of this "right" imposes some very real and long-term effects on the areas where they climb and upon other user groups.

Catbird, there is one crag (two named rocks, actually) in all of Leavenworth that is closed for a few months each year. They said this is one of two eeries in the entire Leavenworth Ranger District, and they want to protect them because they are special. I don't think it is a big problem for us to comply with this very unrestrictive closure. I realize that raptor closures are more extensive in some other climbing areas, and I know that part of what John Harlin kept saying is true -- that there have in the past been "experts" who say that climbers do not deter nesting activity (or at least not always so) and there may be unclear scientific support for raptor closures -- but what's the big deal about cooperating with this minimal closure? I was very encouraged to talk to two rangers from the Leavenworth Ranger Station who seemed to be quite aware of the issues and who generally appeared to be supportive of climbing in the district and mostly quite reasonable in their views on things like trails, rare plants, birds, bolting ...

Catbird, It may be a question of "semantics," I suppose, when DFA read's my comment about "ripping up" the ground and assumes that I am critical of the erosion containment measures taken at a place like Smith. Or maybe the distinction between controlling or reducing impact and mitigation may be a question of semantics. But my point is that we need to realize that we are a high impact user group and we need to deal directly with that fact rather than to pat our selves on the back for being "environmentally sensitive" or trying to hold ourselves out to the land managers or other conservation groups as some enlightened or harmless lovers of wild lands

Now she really feels bad, Dave. She went to the Sloop specifically to introduce herself to you, and you don't even remember.

Flash, you misunderstand me. I have participated in several work projects at five or six different climbing areas, and I am not critical of the landscaping done at the bottom of climbs such as that undertaken at Smith. It DOES constitute a serious modification of the cliffside environment, though, and the whole management approach behind it rests on the assumption that there are and should be lots of climbers concentrating in that particular spot. I think Smith is a great park. In my view it is a better rock climbing area than any we have in Washington and I think a big part of the attraction of the area lies specifically in the fact that it has been so heavily modified for climbing. I just don't think you can describe trampling the place and then rebuilding it, installing several hundred sport climbs, and hanging out in groups of a hundred as "low impact" techniques or signs of any great push toward environmental preservation. I like being able to climb at highly developed climbing areas, but I sure wouldn't want to see every potential rock climbing area developed that way.

Hikerwa, that beer I brought was actually from cc.com. Paid for in horescock dollars.