mattp

I'm with you, Sisu, but lets take these things one at a time, shall we?

nonanon - I guess I did miss your point. I didn't recognize him as a conservative columnist. I didn't really think you were pointing him out as an example of a liberal counterpart to Rush Limbaugh, though. I thought you just liked the quip.

Fairweather, again you mis-state yourself. Look at just about any political thread where the shortcomings of the democratic party was even tangentially mentioned and you'll see that most of us evil liberals are quite clear about how the democrats suck or about how liberal dogma is just that. Hell, just scroll up four or five posts and you'll see where I pointed out the obvious weakness in that liberal quip that alanon thought was so clever.

Jay, I largely agree with what you just wrote - but in focussing on Clinton's perjury, I think you miss the main issues here. I don't think anybody who labels Clinton a crook pins their argument on the fact that he lied about having sex with his intern, and although GW's lies about why we went to war probably constitute his single greatest immoral act, I don't think I or anyone else asserted that they constituted a crime under criminal law. I say GW is a crook because it appears pretty clear that he engaged in insider trading, fraud, bid-fixing, etc. etc. etc. Of course, I'd have to admit that he has not been indicted -- just as nobody connected with Clinton was ever indicted for Whitewater. In my own opinion, though, it is pretty clear that Bush did those things and they have not been investigated, whereas Clinton was heavily investigated and it appears pretty clear the Whitewater scandal was mostly trumped up. Just as you may think it is morally superior to be able to distort the truth successfully as opposed to not being able to do so (I guess that is what you said), you might say that Bush is a better criminal if he commits serious crimes and gets away with them, whereas Clinton committed the pettiest of crimes possible and did not get away with it.

Sorry Slop. I misunderstood. You ask a good question that is closely related to Chuck's initial queery: what do folks think about deliberately trying to make a climb bold (i.e. scary)?

I like clever quips, too, nonanon, but I don't think one can compare a visit to the vice president's residence with a night in the Lincoln Bedroom. If that guy had a regular radio show where he told his listener's: "listen up, folks, this is the REAL news of what is happening in Washington - and particularly if it was heard on hundreds of popular radio stations nationwide - I'd say he might be that liberal equivalent that I asked Gunt about.

I didn't make that assertion, but I am not aware of a "liberal" website or talkshow host that purports to disseminate "news" and is even remotely equivalent to the Drudge Report or Rush Limbaugh in its link with mainstream media and its propensity to lie, distort, and publish unfounded rumours. There may be one - can you point me to it? I promise I won't cut and paste their lines onto this bulletin board.

I'm with you, Josh and Bug. Anybody who actually thinks Clinton was dishorable and a criminal and GWBush is neither must be deliberately ignoring the obvious or they are a complete idiot. Check out GW's history of insider trading and manipulating real estate deals in Texas and look at all the connections between his admin and the oil companies and enron and the contractors for rebuilding Iraq. None of that has seen any organized investigation like Whitewater, where the investigations went on for years and years and very little of the allegations turned out to be accurate - or at least nobody could find enough evidence to bring any indictments. I'm not saying that Clinton wasn't a crook, but can anybody really say that Clinton was a crook and GW Bush is not? C'mon. Also, anybody who cites the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh as an information resource must also be ignoring the obvious - that these guys' mission is to make up lies and amplify unfounded rumor and otherwise spread misinformation that is damaging to the evil liberals. You may like their arguments or think they raise provocative issues, but to cite them as a primary source of believeable information shows only that you don't really want accurate information about liberals or liberal policies.

Slop, I more or less agree with Pope on this boldness thing. It is not nearly as bold to lead that 30 foot runout after you have preinspected/rehearsed/cleaned and bolted the pitch on rappel. Whether you want public badass recognition or just your own sense of accomplishment at having been truly bold, you really gotta do it from ground up. You can only proclaim yourself partly bold if you made the redpoint after rehearsing or preinspecting a climb. As to the liability question, I am aware of nobody who has ever been even named in such a suit, let alone successfully sued for wrongful bolt placement. Thus far, I think, it has been assumed that rock climbing is so clearly and obviously dangerous that anybody who starts up a climb has assumed responsibility for taking that risk. The only contrary case that I remember is the Black Diamond harness nearly 20 years ago. There may have been one or two others, but even in the case of accidents on guided climbs I don't think it is easy to hold the guide service, whose job it is to safeguard their clients, responsible. Lets hope this doesn't change, because otherwise we'll all be lining up to sue each other every time there is an accident - and we'll be suing not only the first ascent party, but the Forest Service who didn't keep us from going there in the first place, our belayer who should have hopped as he caught us, and the party in front of us who recommened we skip that troublesome clip or who should have warned us about that loose block. We'd then have to purchase liability insurance and be prepared to show "proof of insurance" to the climbing ranger in order to go climbing.

Trask: we cannot view IP address in all forums. I could not view chirp's IP address this morning and I WAS only guessing, using the same information that is available to you. Or maybe not -- are you chirp?

If Dwayner wanted to use a single identity - his name - he could do so. I'm not saying anybody has to use their real name around here, but if they elect not to do so and somebody gets confused about who they are, it is their own doing. I thought I made it clear that I was only guessing about chirp's identity when I wrote "if I'm not mistaken." Perhaps I wasn't so clear.

Yeah, and count me out on the Sitkum, too. I've skied it twice, and thought it was just fine both times. I'll probably do it again some time, but I won't admit it. JoshK is right. Only losers go that way.

I have no "special" knowledge of Chirp's identity, so I may well have been wrong. But from this and other posts, I concluded that to be who he is, and if I was right, I think it is somewhat silly to pretend he is some anonymous admirer. Your post promted me to check his profile, though, and i found he links himself to a personal website so maybe he is a real person apart from Dwayner. Either way, it wouldn't be the first time somebody did such things with an avatar, (using a false identity to pretend to be a different character from their other identitiy and talking to or about themself, or mis-identifying somebody and mistakenly accuse them of using this "ploy"). If anybody thinks this is a problem, they of course always have the option of logging on with their real name. Is there something about my moderator status that means I should not speculate about chirp's identity?

Pope is correct that you can not always (I' can't) correctly read a pitch while on a top rope and you can't completely tell where the subsequent leader is going to want/need pro, but I think that on multipitch climbs, just as many or more mistakes will be made by developeing from the ground up. They'll be different types of "mistakes," though: unnecessary hanging belays, half-pitches heading in the wrong direction only to force an awkward traverse to get to the next pitch, bolts placed where there was a good stance and the climbing looked intimidating immediately above but turns out to be easy, or bolts placed next to a crack which was filled with filth and invisible to the first ascent party, etc. As to the bolt ladder, it is not a choice of putting the bolts so close together that you can lock off on one and reach the next or putting them so far apart that you have to make the moves. For an example of this, try a Layton Kor bolt ladder some time. If subsequent parties aren't using those stupid stiffy dogbone draws, they can stand in their slings and use tension if needed as they stand up and reach a bolt that may be over 6 feet overhead - much too high to reach from being "locked off."

If I'm not mistaken, Al, he just did - in the post immediately above yours.

Bummer. When I stopped in the ranger station at Verlot last Spring, the woman there said they had been having a lot of trouble with this kind of stuff. I guess it is really pretty hard to catch these guys - it seems to us like it happens al the time, but if Ranger Joe spends an entire shift (or two) hiding in the bushes to watch a particular put-in or trailhead and he catches nobody, he's likely to conlude he's wasting his time when he could be writing tickets for failing ot have a trail park pass or helping somebody who has had a problem with racoons raiding their campsite or something - you know, regular ranger-type stuff. That is the way it works -- stakeouts are boring and there is plenty else to do. If a state senator gets their car broken into, we may see some action....

Fleb, I don't know if you are 100% earnest in your post, but I should tell you that I agree: I'm not interested in waging a personal campaign against Dwayner. I didn't want him to continue stirring up animosity and stiffling conversation on this website, and I may feel the need to respond if Pope or somebody else feels the need to attack me or complain about how the site is managed with respect to this issue. Dwayner HAS a point and I retain significant respect for him; I don't wish to make him into some kind of laughing stock or pariah. (The same goes for Pope.)

What the hell were you doing crossing the street with a walk signal? Sheesh. That's definitely not in the Boston Driver's Manual.

Of course the subsequent parties will have a different experience than the party who installs a route on rappel. "Honorable" is an odd term here, but what I meant was that it seems more than a little contrived for somebody to hang on a rappel line and put a bolt in what amounts to an unnatural place just to be sure that subsequent parties cannot cheat a move. If you put a bolt at knee level when you could just as easily put it at arm's reach overhead, just about everybody who follows is going to stand there wondering "why did he put that bolt at knee level?" and very few of them are going to thank you because you allowed or forced them to make the move on their own. It is "dishonorable" in the respect that you are to a certain extent coercing them into experiencing something that wouldn't be there if you had just put the bolt in what almost everybody woud think was the sensible location, and unless you are wanting them to stand there and curse you, you must be hoping that they will overlook what you did to them. You may think it will make your route more exciting to put the bolt at knee-height, but it is hard for me to understand how that could be said to be "honorable." If you want to leave a legacy that will be exciting and challenging, the honorable thing to do would be to put fewer bolts in the rock in the first place - and leave more natural excitement and challenge in the route in a more "natural" manner. The ground-up first ascent may be thought more honorable if you emphasize the element of boldness that is often associated with the traditional use of the word, "honor" (think knights and stuff). However, the word also carries a very strong element of doing the right thing. If you are seeking to do the right thing by future climbers, it may well be more honorable to carefully craft a climb after preinspecting it and carefully planning every bolt placement. For the most part, you can much better do this if you are rap bolting. If you are seeking to do the right thing by the rock in that your goal is not to despoil it with unnecessary bolts, the question of whether you rap-bolted it or placed your bolts on lead seems kind of unimportant. Six bolts is six bolts and the number of bolts is more likely to increase to sixteen when you are using a power drill as opposed to a hand drill, rather than when you switch from ground-up to top-down ethics. Indeed, most of us would be quicker to resort to the use of a bolt ladder if drilling on the lead, and recently I felt compelled to place a bolt next to what turned out to be a crack when I was leading and wasn't able to garden away the moss sufficiently to find the nut placement. Thus, we may well opt for fewer bolts if we rap-bolt (again, this is assuming we're using the same drilling technology; it is also assuming that our goal is to use as few bolts as possible -- and many who rap bolt new climbs do not have this goal very hign on their list of priorities). I'm not quite sure how this relates to Fern's discussion of climbing the rock "on its' own terms."

Erik and Glasgow- There is really quite a difference between using helicopters to access and area and using them for repeated ski runs. True, a helicopter is a helicopter, and there may be a measure of some kind of self-indulgence on the part of those who use a helicopter to get somewhere and would prefer not to hear others riding back and forth all day long, but that does not mean in my view that those who like to ski tour should either be willing to walk from the highway or accept that the wilderness is to be overrun with helicopter traffic. IF they were saying that they don't want people to be able to go helicopter skiing, that would be one thing. It is quite another to say that, now that 90% or whatever of the alpine areas south of Prince George are already helicopter served, they'd like to have a different rule for the remaining 10%. It is in some ways analogous to those who enjoy some bolt-protected climbing but don't want sport climbing to take over everywhere.

Just to question the semantics, here, Slopthrop, let me ask you how it would be "more honorable" to deliberately make a move unaidable. It certainly changes the character of the climb, but if the guy who puts up the route is doing it on a toprope, it is in a way DIShonorable to put the bolt where those who follow will not have the benefit of close protection at the crux move in that he is forcing them to have an experience and view the climb in a way that is very different from that which he (or she) experienced it when they did it. Of course, it may make the move more exciting, and this could translate to making the climb more fun; it may also prevent someone from doing the route and claiming to have climbed it free when they did not do so, but is that a measure of "honorability" on the route-setter's part or on the part of that person who lies about what they did later?

Good questions for discussion, AlPine, but I don't think you'll get anything like definitive or even completely sensible answers because there are just too many variables and it is largely a matter of personal style - both yours and those who may follow you. As to the placement of a bolt at a crux move, it depends not only on the fall potential at that particular spot but also on what the prevailing ethic is at that particular crag, how the bolt placement will affect rope drag, and all kinds of other factors. Is the move in question one where timid movement will make it more difficult - say a dyno-to-transition-hold followed by a bucket? (This might suggest to you it is more or less desireable to deliberately make it un-aidable, but at least you should think about this.) All other things being equal, I'd generally agree with Snoboy so I'd say it is contrived to go out of your way to place a pro bolt below where most climbers would want it just to make the move scarier or "uncheatable." If you are trying to minimize the number of bolts and thus decide not to put a bolt at every hard move, that would in my mind not be such a contrivance. As to the bolt ladder, my answer is largely the same. I don't think there is any magic number like if the climbing would be two numeric or letter grades harder it is not OK but if it would be three grades more difficult than the rest of the climb it is "acceptable." It depends on where you are contemplating this, what other climbs are nearby, whether the climbing area has been heavily bolted already and other factors. Of course, some of these factors might cut both ways: for example, if the area has been heavily bolted already one might argue that an additional bolt ladder will hurt nothing but they might just as well argue that the place should be protected from further abuse because it has already been overdone. No matter what else you say about the matter, bolt ladders are ugly and I'd go to great lengths to avoid installing one.

I'd be inclined to think Mr. Foster has a point. The interior ranges are all pretty heavily served by helicopter skiing and it is difficult to go for any kind of extended ski trip there without encountering or at least hearing helicopters, as is also the case in the more southerly part of the Coast Range or in the area closer to Bella Coola. I'd be for keeping one part of the range more oriented toward touring.

Is that why you, like Dwayner, have been completely unwilling to engage in an honest and direct discussion of an issue without resorting to put-downs, hyperbole, and diverson? We were talking about how you believe that Dwayner was shut down because of his position on the bolting issue, rather than how he was expressing himself. Now you are either (1) putting me down by saying I don't know how to engage in logical discourse, (2) extending your argument to how all attorney's manipulate the truth, or (3) changing the subject completely (perhaps all three). I think I may be through with this discussion because, as our hero Trask noted yesterday, it is a waste of time to engage in pointless debate on this website.

I take it that Pentti Leppanen & Duncan Watson work in that Lands office, and have some role in deciding whether to grant a permit. Do you know anything else about the status of this matter, what might be involved in the permit process, or who is in support of/against it?