mattp

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?

If your buddy is worried about being labeled an American, DP is right he can masquerade as Canadian. Personally, I have never found that I was mistreated for my citizenship anywhere in the world: outside of the U.S., people seem much more able to distinguish between someone's government and the individual. (You probably won't even get any harassment even if you had a small American flag or a patch that said "NewYork" on your backpack in Paris, but can you imagine traveling around this country with a turban on your head or something that identifies you as an Iranian?) If your buddy makes a spectacle or nuisance of himself somewhere, he is likely to be chastized for being an obnoxious American. If not, I doubt he'll have much trouble with it.

I agree with David Parker that travelling in a rental car is a better way to go, but backpacking/hostelling can be fun too. He'll meet lots of other people doing the same thing and he will find out from them that there is a really cool beach somewhere or that the good smoke is available at such and such a coffee house or whatever. RBW is right - most people travelling this way quickly find out that they have brought too much luggage and they start leaving things behind as quickly as they can. RBW is also right that using a phrase-book will help your buddy meet and get help from locals, whether it is at the bakery, the train station or in a hotel. A cultural guide will also help inform him that, in Greece, waving good-bye the way we do actually means something quite different - and it is insulting - or that French people will not like it if he shouts accross a store to his buddy that he forgot to get the cheese whiz. As to hotels, he may find that a cheap hotel that caters to backpack travellers will cost little or no more than a hostel - and they usually don't have stupid rules about bedtime and alcohol and stuff like that.

Pope- You know full well the difference: Sphinx and his equals have not dominated and destroyed every single thread that ever had anything even tangentially to do with the bolting issue for three years. You also know that at least one of "Sphinx equals" has been shut down recently. To be sure, there are a lot of double standards and contradictions about how this board is operated -- but that is not one of them. And, by the way, I think you are right that it was the former. Dwayner was banned for spraying "his" obnoxious banter - not for spraying somebody else's. Also, by the way, I think you completely miss the boat in one small bit of your argument here: in carrying on like an idiot, Dwayner did not intellectually intimidate anybody. To do so, he would have had to discuss real issues in much more of an honest and clearly thought-out manner.

If he's into cities, he'll want to spend time in Paris and Amsterdam. If you want to see art and night life and stuff like that, these are MUST DO. If he wants to see countryside, the south of France is probably the most pleasant place I have ever traveled and if he is a rock climber, tell him to head for the Verdon Gorge: it is ABSOLUTELY MUST DO and he'll be able to pick up a partner within a couple hours of arrival there. And don't forget about Eurodisney. Is he going to be "backpacking" or renting a car or what?

I don't think that was my post. Thanks for the credit, though.

Lets hope he's right. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if the evil media found it more profitable to stress stories about bombings and assassinations than to discuss progress toward a new sewer system or PTA meetings and improvements to the school system. Don't we see the same kind of coverage here in Seattle?

Pope has no interest in logic or even in presenting his case. Here, as in the bolting threads, he seeks only to grandstand and cause trouble. Pope knows full well that Dwayner was not banned for his position on the issue but that he was banned for refusing to stop spraying his obnoxious banter -- and that he refused to give it a rest for even one day. Pope proclaims that we are entering the Dark Ages because he fears that he may not be allowed to carry on like a clown-bully in the bolting threads. Rather than the Dark Ages, I'd say we may enter the Renaissance if all of the sudden we might be able to look at things in perspective instead of resorting to demagoguery. Who knows, if he elects to participate in some actual discussion of the issue instead of simply recycling the same two or three clever insults for three years, Pope might even find that he can express himself in an artful manner.

Trask, you're not going to get all thoughtful on us and suggest that pointless posts on cc.com are a waste of time, are you???

WTO or MardisGras or the danger of wandering around in the Cenrtral District on Saturday night would be examples of why I should't leave my door unlocked at night or leave my car running in front of the store? I don't think so.

Yes, veggie, I am sure he CAN speak for himself and he probably will. But the notion that Seattle is not such a safe place was brought up in support for his argument that he needs a gun to protect himself in this rough and dirty city of ours. We've talked about the home invasion thing before, and probably will argue about it some more, but we've also been talking about why someone might need to carry their gun around outside of their home. I'd make a similar argument about walking around in the Central District though it is not quite so clear, perhaps, that the gun might not be useful for protection in that situation as when we talk about WTO or MardisGras. But if you went to one of those dangerous corners at midnight on a saturday and pulled out a gun after being approached or accosted by some hoodlum, I bet your chances of survival just dropped considerably.

In a related vein, I'd point out that I think gregw is not thinking clearly if he was suggesting that the guy who was killed during the Mardis Gras "riot" would have been well-advised to protect himself with a gun. I would guess that, had he pulled out a gun to protect himself, he might well have been shot by the police. The same fate might have befallen any shopkeeper who stood in front of his storefront and started firing on vandals during WTO (I can't think of any other defensive use that one might have made of their handgun during WTO, unless perhaps it would have been firing back at the police after being pelted with rubber bullets or struck with a billyclub, so I guess this is what he was thinking of). Speculation and reference to various remote scenarios may well be useful in a discussion like this one but I'm not sure these "examples" are proving their intended points.

I think you folks may be overestimating the danger of the Central District. Yes, if you walk past one or two corners in the area you may be asking for trouble, but the prior point about how this is Seattle we are talking about still applies. If you want to flirt with danger, try your midnight walk in certain parts of Detroit.

The view of Mount Shuksan from the ski area tarns is probably one of the most famous mountain images around and perhaps more widely used for commercial purposes than Mount Rainier. When it is not identified as Mount Shuksan, but for example when I have seen it on gas station calendars, sugar packets, and even in the backgroud of a sunday comic, this view of Mount Shuksan is more often than not pictured backwards. I even have a postcard that is printed backwards. I am guessing there is some graphic arts or marketing principal that favors having the major lines in an image slanting upwars from left to right.

Carolyn- Sorry to hear that. Back pain sucks! Is there an acupuncture school nearby? Even a beginning acupuncture student can often provide great (temporary) releaf from acute back problems - and that may allow things to settle down quite a bit.

Only if it started engaging in vicious personal attack -- but then again, I guess that is what drug-crazed axe weilders do, eh?