mattp

Yeah. Toyota's suck. I bought one that was totalled before I bought it, and I totalled it once more. The damn thing drove like nothing had ever happened.

Fern, I am not arguing with you, but I'm kind of interested in what would give the guy "background credibility." Like you (I'm only guessing what you think), I found some smug amusement in thinking that the guy must be rather egocentric to think that people are going to pay him to put up sport routes. Also like you (again I'm only guessing), I would be surprised if he got much in donations from this solicitation -- but then again people get lots of money from all kinds of idiotic inernet scams that are probably far less trustworthy than his solicitation. But what of this "credibility?" Would if affect your judgment if he had a link with Kevin McLane or Scott Flavelle -- and why? What if this "lost crag" or whatever it is turns out to be lauded as the best sport crag in BC? In reflecting on my own experience, I wonder why our money jar in Jim Nelson's shop was all that different. Yes, Dave had been an author of a Washington climbing guidebook, but his name was not on the jar. Was it different because the jar was on the counter in a shop operated by someone who had credibility as a guidebook author himself? Or were we just being egocentric idiots to think that someone might want to donate to what we saw as a worthy project? Was it crucial that we were not only putting up new routes but also maintaining old ones?

Those guys may be a little self-indulgent if they expect unknown climbers to support their drilling activities, but putting up or maintaining bolt-intensive routes is very expensive. If you use what I consider to be decent hardware for the belay stations, whether a pair of hangers with chains attached to them with screw links, or pre-made belay stations from Fixe, it costs $12.00-15.00 for a belay station. For pro, I like powder-coated bolt hangers, and each stainless steel bolt with hanger costs over $3.00. A few years ago somebody suggested putting a "donations" jar in Jim Nelson's shop when Dave Whitelaw and I put up an 8 pitch route and started replacing old bolts on many of the classic older routes in Darrington. We were pleased that somebody thought well enough of what we were doing to suggest that and over the next few months we collected a couple hundred dollars. I don't expect other people to pay for my new route, but I have probably spent over 25 days and at least a couple hundred dollars doing road and trail work on existing roads and trails and replacing pre-existing hardware that was installed by somebody, 25 years ago, who isn't coming back to maintain their climb. I have also been given a lot of bolt hangers strictly for this maintenance work, and for that I am grateful. If somebody set out to replace all those chain-link hangers at Little Si, I bet there would be lots of folks willing to donate. I bet that, withoiut some kind of sponsorship (donations), nobody will ever set out to improve things there.

I think cavey and Erik said it all on page 1: some people are more sensitive to giardia or other water-borne nastiness than others but, for most of us, if you don't get your water from immediately downstream of some popular camping area or from the Duwamish river, you probably won't get sick. I have never carried a water filter, I don't use iodine, and I am not all that careful about my water sources. In Asia I got giardia. In North America I have only once gotten sick from bad water - and it was when I got water from a faucet at a gas station.

I'll say. I have twice drilled a hole for which I did not have a bolt, and then gone back several few months later to install the bolt. These were both on rock that was less than vertical, so the holes pointed upward. With rain washing bits of debris down the cliff, the holes had become obscurred so that, on each occasion, I had difficulty locating the hole even though I was standing on exactly the same footholds from which I drilled it!

Squire Creek Wall has just about everything a big hunk of granite has to offer except straight-forward and well-protected climbing. You gotta cross the world's biggest landslide, ford the creek or use a 1/4" cable as a zip line, crawl through the brush, solo up wet slabs and climb hand over hand up old pieces of tat just to get to the wall -- and that is the best way I have found to get there, after four visits. Once you get on the rock, the climbing is some of the best that Darrington has to offer, but there are probably no more than a dozen 3/8" bolts with decent hangers on them in the entire place (there are lots of 1/4" and smaller bolts, and most do not have hangers; there are also a bunch of home-made hangers and just plain weirdness). Also, because it doesn't get much traffic, you have to dig grass out of the cracks before you can place gear in them, and there are more than the usual number of expanding flakes. Not only is there no easy approach, but there is also no easy "walk off" and nothing that modern climbers would describe as an established rappel route. The wall is very big and complex; routefinding is made more challenging by the fact from no place on it can you see all the way to the top and bottom at the same time. What I believe to be the easiest route on the main wall involves at least 16 pitches of climbing, none easier than 5.8, and this reaches a point that is still several hundred feet below the top. The wall is also geologically active; on all four visits I have made to the area, these being in the months of September, December, March and June, I have seen massive rockfall. It is extremely beautiful, though, and I'd be keen to head back up there again some time this Fall.

"Not Fred Beckey's" goes up the main wall, just right of the middle of this picture. 5.10b. 16 pitches+. The wall has a lot of great climbing on it, but be prepared for adventure. I'm not kidding.

According to gripped.com the climbs in the area are up to 20 pitches. Ray's picture showed "Airport Wall," and I've been told that the obvious rib/arete right up the middle of the thing is a bolted 5.10 face climb (that's "slab" for you sport climbers, but it's steep enough that I don't think the hard part will involve the type of smear and palm tactics you'd employ at Static Point).

We've argued the gun control issue before, Greg, and I think you are right when you say that most of us folks who are in support of gun control are not going to believe your NRA-sponsored "facts." However, I bet you would very likely similarly reject any study that showed that there was serious risk associated with keeping guns in one's home, too. This is one of those issues where our society is just about as polarized as we are on, say, abortion. In the context of the question of whether or not there is a liberal bias to the news media, can you or the NRA provide a statistic that shows that the purported bias against guns is anything more than the sensationalism or some other kind of market-driven slant that all of us agree exists in the news?

Nunberg may be a liberal but, on that question as to whether the media disproportionately labels "conservatives" in an effort to make their liberal counterparts appear more mainstream, he at least made an effort to back up his assertion with some kind of analysis of actual fact, whereas all Goldberg could offer was an unsubstantiated assertion. When questioned about this, Golberg said "I didn't want the book to be written from a social scientist point of view." In other words, he doesn't think that he should have had to have any actual data to back up his point.

One of Goldberg's primary examples of the libera bias in the news - the accusation that in mainstream news media they always identify conservatives as "conservatives" but fail to identify liberals as "liberals" has apparently proven dead wrong. In 2002 a guy named Geoffrey Nunberg undertook to study this question and found that, if anything, the opposite is closer to being true (the "liberal" media identify liberal experts, polititicians, and organizations as "liberal" in situations where they tend not to identy their conservative counterparts as "conservative").

Not only did our press completely ignore the news from BBC - at the time of the President's Stae of the Union speech that the uranium purchase thing was bogus but, about six weeks ago, President Bush said that we went to war in Iraq because "we gave him [saddam] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." I don't believe a single reporter asked for clarification of this statement that was clearly, at best, "revisionist history." I don't think any commentator on NPR, in the New York Times, or anywhere else made much mention of it either, even though Bush made this statement at a time when the Democrats were jumping up and down about how he had lied in the State of the Union Speech. That's the liberal media for you - slanting the news to the left and telling us what to think.

Cluck - You said you were looking for short grade I climbs, but then you cited Sahale and Shuksan as examples of what you are looking for. In my book, these are both pretty big hikes and much more than a "short grade I." If a big hike with a glacier and an easy rock summit is what you are looking for, you might look at Silver Star Mountain, Silver Star Glacier. At this time of year, the campsite below Burgundy Col may be without water, so it'd probably be a good call to head in via Silver Star Creek. Whitehorse and Sloan Peak are also good candidates.

I agree with ChucK and Alex that the method of racking gear is not critical. I climb with partners who use a variety of methods and combinations of short or long shoulder slings, double slings, or racking everything on their harness. I find it easy to accommodate their preferences and I can lead just fine with no shoulder rack, one or two -- the only thing that really bugs me is when I am climbing with someone who gets impatient when I want to deviate from their "system." I bet most parties lose a lot more time screwing around placing and moving a nest of anchors and equalizing everything or insisting upon "directionals" on 5.2 terrain or whatever, and then breaking down the resulting convolutions, than they do with the exchange of gear.

Thinker, I think that in noting that the gyms are all set up for a static belay, you have hit on to what may be an indication that the high performance lobby may be overemphasizing the value of letting let rope out and providing a dynamic catch. RuMR was hurt by a "short catch" so I'm not saying there is no usefulness in this technique, but my guess is that the insurance people or the gym owner's association or somebody studied the matter and concluded that benefits of a fail-safe static system outweigh the dangers of the short catch or the static belay (and they even use static ropes, do they not?). Of course, if you ARE a high performance climber, and if you ARE experienced at catching real falls, and if you DO have good judgment, the dynamic catch may well be a good idea - ON OVERHANGS.

Eden, I've got no problem with the debate over the use of a gris gris. I thought it silly that Necro and RuMR were arguing about whether RuMR had made an overly broad, and therefore arrogant, statement. As to the gris gris, I gotta say that I find them clumsy to use but that is only because I am an old guy who has barely figured out what to do with quickdraws and I am always suspicous of a gadget with moving parts and stuff...on the other hand, I laugh at kids these days who don't know how to belay with an ATC or a hip belay, but I bet that most of the time most belayers are probably more effective using the gris gris.

Fairweather, you'll find that Brock is a whiner, too, but I think that he paints a picture that is more compelling than that painted by Goldberg, if for no other reason than the extensive detail and long history he provides.

RuMR, Perhaps it is the suggestion that belayed climbing with a gris gris is completely safe, when all of us know that "accidents do happen." But don't sweat it. I'll climb with you even if you insist on feeding out the rope rather than reeling it in -- as long as we're on overhanging terrain.

I'm with you, Lummox. But in Sport Climbing, in particular, many are apt to say that if you aren't falling you aren't trying.

Kitten, I think you are correct that "climbing is a must in the climbing community." Climbing is kind of a disease; those of us who take to it tend to get addicted and we are likely to become hostile if kept in a cage without an opportunity to climb. I have destroyed prior relationships over this selfish and self-indulgent habit and now am married to a woman who feels neglected at times, but who seems to understand that it is an important part of who I am -- does that make me a dirtbag?

Read the discussion, Flash. Attitude was responding to where I wrote: I do not question the "laws of physics." I question the application of those laws.

Excuse me for being so brash as to question your application of a numeric formula, Attitude, but I thought this was supposed to be a discussion of the pros and cons of the use a certain technique and you did in fact state that "on a vertical face, it takes an object about 0.6 sec to fall 10 ft" as if this were some inarguable and invariable fact. Please also excuse me for raising the same kind of counter-argument to your statement that reeling in the rope increases the force on the piece of gear that is going to hold the fall: I think that a shorter fall may well result in lower forces being applied, and the belayer who is watching the fall while they reel in the rope will indeed have locked off (and hence stopped reeling in) at the moment of the catch -- it is a natural reaction. I don't purport to know everything about the situation and I have not studied the matter in any great deapth. However, if you are belaying me, I want you to be ready to try to reel it in.

I used to know someone that used a ratty old windbreaker, a garbage bag, and an umbrella. He called it "Scottish goretex." And he did just fine.

Don't worry Greg. I don't think anybody expects you to have all the facts and figures stored in your head and, even if you did, a single study or even ten different studies would probably not completely answer the question.