mattp

I have had two pairs of 8.5 Edelweiss Sharp ropes and I will not buy another pair of them. The sheath has slipped more than any rope I have owned in 40 years' climbing and they are too flexible for my taste - causing knotting and clusterfk more than a stiffer rope. In addition, I see signs of wear on these ropes much faster than other ropes in the same category (although I realize that visible wear may not exactly be an indicator of loss of strength but it just makes me uncomfortable). For my purposes, I think the prior Edelweiss Stratos was much more durable and a better rope, albeit .5 mm thicker and a little heavier. I believe the Sharps are rated to hold a fall over an edge, and I think the Sharp's are a good rope if you are looking for light weight and strength and value these over other aspects of their performance. I don't know the ropes you've listed, but I would say that the one completely crap rope I have owned was a Beal (the rope was soft and tied in knots all the time and the sheath showed major wear in less than five days' mountaineering and ice climbing with no falls). I've never had a Petzl rope, but Mammut ropes have generally been good and I used to think Edelweiss was a good brand and it probably still is but I was not happy with the 8.5 mm Sharp (perhaps I bought a pair of rope that werne't made for what I do and it was simply a mismatch).

Otto: I thought long and hard about this project for fifteen years. I have climbed that way at least 20 times without incident but the fact is that I have found it scary myself and nearly all parties who have not rehearsed those pitches have found them frightening. This includes climbers who climbed 5.11 rock to get to that point. I held off on this for a long time for what I would guess is exactly the concern that you must feel. After a long deliberation my buddy and I decided that these few bolts would add more than they would detract. To have climbs that were relatively comfortable in terms of protection all of the sudden become scary and turn back the vast majority of parties two pitches short of the top just for the lack of literally two protection bolts on 5.7 rock did not make sense to me and the addition of two chain belays for two pitches of climbing did not seem excessive. Pilchuck: If you are headed up there with Smedley I'd like to go with you.

I often go the way that AlpineDave describes but it is a little messy getting from that tree on the Blueberry Terrace over to the Westward Ho route. One nice thing is that it avoids the equally messy traversing back to the base of the West Buttress or Dark Rhythm from where the rap routes I describe empty out. If you know where to go, traversing back around is simple. After Subaru visited the area there was a nice path around the base. If you don't, it can be a bit of a nuisance. There is a nice easy scramble from near the base of Rainman to the base of DarkRhythm, but it is not completely obvious. Alternatively, if you drop to the base of the apron slabs beneath the wall directly below Rainman rather than being tempted to stay high further toward where you want to go it is fairly easy to walk back around, with about a 30 foot climb back up just as you near the sidewalk. You may not find the best way your first time up there. If climbing Dark Rhythm or the West Buttress and planning to descend this way, leave packs at the bivy site off to the left of the granite sidewalk, 3/4 of the way up.

Trip: Exfoliation Dome - Blueberry Date: 9/13/2009 Trip Report: On Sunday, my buddy Mark and I went up the Blueberry route and added two pro bolts and two belay stations to the exit pitches above the west north end of the Blueberry Terrace. These are now going to be far more enjoyable for most parties than they used to be. To go to the summit from Blueberry Terrace, do not head up the corners as shown in Smoot's book and the older Brooks/Whitelaw guide or you will end up climbing bushes and loose blocks and likely fighting your way through a thicket when you could be on clean slab and then a short heather slope. Walk north along the Blueberry Terrace from any of the routes that end there to find the stainless steel chain at the top of Jacob's Ladder (I often take a tip-toe traverse maybe 20 feet above the lowest part of the terrace and bypass the JL anchor). From the chain, head up and left about a half rope length, with some blocky scrambling. Belay from the highest point easily scrambled to -- a comfy ledge with a short 3/4" crack just below your feet and a bush reachable above. A bolt is visible 20 feet up. Climb up a seam, pass the bolt, move around a bush and then left and up and back right to a belay. This is a 30m pitch but stop at the chain. For the second pitch, climb up a short crack and blocks, then up and left past a bolt into a vertical crack, soon heading left under a diagonal overhang and then up again on slab and corners to the 2nd belay. 50m. Climb over a rock hump 15 feet up and left of the belay and down a corner system into the bowl above 23rd Psalm; leave the rope here, and walk to the summit and back or else take the rope to the top and descend the W. Slabs rappel route. We met some climbers who were using my description of a now defunct combination of Dark Rhythm and West Buttress rappel route. From the Terrace it is now easier to take the old Chris Christenson rappel route from a heap of slings on a Pine at mid length or the Jacob's Ladder rappel route. I prefer the Jacob's Laddder rap route but the lower terrace is reached with one less rappel via the CC route. Christenson's rap route is very steep and since it does not even loosely follow a climb it would pose quite a problem if you got a rope stuck but the raps are pretty clean (after the start of the first one where you can easily kick a rock on your buddy) and I have never heard of anybody having a problem. It could also use some new bolts and chains at the stations.

I did that route in the Winter, Josh, and it was an excellent climb. I'd be curious to learn how those ramps on the SE face are without snow on them.

I'm not entirely clear on this ABC business but when you use a munter hitch to belay a follower or to lower somebody, with the rope in and out of the hitch coming from the same direction, you don't get the twisting that you do if the feed and load come from different directions. For lowering somebody, in particular, the munter is really more foolproof than an ATC.

You follow the overgrown logging spur up from the road for 15 minutes or so to where it ends up very close to the creek and there is a sharp turn to the right, away from the creek. Follow this extension away from the creek for a couple hundred yards, and then turn left. It soon travels fairly close to the creek for a bit before a switchback heads uphill and rightward, well before you see any sign of the wall, and then you cut back left and it continues to climb for a bit through relatively open woods before leveling out and exiting onto the boulders again quite close to the creek. For most of the way you neither hear nor see the creek.

Let's see some of you folks at OR tonight!

I rarely ever made it to the start of Dreamer in anything much less than an hour and a half when we could drive to the end of the road. You must be running, TurnOne. Dreamer and Safe Sex are good climbs, and the two central pitches of Dreamer area as good as any two 5.9 pitches around here whlie that corner pitch on Safe Sex is also fantastic, but they are not "easy" approaches. Blueberry is easier to get to by a large measure and well worth it. Jacob's Ladder West Buttress routes The routes get generally steeper and harder and more varied from right to left. Westward Ho (not shown in the picture below) is pure slab climbing. West Buttress is slab and crack. Dark Rhythym has some face climbing mixed in. Rainman and Jacob's Ladder have the odd bits of real crack climbing and Jacob's Ladder has the most edging.

I went in there with another friend yesterday and we got the rope, rack, ice axe and crampons left up at the base of the Sherpa Glacier. Any serious booty hounds are out of luck. We didn't see Bug's cache, though. Another search and retrieval mission is still in order. Pack and camping equipment, right?

I've been up there this time of year and the stream Fox refers to was dry on that occasion. However, 30 minutes below, and below the base of the boulderfield where you exit the woods, is a stream that should be plenty big. The Gunstone memorial trail will be hard to locate if you haven't been up there and a key switchback in the woods in inobvious. It is not a bad approach altogether, and in fact probably easier than getting to Dreamer right now, but be prepared to have to look around a bit.

I intend to go up there and retrieve their stuff some time over the next few weekends. If somebody does so before I do, please post here so I don't waste a trip. If you want to partner for a daytrip to the Sherpa Glacier, let me know. It goes without saying that I'm glad Mark is gonna be OK and I salute these two gents.

Along the lines of what Tvash suggested, you might check whether the weather forecast appears better north or south immediately before your trip. You could make a decent trip out of Mt. Adams and the Goat Rocks area if the weather forecast suggests the south would be better than the north. These will involve a higher rubble-to-rock ratio than the more classic peaks on Dan's list, though.

Yes, the author's conclusions were clear to me as well. However, I don't think this article supports the argument that the entire debate is false. I believe that the medical profession's "entrepreneurial spirit" is an issue just as that same dynamic is a blight in my own profession (the practice of law). But I ALSO believe the private health insurance companies are organized criminals just as our friend Prole has argued here. They have taken my premiums for my entire life and when I need actual health services they don't want to pay. And I'm not talking about cosmetic surgery. I'm talking about treatment that makees the difference between my being able to walk and stand and work for a living and my not being able to do so. And while I'm sure that at least a couple of posters here will argue that the current anti-Obama-care outrage is based on genuine belief, I think there is no doubt that insurance companies are major players in the anti-reform effort. That is no surprise. They make a lot of money with the system as it is now. Unless "healthcare reform" means government mandates with subsidies and no effective standards of care imposed but maybe actual limits to how much they have to pay out, health insurance companies don't want it.

We've had a rat chew a whole slew of hoses under our dishwasher in the last week. Apparently some of our neighbors have been having a problem, too. According to what I have learned on the matter the problem seems to be caused by neighbors on one side who have a compost pile and put kitchen waste in it and neighbors on the other side who have a bird feeder that spills onto the ground. We don't supply the rats with food but they are living in our crawl space because they have handy food nearby and we provide a good shelter for them. I've tried to fence them out but so far have had no success. We've been having this problem since last year. I have trapped and killed a couple of them, and our kitty (RIP) did his part too, but the kills only result in temporary relief. If you kill one rat but still maintain a food supply, his cousins will take up his residence.

Off topic, but in 1977 Willi Unsoeld told me about Big Four in the winter being a classic cascade climb. I would guess somebody may have climbed it before Folsom and Carlstad but maybe not. He probably would have known about their climb. Is it possible that Folsom and Moore climbed routes on the North Face AND the North Ridge? It is not uncommon for climbers to climb multiple routes on the same feature.

I've often pondered sandblasting, but my guess is that the rocks are way harder than the concrete matrix, so you'd blast away the structure long before you made any significant improvement in the roughness of the stone. Maybe one could do some selective sandblasting with steel plates to protect the matrix, but that'd be tedious to say the least. If you figure out the environmentally friendly way to "restore" original texture, maybe the first pitch of Midway could use the same treatment! That thing is slicker than snot.

I don't think it is all that much longer to reach the West Ridge of Pidgeon via the south side of Snowpatch and I believe that parties headed over to camp below the Howsers often go this way as the easier of the two choices but it might add an hour. I am always surprised at how difficult people seem to find the Bug Snowpatch col when there is a little slop over some ice but in such conditions the alternate is probably a little less dangerous for folks who don't have a lot of snow and ice experience although it is not entirely without a bit of mountaineering in that (1) some scree and scrambling is involved where you round the ridge below the standard route on Snowpatch, (2) you'll encounter bits of bare ice that are not flat and crevasses a little higher where you get back on the glacier, and (3) a few more crevasse obstacles as you climb up past the south face of Pidgeon. I was amused to read about someone fallig in up to their armpits on the flats below Pidgeon and Snowpatch -- that is the only place where I have ever fallen in a crevasse and I, too, went in up to my armpits. The view of the south face of Snowpatch from the flats below it is spectacular.

I agree with you there-at least as far as the likely outcome. I heard on Bill Moyer last week that the pharmaceuticals have won an agreement with at least one of the committees involved that no legislation will allow any public program to negotiate drug prices and they also got an agreement to extend some patent periods. In that kind of a "reform" program the insurance companies can't be far behind. What we are likely to get is a massive government subsidy of private business, more consolidation and price setting control handed over to the "free market," more bankruptcies, and less essential services available for those who can't pay through the nose.

To Goatboy's comment I'd add that on the second pitch it is a little "non-intuitive" where you can avoid a 5.9 corner as you approach the belay by stepping out left.

Neither climb is particularly runout on any old school scale but both are slightly serious by modern standards. There is some vaguely run-out climbing that is maybe 5.7 on Orbit but the real runouts are on easier terrain up toward the top. Mary Jane is actually slightly more difficult to protect than Orbit. Both are good climbs.

You are right, Dick, that in at least a couple instances a bolting argument on cc.com has drawn ire or concern or direct intervention from rangers. Here too, however, we've seen them react more strongly to other matters such as when an anti-bolt crusader urged climbers to ignore falcon closures some years back or when some of dem dare adventure climbers wrote about using a machete in the wilderness or somebody else posted about doing something illegal with a law enforcement officer.

Dawg, I’ve talked to lots of land managers about bolting practices and a wide variety of management issues and I have yet to meet one who is really focused on this issue unless they are a climber as well as a land manager. I suppose we could argue whether it is appropriate but climbers asking for road access, bathrooms, and policing represent bigger immediate challenges and such things as our impact on vegetation and wildlife and our interaction with other recreational user groups also tend to draw more attention than bolts. I know: you or others have at times said that bolts are or should be seen as the key to all of these matters because if they took away all the bolts they wouldn’t have all those pesky climbers to worry about. There could be some truth to this but in simple cost/benefit terms I doubt it would pay off from a management perspective for all the rangers in the state to engage in an anti-bolt crusade and, even if it were successful, they’d then have to figure out how to stop drawing hunters and fishermen and mountain bikers…. You have your point, Dawg, but from my perspective John Frieh was right in hinting that the "ultimate" questions at least have something to do with questions of time and place and balance.

I think “the other camp” is a mysnomer here. What is “the other camp?” Is it a bunch of people who advocate indiscriminate bolting of every rock in sight regardless of any rational need for bolts? Do these people exist? To be sure, one could argue that “times have changed” or “I don’t need or want bolts the way YOU GUYS do” but is there an “other camp?” It appears that anybody who doesn’t share the same paradigm as these few posters who identify themselves as the "clean climbing warriors" or whatever is the correct creed must be in “the other camp.” Whether you are a new climber who admits they have insufficient experience to form an informed opinion on these matters, a seasoned old guy who really doesn’t care, a honed athlete who is training for the really hard stuff, or maybe even one of those guys who is actually installing bolts and thinks about whether they are doing right by the Earth or not, you are in “the other camp.” Are thees people in "the same camp?" Really? Off is right. The fundamental structure of these discussions is weird to begin with. Having said that, I see some wisdom in the message from our esteemed friend Bug, too. If bolting or for that matter any other practice employed by our user group becomes visually or geographically dominant it is likely to reach a threshold point where a response from land managers or some other group with an interest in these matters will follow. Thus far, the big reactions have been largely focused on impacts both more visually and geographically prominent than bolts: yes, bolts have been a cause for concern and anybody who has been climbing very long remembers the "fixed anchor ban" or press releases concerning climbers busted for using power drills in Wilderness areas. All of us have participated in discussions like this one dozens of times or more. But on a daily basis the concerns raised by non-climbers at least as often involve parked cars and people, or visual imipacts associated with chalk and rappel slings. The fact that bolts are more permanent than the visual blight caused by washed out approach trails or discarded athletic tape is a reality, but the bottom line in any “response” from land managers or any other group with an interest in these matters is based on the measure of our impact on whatever their concerns may be, and climbing "ethics" is usually relatively low on their list of concerns after visual impact, trash, sanitation, erosion, wildlife management, and user-conflicts. For the most part, our ethical concerns are of most interest to climbers and less of interest to land mangers or conservation groups or other recreational users unless, as in the case of bolts, they see limiting bolts as a way to limit climber numbers and the broader impact that is associated with a popular climb or climbing area. As an example, I'm pretty sure that the land managers in Leavenworth are just as worried about how to handle the climbing traffic on Outer Space as they are Condomorphamine Addiction. In our discussions here on cc.com, however, you might get the impression that Outer Space was a shrine while Condomorphamine was some kind of blight. There may be some basis for this, but to the extent that you think there is a basis that "truth" is of interest to climbers and not to non-climbers.

New Zealand would be a good choice. The Alps are awesome and there are some other interesting things like tramping some of the coastal treks and a cool volcano park on the North Island as well.