willstrickland

quote: Originally posted by CraigA: So, Friday I climbed Hood and was checking out the upper part of Cooper Spur.....to which I said "@%, that's insane." I'm still going to climb it this year, but... Buck-up man, 'cause unless you plan to shuttle back to around to your car, you're gonna be downclimbing that section too...after that climbing up it will seem tame in comparison

When I lived in Utah, I knew of a crag that was similar to the fabled Mill Creek...unknown to about everyone, no guide, few routes but great potential, occasionally a pic would hit the mags and I'd hold my breath hoping the caption didn't give it away. Basically a few hardcore from SLC were the only ones in the know beyond the five or six climbers in my town (of 300) which was as close to "local" for this crag as you get. I;ve seen at least five or six photos of this area in the mags always caption simply "southern Utah". I've told a total of 4 people about this place, 2 boulderers and 2 trad climbers, all good friends and partners. I doubt it would be an issue even if people knew where it was because it's remote, but people used to think that about Indian Creek/Canyonlands/etc too ehh? I'm not giving up the stash and it's bomber granite in the high desert. More of an issue is the fact that there is a rad boulder field at the base of the wall. Yes, as an American it's your land too, but so what, you go find it. I put up some FAs in the Hood Nat Forest last year. I told several people where, what, how to get there, how to avoid the bushwhack we enjoyed. Nobody was much interested...new crags are work! Anyone with an interest, USGS topo, and middle-school level research skills can find this 1-2 pitch basalt wall, with a 15 minute approach and start cleaning, trundling, etc. You can clearly see this thing across the drainage from a prominent hiking trail. I feel no need to develop (i.e. alter the area) it or publicize it...for many reasons, but the biggest being that the it would take a crew of 6 or 10 a whole weekend to clean, trundle, etc and make the place a safe spot to try FAs without pulling a ton of loose rock off. I don't know 6 people in PDX (not saying they aren't here, I just don't know them) who I'd trust to put up good thoughtful routes, on gear, from the ground up. I know of two areas in Utah awaiting first ascents. I don't say awaiting "development", because I don't crave development. It brings people and all their baggage...trash, pets, cars. Sometimes just going in to try some lines, with no idea of how hard it will be, and leaving nothing beyond a rap sling or two is the way to go. No trails, no parking hassles, no garbage. Also, no squeeze jobs, or routes for the sake of number of routes. I see crappy routes all over because someone felt the need to establish more climbs beyond the good stuff to accomodate the increase in numbers of climbers. These two areas are also remote and since I don't know the ownership status of the land in either case, I'm definitely not sending anyone in there (and because I haven't gotten the pick of the stash yet). For me the reasons boil down to this: 1. I'm selfish, I want the cherry FAs. You want a pristine new area...do the research both on paper and in the field.2. I don't like "development" much, especially in the case of a new area where adventure is part of the game.3. I know eventually word gets 'round to the "community" and next thing I know there are bolts, hangers,bolt thieves, car break-ins, etc. It's selfish, and I'll be the first to admit it, but I honestly believe that anyone with the real desire for FAs, new crags, etc can easily get the info. Spend the time talking to people, doing research, and climbing with a wide variety of partners and you'll find the goods. Remember seeing a cool outcropping 2 miles cross country from where you picnicked with your SO? Well hike your ass in there and check it out. I remember some Jeff Apple-Benowitz article where he talked of pouring over a topo and finding a likely spot for ice, then skiing six miles in to see what was there. Ever see a crag that retained it's "secret" status for more than a few years?

OK, The pictures as promised: The Falls from a few viewsRoping UpWes on the first pitchRapping Off - The "pointer" shows Will for perspectiveand TG and Will chillin on the belay ledge I think we could grade this SI-Fading for Slurpee Ice-quickly melting. Seriously though, any guesstimate at the rating for this thing? [ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: willstrickland ] [ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: willstrickland ]

Here's a pic from when we were out there mid-Jan. Lots of snowcover! [ 04-01-2002: Message edited by: willstrickland ]

I'll second that opinion, nothing but good experiences dealing with these guys (Brian and Mark? I believe). Quick delivery, good prices, lots of cosmetic blem items. Bought screws, ropes, biners from them in the last year and highly recommend them. $0.02

quote: Originally posted by DCramer: If you take them down, you don't need to send them too me. But if you do remove them don't chop - pull and fill the holes. Don't worry man, Ray knows how to pull them bolts out the right way. I hear he's been practicing.

quote: Originally posted by lizard brain: Noone wants to wade though pages of mouldy old song lyrics to figure out your cryptic message. Ahh ha, I see your reptilian cerebrum is in action. You only need to read the first paragraph of lyrics, the whole message is there...it works much better to just put a copy of Rastaman Vibration on the hi-fi, preferably on vinyl, and fire up a spliff...by the time the record gets to the track War, you'll hear and feel the message.

Seems that I remember quite a few folks looking for some non-wired hexes a while back. I noticed Climbmax CLimbaxehas a set of the 8 larger sized pre-slung with spectra webbing for about $50.

Yeah, so whadya want, a fuckin cookie?

Sounds great Jon, I also noticed that you guys re-scripted the code to auto-load the last page of a thread, that's a nice change! Thanks for all the work, makes my workday much more enjoyable.

quote: Originally posted by klar404: I believe that i was more interested in having more people read the entertaining story surronding the dicovery of this picture.cheers Yeah, sorry if I'm a little caustic, just carryover from a previous posting I guess.No doubt some entertaining, albeit slightly strange and hard to read, stories on that site. Check it out ya'll! The guy is maybe the worst html coder in history, but the stories are pretty funny. Check out the bit on Bridwell's slideshow from a few years ago and the "Jim Bridwell sucks hat". Also got a great logo appropriation idea from one of his stories..."The Shit Faced"

Whatever man, it's fairly standard protocol to post images without crediting them here because they are all (for the most part) hosted on their source site. If you wanna know the source info, right click on the image and then click on "properties"

quote: Originally posted by Richard Pumpington: Hey Will, You going to warm up for your Yosemite trip withanother "onsight" ascent of the Reid Glacier Headwall? Alright shithead, I'll bite on your troll. Even though you have said in the past that you don't fire unless fired upon (see Trask Anger Management seminar thread), you seem to be intent on messing with me. I see that you're a partner of my online feud bro Billy, ahh so that's how it works ehh. So be it, it's ON bitch. No Dick, I think for Yosemite it would be much more conducive to practice my fist jamming technique...on your mom. I'm glad you've enlightened us that you're the ripe old age of 36, that's good because I won't get arrested for child abuse when I open up about six cans of whup-ass on your head. Keep trolling,it suits you because you belong on a boat, in fact you belong on a ship...a pirate ship, to be precise a Butt Pirate ship. Go troll someone else jerky, you don't have what it takes to tangle with a witty redneck.

Yeah, that's Lynn Hill...many years ago

Erik, what are you Crack now?

Since I don't have any short ropes, and by the time I cut them up I wouldn't lead on them, I just use whatever I have. Shorten the length for the simul-sections with any number of methods...Kiwi coil, etc. I don't feel like it matters much except from a communication and rope drag standpoint. You will likely have to carry a slightly larger rack to keep a sufficient number of pieces between you on a shorter rope, so the weight tradeoff might not be a big deal...especially if you're talking 50m 10.5 compared to 30m 10.5, I'd guess you save 3lbs of rope weight.

Might as well get my request in this... I need a short term room to rent in PDX, for about 4-6 weeks starting immediately. No pets, I leave for work around 6:30 weekday mornings. No amenities required, hell even a garage works for me. Just kinda got screwed on my house, I was leaving PDX first week of May, one of my housemates decided to move out end of March so everyone else was forced to move, leaving me in a 6 week limbo. Any leads appreciated, or maybe I just kick it at Dignity Village for a while.

quote: Originally posted by payaso: We could go down to Smith Rocks and leave a Subaru unlocked with an intentionally sabotaged climbing rope in the front seat. Then sit back and watch the news. The next climber to take a fall in that area will be your thief! You're more likely to get the poor college kid who just bought the rope from the thief that way. I would think that if it's a two-year ongoing deal, the distribution/liquidation of the stolen gear is the place to focus. Getting rid of used climbing gear in volume is bound to draw some suspicion, particularly if it's in the same area (the thieves seem to be locals). A vigilante mission would be fun, but only if you knew for certain they would strike, otherwise it would be a long sleepless night. Any shops down that way that sell used equipment? Might start there.

Ok, more info from the AAC website: The AAC has produced three indexes for the AAJ, which allow individuals to locate reports of climbs based on region, country, climber, and peak name. Paperbound editions of the index for the years 1929-1976 and 1977-1986 are available for purchase through The Mountaineers Books, a PDF version for the years 1987-1996 is available by clicking on AAJ Index for 87-96 in .pdf format

Try the Mountaineers Books, they publish the journal and the index volumes if I'm not mistaken. You can find their catalog online at:Mountaineers Books

FWIW, In the past two weeks I've sent my Lowe gloves back for warranty, my Glacier Gear pack back for repair, and some Moonstone pants back for warranty repair. I thoroughly researched and inspected these pieces prior to buying them, and was happy with the performance of each. When you look at the number of seams and the small tolerance (stitching close to the edge) when sewing gloves, packs, and the like, there's bound to be an occasional problem. Look at the sheer volume of gear we use and look at how much of it gives you problems. Not too much in my expereince. But I will say that in the last month I've had to deal with broken snowboard bindings, a shredded pack, unraveling seams on gloves, a delaminating fabric layers on pants, not one but two broken trekking poles, a worn out snowshoe strap, a shredded idiot cord on my mittens. I figure you've gotta at least give customer service a couple of tries before you bash the whole company. I'm sure all those major manufacturers could make bomber stuff that would last 100 years, but it would all weigh a ton, cost a fortune, and have the dexterity of boxing gloves. That said, prices could be lower. Say what you will, I'm happy with my BD gear (cams, nuts, and ice tools). You wanna talk about a rep for bad customer service, let's talk OR (which is funny because the one time I sent something in they did well by me).

Saw a great documentary last night with Bunny doing an acoustic solo version of Concrete Jungle...very nice indeed!

The Sky is Falling Wallowa Mtns, Mar 21, 2002 A phone call from Terminal Gravity, raving about “magazine cover” ice convinced Wes and I to make the 5 hour drive out to Enterprise. We headed out straight after work Wednesday and arriving at TG’s around 11pm we immediately crashed. After about 5 hours of sleep, TG fired up the coffee while his lovely wife cooked up some waffles. Nice! I hadn’t had a real breakfast in months. A quick meal, some “calling in sick” phone calls, and we were off. Ten minutes on the road put us at our parking area. A short stop to deflate the tires a bit got us up the last 1/3 mile of non-plowed roadway. We donned our gear and headed up the approach slope. A quick and short approach of about 10 minutes put us at the base of a 55-60m fall. Sure enough, on the wall in front of us was a beautiful curtain of white, this was going to be fun! Temps had hit 50 the previous day and would reach at least that high today. TG commented that the flow was half what it had been the day before. Looking up, I noticed that one connecting section, a 10 ft vertical step, was gone and would require some serious dry tooling and/or aid to pass. Looks good, and looks interesting (i.e. hard!). Since TG had led the last pitch when we were here back in Jan, and I had led at Ski Bowl, it was Wes’s pitch. Now about 9:00am, he took off up the vertical start and bouldered through the first 15ft, axes making that reassuring “thunk” when hitting solid plastic ice. Reaching a step, Wes stopped to place a decent screw. He soon climbed out of our sight as we had taken shelter under a rock overhang to the side. Wes was moving really smoothly and confidently, and was well into the pitch after a couple of minutes. After heading out of sight, and what seemed like a really long time, he sounded an “off belay” from above. I was soon to find out why the delay was in order. Tagged as the leader of the next pitch, I took off following Wes’s lead and trailing a line for TG. I was determined to get through the pitch quickly and efficiently since it appeared that the next lead would take some juice. I managed to follow the pitch fairly quickly and was soon pulling across a traverse to Wes’s belay. One look was all it took to realize why he was a while with the anchor, and to inspire me NOT TO FALL! Two poor tied-off screws, an ice tool, and a slung icicle column made up the belay. Not confidence inspiring, but for what he had to work with Wes did an excellent job. I had the pins on my harness and reaching the belay handed them over where Wes tried, without luck, to add a decent pin to the belay. We decided I should climb on through and get some gear above. This seemed like a good idea, for about five moves. After trying out a rightward traverse to rock to bypass some poor ice and finding ice coated slopers, I retreated back left and started to climb upwards. Now situated directly above Wes with no gear in and a questionable belay, I started downclimbing. I reached an area with better ice and tried to place a screw…no luck. Tried another…whew, got a stubby, that’s a little better. Continuing to climb through poor ice and reaching some decent footholds I decided to get another screw. Again I had problems getting a placement and finally gave up and kept climbing up and left. Deciding to traverse to a rock shelf to the left, with the hopes of getting some good rock gear in, I pounded a Spectre into decent ice and set off. As I dropped the tools and started pulling rock moves I felt relieved, as this ledge was big enough to stand on and would take good cams and pins. No sooner than I start to place a cam I notice a bolt…right in front of me, then another. Stainless steel, 3/8 inchers, must be reasonably new. The bolts were a real surprise, but welcome at that point because the rapidly melting flow and missing section of ice meant we were going down, not up, from here. One look at the aid/drytooling section and the rapidly melting ice was all the convincing I needed. I arranged a belay off the two bolts and backed it up with a bomber small cam. A quick eq job with the cordelette and TG was on belay. I couldn’t see TG, and apparently he took a couple of short falls off the initial section…trying to tiptoe around and climb delicately, he just oozed off a couple of features. All I felt was the rope go tight and then come unweighted a few seconds later. Deciding to bash and smash as much as he needed to, Steve continued in good style and cruised on into the belay without further ado. Now Wes was up. After trying to exchange the camera a couple of times, Wes ended up with it after Steve had followed. I had the camera when Wes was leading the first pitch and snapped some shots. Then I forgot to give it to him at the first belay (the anchor was my immediate concern at that moment!) so he couldn’t get shots of me. I had the camera when Steve was following and I couldn’t see him until he was right in my lap. Now Wes had it (I’d lowered it on the rope when Steve was following trying to get the camera to Wes). Wes is following, pops his head over a ledge giving us the chance for a great shot…face in the frame, from above to the side, sun shining, axe planted in ice above the lip, etc, but he had the camera DOH! Wes followed without any problem and we began to arrange the rap station. Lacking any tied webbing, we decided to leave a rap ring and two slings. Wes was the first down, and Steve followed. Being the lightest, it was standard practice for me to go last and pull the backup cam. I cleaned the remaining gear, holstered my tools, and began to rap. Quickly enough I was at the base and ducked under an overhang in the rock. I thought about pulling the rap ropes from there but the drag looked to be too bad that way. Still attached to the ropes, I began rapping down the snow slope below the base to get away from the face in order to pull the ropes. TG was at the packs under an overhang at the base and Wes was standing a few yards to my left. Suddenly I hear Wes scream out. Now I don’t know what words came out of Wes’s mouth, but all I remember hearing was a cry with some SERIOUS alarm in it. Looking skyward, I saw the cause of the seriousness….all 800 lbs of it. Just like a dropped paper plate will flutter to the ground, a massive chunk of detached waterfall will float and flutter on it’s way earthward. Wes sprinted left, soon reaching a low angle section of jumbled rock and got hemmed in, but out of the main fall line. Instinctively, I began rapping the remainder of the rope as fast as I could and tried to get a bead on the biggest pieces. WHAM! The chunk hit about halfway down the climb and exploded into two large pieces and a bunch of smaller ones. Still rapping, here it comes…time it right, wait, wait, DUCK! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!! The biggest pieces went to my right and left, the haymaker passing a good 15-20ft to my left. Somehow I managed to dodge some and get spared by the rest, only getting hit with one basketball sized piece in the shoulder. Ok, that was close, now get me the hell off this rope! Traversing way to the side, I give Wes the rope to pull and head to the packs. A quick analysis and we basically agreed that the bolts were most likely for a 1st pitch belay for the ice route, and not for a rock route as we originally surmised. The sheltered position, lack of other bolts, and lack of an obvious line through the rock led us to our conclusion. So much for virgin ice, but we didn’t finish the whole thing anyway. Soon enough we are hiking out under clear blue skies and 50 degree sun. Staying well to the side and moving quickly, we were out of harms way and back in the trees in less than a minute. A growler of porter awaited us at the truck and we made quick work of it, soaking in the beauty of the Wallowa Mountains. Lunch in the cowboy bar and a few beers at the Terminal Gravity public house situated us nicely for the long haul back to Portland.Usually, after any kind of close call, I get the “stress let down” where once the thing has passed I feel shaky and amped up. I never got that, and actually kind of laughed right after the blocks blew by and we were looking at each other in awe. All I kept thinking was "damn, good thing we weren't on that pitch when it came down". I guess I can put the tools away for a while now. I have no idea what the rating would be, but suffice it to say that the conditions were much more of a factor than the steepness (although it was steep enough with maybe a third of the sections going at vertical and the start actually overhanging slightly). I’m not revealing the location except to say it’s in the Wallowas somewhere, and someone else obviously knows about it hence the bolts. I’ll post pics when I get them scanned (probably next week).

quote: Originally posted by rbw1966: I was climbing the ice at ski bowel last weekend. It was way too warm but fun nonetheless. I'm sure its all melted out by now. Indeed, it's gone. I snowboarded SkiBowl yesterday and inspected the cliff up close...no climbable ice left. [ 03-25-2002: Message edited by: willstrickland ]

Hey Dick, Here's all I gotta say: May 2002 - Will arrives in Yosemite for the seasonMay 2002 - Dick continues to wank it in Terrebone