fleblebleb

Yeah, good info Ross and Matt and Cpt. although Ross might have shared it a bit differently... Now I know why Twight's book says not to take more than factor 1 falls on half ropes

Boy could you not resist this one. But why bother to lock down the heel if you can turn whichever way you like with a free heel?

The duckbills suck. Don't get me wrong, tele is great and stiff boots are great because you can tele or parallel or whatever you feel like, I just wish I could climb and tele in the same boot. Hell, if you give me a boot like that I'll wear the dayglo hemp clothes if I have to.

I tried some gu in one of those fancy glasses, it was awesome! Thanks for the tip Mattp!

Heeheehee

Mighty drippy?

Temperature last night, on Svalbard: -20

Damn funny. From the mists of antiquity, heh.

Sorry about the Saab btw - maybe the axle damage is from when you got rear-ended.

Ooh, jump on that offer TLG, I bet he just wants you to let him give you one of those oral pedicures of his.

Just give us back the wazzup gremlin, please, please, puh-leeze...

Hardly even matters given the average IQ, heh.

Funny

Try it somewhere where you've had rope drag in the past, you'll be an instaconvert.

Hey Iain, can you explain how the Figure 8-EDK fails? Does it invert?

More on this here.

Do you dress the EDK? How? Somebody taught me that if I were using the EDK to join two ropes with different diameters (like a 7mm rap line to a 10.5 mm single line) then I should tie an overhand in the smaller line, snug against the EDK. I've never joined two ropes like that though, at least not yet.

Exactly.

Somebody died rapping off a big route in Utah not too long ago, ostensibly because the EDK unravelled. You can see for yourself how it might have happened. Tie two strands together using that knot. To trust it you have to pull it supertight, but to see how it can unravel you should leave it a bit loose, then pull the strands in opposite directions - just like the load on the knot when rapping. What happens is that the knot inverts, and the tails become shorter. Repeat a couple of times and you eventually run out of tail and the knot fails. I use really long tails (6-8") and tighten the knot as much as possible, and then I check both the knot and the tails before the next rappel. It's the lesser of two evils to me, I'd rather deal with the possible inverting of the EDK (which I know how to do) than deal with "more" stuck ropes - for almost any definition of "more"...

LOL, that's a good one See, that's the kind of thing that prevents me from falling asleep at the wheel, it's like a little game you can play to keep your mind off things. But I have to play it with miles because I grew up with kilometers on the speed signs.

Cool post of the day! Now that's customer service.

This star stuff is stupid. Colin just posted that Jberg TR and his stars went from 4 to 3? Where is the wazzup gremlin when you need it, eh?

Yeah, sorry, I guess what I'm fishing for is whether there was some evil-looking big pieces of debris down there that would indicates solid slides that might have broken backs or swept a rope team away. I tend to underestimate the probability/danger of small slides, I'm trying to understand those better.

I started wondering what people were using the overhand for, but of course the water knot and the fisherman's are just the overhand. I could believe these are the "most useful" four knots, sure. The mule knot and radisch hitch and high-strength tie-off and whatnot are hardly ever used - I'm sure it's far less than 1% altogether.

Well, I've seen grades like II-III, but I have never really seen +/- used with the NCCs grades. I don't know, maybe there isn't any benefit. It doesn't take a lot to get me excited about new stuff Still, I looked at grades for Triumph and Baker in the bible, Triumph NE Ridge is rated at II-III 5.6, the Coleman Headwall at III-IV and the Coleman-Deming isn't rated at all. What NCCS grade should the Coleman-Deming then get, grade I? Freedom of the Hills explains that as a route that "normally requires several hours; can be of any technical difficulty" (my emphasis). Similarly grades II and III have that "any technical difficulty" clause - they're just a measure of time spent, half a day for grade II and a day for grade III. Looking at these definitions the Coleman-Deming would have to be a II-III because most people take that long (excluding the approach), but grading the Coleman-Deming and Triumph NE Ridge the same makes no sense to me! I do realize that there is a separate technical rating - but I want something somewhere in the rating that tells me that an incoming storm is more of an oh-shit situation on the Triumph route than on the Baker route. A bolted multi-pitch sport route with no route finding and bomber rap anchors could be rated II-III 5.12 but it would be graded much lower than Triumph NE Ridge... There are 5-10 routes that I want to do this winter that all fall into the II-III range, but I am a whole lot more apprehensive about some than others. From reading McLane's explanation in the guidebook it seems to me that the application of the alpine grading system is intended to be different - it's supposed to catch ephemeral things like exposure, objective danger and the quality and quantity of pro placements, none of which are factored into the NCCS grade (according to FOTH...). They call it engagement, sounds good to me. So I guess my conclusion is that there is not a direct translation between the Alpine Grades and the NCCS grades.