genepires

https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10151926843682938&set=a.410480422937.209825.206971122937&type=1 real frosty after the last storm came through. could all melt off quick though.

ropes have different characteristics other than diameter. Elongation and impact forces will be more relevant to your question than diameter, assuming that your belay device is rated to work for a 8.5mm rope. Typically the smaller diameter ropes have more elongation and lower impact forces but that may not be 100% true. If your inferred question is wether your 8.5mm rope adequate for catching vertical leader falls, then answer would lay with evaluating all the points in the belay chain are adequate. -Is the belay device good for that size rope? friction goes down as size goes down. (insert snickering here) Rope size people! -Is the rope being used as designed? (is it a single rope or a double rope?) -Is the rope still in good enough condition to be used this way? If the answer is yes, then the rope is fine. There a shit ton of other questions about lead climbing but for your original question.

Of the 4 FA's I have done with Darin, I think this route may actually get a second ascent. It deserves fairly regular traffic and is actually more fun than the normal n face route. Oh the heresy!

somewhere below in the photos are girls in bikinis. really.

damn D, save me the trouble of going back in there for the hard manual labor. was planning on trudging up there this fall. Now I can just go in with light pack and send the radness. Any fools wanna hit the second (or third) ascent?

sweet!

it is also my humble opinion that a ice climbing boot will work much better than a ski mtneering boot for ice climbing, no matter what anyone says. Otherwise every ice climber would be wearing them, right?

look at Dane's blogs. he has reviews on ski mtneering boots and their ability to ice climb. There is a growing group of split boarders going hardboot. These boots are the same as the ski mtneering boots. dynafit TLT5 is a very popular ski mtneering boot and also works well with the splitboarders too. I have read that people have ice climbed well with them also. I assume that you are wishing to ice climb in washington. I love washington for the variety of climbing but ice climbing we ain't got it. If you are looking for advice, forget about buying skiis and use that money to get in your car and drive to banff for a week. You will get more easily accessible, reliable, and safe (as ice climbing can be) ice climbing in one week that in a entire season of slogging through deep snow to 30 foot smears that may fall down at any time. or buy a ticket to ouray and get 10 pitches in every day easy. If you want mileage on ice, you gotta travel to where the ice is.

another climber in monroe-via? are you talking about just summer cascade climbing? My spring/summer/fall glove kit (and mostly volcanoes) is real simple. A couple pair of liners, a windstopper glove and for when things get real crappy, a goretex mitten shell (no liner) over the WS gloves. Luckily the goretex hardly ever gets used. No one glove will fit all conditions, but this combo works for mostly everything not involving skiing. If there is alpine ice in the route, I throw in a pair of BD dry tool goves for those steep ice bits but switch to the previous setup for the rest of the mtn. sometimes you just gotta live with wet hands while drying the other ones in your clothes.

that talk is in his will gadd blog posting. in that discussion comes the solution with using the fixed anchor belay.

it is all just tools for the tool box. this fixed anchor idea may have it application in certain situations like a very steep or overhanging limestone sport climb that is very runout. I can see the argument that the belayer getting sucked into the anchor being a bad thing one that I admittedly do blindly. Having the fall factor 2 force transmitted directly to the anchor (if it is bomber) vs catching the fall normally with a fall factor 1.74 and risking losing the belay is the question that needs to be asked. Would take more research into what the tests showed, but he may have run the "belayer well below the anchor" option and it did not show enough improvement. If you do not like the single point to the belay device, you could connect the belay device to a equalized point. There was some author for a strange how to book (maybe called mountaineering techniques to get you higher or something) that was proposing a similar system. belayer tied to a single separate piece of pro and the climbing rope was run through a equalized anchor for the first piece. The idea was that the first piece takes the most force so it should be the most bomber. I think the video was proposing a munter instead of a atc so the brake position would be ideal for a fall onto the anchor. A ATC would be in a very bad brake position. It would be awkward to belay out and keep slack under control when belaying from the anchor. Maybe they found that the slack is the same though between the two options. (of anchor and off belay loop) Will Gadd does make several comments in his blog about anchoring the belayer for a upward force, separate from the anchor, when clipping the anchor with the climbing rope. If this Kirk Mauthner is as thorough and Gadd makes him sound like, (in addition to the canadian mtn guide assoc) I would bet that he has taken all the other options into account and still came up with this being a good option. (for certain situations) Also, if done safely, I bet one could belay off the anchor when the FF2 is a possibility and switch over to a standard belay when the FF is lower. not that I want you doing that to me, Mikey. good rainy day thoughts.

damn it, need to add another to the list.

damn it. another great one lost.

no appologies needed. I still have fond memories of my first alpine rock trip up to beckey route with my very good friend jeff. WHat a couple of clowns we were. I doubt that you brought more gear than us. at least no one was on route to witness our goober-ness, but a team on concord could hear the circus going. those early climbing career climbs are the best. everything is fresh and new. savor them.

most would ask to partake. especially if away from the road.

I often would have the tent deadmanned down and shovel a big pile of snow ontop of each buried stakes. Come back at the end of the day to find all the pile is gone but by stakes are still buried deep because of the cover. Snow melts of crazy fast in a hot day of summer. I suggest a huge pile of snow above each stake. Easy to do the day before when the snow is soft, then it freezes hard overnight. Bomber! Nobody will mess with it, except for the taliban, marmots and the crows. Mostly the crows. I have had good luck with putting my extra food in the sleeping bag. The stench of the fart sack hides any smell of food.

nice job and good judgement! that three person rap setup looks good. thanks for reminding.

how about this itinary. June 17th - fly from Boston to Seattle, get the gear together, sleep somewhere along way between seatac and rainier. MOst gear should ready before you leave for plane. June 18th - get permit and hike to muir. June 19th - summit if weather window is good and short. or move camp to ingram flats. June 20th - 12 am start, summit, back down to hotel or use as a bad weather day June 21st - 12 am start, summit, back down to hotel June 22nd - fly back to boston this plan allows for more acclimitization with the 2 camps. Sleeping at 5000ft is OK but not as good as sleeping at muir and ingram for a couple of days. Plus, if the weather is good, enjoy the time in the mountains. Don't just rush in and back out. As fine as seattle is, time spent on rainier is better than in seattle. also, +1 to everything Dan said.

I wish the mtn loop hwy went to Toulumne meadows.

that voice was silenced by raging fear.

If the snow is hard enough for a vertical placed picket to be worthy, it is very unlikey that your partner punched through a hidden crevasse. Of course there is a chance that your partner could trip over themself and fall in a open one. But chances are if you are placing gear for crevasse rescue, the snow is soft and weak and therefore it should be deadman placed. With that in mind, I still place my picket with the sling on the top hole cause it is hard to pull of the pack with it girthed to the middle hole.

10 coils should be around 40ft each which would leave 85 ft between climbers. In alaska this might be needed but the cascades don't require that much space between climbers. Just more chances for slack and rope stretch to make a small fall into a large fall. With a couple knots between climbers and 50 feet between will give you 57 feet of rescue coils each. Being on a dynamic line is preferred over skinny static, granted the snow is forgiving. If you wanna rap on 6mm, even doubles over, then it is your call. Lockers go on whever it is the sole connection to a anchor, either on puropse or during the accident.

from Cliff Mass weather blog. about very cold temps in oregon. Maybe oregon ice climbers should be poking around this area in the winter?

It would take an ice layer to prevent a picket from not going down fully. No reason to think that will happen around the second hole point. More often than not, it goes in fully so you would have to change it to the top postion or go with the weaker less than full depth. the waist loop length is really about trying to do 2 things. 1.From a self arrest position with a picket already placed, I take my waist prussik which is already on the rope and attach it to the buried picket. this is easier with a longer prussik. 2.When I need to move to the lip of the crevase, I protect myself by using my waist prussik which is attached to the fixed rope. A short one would be crazy hard to move back and forth. what length of rope and spacing do you use? a 50m rope with 40 feet between climbers leaves 60 feet of coils used for rescue and rappeling. If you are using a 30m rope but both climbers need to carry 50ft of cord to help with rescues, maybe a rethink of the rope choice is in order. rapping down with a 6mm rope is not trivial, especially when you think about the cutting in the snow of the thinner line and the friction needed to go down and how will you get back up. One good reason for a extra cord is for some other kinds of mech advatage pulley systems. I think there is some kind of efficient 7:1 system utilizing a cord on the end of the z system. I saw it once but never really tried it.

you can't wipe your stinky ass with a kindle. well maybe you can, but you can't make a fire with a kindle. you could have a picture of a fire though.