Don_Gonthier

February 14th...(bring your valentine...or not!) doors open @ 6 p.m. starts @ 7 p.m. students: $5 public: $8 This is going to be a truly great event! For more information: PSU Outdoor Program (503) 725-5668 www.odp.pdx.edu, odp@pdx.edu The MountainFilm website: www.mountainfilm.org three hours of rock climbing & swimming, trampolines, environmental & human rights issues, sled dogs, Soviet espionage, mountain climbing, kayaking and cartoons! The feature film, Daughters of Everest, spotlights the first group of Sherpani (women Sherpas) who attempt to climb Mount Everest. please attend, you won't be disappointed!

Sorry Stiffler. I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't a fun trip, its just that when normal folks are around the "wrestling with my personal deamons in the bleak wilderness" thing can feel a little silly. It's way too easy to find something sensible to do with my time. After all, would you want to climb the runout choss with your mother watching. Anyway. I stand by the interesting description. We didn't get high enough to get really scared and there was gear but it was hard to get in and hard to tell whether it would hold a fall. I would like to go back, I just might not get any higher than last time. By the way, does anyone know where I can find some personal deamons?

I've been there. Tried to do the 5.7 on the upper pillar. Only got up about 30 feet. The climbing wasn't that hard as far as we got and didn't look any worse, at least to the top of the first pitch, but the rock is interesting and there is not much good gear. I wouldn't mind going back so long as we don't also bring along significant others and siblings and their dogs. Getting scetched on bad rock with shitty gear is a joy best savored with only a belayer around.

Sorry, you are right. The first class was on the 6th. It has met only once so far.

If anyone is interested learning to lead bolted routes, there is still some room open in the class I teach at Clackamas Community College. Its called Rock Climbing/Intermediate PE 185 124. It is a 1 credit course and costs $68 for the 11 week term and meets Thursday nights from 6:30 PM to 9:20. It started January 3rd but it is not too late to sign up. Instruction takes place at the college and will cover the basics of leading, anchor building and rappeling. Students should be able to belay and be familiar with basic equipment. Students supply their own harnesses, belay device and rock shoes. If you have any questions, you can post them here or call 503-657-6958 ext. 2988.

I'll vough for the strange sounds at Index. About 5 years ago we were at the Great Northern Slab and were treated to about 2 hours of the craziest sounds coming from across the river. It was obviously human but contained no identifiable words. Moaning, screaming, the works. Amazing experience, I wish to god I had a tape recorder. We asumed it was aretarded hillbilly on a bender.

The truth is that it would probably be O.K. But no one on this board or any where else could tell you without knowing more about the rope. Working load is not a really useful number for judging whether a rope is acceptable for climbing. The first problem is that "working load" may be deffined differently between manufacturers and specific industries. I've seen ropes with working loads between one quarter and one tenth of the breaking strength. So the range for the above rope would be roughly between 1000 and 2500 lbs breaking strength. You might notice that the larger number isn't that far from the breaking strength of climbing rope and webbing. Then you get into how do you measure the breaking strength of a rope. Is it just the load at which the average rope in a sample breaks or is it 1 or 2 standard deviations below the average. In other words, is it O.K. if half of them break at lower loads or one in a hundred or one in a thousand. I imagine it depends on the industry and how much insurance the manufacturer wants to pay for. For most ropes you buy at the hardware store none of this information is available. This means that there is no way to tell the strength of the rope from the information you've given. One reason climbers use a particular type of rope is that this information is available for each piece of rope and equipment. Second, it is likely that the rope you have is a static rope, one constructed to limit stretch. Climbing ropes tend to the other extreme. They are dynamic, constructed to enhance stretch. This quality of the rope is far more important for climbing than the strength. Again, with a climbing rope these properties are all spelled out by the manufacturer so there is no guess work. Most of the people on this board will be agast that I would suggest that a static rope was exceptable but remember that falls while crossing glaciers are going to be anything but static. There is nothing like dragging your partner across the ice to limit impact forces. Hundreds of falls were caught on hardware store hemp and twisted nylon back in the day. Many climbers would contemplate using 8 and 9 mm static rope on simple glacier routes but not a rope with unkown properties. Finally the question of experience does come up. Most climbers have already made decisions about what techniques and equipment they would accept on particular climbs and don't ask questions about the strength of rope. If that is not the case I apologize, but I assume your experience is limited. I would suggest that the experience of the climber has more effect on the safety of the party than the type of rope. In other words, the best equipment in the hands of someone who doesn't understand how to use it can have far worse consiquences than crappy gear in the hands of experienced climbers. In my opion, roping up on a glacier is the best example of this in all of climbing. Look back on accidents on Hood and Rainer involving more than one climber and I believe you will find that the particular type of rope used has little to do with the cause of the accidents. Far more important are questions like when to rope up, when do you take it off and how do you travel when you have it on? If you don't have an answer to these questions, it makes little difference what rope you take. That said, the 8mm for 66.95$ sounds like a great deal.

I climbed one of the needles with Stifler. They are basalt, similar to Vantage. There are a bunch of them and each one is a little different. Most seem to be just eroded out columns. Some of them may have had a little help from some sliding. They represent several different flows of Columbia River Basalt so while one pinnicle looks pretty solid, another on a cliff band above may look like a horror show. Needless to say, the PG/R rating is probably well deserved for most of them. I didn't climb the 5.7 but looking at it from below its obvious that the summit of the pillar is shattered and only resting on the base. The 5.5 was not too bad and I got to the notch on another that looks even better. If I were to go back I would take a regular rack, nuts and cams, also a bolt kit and a few small pins for beefing up crappy rap anchors. The truth of the matter is that the rock in the pinnicles is kind of shattered but the stuff behind them doesn't look all that bad.

My guess from the pictures above and from haveing done the route is the West Face. It's the easiest route in that area at 5.6 and the guide paints it as a moderate route. As I remember though, it was under-rated, more like 5.8 or 9 and it was poorly protected, at least an R if not an X on the crux pitch. I have talked to others who have climbed it and all agreed. One person I know has climbed it 3 times and said that there is a way to make it 5.6 but it involves an inobviouse traverse at the start of the crux pitch. If it is the West Face this is the second accident involving anchor failure on that route in 4 years. It might be a good idea to get the word out that that route and the entire Mt. is a bit more of an adventure than the guide books would imply.

Bill. The guy who chopped your route claimed to have done it several years earlier without the bolts and with reasonable protection. The guy is a long-time Portland climber and I believe him when he says he did the route before you placed bolts in it. It seems to me that one way to avoid the "you bolted my route and now I'm going to chop it" bolt wars is to have some kind of acurrate list of routes with information on who climbed it, when they did it and where exactly the route went. Gee, that sounds like a guide book. I know that that's something that you don't like and I understand the feeling. Hell, maybe you climbed your old farts variation 20 years ago and really are the first asccentionist and you just forgot about it. My point is, is that it might be possible to avoid much confusion and maintain the limited boltting on the south face of beacon in the future if someone were to keep this kind of information in some more freely accessible place than Jim Opdycke's brain. It doesn't have to be a published guide book, a simple photocopied sheet of paper would work fine. I bet Jim already has most of it written down somewhere. Or of course you could just accept that someday the bolts you worked hard to place will be missing and the next day, the route you worked your ass off and risked your neck to free on natural gear is a "clip and go" sport route with a line gym rats at the bottom waiting to get the pink point. Don

Leave two. They're free!

A friend of mine showed me this real cool knot that he ties in with. Its really cool. I'm going to use it all the time now. Its called the Flemish Bend, has anybody heard of it before?

I did the Alpen Jager about 4 years ago and have talked to several parties who have done it since then. It seems like every one does some thing different on the chimney pitch. If you read Dodge's book it sounds like you should climb pretty close to the bottom of the chimney to the saddle at the top. Then climb the last 40 or 50 feet to the top of the pinnacle. When we did it, my partner climbed more or less verticly up the chimney from the crappy bolt in the bottom to where the chimney opens up. At that point there is a belay stance with 3 pitons. Then we climbed that last 40 or 50 feet to the summit. The summit is just a small field of grass, no exposed rock to anchor to. At the south end of it there is a bush that you can rap off of to get down to the saddle. It seemed like this way had good rock all the way up the chimney but almost no pro. Knife blades and RPs are the most likely pieces of pro. A friend of mine from way back says that they climbed to the right of the chimney and belayed at a tree. When I was there this looked pretty scetchy but he described the bush at the top exactly like we found it so I know he was there. It was a cool experience and I would repeat it but wouldn't recommend it to someone who was looking for a moderate climb.

Over the years I have heard that it was climbed and that it hasn't been climbed. From personal observation, even in the biggest freeze years like 1990 the falls has never frozen completely. That year I stood at the base on the frozen plunge pool. You could walk within a few yards of where the water was hitting the pool. The spray built up a huge mound about 15 foot high. Even with this huge mound the water had a long free fall, possibly 75 to 100 feet. With the way the wind usually blows during the cold periods and the amount of water coming down, it is really difficult to imagine the bottom part ever connecting. I guess you might be able to traverse in from the side but if you take a close look at that I think you would agree that while it might be possible it ain't likely. The rock is really bad, in places its not really rock and it never gets completely covered in ice. With the huge overhang at the base and the huge amount of water coming down I kind of doubt its ever been done. I could be wrong but you would have to have some pretty good pictures before I would believe it.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the photo of the guy rappelling is not on Multanomah Falls. It is one of the climbs in the Bridelveil Area by Bent Screw. Sorry.

If anyone is interested learning to lead bolted routes, Clackamas Community College is offering a class starting in January. Its called Rock Climbing/Intermediate PE 185 124. It is a 1 credit course and costs $65 for the 11 week term and meets Thursday nights from 6:30 PM to 9:20 starting January 5th. Instruction takes place at the college and will cover the basics of leading, anchor building and rappeling. Students must be able to belay and be familiar with basic equipment. Students supply their own harnesses, belay device and rock shoes. If you have any questions you can post them here or call 503-657-6958 ext. 2988.

This type of injury is not related to G-forces, it is called Compartment Syndrome as snoboy said. Here is a link http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic739.htm that I hope works. If you read this carefully you will see that damage to the muscle occurs because of a loss of blood flow to the affected area. The isochemic shock occurs later, after the toxins build up and nomal blood flow is resumed. While this particular artical dosen't specifically mention hanging in a harness, it does say the syndrome can be caused by any thing that causes blood pressure to rise in a compartment. This includes hanging in a harness but also remaining in one position for a long period concious or unconcious and crush injuries. If this occurs for a long time the treatment is a faciectomy, cutting open the facia, the sac that holds the muscles to releave the pressure. If there is any necrosis, dead tissue, this must be cut away. A couple of examples of this are the guy who took all the photos for Stefan Glowasc's book "Rocks Around the World", Uli Wiesmeier. He lost 50 percent of the muscle in his legs after getting compartment syndrome while competing in a paragliding world cup. He was concious the whole time he was hanging, but hung for nearly 24 hours. Another example is that singer Eddie Money from the 80's. He got it from passing out after taking some type of drug and alcohol, he crashed on a couch with his legs crossed and had to have surgery to remove some dead tissue from his leg, now he walks with a cane. Just say no to drugs boys and girls. Another form of compartment syndrome is called chronic compartment syndrome and is very common. It's cause is rapidly increasing training. One symptom is bad muscle cramps and pain that recurs after a certain amount of exersize. This is the one I'd worry about if I were you. The harness hang syndrome is just another reason to get accident victims to some sort of medical attention fast.

This may not help much but, I talked to a guy who was heading out to try it with some people from Praire City a couple of years ago. It sounded like it had been attempted before. I hiked by it in summer a couple of years ago and as I remember the approach is about 3 miles over pretty moderate terrain. The big issue would be getting your car to the trail head. The place is pretty cool and it looks like there might be other possibilities in the area. Has anyone ever looked at the Anthony Lakes area in winter for ice, its got some good granite in the summer and the road is open all year to the ski area?

Another method I've used a bunch of times is to have the beginner rap on a single line while you belay with the other. So long as the raps aren't stretching half a rope length you can do it with one rope. I find it doesn't take any longer to set up and gives a bit of peace of mind. I also like this method when the raps are funky, like when you have to pendulum to get to an anchor. The guy on rappel only has to fish one rope out of cracks and if he needs to free climb he's already on belay. The second guy just raps normal.

I was there last summer. The rock is rhyolite. It is a huge area. The rock is real variable. A lot of choss. There are two areas with welded tuff of the same type as Smith , Leslie Gulch and The Honeycombs but they are both posted 'closed to fixed climbing hardware'. I took this to include pins and nuts left behind as rap gear. We saw one sport route in Leslie Gulch. Succor Creek is a state park and looked like a bastard son of Owens River. We didn't find any established routes but the access was easy and there were no closures. Its a real cool looking area but I won't go back to climb. Did I mention there's a lot of choss.

I heard it was soloed in winter and again in summer by the same person. Ask wayne1112 about it, he knows the guy better than I do.

I realize that "Solo climbing" technically means climbing alone but, most climbers associate it with climbing unroped. If this is always unsound advice to an anonymous audience, we're going to have to rewrite all of them guide books that descride a route as 3rd class. I mean who knows whos going to get their hands on them things. Most of us feel we can trust people to use their own judgement when they are using a guidebook. Why would anonymous advice off the web be any different.

Wayne. That wouldn't have been a pinnacle in the Columbia Gorge would it? If it was, a trip report would be real cool. I climbed the little pinnicale in the notch last year. It looks crazy.

If you like shitty rock, check out the Columbia Gorge. There are some classics. Steins is a cake walk in comparison, at least the rock is solid. There is also a couple of beauties in the next drainage west of Stein's.

Gimpy, I could be wrong but the area right around Timothy Lake is rather flat. There is one possibility that I know of on the Collawash River. Its real obvious, 20 feet from the road on a large road cut where the road runs right along the river. Its 1 bolted crack, lota bolts too, and a couple of TR anchors but its gotta be 30 miles from Timothy. Are you thinking of Trillium Lake? Its up by Hood and indead has a secert crag, 'oooh very secert'.