JayB

Good stuff folks. I forgot the stuff about you and your partner checking one another out at the base of the climb to insure that your knot is tied properly and your harness has been threaded through the buckle correctly. I was ice climbing last winter and undid my harness to take a leak and only discovered that I had failed to double it back when I topped out. Not just stupid - we're talking Darwin awards material for sure. I'm very fotunate that nothing happened, and needless to say the experience reinforced the importance on focusing on the fundatmentals. It's just so easy to get complacent or distracted if you're not religious about some of these things. Anchoring at the base of a climb is another good issue to bring up. I don't see it as much at trad areas, but at sport venues I see quite a few unanchored belayers lingering 10-15 feet out from the base of the route that their leader is ascending. If you've got a BMI on par with Elvis in his Vegas days and you're belaying someone with the physique of an Ethiopian supermodel it might not be such a big deal, but if your weights are even close to equal and the leader whips down low the odds are good that you'll get dragged violently to the base of the climb -maybe even a few feet up it - and may even lose control of the rope, all the while adding several feet to your leaders fall. This again is an area where I learned the hard way. I was out with some newer folks and volunteered to put up a top rope on a climb I'd never lead before. One of the climbers in the party claimed to know the rating and put it at about a 5.9, so I wasn't worried. It was actually way closer to an 11, and at seventh bolt I peeled off while bringing up rope to clip with. I fell right through the zone where I was expecting the rope to go tight, and fell right past another 5 bolts on the way down. I could have shaken my belayers hand, seeing as he had been yanked about 12 feet across the trail and about 5 feet up the wall. Thankfully I had him use a Gri-Gri, as both of his hands were off of the rope. It was a nice soft catch, which was nice, but I would have much rather had my fall arrested a few feet higher off of the ground. Other things this experience brings to mind: 1.If you're not anchored stay close to the wall - but not directly beneath your leader. This is often what I'll do when belaying I'm belaying a trad leader and don't want to introduce any additional forces onto the gear he/she's placed. 2. Consider anchoring if it looks as though there's a roof or some other blunt object looming above you that you might get sucked into if your leader pitches. 3. Consider wearing a helmet when you are belaying - especially in areas with loose rock like Vantage. I remember reading a horrible account somewhere about a guy belaying a leader at the feathers who got hit with a rock that his leader dislodged. Not only did the rock pierce his skull, but after this happened he naturally released his grip on the rock and the leader landed on him from like 30 feet up. Thankfully the belayer lived, but I sure hope nothing like that happens to anyone else out there. [ 10-03-2002, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

11/14 Just bringing this sucker back up to the top after reading many posts on taxes, Israelis vs. Palestinians, etc. I hereby propose the following tax: For every five posts you make concerning the topics mentioned above, and/or gun control, property rights, etc. one must post one useful piece of climbing info/beta/lore in this thread or a related counterpart. Howdy: There's been quite a bit of discussion surrounding the potential modes of gear failure and other aspects of climbing safety in the thread concerned with Goran's tragic death at the coulee. This got me thinking, and it seems like this might be a good time to move some elements of that discussion to a separate thread dedicated those topics. I suspect anyone who's been climbing for a while has had occasion to look back at the way that they did things when they first started climbing -or became involved with a new aspect of the sport - and shudder just a bit. At the very least I imagine that nearly everyone has discovered that there are better or safer ways to do things than the way that they originally learned or were taught. That got me thinking about some of the things that I've learned along the way that might be useful to someone else who's just starting out. I'm also pretty confident that there's still alot that I can learn from folks who have been at it a lot longer than I have. So, if you have changed the way you do things for the better, you had a close call that you walked away from, or just some general pointers that you think your fellow climbers could benefit from - why not share them here? The techniques you discuss might seem obvious or redundant to most of the regulars here, but I suspect there are quite a few folks who skim through this site that might benefit from what you have to say. I'm neither a pro nor anything close to a hardman, but I do try like to challenge myself while climbing as safely as I can, and feel like I've learned a useful trick or two while I've been at it, so I'll get things started. Hopefully someone will find some of this stuff useful: Trad: 1. Plug in more gear at the start of the climb. When you're just off of the deck you've got less rope out and the impact force on your gear will be higher if you fall down low. Once you get some distance between yourself and the belayer you can run it out a bit more between each placement. 2. Use an auto locking belay device to bring up seconds. I started out belaying seconds with an ATC because that's all I had. Now I use a reverso or a gri-gri and it makes it much easier for me to safely manage the rope at the belay while bringing up the second. If you are belaying off of the anchor (in general, but especially with an auto locking device) it will also make it much easier to escape the belay and begin self-rescue if your partner gets in trouble. I generally belay off of the anchor unless the best anchor that I've been able to construct doesn't inspire as much confidence as I'd like and I want to mitigate the stress on the anchor with my body - or it's just too akward to belay directly from the anchor. 3. Have your gear ready for the crux. If there's a good rest stance directly below the crux or a tough part I'll take a closer look at the crack and get the gear I'll need ready before I commit so I can (hopefully)plug it in easily without futzing around with my rack too much. 4. Reset disrupted cams if you can. Ideally you'll always use runners of the appropriate length when you're leading and you'll never disrupt a cam that you've placed as you lead past it. I do my best to use runners appropriately, and it feels like I overuse runners sometimes, but it still happens every now and then. When I was starting out I would just rush on to the next placement. These days If I see this happen and it's still within reach I'll reach down and reset the cam for a downward pull and add a runner if necessary. If it's not within reach when I notice it and the climbing is casual I'll downclimb and do the same. If neither is possible then it gets more complicated. I'll add extra gear above it and either downclimb with the security of the toprope above me and reset the gear, or continue on if I'm confident that the rest of the gear below is good and I see lots of places to plug in gear above me on terrain that I know I can cover with very little risk of falling. Of course the second option is not as safe but it's the kind of judgement call you can expect to make fairly often when leading trad. The more you climb the more confident you'll feel with your choices. Ice. 1. Always place a good screw before you top out. It's tempting to get off of the scary stuff as quickly as possible andhead for the big tree with the slings or some other oasis of security that beckons beyond the easy ground atop an ice route. However, lots of times the ice just beyond the apex of an ice climb is horrible, unprotectable slushy crap. Take advantage of the last good ice that you can find and crank in a screw before you commit to clearing the bulge and/or the easy but unprotectable ground above it. 2. Never use your knees to clear a bulge. When you top out on an ice climb it's tempting to lurch over the edge and swing your tools as far onto the ledge as you can. Avoid this temptation as it will more or less force you to clamber over the top with your knees or shins in contact with the ice instead of your front points. Find good ice near or over the top of the climb to sink your tool into, work your front points up from below, then incrementally advance your tools away from the edge until you can step over the top and stink your crampon points onto the top of the ice instead of your slippery, goretex-clad knees. 3. Use half ropes and screamers. Much lower impact force on your screws, ergo much lower chance of the screw ripping if you fall. It should go without saying that you don't want to fall if you can help it. I've yet to take a lead fall on ice and hope to keep it that way. 4. If you'll be climbing waterfalls, get clearance shaft tools if you can afford them. There may be some folks out there who will argue this one, and there are tons of guys out there who have climbed insane stuff on straight-shafted tools, but as far as I'm concerned there's no contest if you'll be climbing picked out ice or clearing many bulges. I've spent the last two seasons climbing on straight-shafted prophets and dig these tools in general, but when dealing with honeycombed ice or bulges clearance shaft tools are just way more secure. If you're a good enough ice climber I suppose it doesn't matter which tool you use, but must folks I know - especially those just starting out - find climbing with clearance shaft tools much more secure. 4. Buy screws that you can place quickly. My personal favorites are the Grivel 360s as I find I can place them much more quickly. I spend much less time preparing the ice on account of their floating handle, and find that I can crank them in much more quickly. Other folks prefer BD Express screws. In any event - buy screws with handles on the cranks if you'll be doing much leading on waterfalls. The faster you can get your screws in the happier you'll be. 5. Get one of those racking deals for your screws. There's a lot of different systems out there that work. Find something that will allow you to get your screws off of your harness and into your hands quickly. Nothing sucks more than desperately fumbling around with the gear on your harness with your numb hands when you're pumped silly and want nothing more than to get a screw in. I have three or four BD ice-clippers on my harness and that seems to work for me. Other ideas? [ 11-14-2002, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

I now know that hitting stop after hitting "Submit Post" and then hitting "Reload" will lead to a double post.... [ 10-03-2002, 03:51 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

quote: Originally posted by erik: jayb you dont carry your windbreaker.... by the way that thing works great!!!! Just consider me a sponsor, homie...at least until we head out again. Have you had a rematch with that OW yet?

I brought all of that stuff along on longer climbs for a long time and never used any of it - until this season. I've had a couple of mini-epics this year and have actually had to dig into this stuff once or twice: On grade III or longer climbs, or those with a really long approach, I pack along: Knife Extra webbing Two Tiblocs, prusik, small pulley Tikka Windbreaker Hat Thermal top A bit of extra food (just enough to fend off starvation overnight) Lighter&Firestarter Space blanket bivy Shades Map&Compass if I don't know the way... Not sure what it all weighs - but I hardly notice it in the pack and all of the non-climbing stuff take up about an inch in the bottom of a bullet pack. Sure is nice to have when the time comes...

quote: Originally posted by Fence Sitter: i was checking out and a static 10.5 mill is about 27kn breaking strenght and has an elongation of 3% whereas dynamic ropes have about 9 kn breaking strength, but have 7.5% stretch... No hostility intended here, but the 9kN figure is the not the breaking strength of the rope, but rather the maximum impact force that the rope will generate in a factor two fall. Any UIAA certified single rope will handle a load well into the high 20 kN range before breaking. Count me in with the folks who think there is just no way that either Erden or Goran would have failed to recognize that they were tying in with a static rope. Try actually threading a static rope through a belay device or tying into a harness with one and see what you think. We're all speculating here, but I think Ray had it right - first piece blows, biner on the next piece breaks, and the rest fail. The fact that so many pieces blew in series stongly suggests that at the time of the fall they were not optimally situated in the rock. Could have walked, could have been the original placement, certainly could have had something to do with the characteristics of the basalt. We'll probably never know the full story - but hopefully learning as much as possible about what actually happened will provide some comfort for his friends and family. [ 10-02-2002, 11:45 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

I think that Ray may have been asking about the conditions you encountered in the Canadian Rockies on your recent trip out there. I think he took a trip out there with FB and Dennis Harmon, amongst others, not too long ago.

Very sad indeed. Horibble news. Condolences to friends and family.

As long as were on the topic of Dreamer/Green Giant Buttress - anyone know the name of the big granite formation to the climbers right (across the valley)? Anyone know any info about the climbing history on that sucker, or the lack thereof. It should be marked with a red X on the map found here: http://www.topozone.com/map.aspz=10&n=5334386&e=601020&s=25

I think I've done two in the first volume and two in the second. Going for the big number 5 this weekend, baby!

Well - there's still the unbolted final pitch for all of the runout junkies out there! It seems when it comes to the runouts on slabs there's a fine line between crafting a classic route with run-outs that keep a leader who's up to the grade fully engaged during the climb (Online comes to mind), and a gut-wrenching death route that no one ever climbs. I'm not against such routes in principle, especially when they were put up on lead and the FA naturally had to leave the crux(es) unprotected, but doubt I'll have the heuvos to climb many of them intentionally. Anyhow - IMO the Dreamer/Safe-Sex combo falls squarely into the "classic" camp. Even on the last couple of bolted lines the bolts near the end of the pitches were spaced widely enough to provoke plenty of thought in this guy's head. (I think I may have inadvertently skipped the last bolt on the next-to-last pitch though). I did have some serious leader's fatigue going on by that point so your opinion may vary... Kudos to mattp and co for putting up a sweet line. [ 09-26-2002, 05:45 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

Great summary of the route. Thanks for adding it to the site.

quote: Originally posted by Muir on Saturday: somebody bolted some climbing holds to one of the pillars below a 520 on-ramp in the arborateum. you can rent a canoe at the UW near the climbing rock. A photo of these routes showed up on the front page of the Seattle Times local section this summer. As you might expect, this led to their removal shortly thereafter - that is unless someone has re-installed the routes within the past three weeks or so since my last visit to the arboretum. Anyone know how long those routes were in place prior to getting chopped? Has the installation/chopping cycle been repeated before?

Did the Safe-Sex/Dreamer combo a couple of weeks ago. I'll second the recommendation to take the first couple of pitches of SS and then shift over to Dreamer. The direct start to the Urban Bypass variation looks cool as well - maybe next time. On this outing I was leading everything and knew I'd have some serious leader's fatigue if I got on anything too burly down low.... [ 09-23-2002, 09:14 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

Congratulations Matt! And let's not forget GregW, who also exchanged vows with his lovely bride yesterday...

Most of the views of the formations in and around Darrington were obscured be clouds on the last trip out to the Green Giant Buttress, but thankfully the conditions were quite a bit more favorable for climbing and taking in the scenery yesterday. As we were heading up the approach slaps I noticed a pretty substantial granite formation to across the drainage to the right (if you're at the base of GGB, facing the rock). Anyone know the name of that formation and or any details about the climbing history out there, if there is any? Gracias, [ 09-15-2002, 03:29 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

Thanks for all of the hard work, Andy! Matt and Darryl speak with far more authority on this issue than I do, so I'll limit my commentary to a wholehearted agreement with them.

quote: Originally posted by Cpt.Caveman: Looked like the fang to me, and the URL seems to bear that out. Goes at WI6 when it's fully formed. I walked past it a couple of times last year, during the first pass it had yet to touch down and a full on shower was dripping through the core. I could see that the ice was about an inch thick, although it would be hard to know just how thick it was once it had formed fully. Once of the guys I was chatting with had been climbing in the area for several years and talked about watching Helgi Christiansen climb it in early season conditions, then watching the entire formation collapse a day or two later. I stopped by later in the season after it had touched down and filled in. In its first thirty feet the route ascended through the overhung base an ice-formation that looked like something roughly akin to a massive frozen pine cone. Once can apparently hook these things but sinking a screw in them is apparently next to impossible. Maybe you would be able to sling them if you could hang on long enough, but most folks who climb ice at that level just climb through to the vertical stalk. Then it's another 90 feet of dead vertical to slightly overhanging ice, then out over a small roof and onto a hanging ice-curtain to the finish. It is a killer picture, but afte being there and looking at that sucker in person, the first sensation I feel upon looking at it is a mild case of nausea, followed by the desire to run away and hide under something. How about a picture of a nice, 10 foot thick WI3 flow of blue plastic ice? That'd get this guy excited... [ 09-12-2002, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: JayB ]

I'm no PR man but I'd certainly be willing to pitch-in in some fashion or another to make things work.(Not organizing the event but helping anyone who takes on the job). Just not sure what that might entail at this point. Any ideas from folks who have been to previous ice-fests up there as to what factors besides good conditions might make the event a success? I know that the Ouray Ice fest is pretty huge - taking a look at what they've done (besides creating a massive ice park) might be a place to start. [ 09-11-2002, 10:58 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

Turned out to be a bit more of a GFU day out there for this guy, but definitely cool to finally meet Bronco and E-Dogg and hang out on their home turf. [ 09-07-2002, 10:16 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

Always filter - knew a kid who got a pretty bad case of Giardia on a backpacking trip after drinking from a clear, remote stream flowing ever so rapidly through the Pasayten and ended up 25lbs lighter after the parasites were through with him three weeks later. It's just one case, but waiting 30 minutes for the iodine to work its magic or packing along a filter doesn't seem like such a big deal in comparison.

Yes, generalities - but we're talking about entire populations here. When you're doing that you have to speak in general terms. I was just just trying to give an honest answer in a relatively concise format, and hoped I could do so without restating the obvious - that there are in fact untold numbers of climbers, backpackers, hunters, mullets, dudes with the confederate flag on their trucks, yuppies, minorities etc, that confound these generalizations - in order to fend-off the sensitivity police. It just so happens that as a consequence of growing up in T-Town I attended schools with a fair number of blacks in attendance, and actually got to be close enough friends with three of them to actually discuss things like this in an honest fashion, sans the usual PC disclaimers and posturing, and what I wrote is more or less what they told me. It was pretty consistent with what I read in the essays by Black outdoorsmen in response to the same question, and it's pretty much in line with a Black climber's response to a similar question posed on rec.climbing a few years back.... "Freaky, > > I am African-American and I climb but I usually don't notice nor care. > Climbing is a personal challenge. I think the inherent illogicallness of > climbing (for what? To go high? Rent an airplane!), the slightly excessive > personal cost of the equipment (gym fees, pro, pop-tarts) and the lack of > mentors to cheaply teach technical skills make it hard to find many of us. > > Also remember, climbing is too closely associated with camping and being > outdoors. 300 years of working outdoors has us beat! Forget it, my sisters > and brothers prefer trad indoor sports. > > The last time we African-Americans were required to go climbing it was while > escaping from the plantation ... if anything can motivate ya ta' climb 5.11 > its that awful feeling of being chased by dogs and hicks with ropes > whistling the tune from "Deliverance"! > > (PC Disclaimer: As an African-American I have a cultural right to make this > joke...those offended can contact the Jesse Helms or Clarence Thomas, which > are almost the same thing.) > > More seriously, African-Americans have only been technically free for 130 > years and integrated into the American daily society for 30 years ... > Climbing is not at the top of our "to-do" list. European descendents and > people who have the time and money find climbing (un) naturally ...Climbers > are a corps of extreme individualists within the world (that doesn't include > the French!) at large so climbing is more like Curling ... find some people > who play that. We have only recently been popularized by the X-games, the > Eco-challenge and the Ford Expedition so standby for the yuppie influx of > wannabees. > > Climbing is still considered a sport for freaks...aren't you glad? > > xxxooo > Abu Buckwheat Malcolm "Buckwheat," Nance" [ 09-04-2002, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: JayB ]

One of the essays I was referring to if you're interested... "Outside magazine, December 1997 Solo Faces A black outdoorsman takes a wilderness census, and finds it disturbingly light By Eddy L. Harris -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Night was falling all around the dusty mountains of southeastern Utah. It was a warm, clear stretch of December, and I'd been fishing the Green River all day, fighting monster rainbows until both my arms were tired. By late afternoon I was exhausted and hungry but not at all ready to quit fishing, and I moved on to a small stream where the water was quieter and the trout were smaller and I was the only one. When the sun went down, I was still fishing. I couldn't see well enough to tie on a new fly and had to thread tippet to eyelet with some eyes-closed mystical magic. But I wouldn't leave until the last lumen had been squeezed from the sky. Then I heard splashing in the stream behind me. It could have been deer coming down from the hills to drink, moving along in what to them is the safety of darkness — could have been anything not worth worrying over. But the splashing came instead from the wading boots of men. I froze there in the darkness, because there are times when men are more to be feared than grizzlies. They were not villains, as it turned out, only fellow fishermen done for the day and noisily finding their way back to their car. But as I think back to that evening and many occasions like it, I realize what a complicated thing it is to be the only one. It's a sensation at once intensely pleasurable, to be alone on a stream at sunset, trout dancing at your feet, and at the same time daunting, for to be alone anywhere in the wilderness is to be really and truly alone. On that evening, whether or not I was the only fisherman, I was certainly the only black person on that stream, in those mountains, in the great state of Utah. Surely this is an exaggeration, and yet through hyperbole I suddenly realize it has been on my mind now for many years, this peculiar fact that whenever I find myself in nature — camping beside a dry creekbed in Montana, cross-country skiing in northern Vermont, hiking a bit of the Appalachian Trail — mine is nearly always the only black face around. This is something that other black outdoorsmen have been quietly puzzling over for years. My new friend Jean Ellis, for example, is an emergency room doctor from Billings, Montana. He's also an accomplished alpinist, and he's black. Ellis has attempted Everest and has climbed Cho Oyu in the Himalayas, distinguishing himself as the first black American to climb above 8,000 meters. "In 15 years," he says, "I've yet to meet another black climber in any country on any trip. And when I ask my other climbing friends how many blacks they've seen, they come up with one black climber a year. Maybe." The same could be said of caving, kayaking, scuba diving, orienteering, surfing, hang-gliding, bouldering, birding, and just about any other intense wilderness pastime I can think of this side of hunting and fishing. Likewise, there's a conspicuous absence of black voices in the world of outdoor literature — not only black voices, but the voices of people of color in general. And with few exceptions, American environmentalism has always been a movement of monochrome white. The major environmental groups have long been aware of this problem, and during the early nineties, many made a conscientious effort to recruit nonwhites and to take up the cause of "environmental racism" (which charges, among other things, that industrialists have disproportionately located toxic dumps in minority neighborhoods). Yet lately the major American environmental groups have largely abandoned these efforts — which could perhaps be taken as a tacit acknowledgment of the wide gulf that separates white environmentalism from other shades of green. But is this curious apartheid to be understood as a reality, or merely a perception of a reality? If you were to take only the images offered by television as a cue, you'd get the impression that blacks nowadays do just about everything everybody else does in America; there are black lawyers, black detectives, black ER docs, even black golfers, for godsakes. Blacks are everywhere to be found — everywhere, that is, but in the great outdoors. You don't see them bouncing through the Australian outback in the latest sport-utility wagon. You don't see them guzzling a sweat-beaded can of Coors Light against a backdrop of Rocky Mountain alpenglow. Similarly, if you thumb through the pages of this magazine and many others, you'll have a tough time finding images of American blackness. In general the stories are neither about nor by blacks, and the advertisements hardly ever show a black person engaged in "outdoorsy" pastimes. Do the marketeers not expect to find black readers? Or do they merely not expect to find enough black buyers with the requisite sums of disposable income, and therefore choose not to target them? It's hard to tell, within this chicken-and-egg scenario, which comes first: the not being invited to the party and therefore not showing up, or the assumption that blacks party so differently that they need not be invited. Still, it's a tricky thing for me to talk about this subject. For if it's true that blacks don't sail, don't surf, don't hike, what does it imply? That we don't like sunshine and spectacular scenery? That we harbor some deep-seated dread of water and snow? That we have an aversion to crisp, clean air? And then, too, if there's a general rule about blacks in the outdoors, what do we make of the exceptions that are to be found just about everywhere, past and present? What about the prominent historical example of Matthew Henson, the noted black explorer who accompanied Robert E. Peary on numerous expeditions and, though Peary's exploration claims are contested, is still thought by many to have been the first person to stand at the North Pole? To go back even further, what about the black "Buffalo Soldiers" of the U.S. Cavalry or the little-known but nonetheless rich traditions of black ranchers and miners and cowboys of the American West? If you visit the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center in Denver and talk for five minutes with its founder and curator, Paul Stewart, any lingering stereotypes that you might have about the racial makeup of the Wild West will be compellingly shattered. "There were blacks working on the wagon trains and black scouts in the army and black frontiersmen," Stewart will tell you. "One quarter of the cowboys in the 1800s were black. But we don't get the whole story — we've never gotten it." And how about today? The new director of the National Park Service, Robert Stanton, who was appointed last summer amid considerable fanfare, happens to be a black American. (But note the fanfare, and its implication.) A Washington, D.C.-based climber named Keith Ware plans to lead the first all-black expedition to the summit of Everest, in 2000. The National Brotherhood of Skiers is a black organization with some 14,000 members; four years ago, 6,000 of them descended on Vail, Colorado, to celebrate the Brotherhood's 20th anniversary. It was one of the largest ski conventions in history. And there is William Pinkney, a Chicagoan who is probably the best-known black sailor in the world. Pinkney is the first African-American (and one of only four Americans) to have completed a solo circumnavigation of the earth via its five southernmost capes. When I asked Pinkney about the apparent dearth of blacks in the outdoors, he replied that this was simply nonsense. If blacks seem largely invisible in this particular universe, he argued, it's because whites don't want to see us. "It's all a numbers game," Pinkney insisted. "In the outdoors you're dealing with a small proportion of the population anyway. For most Americans the great outdoors is the distance from the front door to the car. Add to that the fact that we're a minority of a minority, and of course the numbers are going to be small. But we're out there." My friend Jacob Smith, a St. Louis shoe repairman who is an avid outdoorsman, emphatically agrees with Pinkney, and he chastised me for giving this topic even a moment's thought. "The whole thing's ridiculous," he said to me. "Of course black people fish and ski and everything else." After all, he's a fly fisherman. He skis. And he's black. But when I asked him to name someone else out there besides the two of us, he came up short. "Still," he insisted, "saying that black people don't do this thing or that thing is like saying black people don't like cats. It's just an assumption. And like just about every assumption made about black people in America, it's an assumption that's dead wrong." He appeared quite sure of this when he spoke, but for both of us, the question dangled there uneasily. I prefer to hang onto that ambiguity, and yet I have to admit that my own experiences have been consistently unambiguous. Three years ago, while I was working on a book about Harlem and found myself growing decidedly claustrophobic in the city, I was seized with the notion of riding my BMW motorcycle from New York City all the way to Alaska. When I told my Harlem neighbors what I was planning to do, they thought I was crazy. The route I took to Alaska carried me across the Badlands of South Dakota to the old frontier town of Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok met his end in a saloon, holding a winning hand of two aces and two eights. I dismounted my bike the way saddle tramps in the old westerns climbed down from their horses. I walked over to a quick-draw contest I'd seen advertised on posters around the town and tried my hand at gunslinging. I was the only black man in the crowd, the only one in the whole town that day, it seemed. People looked at me as if I'd just stepped off a spaceship. I continued West and pitched my tent in Glacier National Park. I climbed a Rocky Mountain ice field on the border between British Columbia and Alberta. Finally I made my way to Alaska's salmon and trout streams. I unpacked my rod and got ready for what I knew sooner or later would come: first the look, and then the words, that ask what I'm doing here. Sure enough, beside a stream on the Kenai Peninsula I met an advertising executive named Michael who lives in Anchorage. The first words out of his mouth were words of wonderment. "I never knew a black man who was a fly fisherman," he said, matter-of-factly. He didn't say fisherman. He said fly fisherman. Michael's surprise came not from the fact that I fished, for black people fish all over the place: on the banks of the Potomac or the James, in the bayous of Louisiana, on lakes and streams everywhere. We have always been, in fact, a rural, outdoor people — from when we were African to the time when we were uprooted and shipped to this new land to work as plantation field hands and then as sharecroppers. But like the natives of North America who likewise lived for countless generations on the land, or Hispanics, or Middle Easterners, or Laotians, or Polynesians, or just about anyone of color, blacks are not thought of in the context of this new love affair with the recreational outdoors. No, Michael's surprise came from the simple fact that my tastes leaned in certain directions and that I, as a black man, would be drawn to a style of fishing widely thought to be reserved for rich white squires. Michael and I became good friends and fishing buddies. But on an earlier trip I'd had a similar encounter, with another form of generalization that I found both idiotic and insulting. I stopped one night at a bed-and-breakfast in Bath, Maine, and the next morning one of the guests, a graying, middle-aged man nearing retirement, accosted me as I fitted my fly rod into its holder on the back of the motorcycle. He recognized the metal tube for what it was and right away took offense when I told him that I was on my way to do a little fishing in the Canadian Rockies, that I had fished prime trout waters from Scotland to South Africa. He seemed shocked, almost angry. "I've worked all my life to be able to afford to do some of those things," he declared, "and I can't do them — how can you?" I wasn't enthralled to be standing next to this pathetic man, who'd somehow managed to fuse economic prejudice with racial prejudice in a single thoughtless sentence. Nor am I enthralled with my usual role as the only black face among the new breed of recreational rustics. I wish there were others. But I want to make sure that when someone like this man looks up from tying a pale morning dun onto his fly line, he knows that he and his whiteness will have to share the stream with me and my blackness, that the outdoors, the hidden coves and the mountain fastnesses and all the best places, are not reserved for him and his alone. If the wilderness were not such a formidable place, we would not venerate the Indian tribes and the mountain folk and the frontiersmen and the cowboys who "tamed" the West and carved out a life from its harshness, nor would we seek to emulate them in tests of outdoor skill and courage. But concerning the challenges of nature, black Americans have an added element to deal with, one that white Americans can't fully fathom and that African-Americans are perhaps just beginning to come to terms with. The black writer Evelyn C. White defined this challenge eloquently in an essay for the San Francisco Chronicle a few years ago. "It is not the sky or the trees or the creeks that have harmed us, but rather the people we have encountered along the way," she wrote. "Ask yourself why a black woman would find solace under the sun knowing that her great-great-grandmothers had toiled in brutal, blistering heat for slavemasters. It's no mystery to me why millions of African-Americans fled the 'pastoral South' for the grit and grime of northern cities." The point, of course, is that historically bad things have happened to black people in the outdoors. If we choose to conjure them up, our associations with the woods can easily run in the direction of bloodhounds, swinging hemp ropes, and cracker Wizards in Klan bedsheets. And those associations, I think, play a large though largely unspoken role in this whole question. This fear is not confined to the distant past. In 1985, when I was 30 years old and living in St. Louis, I decided to canoe the Mississippi River from its source in Minnesota down to New Orleans and write a book about the trip. It was an impetuous plan, and one for which I was quite ill-prepared. I'd scarcely been in a canoe before. I'd been camping perhaps twice in my entire life. Growing up in St. Louis, the closest I came to the outdoors was the time or two I walked in the Missouri woods, clutching a shotgun in my hands, with my oldest brother at my side. He was a hunter and a fisherman, but his hunting and fishing were of the straightforward putting-meat-on-the-table variety. No fancy gear, no exotic locales, and the trophies were ducks from the lake, rabbits from the woods, catfish from the river. My father would sometimes accompany us. I had noticed that he would never venture into the woods alone without carrying a gun, and he discouraged me from ever heading out into the countryside by myself. When I was in the Boy Scouts, he refused to let me go camping. His justification was always the same: snakes. "What do you want to sleep out in the woods for?" he'd say. "You want to get bit by a copperhead?" If you're not accustomed to it, of course, the deep woods can be a frightening place, with its twigs snapping in the night, its snakes and bears and mountain lions that know no discrimination based on color or race. But I always suspected there was something else that my dad was afraid of. The other boys in my all-black Scout troop rarely went camping either. I sensed that their parents might have had the same fears. Yet in the fall of 1985 I cast aside all that dread and canoed the length of the Mississippi River. Somewhere in the canebrake of Tennessee, I set up camp in the midst of a downpour. It rained all night long and well into the morning. At some point a pack of wild animals wandered up in the dark and snuggled around the edges of my tent to steal a bit of my warmth. When I poked on the bulges in the tent wall, they growled at me — feral dogs. They had me pinned down and so terrified that I could not sleep. I lay packed tight in my bedroll and clutched the pistol I'd brought along. When I finally bolted from the tent the next morning, one of the dogs charged me. I aimed the pistol at his chest and fired a single shot. The rest of the pack fled back into the woods. But later still during that same voyage, on another night, at another campsite, a different source of fear came creeping out of the woods toward me. Nearing my trip's end, I made my camp on the Mississippi side of the river. I pitched my tent, built a fire, and started cooking my dinner. A possum rustled the leaves. When the branches rustled a second time, I thought nothing of it. Then out of the woods came the bad dream. On the edge of the darkness, where the light from my campfire faded into shadows, stood the figures that must haunt the imagination of every black American who has heard the old stories about Emmet Till and James Earl Chaney and Willie Edwards. Two greasy-haired, camo-wearing white hunters materialized out of the forest lining the river and aimed their shotguns at me. "Hey," one of them said. "Look what we got here." "And I haven't shot at anything all day," the other one said. It was deer season and they'd been out hunting, without success. I was not about to be used for target practice in the night. So I pulled the pistol from my boot and I shot in their general direction. When they scattered, I hastily broke camp and, wrought up with anger and fear, hopped into my canoe and sprinted for the middle of the river. As I paddled toward the Gulf of Mexico, I was certain of the malevolence of man, and of those two men in particular. But as I reflect upon it now, it occurs to me that there might not have been anything particularly racial about that situation. And I suppose it's possible, remotely possible, that I reacted prematurely, an impulsive response rooted in the old black-and-white fears that I had hauled downriver with me. Perhaps. The natural world, however, is neither black nor white. It is forest green, desert ocher, deep ocean blue. If there are barriers that keep us all from immersing ourselves in it and savoring its riches, they may be reducible, in part, to economics, to geography, to history, and to culture. But mostly they exist in our minds, in the fears and misperceptions that continue to keep us suspended in our separate limbos, unable to come together, even in a place as universally inviting as the world outside our doors. Eddy L. Harris is writer-in-residence at Washington University and splits his time between St. Louis and Paris. He is the author of four books, including Native Stranger and Still Life in Harlem. Photographs by Mark Katzman Copyright 1997, Outside magazine"

I'll have to go with the demographic/cultural explanation here. Someone's already covered the fact that blacks on the whole have less disposable income and tend to be concentrated in urban areas that are quite a long way from the mountains. For the first half of this century I would bet that most folks who went out to the mountains did so for the purposes of hunting and fishing, and the population introduced to the outdoors in this fashion, or more likely their kids, channelled this interest in the outdoors into backpacking, skiing, hiking, kayaking, climbing, and the like. I suspect that in the black community this transition never happened, as the population underwent such a rapid transformation from a rural to an urban population, and the folks that left for the city probably didn't miss the kind of life they left behind in the rural south all that much. There was simply no "rural ideal" in which they could wistfully harken back to those good ole days in the pioneering era, when they were oppressed, impoverished, and had to hunt and fish for food. As a consequence of demographics and the the absence of any outdoor legacy being passed down from one generation to the next, what you see when you hit the mountains is the fact that the vast majority of the folks that you see in the outdoors are white. While most of the backpacker-types fall into the Uber-sensitive Goretex clad-yuppies category, I suspect that blacks associate rural/mountainous areas with or gun-toting mullets in camo driving trucks flying the confederate-flag. Consequently I suspect that the idea of heading to the mountains to experience first hand what your ancestors left behind amongst rednecks sporting high caliber rifles has about as much appeal for them has heading to Watts for some hoops and a barbeque has for the average white person. Take the AT for example - travelling alone in the woods through the deep South, enduring all of the hardships that the woods can dish out,andhaving to worry about being assaulted by Cleetus and Jethro when you head into town for provisions. Can't say I'd head out there either if I was in their shoes. Despite all of this there are a few blacks that get out into the mountains quite a bit. One guy's doing the PCT and the AT, the other is doing the Seven Summits thing, another paddled down the length of the Mississipi. Some of them even write about why they do it, and the reasons why there are so few others joining them. If you look around on the internet you'll probably be able to find the articles they've contributed on the subject.

The south facing "Cactus Cliff" section of Shelf is pretty sweet in the winter, with temps in the high 50's to low 70's most days, and incredible views down the valley and out to the Sangre's. The camping is pleasant and convenient, and there's usually folks from all over the US and Europe hanging out there to hang out with if you're feeling social. If you're looking to mix in some skiing both Monarch and Wolf Creek are within driving range in the Southern part of the state. Penitente Canyon is another climbing option if you're looking to mix things up a bit, as is the south facing stuff out in the Platte if you get hungry for some trad.