fern

The first pitch of Jackass was fine and fun climbing on Saturday. Entropy was well formed and mostly dry bottom to top on Sunday though we bailed early due to sickness. Entropy was maybe even fat enough to survive a short warm spell this week. The Fig Plucker climbs would have been climbable too in sporty style with stubbies, but they are going to fall apart with any warming.

after cogitating I decided that I think the original post is right. If you can do 15 pullups but can't climb WI4 then your technique must be worse than suck. WI4 is not even vertical. Also I think that if you can link 15 crossfit-style kipping pullups with good rhythm and pace you are probably closer to good ice-climbing technique than if you can do 15 static deadhang pullups (or worse, typical gymrat 1/2 ROM chins) but can't kip. Also I think that my choice for the top 3 exercises that would improve my conditioning for ice climbing they would be pullups (on bar, rings, tools, L-pullups, windshield wipers etc. - basically hanging off my arms and moving my body around), deadlifts, and swinging actual ice-tools with extra head weight (I add weight to mine by taping on sockets from my wrench set).

at the moment the hardest part of onsighting man of leisure might be locating the trail to it through the epic salal and windfall jungle. from anecdotes it seems like the lower .10a cruxy move on Rock On is frequently mis-read by first timers.

The Mt. Harvey ramp is not 'avalanche safe' all the time, safe climbing is condition dependent as with most steep snowy terrain. An avalanche course is a great idea. Be sure to use the opportunity to do some extra-curricular quizzing of your instructor about your climbing objectives. Often those courses will be focused towards backcountry ski-travel with no consideration for winter climbing.

here's some nice definitions from Jim Cawley. Strength is #3: if you work at improving all 10 skills, by whatever training regime you like, then your climbing will improve. Skip development in any area and you will probably find that area becomes your mode of failure in performance. For example in climbing (ice or rock) many times arm strength is blamed when what is actually lacking is the balance, flexibility and coordination to transfer weight to the feet.

what's your background in assessing avalanche hazard?

valleycliffe access is closed at the Y junction under the hospital, and there is a slide blocking the stawamus in the vicinity of the Sheriff's Badge trail. The only access into valleycliffe is up hospital hill and through the unpaved gated connection to Plateau Drive, 1 way traffic only. Could be a few days. Lots of trees still down on power lines along the highway and no repair crews in sight.

technique is the efficient application of the strength you have. more strength = more opportunity for technique. why would anyone want to be a weakling just so they could brag about technique? better to brag about both.

I think you are probably right. The point I was making was that when the terminus retreats by some amount you get 100% loss of ice thickness in that area, if you take that lost volume and distribute it as an average over the whole area you can get a number that is much bigger than any point loss of depth well upstream in the glacier. But even taking that approach 65' per year would require a whole lot of terminal retreat too. the World Glacier Monitoring Service has published global glacier mass balance numbers for 1990-2000 (Blue Glacier is in there) in PDF format if you want numbers unfiltered by journalistic misunderstanding. http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb.html

65 feet on average over the whole glacier surface. If the terminus of cross-section Y times Z retreats back X feet then there is a loss of XYZ cubic feet of ice. Divide XYZ by the total area of the glacier (typically just the planar area measured from a map or sat photo) and you get the average depth lost. It's not necessarily a true depth lost at any given point in the glacier. or maybe it is a misquote/interpretation by the writer ... dunno

it's essentially the same retraced fig 8 you would use to tie into the rope. As long as you dress it properly and pre-cinch it tightly why would it be any more likely to unravel under load than your tie-in is in a fall? there is a good reason for sticking to the common repertoire of climbing knots and not innovating with all manner of obscure sailing knots and bends - which is that just about any other observant person in the gym or at the crag will be able to check your knots and see when things are amiss in your rigging. wikipedia

ya that was the joke. I wouldn't rely on the numbers on 8a.nu either.

a reminder to everyone to keep the discussion civil and reasonably on track. thank you

if you think you have a medical condition wouldn't a doctor be a better person to talk to than a paramedic? feeling like shit after rowing is normal. I attribute it to a hunched posture which alters how you would normally inflate your chest, and also changes how you process lactic acid. I usually try to go for an easy short jog as soon as I can after getting off the rower and generally feel better after that. I thought that exercise induced asthma was one of those things aggravated by breathing cold air ... so if in all your alpine and winter adventures you have never had problems maybe it is just a rowing thing. 7:28 puts you at around 1360th in the world on concept2.com ... how does that compare to your 8a.nu score?

Read Accidents in North American Mountaineering to get an idea of carabiner breakage rates. It is actually fairly common - probably the most common reported mode of actual gear failure rather than operator failure - though often operator error sets up the circumstance for gear failure (eg clove hitching to intermediate pieces when rope soloing).

the rap rings at the top of bunny face are down to about 25% from people TRing through them. no shit I coulda DIED!

AFAIK the fluorescents don't work with dimmer switches though ... no more mood lighting

this is complete nonsense.

who is sponsoring saturday?

2 opposed quickdraw anchor properly rigged probably isn't going to kill you but it is sub-optimal from a clusterfuck perspective. A multipitch anchor with a solid "power point" is going to give you much more flexibility for managing your belay. Cordallettes or double length slings or similar are all good. Clip yourself to the powerpoint directly using the rope and a locker (or opposed non lockers) use your daisy as a backup if you like.

go to skull hollow. skulk around the loop peering at random groups huddled around burning pallets. periodically work up the nerve to approach strangers and ask: "Is this the Plab?"

maybe you know this already ericb, and it doesn't apply here, but I feel it is worth mentioning. Sometimes a following party that isn't aiming to pass will wait until the party above has cleared the belays before continuing themselves, for example to not have to share gear belay stances. Just because they were a ways behind you all day doesn't mean that you were climbing faster than them and absolved of responsibility for any traffic jams lower on the route. If you had climbed faster they also may have climbed faster but still deliberately kept a separation so as not to crowd you.

as a TR forum moderator I aim for something like #3. But I try to take into account things like the humour level of the original TR and whether the solid beta there is still going to be useful in 5 yrs, or it's only of short term use. One one level this is a circus and on another we are collectively building a huge database of climbing info that would ideally be searchable and usable by anyone without having to shovel through a deep layer of junk posts. other mods may have slightly different ideas about where the fuzzy lines are. we are all pretty much on the same page about spray that degenerates into insults, or TR responses that are discouraging to the continued posting of TRs of any route - hardcore or beginner - by any user, 40 000 posts or 1.

hey Cobra_Commander ... what's that bolted thing on the Shakespeare cliff that I was TRing last year?

if you get turbulent flow perhaps you don't even need silt in the water. see: cavitation it's all beside the original point if Snow Creek canyon or Icicle Ck canyon were never glaciated. were they?