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Cairns

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Posts posted by Cairns

  1. Maybe it's just me, but rap-bolting has always felt like cheating. Its easy for me to say, perhaps, since I'm not a "crag developer" and have never "put up a route". Nevertheless, I'm a big believer in ground-up "ethics."

     

    It's so area and even line dependent: if you disagree with that assessment I have a blackberry bush, 10" of loose dirt and rock covered, loose death block encrusted potential route I want to watch you try to get 10 feet up on. There is no visible cracks, but maybe......just maybe, you can dig something out.

     

    I'm not kidding.

     

    Top-down and ground-up approaches to climbing new routes rarely come into conflict, I think, in any serious way. The worst I can think of is when a poorly protected but otherwise good route is soloed and then someone else comes along and bolts it. That happened to a friend of mine who bolted (on lead) a Bachar solo at J Tree with no idea the route had been done. The conflict got resolved peaceably talking around a campfire.

     

    Mostly, though, the rap whatever versus risk ethic live in different neighborhoods and both schools produce good climbs.

  2. Wew…..that only took about an hour before some person on here would discount what I wrote. Would you feel better if I changed the title to big fall instead of huge?

     

    I would've.

     

    On seeing the title Huge fall at Smith:

     

    first thought = hundreds of feet

    second thought = then it would have been "fatality at Smith"

     

     

  3. So is Astrologger good? I don't own a squamish guidebook but I remember reading about multiple hand size pieces so i was thinking it must be pretty steep. Was it clean.

     

    alaskan highway would be another one too I guess. Though I'm pretty sure it would chew me up and spit me out at the bottom.

     

    Ryan probably just wants to know about Mastodon so he can TRY to talk me into leading it for him. :P

     

    Astrologger was clean, good, and safe. Sig Isaac led it. Getting to the start was tricky but that was years ago, maybe the trees have been turned into stairs.

     

    Alaska Highway has an undercling to start the second pitch but not much truly overhanging crack.

     

    Masotodon Roof I remember doing with Brian Povolny. It was a big roof with good protection.

     

    Spellbound I remember hanging by one hand jam towards the top while placing a cam and thinking it might have been better not to take the time.

     

    Overhanging corner cracks seem more common than cracks in overhanging faces.

     

    Did G-Spotter mention the Campground Wall climb (A Pitch in Time?). Shorter examples: brief bit on Whirlwind on the Apron, and Voodoo Amour. The first 3 moves of Perfidious Albion but they are more than enough.

     

    Has anyone done Crucifixion?

  4. The third question is: are the Han Chinese people committing cultural

    genocides?

     

    HI, TRAIN!!

    Genocide basically means killing the members of a culture rather than the culture itself, although trying to deprive people of their culture is one of the more wishy-washy tactics sometimes employed by those suspected of harboring genocidal intentions.

     

    should the western corporations including McDonald's, KFC and

    Addidas that are currently opened on the street of Lasha also be called a

    Tibitan culture invasion?

     

    I would say so but with different spelling.

     

    Indeed, this is a trend of culture co-existence

    under the frame of globalization and information explosion, not a so-called

    cultural genocide.

     

    You should step a little further back from the information explosion. I expect Tibet will be getting flying cars, soon?

     

     

     

  5. We were hiking up the Far Side trail this afternoon when we came upon a large black bear in the middle of the trail just a 100yds from the road.

     

    Where have you seen them?

     

     

    meat department of the grocery store, once

     

    bear_advisory.jpg

  6.  

    He trains US Special Forces personnel.

     

     

    Nooo! Not my hero? How could he tarnish his brand?

     

    Or is there The Untold Story: US Effectiveness on the World Stage? Extreme Militarism

     

     

    Back in late 60s I heard a Green Beret/whitewater canoeist describe an excercise in rural New England where one team was the guerillas and the other team worked with local authorities. The guerilla team kidnapped the local sheriff. Great stuff but didn't turn the tide in SE Asia.

  7. Andrew - whatever gets you back in shape and keeps you there! What's your schedule look like for this coming weekend and the one after that - I'm thinking of jamming out of here for one or the other given our forecast looks bleak and Vegas is already too hot.

     

     

    Andrew here.

     

    Chalk is good but you should only use it after having fallen off the move without it.

     

    Don't expect to see me taking my advice, though.

     

    And when sport climbing you can predict the fall and use the chalk in time-advance mode.

     

     

    But I will be doing the birdshit traverse, today.

     

    And on the subject of Beacon Rock:

     

     

     

     

    Warning.jpg

  8. Trip: West Vancouver - the traverse

     

    Date: 2/24/2008

     

    Trip Report:

    There were a horrible number of spiders. Therapy might uncover the buried details of the climb but who has the time or money? Here are the pictures.

     

     

    How can there be spiders in February?

     

     

    the North side of the traverse in summer

     

    sequence1.jpg

     

     

     

     

     

    February 24, 2008

     

    grebe.jpg

     

    IMG_7396a.JPG

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    North

     

    IMG_7395a.JPG

     

     

     

     

    Middle

     

    IMG_7417a.JPG

     

     

     

     

    South

     

    IMG_7401a.JPG

  9. Sorry for the spruhumm, er, meta-analysis, but this thread truly hits the cc.comer demographic target: an army marching on abandoned food, twist ties, laundry lint, and wearing aluminum foil hats.

     

     

    If the old is new again: in winter put your jacket at the bottom of your sleeping bag and put your feet in the shoulder sleeve holes.

  10. Leave the camera at home. You won't miss it. You're the only one who actually enjoys looking at your pictures anyway, although your SO will never let on this is true.

     

    Peanut butter, yes, leaving the camera I would only do where the survival chances on the route seem marginal. In your golden years you will want a visual of the way your partner's face looked when they broke that shoelace, or whatever.

     

    It is true, though, that actually climbing is a far better experience without a photographer in the party.

  11. Maybe counter-intuitive but: if you have time to go climbing, don't worry about the weather forecast, just go. Wait til you get there for the next decision. To me, climbing isn't about getting stuff done so much as it is about the rare times when crazy ideas work out.

     

    A related tip: try the routes you haven't heard anything about.

  12. I continuously hear people say that Squamish climbs are soft in the grade, but the more Ive gone up there the less Ive found this to be true. I know that there are a handfull of giveaways at the bluffs (ex. The Zip) but it seems almost every climbing area Ive ever been to has these. I know I know, grades really do not matter anyhow. I would just like to hear examples of Squamish climbs people feel are on the soft side. I can name a few stout ones off the top of my head.

    Mushroom 5.9

    Rightwing 10c

    Avalon 10b

    Seasoned In The Sun 10a

    Perspective 11a

    Silver Surfer 11b

    Horrors of Ivan 11c

     

    If we say that grades don't matter then we imply that difficulty doesn't matter or that it is impossible to estimate.

     

    To answer the larger question you would need to import climbers who haven't been to Squamish, Yos, Index, and send them up climbs without telling them the rating and then ask them to rank the routes' difficulty.

     

    Of course, ratings aren't always reliable. Red Nails at 11c would be more of a problem for most people than Ghostdancing at 11c/d. the 12b on fourth pitch of Daily Planet is soft compared to the 12b on Genius Loci. That was humor. The corner right of Kneewrecker is a harder 10c than Squamish Buttress 10c.

     

    However, my faith in inter-area grading is strong and rests solidly if irrationally on having been told that Serenity Crack had a crux "similar to the thin part of Exasperator" and not believing it but then finding it true.

     

    And I think the chimney start to Yosemite's Super Slide (5.8) is similar in difficulty to Clean Corner (5.8) at Squamish.

     

    But of course Yosemite has generally slicker granite. Too bad for them, except when it rains up here.

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