G-spotter

Yang is quelled by yin. Together they form qi.

"I remember the Oil Price Bubble of 2008"

Save Gas. Fart in a jar.

You must have missed posts like this one from May 16:

Why did the friend break? Was it placed horizontaly? The route is predominantly finger sized and Andy only had about 2 pieces that fit the crack, so after placing everything that fit I started placing things that did not. I had the friend in a pod with two cams tight and two cams mostly open. When it was weighted, the swages on the trigger wires of the tight set of cams broke (they were about 15 years old and heavily used at that point methinks) and the cam then rotated out of the crack and came sliding down the rope with me till the next piece - which I think was a #7 Rock or something - held me.

The first fall I still remember was a 20 footer off of a wet section of Eagle's Domain onto Cairns' old rigid #2.5 Friend, which promptly broke and tuned a 20' into 50'. I'm pretty sure that I had taken some small falls and hangs on gear before that though.

Many older trad routes in the 90s near Kelowna were retrobolted by the prototypical "punk kids with a drill", who learned to climb in a gym and ventured outside with Dad's hilti to make "first ascents". The guidebook provides an amusing commentary.

Jesse's point is that he had to add one or more bolts to that very same route - that despite being a 14c climber on gear, and 12 soloist, he couldn't mentally deal with the poorly protected nature of Steinbok without retrobolting. Thus bringing the climb down to his level. The insinuation is that he should go back to Steinbok, remove the bolts, and climb it in the same style as the first ascent.

Once or twice over the years I have heard some climbers advocate that leaders new to trad climbing should take some "practice falls" onto gear in order to learn to trust it. Here is a case where the gear was not trustworthy and a fatal head injury resulted.

Can you deep fry guacamole?

I went there in 98 or so? It started raining when we got to the crags and it rained until we got back to the cars. Hmmmm.

The Marble Range is mostly snow-free but there are still patches for drinking water.

Hey Mr. 4ord the entire print run of the AAJ is now online. There's a lot of good Himalayan reading in there. Also the entire run of Lindsay Griffin's "Mountain Info" is now online, you have to register (free) to browse it though - climbmagazine.co.uk I think.

The snow pack no doubt was solid, but the whole solid pack, when it rests on smoothly tilted bedrock and is lubricated by running water, can move on that interface.

Jens, It is not the biners as much as it is you developed bad biner management habits while belaying the old (wrong) way. Sounds more like you need to work on your biner management.

It was on CKNW and Global TV, and then it turned out to be a friend of a friend and occasional cc.com poster. Good news is he is safe and out of the hospital on crutches now.

Did you know a climber was evacuated off the north face of Harvey with a broken leg a week or two ago after getting hit when some of the remaining patchy snow, avalanched on him? This is not a good time of year to be up there. Save this one for the winter. Now on to your question. If you don't have the money to spare, buy a set of Aztars or Axars or something like that and use the one with the adze as a mountaineering axe instead of buying a separate mountaineering axe. Otherwise, if you have the coin, buy a set of something nice for ice (like quarks) and buy a separate mountaineering axe like the Grivel Airtech or BD Raven.

Sonnie Trotter made the second ascent of Rhapsody (E11 7a, 14b/c R) at Dumbarton Rock in scotland yesterday after a month of effort this year and a couple weeks last year. Cool reading: http://www.sonnietrotter.com/roadlife.php

Hit that funky Office bubble at top left and choose the tiny little "Word Options" tab at the bottom right of that window. Now play around with AutoCorrect settings until it stops doing that. Now hunt through the Menus until you find the "Clippy" option and turn it on. The next time you can't figure out what to do, just ask Clippy!

CBS - given how overhanging it is the falls would probably clean through the swing part, it's hitting the rock that would hurt. They use double ropes a lot more in the UK. When the natural pro is distributed in cracks, flakes, pockets etc. semi-randomly around the face instead of in a nice straight line along a single crack in the usual style of North Amrican trad cragging, using doubles can really help to manage rope drag and protect traversing pitches.

There's only one brand of nuts that I have doubles of.

Apparently the problem you experienced was due to your skinny rope having been "flake magnetized". After having this problem with several of my own ropes over the years I have come up with a 100% organic rope degaussing solution which I am selling for $50 a bottle. One bottle contains approximately 10 applications. Send PM with your address, credit card # and expiration date. Your ropes will thank you!

If the leader is clipping pro at their waist, the belayer will not notice much different. If the leader is clipping pro overhead, then climbing past it, the belayer will notice that one rope in their belay device is tight and the other is slack, unless they manage the rope by feeding each rope through the device individually rather than both together. If you belay a lot on double ropes, you figure out how to do this (taking in/giving slack on two individual ropes) safely relatively quickly.