Gary_Yngve

Knots, belaying, and rapping are taught and practiced at Camp Long and Spire Rock. They should be comfortable with those skills by Mt. Erie. If they are not belaying/rapping/tying knots safely at Mt. Erie, then Mountie Nazi says, "No climbing for you!"

It is your choice whether you want to take the Intermediate course after one year. You can be a basic grad and take the intermediate course a few years later if you want. For those who want to excel, the Mountaineers are certainly not going to stop them from doing so... they can climb outside of the Mountaineers or hook up with a mentor... Dryad, a basic student, comes to mind... she did her first lead with CBS a week or two ago. At the fieldtrips, there are many instructors teaching. The student/instructor ratio is probably somewhere around 3:1.

Instructor experience ranges from two to twenty... as said before, less-experienced instructors are paired with more-experienced. Mounties don't learn gear anchors right away. They learn girth-hitching a tree and that's about it. Beginners sport-climbing is a relatively new thing in the mountaineering community as a whole... the last twenty years at the most? Being able to climb 5.X at the gym is about the least important thing there is for general mountaineering.

Catbirdseat, you gotta crawl before you can run. You can't teach everything at the same time. Don't try to teach navigation, belaying, pro placement, rope mangement, and fitness on the same climb. Start by learning the ropes at a crag, gain fitness by hiking, learn orientation in the city park for starters, etc. Funny, you think exactly the way the Mountaineers think. In the Seattle course, Basic students have their Nav done by March and are told from day 1 (Jan) to get into shape (e.g. Mt. Si in X hours). For those who have previously done scrambling, snowshoeing, backcountry skiing, etc., they already have done the Nav and are likely in decent shape. Their mentor group will help with conditioning. Belaying and rope management are handled Feb-April, and by the beginning of May, they can follow up the Tooth. Placing pro isn't covered until Intermediate, but arguably they get an introduction by following pitches.

Mountaineers basic students learn how to safely belay, tie knots, and set up simple anchors indoors. Then they transfer these skills to scenarios at Camp Long with weights that go "splat." They have to be signed off as "safe" on these skills before they go to the mountains. One distinction that the Mounties make is basic students do not go on the sharp end of the rope when rock climbing. The biggest skills I've noticed Mountaineers basic students as lacking are: 1) Packing light. The idea that you should pack to survive should shit happen, not pack to be comfortable should shit happen. This mainly just takes time... climbing for a year or two and noticing what you use, don't use. 2) Fast travel through rugged terrain. Bushwhacking, stream crossing, talus hopping... again, this takes time. 3) Being efficient with breaks. Don't put on all your warm crap at the TH because you're cold... you'll have to stop and take it off 15 min later. Plan your breaks... during this break, I will filter water and eat a snack. And my filter and snack are at the top of my pack. I then will be able to go another hour without an extended break. Again, this comes from experience, especially experience with smaller parties.

You only get out of a course what you put in. As a basic student, there are many chances for you to gain additional experience. Ask the leader on a basic climb if you can help with routefinding. Ask the leader if they have any interesting stories to share. Be in a mentor group. But sure, if all you wanted was to be able to follow someone up The Tooth in a slow, safe manner, then that would be all you'd get out of the course as well.

Trask's Mascot:

Would two pounds of ass flesh suffice?

Sorry, didn't mean to criticize you or imply you're not a good climber... what I meant was more like, "The bearhug cracks look intimidating, but it's not as bad as it seems." And I was agreeing with you that a #4 Camelot is insufficient to protect higher up... so instead of bringing an even larger boat anchor, just go without pro higher up.

I don't recommend that. You can't batch-process, and it doesn't downsample properly, resulting in nasty aliasing and jaggies.

Where do you get it? www.irfanview.com

Irfanview is a wonderful piece of software that lets you do conversion, rescaling, and other effects... as well as a good slideshow mode. Oh yeah, it's free too...

We had a #5 friend with us for the Bearhug, and it was tipped out as well. However a #4 friend will fit just fine at the bottom of it. The best solution is to leave the big piece at home (we had it with us from another climb) and just suck it up and climb through it -- it's not that hard, and doing it as a bearhug may not be the easiest way.

I just got back from a four-day Mountaineers trip to Washington Pass that fulfilled the Intermediate Rock climbs that I needed to graduate. We (four of us on two days, three of us on the other two -- the fourth was feeling sick) climbed a bunch of stupid stuff: Liberty Bell: Barberpole, Overexposure Concord: Cave Route NEWS: NW Corner SEWS: East Buttress Direct, SW Rib (with steep fingercrack variation) Cutthroat: South Buttress Like I said, we climbed a bunch of stupid stuff. We also climbed slowly and inefficiently as well, for example doing Cutthroat car-to-car in 6.5 hours, including spending half an hour on the summit and another twenty minutes lounging around by a stream on the way down. So if you want to climb stupid stuff and travel at a snail's pace, the Mountaineers are for you!

Mambo Jambo at X32 for when you don't feel like driving far

Well, it probably wouldn't happen. I highly doubt the Mounties would go up there with more than four people total, and those four would be competent. NR Stuart is not the Tooth...

Yeah, now that I think of it, this is mostly a basic class thing (as well as the first review fieldtrip for Intermediate). I believe I wore blue jeans and a cotton t-shirt to Rock I and Rescue Methods and didn't get hassled by anyone about it. But an instructor did give me a lot of shit for showing up to Camp Long without appropriate clothing for the mountains. As JimmyO said, most of the folks are laidback and cool...

Just wear the polypro then. No need to wear the shorts.

Yeah, I remember reading those specs, jokingly wondering if they were going to kick me out for my 7mm perlon cordelette. Apparently someone screwed up, because on their website, they had the link to Tom Meyer's study of strengths and fatigue over time, but in their handout, they had the classic Mountie phrase, "If you don't use this brand of 5.5mm spectra or tech cord or whatever the fuck it was, you will die." Above phrase is commonly heard from certain overbearing instructors in similar contexts: If you wear cotton in the mountains... If you do not use belay gloves on a rap... If you don't have a candle in your 100 essentials...

Cupped hands as tlg suggested, or instead of a fistjam where the thumb and pinky are left-right (i.e. equal depth in the crack), rotate the fist so the thumb is closer and the pinky is further. Raise your index and middle fingers out of the way so that your hand can arch, making the fist narrower. Check out the cracks on the slightly-overhanging S-facing wall on the UW Rock. The left one for me goes from good hands to cupped hands, and the one on the right goes from small fists to large fists for me, I believe. Many of the .10a handcracks at Index widen to a fist-jam (at least for me) towards the top. But damn, you must have huge hands! A blue camelot for me is usually where hands end and fists start.

Some Forest Service asshole ticketed us this weekend even though we had a legit pass hanging, face-forward, on the rear-view mirror.

Yeah, it sounds like we were somewhere very close to it... we remember passing the 5.12a mantel route on the trail, and a little later, there was a fork left, which is where we went. Don't remember a color on the pin. We belayed at top and bottom on trees and didn't see any bolts around us. Certainly a lot of fun stuff to explore!

One time I did a google image search for horsecock in hopes of finding a picture of . Unfortunately many other images came up instead. The funniest part though were the links... Woman sucking horsecock Girls sucking horsecock Teens sucking horsecock Coeds sucking horsecock and finally... Slutty French Whores sucking horsecock. After that we asked ourselves what it would be like if the French whores weren't slutty.

Today we thrashed around on P3 of G-M (Chuck's recommendation for Stuart Gendarme practice) and did TR laps on HoC p3 with the 5.11 extension. Having torn up our hands sufficiently, we tried to find the knobby TR area, but our gumby asses failed miserably, and instead we climbed up some line that looked like fun... finger crack turn gardening adventure, probably 5.8 when clean. We spent a few minutes cleaning it up more on rap... There was a piton halfway up the route, so apparently it had been climbed before... We tried to do the 5.10 variation approach to P1 G-M, but we could barely pull one move on it... maybe the crimpy face isn't really 5.10?