Alpinfox

Hey Muzungu, I like Pusher holds. Good friction. I'm happy to report I have not climbed plastic in >6mos! I dislike Metolius holds. Slippery. Whatever brand has the three dots is good too. SoIll has good ones too.

No, we were well to the left of OBS*. OBS is pretty much as far left as you can get on the main wall. We were on the buttress to the left (south) of the main wall. It's separated from the main wall by a brushy, lower-angle depression. Here is a picture: Red = Muddy Fingers, Yellow = OBS* (note huge flake with gianormous chimney behind it marked by the upper yellow arrow) *Edit: Apparently I'm totally wrong about the location of OBS. See DavidW's post below. Also note that this picture makes our buttress look low-angle. As you can see in the pictures in Dave's trip report, it's not.

Woohoo! Nice pics! So that crack in the first picture is the crux .11 OW? How much of it is .11 OW? It looks narrower+easier at the bottom? Where the hell is DH these days anyway?

WOOHOO! Awesome climb. I can't believe I haven't gotten to WA Pass this year. Thanks for sharing the stoke.

I thought I heard that there is also some sort of plaque there now as well? I have mixed feelings about the inscription at the base of AG. Not very "sensitive" or PC to air the negative half of those feelings though. Who did that inscription anyway?

Moderators! Help! This medicine of mine doesn't taste good!

Fucking lying christians. I haven't gotten my 14 DVDs yet!

Page six isn't far away now boyz! STROKE! STROKE! STROKE!

I think that is already written into the CC.com welcome letter. Or maybe it's just an emergent property of the dark psyche of repressed, depressed, stuck-at-work-rather-be-climbing spray monkeys. Either way, I think it'll take care of itself. Recommendation noted though. Keep 'em coming.

Are you saying there are people out there who don't read cascadeclimbers.com everyday? Even after they just climbed Outer Space? I'm ad homineumioonious with disbelief.

Listen you Johnny-Come-Lately-Spraysaurus; if you wanna spray on this thread you gotta be there at the crack of the original posting. Now go back to your little events planning you neophyte gear puller.

ho HO! Damn, this plot is getting thick. Could you please ask them to join the fray here?

The cool thing about using acetone is that you could light it on fire at the end. I recommend a night-time "cleanup" operation with video cameras rolling.

11c climbing with a guaranteed ground fall is too much for me. Jeff Lowe is a badass and I ain't. That's why I didn't lead it. How's that for pompous?

How about acetone and a brush? I bet it would work like a charm. Cheap too. Steal a squeezey bottle of acetone from your lab CBS.

Best post of the ruckus so far. (except for my Eminem "Will the real slow party please speed up" post of course. I'm really quite proud of that one.) LET'S KEEP THE SPIRIT GOING KIDS!!! I think if we really all dig in and share our views, do some "out of the box" thinking, and be honest with one another, we can really get to the bottom of this thing. I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE PUNCHLINE!

Who was it that was recently bragging about climbing the Salathe in XX hours? You're a dumbshit, but at least you are stirring things up a bit. I hope you stick around.

Yeah, we slung two trees. One full 60m rap from the top of the "Muddy Fingers" pitch (p5) got us to our belay at the top of the third pitch. From there, a 50m rappel got us to the ground. No rope snags! Scariest part of the day. p.s. I added another video link to the original TR.

Newbie climbers yay. Take all the time you need. Challenge yourself yeah. it's your mountain go for it. Don't slow people up. You are out of your element. Lucky you didn't die. The nerve. Go back to Das Toof. BUMP!

Granite sidewalk is on the other side (West, Blueberry Hill) side of the mountain. I forgot my helmet.

Climb: Exfoliation Dome - Darrington-Muddy Fingers - SE Buttress of Witch Doctor Wall Date of Climb: 9/23/2006 Trip Report: On Saturday AlpineDave, Micah, and I had a go at a potentially new route on the Witch Doctor Wall (East side of Exfoliation Dome). The east side of Exfoliation Dome is visible as the left skyline from a few spots on the road. It is extremely steep (overhanging in spots) probably averaging 80 degrees or so. A quote from MattP's website: In addition to Fred's "Witch Doctor Wall" route, David Whitelaw, Chris Greyell, & Mark Hannah have a route called "Solar Wall" and Dave Burdick and Mike Swanike have a route called "Voodoo Wall". There are a couple other routes up there including "Sunday Cruise" which MattP, Jim, and The Catbird climbed recently. All of these routes connect various flakes of the exfoliating granite for ~7 pitches up the main east face of exfoliation dome. Just to the south of the main wall is a prominent buttress that has some brushy spots, but looked like it might have a good route on it. We spied "a splitter!" about 3/4 of the way up the wall, so our plan for the route was basically just to get to the splitter and climb it. We saw a couple of old rotten slings (one at the first belay and another off to the right several pitches up) so this route (or a similar one) may have been climbed before, or at least rappelled. Matt Perkins mentioned the "Sprague Ackley/Hope Barnes" routes, but I don't know anything about those. More info would be appreciated. Dave wrote up a nice trip report with lots of pictures, so I'll just give ya'll a link: <--CLICK THE SNAFFLE!!! Here is a video I shot of Dave starting the first pitch: <--CLICK THE SNAFFLE!!! Here is a funny (I think) video of Dave on the fourth pitch: <--CLICK THE SNAFFLE!!! I enjoyed the adventure of this route, but the amount of dirt, lichen, mud, and trees will probably prevent most folks from checking it out. Dave (with hindsight) is now murmurring about going back and improving the route. I believe it really could be a nice free climbing route. It might take a couple of bolts to straighten out the line and make it more aesthetic, and it will certainly take a lot of scrubbing and digging, but it might be worth it. The 40m "Muddy Fingers" pitch in particular could be ****. I'd love to climb it again if it were clean. Gear Notes: Arc'teryx folding saw (used several times) - Don't bother trying to find one of these. Dave has a special sponsorship deal. 1/4" hand bolt kit (didn't use it) scrub brush (used once or twice) Hammer and ~6 pins (didn't use) rack of doubles to #4 camalot Lots of small, and very small, cams for the "muddy fingers" pitch - I had to back-clean and lower down to retrieve gear more than once. Approach Notes: The trail up to Witch Doctor Wall is pretty easy to follow.

I'm just trying to gauge the sentiment of the cc.com citizenry:

I bet you "gave consent" at the ropeup. "shuuuuur doooed.... yoooouu kin use me'er pitcher"

Hey Ericb, First off, thanks for posting the trip report. I enjoyed reading it and I'm glad that you and your partner "went for it" and safely climbed a great route. Hopefully you had a great time (sounds like you did) and hopefully you learned a lot and gained some skills that will allow you to more more efficiently on longish routes in the future. Although you weren't the slowest party on the wall that day, 10 hrs for a 4-6 pitch route is pretty slow. Odds are, if you climb that slowly on a popular route on a weekend, you can expect to irritate some people. I'd urge you to choose some more modest/less busy objectives in the future to avoid confrontations. That might sound pompous of me (I've been accused of that after giving the same recommendation before), but I think it is the best way to avoid this whole conflict. It's no fun to be the slow party with an angry party breathing down your neck and it's no fun to be stuck behind a slow party. You certainly don't have to take my advice, I'm just a random jackass on teh internut, but I think it will be more fun for everyone involved if you do. In any case, I'm glad you've taken the virtual tonguelashing you've gotten from all the Monday morning quarterbacks (myself included) in stride and are still posting here.