Geek_the_Greek

Jimmy the Kid says: "At times there are good things on Dutton cliff, but the approach makes it hard to justify. I hope to get out there this winter to climberate it." There you have it. 'Bone, check your pm's for contact info.

My impression is that yeah, there's a bit (you thinking of Vidae falls? maybe something on Dutton Cliff?), but it's really short and the approach hardly makes it worth it. In the winter, doing anything there that isn't right at the rim demands a pretty hefty ski approach on top of all the driving just to get there. This is what I thought I remember my friend (long-time climber who works full-time there) telling me. However, I emailed him to ask just to clarify. Stand by and if he's sober I'll post his reply within a couple of days.

I seem to have temporarily suspended my hatred of this site, so maybe I'll finally go this year...

Bon Echo was still going strong, last I heard (earlier this summer). I think it helps considerably to get in with the ACC in terms of using the cabin, getting the boat shuttle, etc. Definitely not a sport area (wear a helmet!), and heavily sandbagged (or so I'm told - like, 5.3 can be a decent climb), but a cool spot to check out.

Ok, great, everyone makes their own decision, blah, blah, but the arguments against helmets aren't very good. It's hot (Oh no!) It's uncomfortable (Discomfort while climbing? Egad!) It looks dumb (Heavens! Above all, one must be fashionable in the outdoors.) Compared to lugging a fuggin rope and all that damn ironmongery around, a helmet is cake. Only place I don't wear one is in the gym.

I once kept some family-recipe Tsipouro (like Ouzo, but stronger) in a 500 mL lexan for about a month. The bottle was basically unusable for the following month, it was so potent. It took about half a dozen week-long soaks before it was clean. I would think 151 would have a similar effect.

Went to Squamish, got 39 pitches and a half dozen boulder problems in in 2.5 days....a personal record. Then my car got busted into, so I went home.

Done that. If anything comes of it, I'd sure be psyched.

What a downer after a great 3-day trip... Squamish, Tuesday morning (Sep. 7). My car was broken into in the Apron parking lot. Out of it were stolen a Dell laptop computer (property of University of Washington College of Forest Resources, labeled as such), a guitar (Cort Earth 500), an Arc'Teryx Borea pack containing a blue MEC warmwear top and an old (resoled) pair of Scarpa Minima slippers, and a 6-pack of beer. I don't really expect to see any of the stuff again, but if anyone approaches you trying to sell any of this stuff, bean them hard with a #5 camalot... then pm me. -DP

Picked up on the morning of aug. 24. Probably lost the weekend of august 21-22. Black wire frames, somehow managed to survive the trip down in my pack ok. dan"at"buildering.net

What Slothrop said. But finally getting MF overhang clean (after first trying it, oh, 6 years ago or so, and failing almost every year since then) was worth a few beers. I had it all built up in my mind to be this heinous thing, and then it was like, reach, set feet, establish finger lock, step up on small footholds, place nut, bingo! Bushwacking yesterday in the dark was fun. Or not.

I went up there yesterday afternoon, climbed the route this morning. Nice mellow route (still in good shape), fast approach, few people, good times. -D.

I've heard similar things about '80s era westies - stay away from '83-84, or go with late '70s to '82 air-cooled. In particular, '80 through '82 are good: the 'wedge' body which is more aerodynamic than the toaster shape of earlier buses (and thus better on gas, power, etc.), with all the nice features of the latest in air-cooled technology! (hydraulic lifters, 2.0 liters of pure power, fuel injection, etc. feel the rush...). Mid to late '80s should be good too, but harder to work on, more expensive parts, etc. Still, bear in mind that buying any old VW is a hobby as much as a car. Like, they're not low-maintenance vehicles. Expect to need an engine rebuild every ~80-120K (or less), so be aware of where your rig is in that cycle when you buy it.

Looks like there's some cool limestone sport stuff near Trikala, in North-central Greece (about 100-150 miles from Thessaloniki). Clippin in Trikala

If you need any translations of Greek web sites or whatnot, send me the links and I might be able to help. To view these properly, you'll probably need to select a Greek-compatible font. Ditto on what Jim said about Meteora and Olympus, but I don't know about Thessaloniki. Opa!

No, I think Dru's got it right: how we climb is usually dictated by what we feel like doing at the time and the constraints we decide to impose (time, money, personal safety margin).

The zip at Squamish - I was soooo close to blowing it, 'cause I kept shoving cams in at the crux, instead of just pulling through. Also Wings of desire at Skaha (also hardest OS). I've never been that pumped for so long. I finally trembled to the no-hands rest and sat there for 10 minutes (no joke!) before pulling the roof.

What Sloth man said, although maybe a bit more politely...

I agree with the last few posts. Basically, I think self-rescue skills, and equipment are like first aid (actually, as has been pointed out, knowing good first aid skills are paramount in self-rescue). But what I mean is that when climbers take a MOFA class or something similar, they probably start carrying a big bulky first aid kit on their next few outings. A few continue the trend, but many don't. The first aid kit shrinks and shrinks until it is left at home. Hopefully the skills are still there, and you can always improvise to some degree if you're clever, but in many cases they fade. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I'd like to think that climbing self rescue can avoid the same trap by teaching skills using equipment that is realistic to bring along on an alpine climb, when weight is one of the most important factors in success. I feel that slings, biners, prussiks and cordelette and multi-use tools that you will have (for the most part) with you already, and learning how to use them for self-resuce is reasonable and realistic. Assuming that you will always have an extra rope or a bunch of pulleys, or like, 10 free biners or another party or something seems like too much. Freeman gave great examples of just what I was talking about. Fom my part, I had a partner fall after pulling out my last piece of gear on Zebra/Zion at Smith a couple years ago. There she was, hanging in space in front of this slightly overhanging crumbly wall of mud, about 400 feet off the deck. I had to free my hands, escape the belay, rappel the other line (which was thankfully long enough - but if it wasn't, I would have prussiked down her line), and teach her to prussik up a rope while were were both hanging there. It all went fine, and we got ourselves off of there in a half hour or so. I screwed up once, and forgot the load-releasing hitch on my prussik, so I ended up cutting a loaded prussik. In retrospect, I didn't even have to do this, but it's a lesson well-learned for next time. I personally really like the self-rescue stuff in Advanced Rock Climbing.

The thing that seems the oddest to me is that 1- the focus is on two 2-person teams (that's not self-rescue, that's one party rescuing another) and 2- the emphasis (it sounds like) was kind of gear-intensive and elaborate. In my opinion (yes, I've practiced self-rescue before, and try to do some stuff every year), having a high safety margin is very important for a SAR team (who didn't get themselves in the shit in the first place), but less important for self-rescue purposes. If you're up there taking normal climbing risks (like, using one rope), and you get hurt, you probably don't care about the whistle test or gear redundancy test or whatnot, because you're going to be focusing REALLY HARD and just want to stabilize your hurt friend fast or get out of there fast. I think teaching these skills using anything more than normal climbing gear and a 2-person team is silly, because that's not what you have most of the time. I know TMR and EMR know their stuff, but I'd rather learn skills that I can use with the gear and hurt partner I have, rather than worrying about making sure I have 4 pulleys and there's another team of 2 nearby. If safety margins are compromised, then too bad, but if I know the two of us have to hang on one rope, I guess I'll make damn sure we don't have any shock-loading going on, and body weight is no problem to begin with.

On any long route, and even most 1-pitch trad routes (or, really, anything that's not totally pushing me grade-wise) I carry a prussik and a texas-prussik deal pre-tied for my feet. This is indeed a bit overkill, but I already have it for glacier travel, so I just loop it all together and throw it on a biner that sits at the back of my harness. It's 5 mm cord, so the ounce or two it weighs easily justifies itself if/when I have to use it (I've had to ascend ropes unplanned at least a couple times recently). If I'm working on a hard (for me) sport route or trying to on-sight a one-pitch wonder, then I might take it off, but otherwise it's always there.

You guys are talking about the car-camping spot (8-mile), yes? It was fully open last weekend, complete with fascist campground hosts, fees, big RV's, mounties in the group campsite and everything.

Well, holy crap, those columns were hungry. Sloth and I were there too and after doing that great chimney (seven mules and a virgin?) sloth dropped his ATC in a crack at the top. It was about 3 feet down and we could just see it. It came out after much effort finally using a crafty nut tool hang on a bight of rope to hook it.

Not that I'm a pub club regular or anything, but FYI there's a post office on 35th ave at NE 80th. The Wedgewood ale house is at 87th, and another good place on 35th (but maybe small for a big pub club?) is Fiddler's Inn, at 94th. There was also talk recently of going to the Wedgewood Broiler, at 85th. That's my hood, so I thought I'd speak up.

Hit the nail on the head. If I had lots of money I would own these three ropes (one change - replace 9 mm glacier rope with 8.1-8.5 mm) and replace them as needed.