Geek_the_Greek

Chalk? Hmmm. I think I'll start worrying about the environmental/health/aesthetic impacts of chalk when climbers start worrying about the environmental/health/aesthetic impacts of cliffside trails, moss/lichen removal, using tape, and smoking at the crag. But I don't climb at Beacon rock, so maybe I'm missing out on the reality of big dung heaps of chalk on every hold. Bring a trowel.

All this discussion of emissions trading is very nice. Yes, if you know how much emissions reduction you want, the permit trading scheme is an economically efficient way to acheive such a goal. That doesn't have much to do with the SUV-tag plan, which is optional, not based on a quota, and therefore more or less meaningless when compared to coal plants and the like.

Whaaa? ok, bouldery start, then 5.7 hands the whole way...

Pah, speak for yourself. I get my all my info from America's finest news source .

Ok, cross-post, whatever. So if you drive 12000 miles at 18 mil/gallon, that's 666.7 gallons of gas. The same distance at 30 mil/gallon is 400 gallons, or 2/3 more gas consumption. What is the significance of $80 a year? Some estimate of the mitigation cost? Do we know that we can actually mitigate against CO2? Is this by planting more trees somewhere else? I would think it would cost more than $80 per vehicle to plant enough trees to offset burning 267 gallons of gas a year. I am skeptical. Also, like the article said, it only really means something if it catches on, in which case we might as well just put a higher tax on gasoline to decrease overall consumption. On second thoughts, this probably does belong in spray...

It's funny how some guidebooks give beta on moves, gear to take, where the crux is, etc. (Smith) and others give you nothing. I remember the old Vogel guide to J-tree (early '90s) which gave you a crappy photo, a name and a rating for most routes. (The real crux was usually figuring out how to build a safe anchor once the climb was over.) I guess this could fit into that 'climbing is so stupid' thread, arguing over how much beta still constitutes an on-sight.

Is there still a guitar in the hut? Is it remotely playable?

The sketchiest falls are the ones you don't know are coming, even if they're not as scary as they ones you can anticipate (you don't have time to be scared). Glad you's ok!

Dude, this is the newbies forum. Don't be such a dick. We all know your snotty opinions already.

Are you sure about the height? Alpine select (McLane) says 2904 m. Bivouac.com says 2892 m. Summitpost.org says 2904 m (not that we'd trust that...)

Best soundtrack of any gym site I've seen!

From Squid's link: " THIS BIG HAIRY MAGGOT CAME OUT " Oh man, that is fawking gross. Yet another reason not to join the army.

This debate always comes down to 3 things for me: -I get hot far more often than I get cold (breathability is important). I only get cold when I'm not moving, and getting cold is a good reason to start moving again (unless belaying, cooking, etc.) -if I'm moving and it's not raining (or snowing hard with really wet flakes) I don't need a jacket -If I'm moving and it's raining, I will get wet. Period. If I wear a shell it will be from sweat, and if I don't it will be from rain. Ok, maybe if the wind is howling like a mofo and it's pouring out, like horizontal rain (which quickly turns to snow) I won't be sweating, but that's kind of rare. So the only reason to wear non-breathables (rain gear) would be if you're planning on doing a lot of sitting around. Aid climbing and car camping come to mind. Waterproof breathables never breathe very well when you need them to, but they do block the rain, as well as that rain flakes/snow drops stuff we get a lot of around here. But yeah - if it's raining out and you're working hard, you'll get wet. Line your pack with plastic bags, or use a good pack cover, so that when you stop you'll at least have dry stuff. I dont' think soft shells do anything that a windshell and light fleece won't do, but they sure look cool and are comfortable.

Whoa, dude, that's great style. But apparently, leashless tools with pinkie ledges that support your whole hand are acceptable... "hand jammies" rubber gloves, or taping up for cracks

I use a -12 C (10 degree F) rated MEC bag for winter, and do fine most of the time. I can remember being fairly cold twice: one night in Sphinx hut (Garibaldi lk, BC) when the temp outside bottomed out our thermometer (ie below -30 C), and another time tenting near Mt Sproatt when the daily high was -27 C (don't know what the nightly low was; I survived by agressively spooning my tent-mate, which was ok because we started dating soon after). Of course, I am furry and tend to sleep warm. 90% of the time I use the bag, I just drape it over myself and sleep on my t-rest. (I suspect MEC underrates their bags (as in, they are warmer than advertised) compared with some manufacturers. They are great value.)

No, they were on the North Gully route. When in condition (e.g. last spring), it's a fun snow climb, with a bit of mixed scrambling right near the top, where most people bust out the rope. Right now, however, there's not a speck of snow on the route (ok, there are a few specks low down). It's just rock - loose rock. They were unroped, almost at the top, when he fell and tumbled several hundred feet. SMR and ESAR did the body recovery.

randonnee = AT (alpine touring) = (to some people) ski mountaineering skis ie a ski binding that allows a fixed toe/free heel mode for climbing uphill (like x-country) and a fixed heel mode for going downhill, just like lift skiing. They're expensive, used to be heavy and hard to find, now getting quite common and well-made. Some bindings (Silvrettas) can be used with plastic climbing boots, others can't. The lightest models (Dynafit) need their own special boots, but they're supposed to be good. But what do I know - I'm a tele dood.

I happily climb snow and casual mixed stuff in tele boots, but not real (ie water) ice. The duck bill is a bit annoying, as is the forward stance, but you get used to it. Then again, I'm not that hot a winter climber, so don't ask me. Ok, I'm not that hot a summer climber either, but hotter than...never mind.

Nah, back in the early '90s, all the hotshots skied 210s. I'm 5'9 and skied Head Radial 195's (the hot pink ones, from 1990) for almost 10 years. So if you want to go retro on the skinny boards, 195-198 is perfect size for intermediate/advanced cruising.

The How to Climb 5.12 book can basically be summed up in the above posts: climb a lot, especially on rock (the gym isn't nearly as good as actually rock climbing), but not so much that you burn out or get injured, eat healthy, keep it fun.

Naw, grades are bullshit. No way you can compare the difference, way too much "fuzz". In the language of data management, climbing grades are an ordinal measure, like {strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, strongly agree}. Everone gets confused because they're represented by numbers, so they look all scientific and measurable and stuff. They're not. Grades are a first ascentionist's best guess of how hard a route was, nothing more (sometimes modified over the years by local consensus, sometimes not). Don't sweat it. If you're lucky, 5.11a is going to be harder than 5.10a, but beyond that, forget about quantifying it. Modeling the effort required for various climbing moves - could this be the next frontier in biophysics? Inputs could include climber height, ape index, flexibility index, sweat gland efficiency, fear coping factor as well as route steepness, average (median/standard error) hold width, rock friction coefficient, etc. etc. Time for the geeks to really come out of the closet!

Yeah, good times this past weekend. Bummer I had to keep leaving every evening for work stuff (thus logging in 25 hours of driving in a 3-day period...back and forth between the Grasslands and Crater Lake...shite that part sucked). Hey, check it out, cc.com needs an online dating forum!! craig's list Anyone wearing a knee brace on Saturday?? This could be your lucky day...

IMO: The article actually does have some interesting points. Overall, though, I was struck with the impression that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.... -wrong use of climbing terminology struck me throughout and set off "gumby alert" alarm bells in my mind (e.g. referring to multi-pitch as "big-wall", individual pieces of pro as "anchors", referring to runout as "lead out", etc.) -no evidence that the three people who were killed, thus serving as a supposed example for the study, fell because of broken pieces of pro (it sounds like the pro pulled out to me, rather than broke - a vastly more common occurrence) -some very important points missing from the analysis (e.g. "I am not sure how friction from a zig-zag rope system would affect the analysis" p.9-10; here he is referring to the rope going through more than one piece of pro, and thereby more than one 'biner, each adding friction; another example is treating the belayer/anchor system as totally static, or rigidly fixed to the wall - we all know this to be false, and probably one of the biggest reasons why hard falls are never as serious as they should be (based on calculations). I'm talking about the belayer's body being yanked around on a big fall and the like). This stuff doesn't totally undermine the conclusions, but just reinforces that the engineering calculations for this stuff produce a conservative estimate. This is a good thing. The fact is that for people who are hurt while climbing, very very rarely is it from properly rigged gear failing (no, I'm not talking about open-gate or cross-loaded 'biners or pro pulling out), so it's often moot, in my opinion. But for those who continue to be terrified that they will be killed because of their gear breaking, the article has some good points. It's certainly true that you can expect to be hurt if you take a true fall with FF>1.

Yeah, it sounds like they didn't know the deal with the grasslands. Not that I'm into the whole party-till-the-place-is-trashed kind of scene, but it's too bad they called the cops. That's probably the number one thing that will lead to the end of free camping there.

Yup. From an environmental point, climbing is far from an impact-free activity, and the largest impacts from climbing have little to do with bolts. BTW snowmobiles have been found to have significant effects on overwintering small mammal populations. It seems they frequently cause collapsing of the snow tunnels that some of them use to get to seed caches and the like.