Off_White

No, he posts under a different avatar these days

What Kevin, isn't that from 1981 or something? Whoa, breaking news, punk fan gets punched (and digs it). Here's a very informative Nardwuar interview with Henry. Has Nardwuar the Human Serviette been recognized as a Canadian national treasure yet? [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_E34CTcY7k

The yard sale here is just that: a tool to help other climbers sell their stuff to local folks. It's like a garage sale, not an auction. It's definitely not about promoting your highest bidder national sale. The day you registered, with your only post, you put up a link to ebay and one uninformative sentence. I found it pretty irritating and poked you. I'm not a moderator in this forum, though I am in a number of others on this board. Your defense that you read the rules, but oops, decided they just didn't apply to you, is pretty weak. You could have deleted your ebay listing, you could have deleted your post here, or changed it so that you were directly selling rather than advertising for bidders. I'd have been a little more polite if you were a regular poster here, like Kletterhund who posted above, but your approach read more like a spambot (a regular irritant here) than anything else, especially given your identical post at Mountainproject.com and who knows how many other sites. It's nice that you've now written enough to be a person, but I still think you ought to take down your ebay link now that it's pretty clear what the policy is here. If the sale doesn't go through there, by all means, post and ad here, this is in fact your target audience.

Yup, this will tell the story. I could imagine 911 dispatch having a private number, they wouldn't be wanting you to dial that one instead of just using 911. They didn't ask you for your cascadeclimbers.com password, did they?

Yeesh, that looks creepy. I've heard tech folks at Fixe say that you shouldn't use a stainless hanger with a carbon steel bolt, but I'd expect the corrosion to happen to the bolt, not the hanger. I'd sure like to know more about what caused this.

I assume you read the text? OMG, pictures of clouds taken through a pair of sunglasses, and you can see how the secret chemical spraying by the Illuminati or the UN looks like demons dancing! Kind of makes a Truther look like Stephen Hawking.

Here's a few questions: Did you read the post titled "READ THIS FIRST" in this forum? Did you notice the part that read "DON'T POST LINKS TO YOUR EBAY SALE"? Did you register just to promote this ebay ad?

That's pretty damned awesome.

Whoa, now that's what I call a hybrid! I've been looking at bouldering photos (courtesy of clan Kingsbury) out of MT for a few years now, looks really stellar, glad you got to go scope it out Dick. Someone with time and inclination should snatch at this opportunity.

FYI, you can link 4 & 5 on NEWS; now that's a sweet pitch.

No, I went to a wedding in Hood River. The event happened at a B&B above a bluff, and when I looked over the edge at the scruffy basalt and poison ivy I thought, "Huh, that looks like Bill Coe country..."

Did you see someone trundling, as in an active human party? Spontaneous rockfall is just one of the objective dangers that lurk in the alpine environment, but you knew that, right?

Yeah Ivan, and I bet you've seen stars & little tweeting birds circling around your head too!

Joe, do you have a link to the Youtube video production of that ascent?

Why bother? "Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table...I have no interest in doing it." --Barney Frank responding to a question from a woman holding a picture President Obama with an Adolf Hitler-like mustache drawn above his lip at a recent town hall meeting. Here's the relevant film clip [video:youtube]

"fuck" is simply a modern construct that serves as an underline emphasis, by which I mean Dru is no one's definition of a sport climber.

See Pope, the kids are alright, and that one stands a fine chance to establish a B-Y for his generation, not to mention what may lie in Rudy's offspring's future. Coming up through a sport climbing world doesn't mean one can't appreciate the big game. The future is neither as black as you imagine nor as bright as I expect, but its likely to be better than most expect. Seems to have always worked out that way so far... Hey Dru, for a guy who's trad as fuck, I'm really impressed by your appreciation for modern grungy crag craftsmanship.

Like I said, I agree Rudy. Here's a great video of Hayden Kennedy, 18 year old son of Michael Kennedy, on the B-Y courtesy of Black Diamond: link

Don't forget "driver" SS, she was a passenger in that brief truck shot. I agree, some of the voice over was challenging, but some of that footage was really wonderful.

I absolutely agree Rudy, and I do understand Pope's point. I was just trying to answer the question "why would someone bolt something they had already top roped?" In the end, we are pretty much talking about one or two people's experience here, the FA party. Once a route is established, but whichever means, its a known quantity with a grade and all. What remains is how will the route be for everyone who comes after. The Bachar-Yerian in Tuolomne, oft cited as a prime example of the bold ground up ethic, is an interesting beast, but somewhat of a statistical outlier. Bachar chose to make a point with that route. He was drilling from hooks, so he could have chosen to protect it better. He was no Tom Gerughty on the Dike Route just down the road, who felt unable to stop and drill and was driven to continue just to escape the route. Bachar's creation is bold and remarkable, but it's not an example of how every route should be. Very very few climbers will ever attempt it, which is just fine, but its not an example of how everything should be. It's okay to play street basketball, not everyone has to play at an NBA level. On the other hand, a bolt every five feet is a terrible standard too. Z clipping? What a horrible modern invention. There's a lot to be said for a 5.9 route for a 5.9 leader, and its okay to have some 5.9 routes for a 5.11 leader: they tend to develop a reputation (like the B-Y, a 5.11 route for a 5.13 leader). The 5.9 for a 5.7 leader? It just doesn't foster the kind of skill and judgment one needs to develop as a climber. As a potentially hazardous entertainment, ability is only one of the elements of being a climber, and probably not the most important one.

Nice TR, and very thoughtful to include both spellings in the title, helpful to anyone in the future searching the TR index for TR's from this peak.

Uh, Pink? That's kind of disgusting.

I thought if you just use a drunk avatar and a sober one, then there's no need to regret?

Hey Pink and Porter, STFU, some of us are actually thinking in here.

This was a pretty interesting post, thanks Pope. I'll address a couple of your questions. Why would someone bother putting in bolts after they've top roped something? Well, even if you've top roped a route, it feels different to lead it, that's one thing. The other is that when done right, what's left behind is a route that can offer a challenging onsite or redpoint to others, by which I mean other people can walk up and have that experience you love, just minus the "find the gear bit" if it's an otherwise unprotectable face. Finding the rests, working out sequences, moving up, backing down to a rest to recover, heading back out, it's still an engaging chess game even without a gear placement on the route. You're right, you can't have that if you've top roped a route beforehand, but others can. I don't know why others put up routes this way, because its a hell of a lot of hard work. I can tell you about why I do it sometimes. I have a private climbing area that is just full of examples. The routes often exist as top ropes for awhile, a bunch of us discuss whether its worth setting up as a lead route, bolt location often happens by group conversation, taking into account things like where are the reasonable stances, what will you hit, and how to maintain an engaging route that merits repeat ascents yet someone can come up and onsight. Frankly, I think the first ascent process on this sort of thing is really fuzzy: who's the FA? The person who conceived of the line? The person who cleaned off anything loose? The person who first top roped it? The person who put in the bolts (often involves several people), the first person to redpoint it? It's all kind of silly and unimportant to me, because you're right, compared to walking up to a blank slate with no knowledge of what's there and climbing that unknown line successfully, the process I described is just playing around, no big deal. Out in Tenino anyway, I think the first climb of a route that has any significance is the first time (well, every time actually) someone walks up cold and onsights a route, and that always impresses the hell out of me. The sort of climb you describe is analogous to a flash of artistic genius, a peak moment when skill, imagination, doubt, and experience combine for a truly memorable event. Its damned awesome to experience, no argument about that. A sport route done well is something different, is an exercise in craftsmanship. Craft usually gets dissed by artists, but mastery and creation are present as well. The making of something durable and solid that others can appreciate for their own use is a different sort of reward. You've tried to explain it away as about ego and getting your name in the book, because you're viewing it from an artist's bias, which is a more selfish thing (note, it's okay to be selfish sometimes, I'm being descriptive not dismissive). Therefore, you think the FA on a sport route must be engaged in some pursuit of selfish pleasure, fame and glory, or whatever. You should consider that perhaps many are merely in pursuit of an interesting thing done well, they're craftsmen. Yeah, I know we can cherry pick some obvious contradictions to my hypothesis, but if I'm wrong, why are so many sport first ascensionists so damn shy? Where are they boasting about their glorious achievements? Guidebooks of yore were much more upfront about who did the FA, the brilliant artist wants full credit for their work of genius. Nowadays you're lucky to find a list in the back of the book, a move I believe was done to "diminish" ego as a motivation. It's kind of a pity too, because as in any craft, not all craftspeople are equal and some build inferior work. That is true of sport routes too, and with a little experience with workmanship, knowing who put up a route can tell you a bit about what to expect or watch out for. Oh, and you had another question for the old farts about red, pink, and brown points. I'm sure you are fully cognizant of those distinctions, but I'll perform as invoked. Red we know is the climbing of a route without weighting the protection. Pink has been discarded by the elite as a designation these days, but it meant that all the draws were pre-installed on the bolts or the gear pre-placed, so all you had to do was clip your rope through the biner. I think it was a good bit of honesty about one's ascent, because if you're climbing at your limit, and a route is really hard for you, its definitely easier to just clip the draw or piece rather than place it yourself. People assert that the hardest routes today are much too hard today to clip the draw to the bolt and now call it a red point as well, but I think it just dumbs down the definition. Brown point is a derogatory term for just getting up a route by any means necessary, pulling gear, hanging, and generally pitching a fit. Used in a sentence, you would say, "I saw Ivan out at Beacon today and he made an ugly ugly brown point on Blownout."