Off_White

Joe, the K Man doesn't lump into anyone's definition of "sport climbers." He's an old school alpinist whose adventures you'd be 100% behind, so you can't dismiss him as being the same as a climbing slut like myself who will take whatever comes. If you think climbing 5.13 is the same as climbing a ladder, you're a total loon and no more worth talking to than Josh Lewis. In fact, I think you should take Josh out and show him the ropes, it can't be any worse than what he's up to on his own.

Raindawg, you've brought up top roping before as a valid way to experience climbing over a face that does not present natural protection, and I think that's a really interesting subject. Top roping has never been given any creedence in the climbing world, and I agree that the difference between top roping something and relentlessly wiring something so you can red point it is pretty negligible. Maybe Dick Cilley will chime in here, he's been denigrated by others as "the worlds best top roper" and has certainly experienced as much disdain the climbing community will dump on someone for top roping as anyone I personally know. I agree that top rope routes should merit recognition and respect, and in the one pitch cragging world they make a lot of sense. I clip them, but I'll freely admit that bolts are not lovely (unless you're 30' out). Respect for top rope ascents would be a really positive thing for the sport in general, I wish I knew how to make that happen. I like you Dawg, it's nice to have something to agree upon. That said, even with reasonable bolt protection, I find that I climb with more focus when I'm on the lead than when I'm top roping. Okay, so I'm only going 20', even that is enough to sharpen absolutely every aspect of human perception. I've got some 5.10 bolt protected climbs on my private crag that are totally different experiences on top rope than they are on lead, and plenty of 5.11's that play out the same way. Lisa is psyching up to make the 5th redpoint of Legends (5.12c) and I absolutely feel the drama of that, even though its a route I'll never be good enough to climb. The feeling of having the rope run up from you is really different than when the rope runs down, and anyone who says different is not paying attention.

Joe, you're dissembling and obfuscating. There is no equivalency between via ferrata and bolt protected face climbing, and chalk or guidebooks have nothing to do with it. I think we both climb because of the way it makes us feel, I doubt there's nearly as much difference as you suggest.

douchebags are a dime a dozen, we've more than a few of our own here.

Are you that thick? Sport climbers are not interested in making it easy, they're just making it possible. If they wanted it easy they'd make a via ferrata, instead they install protection for some of the hardest physical rock gymnastics ever accomplished. Go climb a via ferrata and a 5.13 sport climb and then swear that they are the same thing. I'll call you a liar, but then at least you'll have some feeble ground to claim equivalency. I'll believe bolt protected face climbing and via ferrata are equivalent when any obese american can climb 5.13.

Really, this is an open question to Joseph, Raindawg, or Pope: where and when have sport climbers deprived you of the essential first ascent experience you crave, stolen from you the singular moment of discovery and uncertainty that a first ascent offers? Repeating a route, whether bolted on rappel or established ground up, is all the same experience: the route is rated, the protection is known, and the line is established. After the first ascent, all routes are the same. In an intrinsic absolute sense, the Bacher-Yerian = R&D. It's a known quantity that anyone who chooses to climb the route knows what they're in for. All this pissing and moaning is over the direct experience of two people.

Joe, Via Ferrata paranoia is ridiculous, proliferation is not even much of an issue in Europe, much less in this country. There is no equivalency between bolt protected face climbing and via ferrata. Set up your straw men all you want, but it's a pathetic exercise obvious to all.

at least the good parts! I'm guessing you mean the lowest skirts of the majestic peak, as in Icicle Creek?

Joe, I know your upbringing in Bumfuck, SoIll led you to conclude that bolts were not traditional, but I suggest you tell John Salathe's descendants that he was a worthless sport climber since he placed bolts on the Lost Arrow well before our time. You and I started climbing at roughly the same time, and bolts were always a factor in west coast climbing, the only issue with sport climbing was the method of installation not the use of bolts themselves. If you could stand (or hang there on a hook, as was the case on Bacher-Yerian) there on the route, a bolt was considered absolutely valid. The only question is about the experience of the first ascent party; after that it's all a question of how the following hordes deal with the runouts dictated by the FA's placements. It's all just a rubric between the rock, skill, ego, and conformity. Runout 5.10 bolt protected face climbs put up by 5.12 climbers is just wankery, pure and simple.m It wasn't bolts that killed the horse, it was the people involved in the posturing. The horse being dead means that the peculiar lost backwater staked out by you and Raindawg's opposition to bolts as protection is the equivalent of the human appendix. Most folks involved in climbing of any sort recognize the ethical superiority of the onsite ground up first ascent, but from a practical viewpoint, this has little to do with the quality or popularity of the line climbed.

I've done an annual climbers reunion with a crew of folks loosely based on Tucson AZ climbers in the mid eighties. My (now) wife's attendance of library school at the U of A led me to meet these absolutely wonderful people. They met at Indian Creek in the fall for a few years, I joined in for three years at City of Rocks, we went to Red Rocks last year, and we're actively discussing where to go this October. I'm pulling for Hell's Canyon, but the location is secondary to getting together with well loved friends where we can all get up something or other. It should be noted that climbing at mid to high 5.10 puts me squarely in the lower third of these mostly 50 and up climbers; even the off the couch crowd has impressive skills in the old kit bag. I gotta say that recurring events with old friends are blissfully wonderful and take some of the sting out of the sort of thing Bill Coe complained about in his "getting old sucks" thread. New friends are beautiful and lovely, but old friends have a resonance and luster that only time can burnish.

Bill Shatner is a registered member of CC.Com, so best ya'll should be polite. I'm just saying...

PS: horse died in 1982

A smart feller might have figured out the first time his avatar pic got changed to Bozo the Clown that maybe a little animated finger on the panties gif is a wee bit too racy for some cubicle bound at work web surfers, and a NSFW notice can't follow you to every thread you post on. Richard Simmons is stage 2.

See if you can get in touch with Bryan Burdo, I bet he's got the beta.

I might be wrong, but it seems like the summit area was pretty casual and one could sleep there. You're right though, there is certainly no built bivy corral like at the Forbidden west ridge notch, Stuart north ridge notch, or the summit of Goode, and the area between the wide crack and the summit doesn't offer any kind of cadillac accommodation like that lower bivy ledge.

OMG! Legit? I think the Nodder even has a Mafia Wars team...

Yes, easy to bivy on top, but the bivy ledge a pitch and half above the notch is one of the more sublime places I've slept - big flat ledge, ring side view of the pickets, and even a snow whale on one edge. Of course, after the last couple weeks, there may be no snow there anymore.

Hey CJA, noob or stranger, anyone who wants to talk climbing is more than welcome here. Glad to have you

Sport Climb-bers = the dude in da lizard suit Trad Re-enactors = da cavemen wit da skillz [video:youtube] The future gonna judge you re-enactors as mighty primitive Hey, this is a non spray response delivered with respect to the tradition of the birth of this sacred thread. Please note the resemblance of the guy wrestling the lizard to a young Rheinhold. Totally on topic!

Sorry, as a private individual I can only install such amenities on private property.

Only vaguely congruent, and yet I can't help posting: Before! After! In use! The bed in the upper photo looks pretty sweet, I bet I could get donations for a mattress to place out here somewhere, but it would turn into a Pope & Dwanyer crashpad sort of thing too quickly given the climate...

Keith, I enjoyed meeting you at the spring picnic awhile back, and I'm generally congruent to any old timer climbing parent, but you're full of it in this quote. Go back and re-read the first post of this thread and then tell me with a straight face that this was anything but spray from the moment Don watched that clip from an old Star Trek and thought it was a perfect example of the sport/trad paradigm. Neither PP nor I moved this to spray, but to assert that this thread was any sort of serious discussion attempt is ludicrous. What does Sport vs. Trad mean anyway? I clip bolts, but I also just did an alpine route that offered an average of two dodgy placements per 50 meters. Am I sport or trad? I recently did a friction climbing pitch with one bolt in 100', and in the same week climbed a 5.8 crack where I put in seven cams and nuts in the same distance. Am I sport or trad? Blake Herrington (or a dozen other posters here) clips bolts, but he'll kick your ass, Raindawgs ass, or my ass in onsite alpine adventure climbing. Is Blake sport or trad? From the very title of the thread this is a bogus parsing of the world into us and them, the pure and chosen versus the infidel and unworthy. You think the moderator's respect for plurality has alienated a large sector of the climbing population? Hardly, it's more that the long chain allowed to abusive narrow minded ideologues generates a level of discord that inhibits the average person who considers themselves simply a climber, who engages in a variety of climbing activities, and doesn't want to be made fun of for clipping a bolt, using a bouldering pad, or roping up for some exposed 4th class. The normal, average, non-cc posting climber certainly doesn't consider themselves some silly partisan reenactor in a civil war that was over for most climbers decades ago. Wave your Confederate flag all you want, and make your assertions of inferiority about those gay sport climbing darkies like Blake or myself (does clipping bolts an eighth of the time make one an octaroon?), but the world sees that sort of thing more like a foaming psychotic ranting on the subway than any sort noble sermon. Raindawg's disparaging rants do his cause nothing but disservice, and mostly invite only reaction, not conversation. This thread is no different than scores of others over the years.

That's a damned nice garden Trashtart, the shade is particularly appealing these days. Have a good summer, and post more pictures please.

Whatever it takes to make "them" go away, Bill.

Internet discussions about bolting ethics inevitably devolve into silly posturing about how what I do is real climbing and what you do is despicable. I guess it doesn't always devolve though, sometimes it starts out that way. It's not a conversation and its not a debate, its a reiteration of posture and puffed up egotistical onanism. The way internet users talk about this stuff online bears little relation to the way people discuss things in person. It's not a conversation, it's a sermon predicated on the assumption that I'm right and you're wrong.