billcoe

OK, can't resist. Will try again. Kennedy....

CORRECT! We will be hijacking these fine Bill O'Reilly shirts to reiterate that point. I will admit that it was the strangest thing to see the text in "preview", and then see a blank post. Perhaps some things are not meant to be. Saw a Turkey next to the road a couple days back. It looked to be waiting for a hunter to celebrate Thanksgiving with, so to you all: HAPPY THANKSGIVING tomorrow. Keep the political discourse to a minimum with the family:-)

I'll be checking in regularly to perv on the pics and get a shot of sunshine and climbing stoke during the raining season Wayne. Thanks for sharing!

If at first you do not succeed, try try again. ...wait for it.... Fuck it. It was copy-pasted and erased when I tried to post it -gone!!!!!!!!!!!1111, lets just say that on this date in 1963 we had always been at war with Oceania. There. The bastards had it coming. That's the short version, clearly nothing occurred on 11-221963...ever. Add a hyphen there where applicable. Nothing of any significance so lets forget and move on. I have no wall of text despite trying to post it multiple times, so it must have no meaning. ..WHOH, HOW BOUT DEM KARDISHANS, AREN'T THEY SOMETHING!!!! HOT...AND THOSE CLOTHES...REALLY SOMETHING EH? I will see you 12/7/41 for another non-post event. Note to censors, if it is true that we were NEVER at war with Oceania, please change my post accordingly, no offense meant. To everyone else, pffft.

THAT WORKED AS WELL! Shit, there goes one theorem. A brief interlude from our sponsor and masters: Thank you NSA.

Hmm, that worked fine. Change up pitch.- TRUMP ALSO sucks pigs penis!!!!

Lets try an experiment. OBAMA sucks pigs penis!!!!

The most interesting thing has occurred. I have a post full of words which looks full of words in "preview" but when I hit "post", shows up blank. I tryed several times to post this diatribe to no avail. It's a huge wall of text, with logic, stupidity, smarts and everything. Gone. Hmm, I'll just leave those blank and try again..... ?????!!!! WT hell.

if at first you don't succeed from the Union.... Forgotten. Day is all but over.

Wut I said was erased. But there. Curious.

The words were there but in keeping with the theme, are missing. Was spoken thus: " Forgotten. Day is all but over. Next up, 12/7/41. Fuggitaboutthatoo. Meh, no need to keep rehashing all this stuff is there? Although it's been said previously that: “A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.”, is that even true with this kind of thing? Ich bin einsheisshistorylessonlearnertoo. Anyone want to know where I was in this day in 1963? Yeah, me either. Meh. Fohgetaboutthattoo.

Forgotten. Day is all but over. Next up, 12/7/41. Fuggitaboutthatoo. Meh, no need to keep rehashing all this stuff is there? Although it's been said previously that: “A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it.”, is that even true with this kind of thing? Ich bin einsheisshistorylessonlearnertoo. Anyone want to know where I was in this day in 1963? Yeah, me either. Meh. Fohgetaboutthattoo.

A great lap was had yesterday. Bless global warming and record heat, it was 68 degrees in PDX in November! Feeling a tad out of sorts, we elected a corner lap. A young Utah man named Kyle wandered by just as Ujahn stepped off into P1 and was invited in the Reindeer games. He'd never seen a person tie off with 2 lockers before and simul on a rope with another, and the hip belay as well was first seen by the 22 year old. He was merely planning a quick boulder sesh and view of the awe inspiring S side before heading back to U dub, but lucky for him he ran into 2 old dudes who recognized that bouldering on the s side of Beacon sucked, whereas laps rule. He didn't know about clipping off single pieces, and grabbing handfuls at the exchange led to the biner my boy had given me, the prized Camp biner, being dropped. He climbed slow, but was agreeable company. It was a nice day and we had plenty of time having cut out of work by 1pm, so it was not a bad thing at all to have time to view Seal Lions noshing salmon and of course the birds. He ditched us at the trail to go to the summit. We headed down to quaff Ujahns excellent Porter homebrew passing Adam and Jeff's car, figured they were working Tourist Attraction but should soon be down. The growler was getting low when the lad comes down to the base and was offered a cup which drained said vessel. A sprint back to the car to try and get in shape would have ended the day, but at 2 am I awoke with massive foot pain. Turns out, I didn't something which my foot is in disagreement with. The usual swelling and limping ensued. Gave up and made myself some coffee at 4 am. Foot still hurts like hell. Pfft, old people and their aches and pains.

Real nice connecting and getting it started today. They will need folks tomorrow as some old people *cough* take a day off to recover:-) Got to watch Ian Caldwell be an animal as he threw boulders around today and we made stairs. Very impressive:-) Met lots of nice folks too. They can still use volunteers, click the link upthread. Turns out I'd met some of the trailkeepers (Elaine for sure, maybe Ron too) as I passed them when they were working on Cape Horn trail last summer. I didn't know it was an official thing and said hi and thanked them. I'm glad to know about that organization now and plan on being more of a regular to help out with the good work they do.

Damn, doesn't look like officially being labeled a cripple has slowed him down at all. Good luck with the joy juice Ivan, it does help some folks, like a lot. I keep putting it off, but now is the time to get it done so I can get some winter rehab in. For you as well. I bet if my Dr saw me helping hump rocks at the Madrone trail day today she'd crap all over the place.

The other common anchor was the Star Dryvins. Basically a nail that split 2 pieces of a sleeve when you whacked it. They were still fairly small and didn't go too deep. Folks liked those better for softer rock. Looked like this (not my photo) The most notable failure I heard of those was the West Face of Monkey Face bolt ladder. The bolts had been getting looser over the years. The story is that Dean Caldwell had a bunch of buddys to help out installing the bolt ladders. They got a keg of beer over to the base and would each take turns going up and banging in bolts till they got tired or thirsty ....or lonely. They'd go down and another would head up to bang some in while the former bolt installer quaffed a few. In such a scenario, it was all but expected that some would be installed better than others. The issue was really compounded by the soft nature of the rock however, coupled with time. They kept getting looser as time went on, we all ignored the issue and you'd have to literally push the nail back in on some of them starting in the late 80s or so, before committing your weight to the shaky hanger. The story I heard is that this culminated with some unfortunate finally zippering 8 of them in what must have been a massive pants filling fall.

I'll add my 2 cents if it will help ya. Soulreaper had some good info up thread. Buy used as cheap as possible if you can. Hand drilling sucks. I have Dan Merricks (hey wait, wasn't that the Elephant mans name?) Drill and holder. I haven't used them yet, however, Merrick has done some extensive testing and he feels it's the bee's knees. He's a sharp guy, it's a safe bet he dialed it. I also own the Petzl, an old Rawl and Deuces A5 Hurricane drill which I have drilled with. They all suck. Did I mention that hand drilling sucks? Last young guy I mentioned that to still wanted to try it, so I grabbed an old 1/4" dia drill, a holder and a I showed him how to hand drill. Tap tap turn. (ie, tap tap with the hammer then turn the holder @ 1/8 of a turn or moreish.) taptap turn. This younger pup was in the building trades and worked real work for a living. In short order, despite being on the ground drilling in ideal conditions (the bolt is still in the boulder at the base of Beacon Rock which is harder than the hubs of hell andesite - and we used a removable anchor just in case) he was like "WTF!" and getting pumped. As far as holders go, they all work fine. I like the Petzl as you can trade out the bit quickly with no hand tools. The Hurricane not as fast but faster than many others. Some folks like the Pika holder (speak up Shapp), I don't. The less you need to monkey fuck mid drill the better. Which makes the Petzl a winner. These days you only have one bit style choice, the SDS style. The Rawl/Powers won't take the SDS, they need a tapered drill bit which are not made any more so if you are buying used make sure you know whats what. A5, Runnout and Petzl take the SDS but the Petzl is optimized for sds. A5 use to make great bolt bags as well, look for one off ebay. A bag will help keep yer shit organized so when you are clutching on with one hand and staring death in the face while trying to drill with the other you don't have to worry (as much) about flying off mid drill and auguring into a ledge due simply to to excessive clusterfuckage. If you can't get an old A5, Luke Malabrista in Moab is making a duplicates and he makes real good stuff. I have both the Runout and the A5 and they are identical. You can always press a Fish Bag or a DMM Bag into service but not as good. Lukes company is Runout customs. He is mfg the A5 Hurricane drill holder as well in addition to haul bags, portaledges etc etc, good stuff: http://www.runoutcustoms.com/Bolting_equipment.html You'll be fine no matter which bolt you choose just make sure it has an ICC approval (Hilti, Powers, Red heads etc etc all have that). In the old days, people used 1/4" diameter split shank construction bolts that were 1-1/4 or 1-1/2" long that could and would and did blow the rock out during the install as you tapped them in. Yet shockingly they rarely failed in use, even after 20 years of rusting and folks hanging off of them. Basalt rock is all over the place in terms of consistency and hardness, it's usually solid but once off the beaten track sometimes you get plating and even spalling that's just sick. Some places like Tieton and other columnar basalt are real good and solid to place bolts. Of interest is that hand drilling will show you how hard the rock is real quick. Grey Andesite, say a volcanic plug like Beacon, is crazy hard. I've hand drilled in it and it sucked. But of course I have already said that. Tap around with a hammer before you choose your ideal location. At Tower, as Ivan will tell you, tapping here sounds hollow and makes ya piss your pants, whereas tapping (just over)---> there is WOW, that's some solid stuff. If you are going to spend 20 min or more making a hole, makes sure its solid and has not nearby fracture lines FIRST. Don't think of fracture lines as something you can see, if you are staring at a huge plate with the fracture going the other way, you will never see it. Whereas hitting with a hammer will quickly tell you both in bounce (vibration) and sound (dull thud or hard bouncing tap)that you are banging on a hollow drum and not solid rock. At Coethedral, there was hollow spots inside which the hammer would rat out if you tapped and listened. Occasionally the hollows were minimal, only 1" or so deep and you'd hit rock again. But tapping will often tell you something which you cannot see with your eyes is my point. Some basalt (which is also grey and looks very similar to Andesite)is not so bad to drill. You'll get differing sized grains come out when you drill that will show you that. Again, of more importance is choosing a solid location for your bolt. If you are near a corner or an edge pay real, real close attention to the possible fracture planes and your spacing, that applies doubly to the top if you are putting in top anchors. Spacing is something you will see on the construction guidelines, but as a loose rule of thumb give yourself 10 times the diameter of the bolt away from an edge. In super solid rock, it's not an issue, but you really don't know the rock composition. No one does. Top anchors, which will be used only for toproping and lowering, you could easily use otherwise short 2-3" long anchors. You might be surprised, but if you climb on older classic routes you most likely are climbing, clipping and trusting with your life much shorter ones all the time. 1-3/4" was long when hand drilling was still happening and 3/8" diameter wedge anchors were the norm. Before rotohammers made such short work of it everyone had to hand drill. No one, and I meant NO ONE ever wanted to go longer than 3". Even in soft rock like Smith. I recall when Alan Watts said he was going to put in some 5 inch long wedge anchors on Picnic lunch wall in a spot of particularity soft rock. We were shocked. Shocked! All of us. That was so massively overkill. In fact, as the transition from 1/4" to 3/8" diameter occurred, no more than 1-3/4 and 2" were commonly used in 3/8" diameter. And this was a huge increase in safety as the 1/4" diameter split shanks were commonly only 1-1/4 or 1-1/2" long. So for back country handrilling, you'll be fine with whatever you decide. Currently the mfg put a code on the end which tells you the length after installation. Its a recent innovation that will all but effectively call you out for being a pussy for not drilling but a shallow hole. In the old days, no one knew after you put it in:-) As an aside, I recently bought and installed (or perhaps bought but then watched or helped install) some shorties, wont say where as I don't need the internet outrage, but lets say that they are 1-1/2" long and I'll climb on them all day long with no muss no fuss. If you choose to do that at yer location, make sure you know the rock real well. Like real real well. There is nothing smaller/shorter than 1/2" x 6-1/2" as lead pro up at Coethedral as that is much softer stuff. It's all about the rock. You can minimize spinners (bolts that don't set) by blowing (with a plastic tube from Home depot), brushing (plastic bristle brush, Home Depot only sells the large brushes but many Hardware stores have what you need, Parkrose Hardware does), then blowing again so your hole is clean. People didn't do that back in the day, but the handdrills didn't seem to powder the rock so fine that the bolts would slip and rotate as you turned the nut to tighten it. If you have wedge anchors that have a dog point (an unthreaded portion near the tip) you are in luck, but if not, make sure your nut isn't high enough to get a hammer smack or you'll be eyeing a spinner for sure. So the process is this: Drill hole. (BTW, if you are hand drilling this just kicked your ass if it's any kind of steep), blow brush blow. Or not. Hammer the wedge anchor in, MAKING SURE NOT TO HIT THE NUT. I usually have plenty of stud, and as I knock the bolt in, back the nut off, tap, back it off, tap, etc. I do highly recommend Stainless steel wedge anchors, and proper torque is key to a perfect bolt. Early in the year I'll carry a torque wrench to double check the feeling of my take on the torque I feel of my regular wrench. Torque recommendations vary on 3/8" bolts between mfgs, so you might want to check the brand you're using. 25 foot lbs is common but not universal. If you have a small 4" long Crescent wrench (Crescent is a brand, buy a well made wrench), you won't be over-torquing, and under torqued isn't really an issue, overtorqing (although rare) is. I have a couple of hand wrenches that are ratchets which will fit a 3/8 wedge anchor nut on one side and a 1/2" nut on the other. Highly recommended. No properly placed wedge anchor will pull out with any climbing load if under torqued. It's never occurred and shouldn't ever happen. That said, we just did a route that took hundreds of colts and we didn't torque a single one of them. Not one. Meh. BTW, that's^^ the short version, I could add a lot, but the main thing is if you have to drill - make sure to craft solid anchors for those who follow and don't forget to have fun as you're carrying on and dragging all this heavy ugly nasty heavy shit all over hell and back.:-) ...and now, back to the ethics and moral issues of drilling.

Good stuff Rudy. You should also be particularly pleased that people talk good things about the lad as being a good person. So congrats on you parents doing lots of somethings right. Lots of people can be good climbers (OK, not that good:-) but to be a good person as well as a very capable climber is much much more impressive. BTW, thanks for the site link, very nice. I'll pitch a suggestion out, give the pup's videos more visibility. Maybe put the most professionally done one or one that you think views especially well some front page space. Sometimes watching other folks climb is like watching paint dry, but not always. That's the ones to feature.

Frosty Froliks or Winterpalusa is more appropriate description . The highlight was not the weather and the hour and a half steep hike by myself through those beautiful and serene woods back up to the truck: but the fine upbeat company. It's much more fun than rolling with a barrel of monkeys at the zoo. BTW, as you said - the "First Ascent" has already been done as you noted to me "that's how them bolts got put in". The first "continuous ascent" will have to wait till next spring and the first free ascent sometime after that I'd expect. I bailed off as it looked like the last clean shot to do so and not slow you guys down who seemed so determined to top out or drop out. Glad I did as I'm still sore today. As an aside, you guys should have been off before 3am (which could have been bettered had the first bolt not been clipped until 10:35am!) but the weathermanfolks were not too determinant on what hour the shit would truly hit the fan that night and it could even have hit hard at midnight if not sooner. As a member of the grumpy old man club that has to get up and pee at all kinds of strange hours I did go out in that crap weather for all of 3 freezing minutes in the wee hours. Being on the wall when that cold wet fog rolled in with the high winds would have been ugly beyond description if not an outright SAR call out. It was the right decision to call it off this go round. "The better part of valor is discretion" later took on a special meaning in light of Geoffs later knee pain, your hip pain and my shoulder pain. The Tower will be there next spring when we have another go. Here's the approach video for the 6 folks interested and still reading with the truck on good ground before the road got really "interesting" and exposed and folks in the vehicle started to get squeamish and then went to praying that they'd just survive the drive in. I wasn't too concerned although there are some claw marks on the steering wheel that just showed up mysteriously. I knew that this Ford has the full 5 star crash rating and it will easily and gladly take the 300'-600' roll down a treeless steep snow covered hill just fine. The advice I got last summer from Pete (of Pam and Pete of Tower Rock Campground, the good one, not the dankage of the Forest Service same named Tower Rock campground) was "don't go up here without a Jeep". I learned the hard way that it was good advice and so I went out and bought a 4x4 (COUGH**for-my-wife**COUGH) and so that I wouldn't tear up the Forester undercarriage (again for the 3rd time) which seemed to not even be able to get up the short road and the mini-grand canyons that have formed in the same. Turns out that the 4wd truck with 18" tires still needs to be jacked up a tad more to stop that occasional scraping and slamming thing which will be the winter project I suppose. Of course, this last trip they had graded the long road and one could make it most of the way in a Honda Civic now. In fact, the road grader is still parked up there, so they may wind up doing the whole road if they don't all get snowed in and have to go all "Alive" like a mad crazed soccer team in the Andes. Geoff had a great shot of the new snow that dumped on Rainier he might show up and share. [video:youtube] ps, I'm tempted to file a complaint about the pay for this job via the wage and hour link I posted above. And I want hazard pay this time. I mean, look at the large blocks and rocks we've been rolling. At even a dollar a lb I could retire right now. The cost has been a one way street heading the other direction so far. We don't have a $ count but it's a bit. Ivan was noting the amount of Stainless Steel up there, one rogue stainless hanger alone interestingly had perhaps missed the PASSIVIZATION process (the word came to me last night!) and is already brown and rusting says Ivan. That should give folks one more thing to hate on too if if they count up all the bolts we put in if they are so inclined. But perhaps not. We have about 5 happy customers reading along now and only one person bitching about a route name at another place so far....pretty fair ratio although there is plenty of time to tip it the opposite direction, maybe for now that's pay enough. At some point this route is going to be the "thing" to do. Budding wall climbers will be running laps before Yosemite big wall trips and some day the shocking sight of 2 partys showing up to do the route the same day may even occur. I will admit that my wife is trying to help my head get right about this as well, having seen my internal crazy climber stokeage go right off the charts a few times previously: she says to me that no one else (except us few crazy's rolling like psycos to get back up there to get the route finished) really gives a crap. Now or ever.....and perhaps she's surprisingly, but sadly, right. It's hard to hear it, I had only fed that to her after hearing it from Steve Strauch about 25 years back as I thought it rang true. But perhaps I'd rather have someone piss in my oatmeal than hear that kind of painful truth. I'm gettin' paid by the word here aren't I.....?

I'm there - but are you specifically saying that you'll have all the shovels, mattoxes and other rude implements of destruction and we bring nothing not mentioned? Thanks to both you and Keith for hanging in for the blessed end game. Hopefully! ps, nevermind, clicked the Trailkeepers link you provided, they sound like good folks who undoubtedly have plenty of implements, see you there 1st sat at least and need to evaluate with other people the other dates. I'll bring a rotohammer and some expanding cement that Steve Lyford gave/loaned me in case either is needed. Both of which I will leave in the car of course unless needed.

I'm not sure he's panicking as much as surprised he's at this place, it's a bit down the road and all. Been a pleasure tieing in with you Ivan. Thanks again. - good to finally meet Jared. That's the kind of condition we can all aspire too reach!

Damn, do they get paid by the word? That's tough to follow, I couldn't hang at all. I wuz less than half way through it and when there was no outrageous sheep sex or blow up doll story's figured it couldn't have been about me. Last weekend passed on climbing and did the family thing. I GOTS THE CRABS!! I GOTS THE CRABS!!!!

I'm only here for the fantastic pictures:-0 ^^(pic from linked TR, that's a good lookin and inspiring line they choose too) ^^

Good Climbing article linked: this thread went from interesting to awesome with your picture and then Mikey showing up Pink. Great stuff. Mikey currently has the picture of Potter soloing Heaven as his home page shot. http://www.mikeylikesrocks.com/index Click that link to Schaefers page and the whole screen lights up with that one. Wow!

Does "premature ejaculation" cut over from the tree on tree ledge over to Warriors? Did you name that? See that, people do read this stuff. LOL