billcoe

Off... Sport-climbers have demeaned the climbing experience by plastering the rock with artificial accessories rather than using bolts VERY sparingly or avoiding them all together if a route can be top-roped, etc. or better yet, just leaving it alone. So if I'm deprived of a "first ascent experience", it's because I'm appalled by the callous lack of restraint in bolting that has become the status quo. By the way, the Bacher-Yerian route is an excellent example of restraint in bolt usage. I suppose they could have made a sport ladder out of much of it but they didn't. Billcoe....I'm way busy....ain't got time for a rude pissing match right now so I'm spending my free three minutes responding to Off. Thanks Don, I'll wait for you to get a moment, I guess the horse made a miraculous recovery. Don, I guess my angst about your posts on this stems from your apparent believe that all bolts should be banned from public land. In Yosemite, they have taken the best land (on the flats of the valley) and opened it up like a park to 60,000 people every weekend. They built roads, a pizzeria, hotels, bars, stores, laundry rooms, showers, movie theaters and on and on. Many people come, like the great Galen Rowell said, and they enjoy it too. With people come impacts. Some of it is unavoidable and much of it is self-inflicted for no apparent reason, yet climbers leave less than other groups. I dare anyone to FIND a single bolt on the Glacier point pics I copied, and those pics were taken from a few feet away. You can't see few if any of them from the ground unless you walk right up to the rock, and even then damn few. Yet contrast that with the park as a whole: I could easily find you a massive building and road structures running willy nilly from a satellite picture taken from the stratosphere. So to me it seems wildly disingenuous for you to rant about how horrible bolts are, when you don't say or do shit about these other huge, massive and widespread environmental impacts to the best, most productive for wildlife, land in the park. Having bolts allows humans to travel vertical paths, and it's much less destructive, and certainly more fun and interesting, than paths on the ground that the park service proliferates for the very same reason: to allow people to recreate and enjoy the place. Truthfully, I like it all and that includes climbing bolted routes. I prefer gear routes, and long ones at that, but it's all good and I say that even though I suck at hard face climbs. Aid or free, bolts or gear or both: love it. Like others, sure it pisses me off when folks bolt where it's not needed. As Joseph said, a half pitch can and should often be left as a toprope, and on a cliff with 55-60 existing routes 90 percent of which take gear, why bolt the face 5' from a nice crack climb? Yet I have to agree with most of what Doug said as well. (hey, thanks for the invite too sir!) A via feratta is way different than a hard sport climb, and yet for many they are both fun to do. Go to Italy and tell me that place is tame, even after mega centuries of settlement, "development" and horribly destructive wars. For us, in the US - I think there are places where bolts are critically needed, and there are places where they are not only not needed but not wanted, and we need to be sensitive to the local prevailing ethic. Off said it as well with this one as well "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? " Regards to all: Oh, and Kimmo, I'd tie in with you any day, love your balance, maybe we need to take off up on that offer:-).

LOL!!! Nice call.

Mmmmmmmm, Dead Horse....mmmmmm Guess Don really didn't want to have this dialog after all then. He must know how F*ed up his position and logic really is. I should bow out and cease the discussion with a sport climbing picture by way of a finale but I'm too much of a gentleman. Wait, I'm a dick, here's the picture, all thats missing is 3 more bolts in the picture. No, must resist urge..........got to see what we're talkin about here: So I am a dick, but where's the ethical horror and tragedy here? Mmmmm, Dead Horse, mmmmmmm

Try and calm down and stay on task dude, she was acquitted it reads. Anyway, is that better than stealing her parents ashes and burning her house down? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/ap_on_re_eu/eu_switzerland_novartis_attacks;_ylt=An3Ilvc63CXp_b24PQLQpbMPLBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTM1NDQzaGFrBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwODA0L2V1X3N3aXR6ZXJsYW5kX25vdmFydGlzX2F0dGFja3MEcG9zAzEwBHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDbm92YXJ0aXNhY3Rp "BERN, Switzerland – Drug maker Novartis AG said Tuesday that animal rights activists have stolen the ashes of its CEO's mother and set fire to his Austrian hunting lodge." _____________________________________________________________ we have a dawg question still outstanding.

What is a 2 bolt full length apron pitch? Sport or trad? How about the same pitch length on Glacier point apron with 3 pitons fixed? Is that "sport" or "trad"? Here's a pic of the lil Dawg to revel in while you consider these ideas. PS, Lil Dawg gets 14 holes per charge. But they are huge holes, 1/2 x 6-1/4" long. I can get a hole done in @ 8 seconds where the rock is soft. Longer for traditional basalt. Haha, "Trad" basalt. Like this one below in the city park rappel anchor which Lil Dawg was fired up to do. I had to hold him back he was so excited.

Huh? That lil waving character thing is naked? WTF! LOLZ

Still for Don

Heresy! It ain't about how "hard" one is that is important, I mean, ugly 3rd graders are out pulling me.......

I spent three years back in the 1980's working on a Parkinson's drug at drug research company in Irvine (N-0923). Nineteen years after it was discovered, the drug was finally FDA approved in 2007 by a successor company under the generic name of Rotigotine. It is now in clinical trials for a different indication- "restless leg syndrome". The drug is a dopamine D2 agonist. It's very potent and is delivered by a patch. Interestingly, we tested it in rats to discover if it was habit forming. The result was that it is three times more addictive than cocaine when administered intravenously. You won't get any of this information by looking it up in Wikipedia. ;-) Whoa......speechless.

Not me Andrew, but sometimes it seems that you're a little hard on The Beaver.

JB, I had you covered 10 posts up (quoted post below). Thank you for the great posts lately on multiple threads - some great quality information. I reposted your conclusion as it was a perfect summation. I suppose I could have bolded the text and added an exclamation point for Jayb but he's a real sharp guy and I figured your post stood well on its own. Good stuff dude, thank you.

Still a classic but I thought we'd all moved on past this embarrassing moment, is round 2 coming up... what? How did the thread take a left turn?

Damn, it almost makes you support Islamic justice.

2 days of climbing followed by a 3 or 4 mile death march with my wife on an urban trail. I tryed to carry extra water for ballast, thinking I could out hike her like always. Shes been training regularly on trail hiking and running and she ground me into the dust. ______________________________________________________________ No CBS, only the rare Ibuprofen but I did just polish off a full mason quart jar of Ujahns homebrew, a deep chocolate stout...ummmmmm that stuff is soo goooood. I have 3 swallows left and then it's time to pee....and that's another thing (spoken like Andy Rooney).... Drained it ahhhhhhhh

And yet you showed up and then contributed less than Kevin E-rock...hmmmm interesting. Bone, you and I are close to agreeing here. It is wrong to hold people, many on flimsy if any evidence, indefinitely. It goes against what our country stands for and what makes us strong. Give them a trial or set them free. The difference is that most of these are POWs, battlefield warriors who were captured. Imagine if in WW2, the US had tried all of the captured German troops. What would the charge have been anyway? How would you provide evidence? It can't be processed that way. However, it should have been processed via tribunal by now, and the real badasses locked up or hung and the rest let go. In a sense, that has been occurring at a glacial pace.

Well spoken as always Jayb. I'm even willing to give folks who want to spew that the nutritional value is higher the benefit of the doubt. Frankly, I remember buying some organic Oranges at natures once, that tasted so good that my kids and I ate them all and immediately went back and bought another sack most of which we ate immediately. The taste was so significantly better it would be hard not to believe it to have more nutrients than the nearly unpalatable bland cardboard masquerading as oranges at the Safeway store. If someone cannot separate taste and nutritional content, I can live with it. Like you, what ever floats folks boats. I think separating out the various health risks of organic or not as it relates to food may be the more prudent approach. Antibiotics, for example, may have different health risks than growth Hormones and pesticides, and it seems clear that there are huge and widespread health issues in the process of cropping up from this practice. Here's some links of scientific consensus starting to form. Perhaps the evidence is less than startling conclusive, yet if you could avoid unwanted antibiotics from possibly screwing up our children, wouldn't you want that? New England Journal of Medicine articals www.cals.ncsu.edu/waste_mgt/natlcenter/sanantonio/Ohl.ppt http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/safe/overview.html opps, looks like my 2nd link, which is a powerpoint presentation, didn't take and will be cut and past for you. Here are the abstracts for anyone to look up. * White DG, Zhao S, Suler R et al. The isolation of antibiotic-resistant salmonella from retail ground meats. N Engl J Med 2001;345:1147-54. Abstract * McDonald LC, Rossiter S, Mackinson C et al. Quinupristin-Dalfopristin-Resistant Enterococcus faecium on Chicken and in Human Stool Specimens. N Engl J Med 2001;345:1155-60. Abstract * Sørensen TL, Blom M, Monnet DL et al. Transient Intestinal Carriage after Ingestion of Antibiotic-Resistant Enterococcus faecium from Chicken and Pork. N Engl J Med 2001;345:1161-6. Abstract

If they are not terrorists they can let them go, if they are terrorists, they can hold them there as well as hold them inside the US border. If they are going to have a tribunal why not there? How much do you think this move will cost? What will it really do? IMO It's just expensive window dressing that will do nothing and cost you money. Stupid.

Yeah, that's what I did. Walked in to the Michael Jackson memorial medicine cabinet, ate some vitamin I, typed for a bit and went back to bed and slept like a baby. Like a baby this time wasn't = cryed all night and peed myself. LOL

Woke up @2-3am the last 2 days with muscles so sore that I can't sleep nor can I get back to sleep. This never use to happen when I was a pup. Wonder how Becky manages at his age, its nothing short of astounding to me. Nothing else happening...take care all.

For Don:

They all haven't been disingenuous. As people note above, your study doesn't include pesticide, hormone, antibiotics and other harmful things that are excluded from organic foods. I appreciate that our food production is world class. You can't get that kind of production without large amounts of pesticides, herbicides and scientific study. Frankly, the mainstream food we eat has been studied extensively and found to be generally safe to eat as we buy it from mainstream markets - yet that doesn't make it conclusive at all that pesticide use is good for you. Some organics have their own set of unsafe issues as well, they aren't always better, especially as it pertains to unpasturized milk and milk products like cheese. Antibiotic research coming to light seems to be indicating that blanket application in livestock will lead to transfer to humans, then causing them to be allergic to antibiotics and/or antibiotic resistant stains of disease occurring, and it ain't a good thing. To lump organic as a waste because the nutrition value, and that alone is the same, while ignoring every other bit of data on these other issues seems disingenuous to me. Regards to all, interesting discussion.

I just re-read the last paragraph before the word "Compare" and I think that's the Ergo - what, point. Starting with the word "Conclusion" "The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system." Well spoken JB. Nice find, thanks for sharing it.

It's a good point JH. I note that many people who pay the scratch for one of these cams claim that due to the massive range they are perfect as a "when the Sh*t hits the fan" piece....i.e., the piece you grab when you are totally pumped and you MUST get the cam in first try or fly. Although the range on these allows us to think that these are that go-to piece....it's probably the exact wrong time to be utilizing this cam as a plug and fall piece in extreme times. Realistically, I rarely carry mine, mostly preferring not to pay the weight cost and go with a lighter Metolius so that I can have a few extra brownies at night and pad the love handles:-) Mmmmmmm I don't like the extra maintenance needed for these either. I often climb in dirt and dust (Saturday climbing was a vertical dust bowl) and the dust and dirt is anathema to these things working smoothly and effectively.

Whoa, at first I though you were the guy who had posted the purple OP failure on Rockclimbing.com. Linked here I quickly saw you were not. He had tested his purple .5 and it had essentially failed in a placement that a Camalot held. These things have some design characteristics which make certain placements time bombs. Any placement where they can't rotate and take a bit of a sideways force, they seem to be a candidate for failure. There was one placed in am angled pod in JT that surprisingly broke earlier, looking eerily similar to yours except for the color. After that story broke, LINK HERE TO THAT LONG TALE Joseph tried to break one with his hands to make his point that the links and length of the cams lobes are a weak point (he was unsuccessful in that endeavor but you just made his point for him iwth an exclamation mark!). I have the 1 and 2- # 2s and figured I didn't need any more OP cams for this reason. FYI, you can post pics on the fly at CC.com, just click the camera link above and insert the location and the file uploads to CC just like photobucket. Kunza is one of my favorites at Smith, so I know, and want to share the main point with others, that this should have been a low fall factor/low force fall. Cam at the feet but with a lot of rope out and fortunately plenty of placements between you and the deck. I always nut this pitch with 1 cam low on the pitch. Thank you for sharing the story. Any good climbing pics feel free to share those as well. Your cam Of particular note and interest is the Rich Goldstone post on the Cassin Joss cam failure which lead to a fatality on a 5.4/5.5 in the Gunks. I'll quote it slightly modified and with the picture outside of the quote. Here is the failed cam, but click Rgolds link after you read his words as it's a worthwhile read for every climber who would use cams. I like Kates post on the RC.com JT failure thread noted above as well. She said: The resolution of that were the ideas that certain placements like flares, can allow force multipliers and that it's best not to let a sideways hit happen on any Link Cam, or perhaps any cam, if it can't rotate and/or is in a flaring pod or placement. Glad you weren't hurt.

Can you show some pictures and/or let us us know your marking scheme? I have engraved my drivers license #, written my name in black felt tip on others, and used paint in difficult to remove places with my colors of blue and yellow and also posted my rack pics for this very reason. If and when this happens to me, I don't want my stuff to be invisible to my friends in the pawn shops or where ever it ends up. Wishing you a fast and full recovery.....damn that sucks.