billcoe

I put a bolt near a crack the other day and I still feel the shame. I don't know how they can live with themselves. Wheres was this Mythosgirl?

Big respect from me Pope. Not joking. Of the priorities in the world, raising good kids well is infinitely more important than most other things, certainly climbing. I balanced kids and climbing for many many years until the last no longer "little" one left for college last month. Although there was times I might have felt I was going mental, kids came first....as they should. I was fortunate in that my wife, many times, would say: "You need to go climb, take some time and head out for a bit". That and there's a few areas close I could get a quick bouldering session in or a few toprope laps in and home in a couple of hours or less. Probably much like you getting in a quick set of laps on your Mt Bike and then home to be the dad. Now about Don's excuse.... Take care all. Bill

I was thinking the same thing after I read your first paragraph.

Yup. Whats a CV? ** I named my drill after him. Here's the 'lil Dawg, seen here worked after a 10 1/2" x 7" deep hole day.

I would have bet $20 this was gonna happen. It's a good call OW.

No, I'm serious, a "real" Professor.....but you'd never know...

I'd wager $100 that 100 of 100 random people reading a Raindawg thread would never guess he's a College Professor. Not the least of which are his juvenile off topic rants and verbal assaults. I suspect many of them may think you are the professor Trash. Certainly not Don. Unless you pulled up that archeological thread of his.

Didn't even get a Sarah Palin style answer. Maybe because Don can't answer it. Perhaps it is much like my Jack Russell Terriers when they tear after a small furry creature, Don has no restraint and cannot control his mind and his fingers?

Yeah, like Mark says, it was good to meet you Minx: although wasn't this suppose to be a secret that you were there? BTW, your front view is much better than that picture suggests up there. You have a natural bright and cheery countenance that is very uplifting, you should have let Mel take a regular pic of you or at least your cheery face. Hope you got a route in before the rain (or despite the rain). PS, I'm glad you got to meet and learn that Kevbone's heart is in the right place, despite how it sometimes comes off on this web site on occasion.

From the Drudge Report 5 min ago. "Who won the debate"? BIDEN 28% 119,546 PALIN 70% 295,740 NEITHER 2% 7,395 Total Votes: 422,681

yeah, no one can ever see me, that's why i wear a red shirt I didn't see Kellie either. Glad you came.

Uhhh, well, true dat, but I thought he wanted the long version:-)

Cam hooks are the greatest thing since sliced white bread was invented in the 50's. Borrow mine and go send the first pitch of the West Face, North Face or East Face of Monkey and you'll be a believer. It's simple but ingenious-- an 'L' shaped piece of metal. You put the short end into the rock and stand on a sling attached to the long end. The levering force holds it in pin scars that will often not take any other gear or is marginal at best. You need to be careful to use the larger sizes at Smith or you'll chew up the fragile tuff from just body weight. Granite won't move.

Ha ha ha ha....wait....are you kidding or serious?

Thanks for the reminder JH. A quick note for those young folks or others unfamiliar with Ed Leeper and his work. I have big, deep and wide respect for Ed Leeper, who was doing pullout tensile testing on pitons and bolts when I was pretty much still in diapers and I've been climbing for 36 years or so. He would post these tests in the now long gone Summit magazine and his efforts greatly contributed to our knowledge base as climbers. Later, long, long after he had stopped producing what many considered to be the finest bolt hanger in it's day, out of his pocket he paid for recall notices and full page ad's in magazines to watch out as a few of his high tensile black alloy 1/4" hangers which had been found to have developed stress cracks. His hangers had been imitated with a less quality product as well, he wanted us to know all this and really stepped up way above and beyond. His Leeper pitons set a very high standard for holding strength to weight ratio that hasn't been matched before or since. Classic Leeper hanger titled first bolt. (these are real old old hangers) Hanger recall: "LEEPER HANGERS NOW IN PLACE MAY BE DANGEROUS Stress-corrosion cracking —The problem: Over time (decades or less) a high-strength alloy steel bolt hanger can be weakened seriously by a crack that propagates slowly in the metal—eventually leaving a hanger that can be broken in a mild fall, or even by body weight. And such a stress-corrosion crack may be barely visible to the eye or hidden on the back side of the hanger. Perhaps only one in a hundred of my hangers will have been weakened. But for a hanger in place, there is unfortunately no way to predict if and when such a crack may begin or how fast it will progress from a tiny to a major crack. It may take decades, or only years, depending on factors that are unknowable. After several broken or visibly cracked hangers had been reported or returned to me, I obtained and tested 640 hangers that were apparently OK, from various rebolting projects. About 99% held around 3000 lbs. or more, but seven failed at substantially lower loads. This is an unacceptable risk. I want to see the potentially dangerous hangers removed—including the 99 percent that are not cracked, since there is no way to tell which they are. Or I want to see them smashed into uselessness as a poor second choice. To say that climbers should just not trust those old bolt placements that use my hangers is an even worse choice. I have tried repeatedly to warn the climbing community, but climbers still often tell me they hadn't heard of any special danger. The risk is there, and I need your help in passing the word and in getting those old hangers off the rock. Unfortunately, a cracked hanger may look sound; while many hangers that are seriously rusted or bent are almost as strong as new. Appearance can't warn us, and experience with other hangers of mine is not valid. If we see a long fall held, it's too easy to say, "Hell, these old Leepers are fine!" Indeed, most are fine; but some are dangerous. Getting the word out: If anyone has already been killed or seriously injured when one of my hangers broke, I would like to know about it, with details—so I can use the reality and sadness of it to help get the word out effectively. In the future, if someone is killed or seriously injured, I would like to know about it right away, so I can participate in the analysis of the incident, if that's feasible. Please call me immediately at 303-442-3773. I don't want to see such accidents happen if they can possibly be avoided. At present, I know of only one fatal broken-hanger accident, which is the triple-fatality rappelling accident on El Cap in 1978. The hangers were not mine, but the failure was of the stress-corrosion cracking type. A weakened hanger broke under the multiple body weight, plus gear. Unfortunately, the failure of just one of the two hangers dropped the party, because of how the rappel stance was rigged. It is true that various hangers made by others, in ways that are similar to the methods and materials I used, have developed similar low-force stress-corrosion cracking after various life spans, and have in some cases cracked sooner than mine or with more certainty. These include some unlabeled hangers that look very much like mine but were apparently made by individual climbers. Certainly every hanger maker has expected or hoped that his practices would avoid any such problems. But not talking about these cracked-hanger failures won't make them go away. There has been too much silence about all this. I hope we can spread the word. With your help, please, since full page ads are not really in my budget. Other factors: Catching heavy or frequent falls does not cause such a crack to start or to progress. At the end, though, when the hanger finally breaks in two, that can happen in a fall. A loosely gripped "spinner" does not indicate a larger risk of failure (though it makes it inconvenient to clip in). On the contrary, steady, long-term stress is part of the process that can lead to crack propagation; and that stress can arise from the hanger being held too tightly against the rock so that the metal is slightly "dished." A non-spinner may actually prove more dangerous. And tightening a spinner may be counter-productive. Corrosion and weather are factors in this cracking process, though cracked hangers have been returned even from the arid Southwest. But trying to predict which hangers one encounters will not be weakened at any given time in any given climbing area is a long-odds crap shoot—and a deadly one. Use them anyway? Back them up! Don't count on a single hanger, without arranging a backup of some kind that will catch you if it breaks. Obviously situations arise where we cannot instantly replace a hanger or a row of hangers, when they're encountered on a climb. Although 99 out of a hundred may be safe, most of us wouldn't want to take a one-in-a-hundred risk—or at least not too often. It may be that many of the chock placements we use have such risks, which we accept as better than having nothing; but we usually back them up somehow. In a similar way, no kind of bolt anchor warrants trusting it totally by itself. A one-in-a-hundred hanger risk creates a bolt placement that is too risky to be used alone. Fortunately, a one-in-a-hundred anchor backed up by another one-in-a-hundred anchor becomes a one-in-ten-thousand anchor, and three of them makes a one-in-a-million anchor. This kind of "safety multiplication" is at least as important as the load equalization people often talk about. One bolt will generally be strong enough, except in some extreme fall. Instead, the real risk is that a single anchor, by itself, may hold almost nothing, if something has gone wrong with that bolt or bolt placement, or its hanger. It is important to realize that most of these cracked hangers may eventually reach a stage where body weight alone can break them. But even if you guard yourself by using backups, the next climber may not. Too many of us trust bolts too much. I certainly have done so. Often. Please take that hanger off the rock for the sake of us who are uninformed or unwise. Thank you. Ed Leeper, 6112 Fourmile Canyon, Boulder, CO 303/442-3773"

c) My comment was a parody of a previous poster's comment regarding the 'Chinese model looking really good now'. DOHHH. I get it now. I might be a little dense but it's of course possible that I may have some other positive attributes to make up for that. Easier to do if you'd just loan me that tin-foil hat you have.

Ahhhh, then you should have no problem using the Pika cam hooks. Have fun, bring a parachute.

"The Great Depression was not the country’s first depression, though it proved to be the longest. The common thread woven through the several earlier debacles was disastrous manipulation of the money supply by government. For various reasons, government policies were adopted that ballooned the quantity of money and credit. A boom resulted, followed later by a painful day of reckoning. None of America’s depressions prior to 1929, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The Great Depression lasted for a dozen years because the government compounded its monetary errors with a series of harmful interventions. Most monetary economists, particularly those of the “Austrian school,” have observed the close relationship between money supply and economic activity. When government inflates the money and credit supply, interest rates at first fall. Businesses invest this “easy money” in new production projects and a boom takes place in capital goods. As the boom matures, business costs rise, interest rates readjust upward, and profits are squeezed. The easy-money effects thus wear off and the monetary authorities, fearing price inflation, slow the growth of or even contract the money supply. In either case, the manipulation is enough to knock out the shaky supports from underneath the economic house of cards. One of the most thorough and meticulously documented accounts of the Fed’s inflationary actions prior to 1929 is America’s Great Depression by the late Murray Rothbard. Using a broad measure that includes currency, demand and time deposits, and other ingredients, Rothbard estimated that the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply by more than 60 percent from mid-1921 to mid-1929.[2] The flood of easy money drove interest rates down, pushed the stock market to dizzy heights, and gave birth to the “Roaring Twenties.”" With the lessons learned last time, this will not be so bad, but the business cycle, step 1 of the 4 seen last time, is here. Link

6 now as Alpine fox posted some craigslist stuff that appears stolen on a lower thread in Lost and Found. Link Did you lose an Ice hatchet and repel gear with the Rock Gear? Cause it's going cheap in So Seattle. starts out "i have some ice and rock climbing gear."......

THE PROBLEM: If the internet rumormill is correct: the best Cam Hooks in the world, the Leepers, will no longer be made or available as Ed Leeper is retiring and will not be making them any longer. Link to supertopo rumor Link to Mt Tools description of same Fortunatly, Climb Max still has some on hand...for now. Link to parts

Perhaps, yet still a disaster.

This is about to turn into a caving thread shortly isn't it?

So my wife of 28 years is of Japanese ancestry if thats suppose to be a personal slam. BFD.

Sorry about the emergency brake thing on your van Kev, in my brothers Dodge truck, all you have to do is push on it and it releases, I figured yours had the same thing but wasn't working. There were lots of hard working crew there working their tails off so that their friend could be feited and honored, and it was so inspiring to see - I mean that was so uplifting: thank all of you - you who pitched in, those who donated so many things for the silent auction, and you who showed up with your dollars, for making my heart soar so much. What a great evening for Kevin Rauch. I asked him as we were looking around the room early on..."have you ever seen anything so bodacious?" and he was almost giggling he was so thrilled. Great pics Mel, thank you again! _______________________________________________________________________ BTW, I didn't mind the Portland Rock Gym donations getting snagged from me, it was good to see them get bid up - but to Olaf, who snagged the donated one of it's kind in the world Cilogear Big Wally prototype pack right out from Kyle Silvermans nose the last second, you got the deal of the day. I wasn't bidding on that because Kyle is my friend, we get out all the time together, and I already have an original. If you want to sell it, let me know.

I stand corrected.