billcoe

The government should stay out of climbing and out of rescues as well. Let Freedom ring.

When I was in the Army, I shot all the time. Both rifles and was on a shotgun team. My eyesight was better than 20-20. (I didn't know that there was better than 20-20 till they told me.) I came close to hitting about everything I ever aimed at. Now, it's more of an opportunity to go embarrass myself one more time while spending a fun day with the lad. My current lack of shooting prowess is widely known and an ongoing joke in the family. Got everything all packed and by the door....been sitting here for over 2-1/2 hours drinking coffee while waiting for sleeping beauty to wake up....maybe I can blame the excessive coffee for contributing to that shooting issue:-) Have a good one Scott!

Since you asked, I think that it's just a case of you can pay now, or pay later Matt. Doing nothing like Scott suggests, really does bite: however, it usually just bites ya in the ass down the road. Apropos nothing, here's another useless Utube video, better than Porters drug one. LXeb-x63wGI

...and I'd say your just the pole-smoker for the j-o-b. Bring your skin flute and bonaphone. I hear Pink likes to jam Dude: you are quick on the uptake!

Link Doesn't look like dudes in prison. Link to good artical above (Jan 2008).

Is that the company Royal Robbins owns in Modesto? Makes gun holsters too? I didn't find the info with a quick google search, but see a bunch of 5.11 stuff for sale.

Yesterday was sweet. Went out to the Twilight Zone, which I've renamed Jimmies in honor of Jim Opdycke, adventurer extraordinaire. It's a super secret new area that I've helped put up 6 (now 7) routes with a few select dudes. Jim Opdycke had been the guy who had found this place, and had early on looked at the ridge on the far side and said "Man, I bet that ridge is awesome". He looked at getting/finding the approach twice but mixed with doing other stuff for the day, hadn't yet gotten it figured out. Tappet brothers and I had navigated to the base of the ridge last year planning on doing it, but one of them had to be back in town early so we didn't commit to leaving the earth. We told Jim that his intuition was correct, looked great (from the ground). Winter comes. Road gets closed. We wait the opening anxiously. I can't stand the wait and hike in on the snow. A slip and full pitch forward on the wet boulder field with a full pack on a rainy day proves that it wasn't as good of an idea as I thought. Spring comes. Snow finally melts about June. Kyle Silverman and I went out and banged out what was the easiest route of the ridge. A sweet easy 2 pitch route that starts up the backside before gaining the ridge and heading up. 4 single rope raps get you the base and the easy down climb to the ground. I had looked to get on the obvious crack on the front of the ridge then, but saw all the loose rocks and then went sniffing around the back and found an easier version. When we told Jim this: he was a little let down not to have been there to have bagged the best route out there. He'd been invited but had understandably wanted to hit the opening at Beacon that weekend. 2 weeks later: both Tappets were up at Squamish and it was a perfect bluebird weather day forecasted to invite Jim back with me to take a shot at the front pitch to access the ridge this Saturday. Jim's great company, always gives solid belays, and should have been there for the first route. Another adventure is spawned. Sadly, I was a little jammed for time as it was my nephew, 'Lil' Bill's birthday party at 5pm in town. My bro had called the night before to remind me. I said, "Sorry, going climbing, you should have told me earlier," he said he did. So next am, Jim gets his beauty sleep and at 9am I'm at his house and we hustle out of town. We get there and see that the newest road washout had been fixed. Sweet! The hike in is uneventful except for watching Jims surprise at all the winter downfall I hadn't gotten cleared out yet. He was happy to be shown the access trail to the base. We consolidated all the gear, rack, shoes, water harnesses etc into a single backpack, and wanting to speed the process up, I put the rope on it and grabbed the thing. Jim complains that I'm not sharing the weight, but I insist, Jim grabs the brush loppers and off we troop. . A short time later I had those as well in an effort to speed things up and was out front clipping and tossing brush off. We get to the base and gear up. As I know the best belay spot, I made sure Jim is situated away from the potential rock fall line and tied to a tree so he doesn't roll down the hill if I blow it and pitch off as I lead up. Our plan had been to climb the original line up the back, rap down and pitch the loose rock. As I was concerned about time, after a brief eyeball, I choose instead to just jump on it and see what happens. The very first move, the easy step you'd want to put your foot, is a traversing to the left thing where you step over the top of the abyss below. The easy boulder step starts to roll, under the moss it wasn't connected to anything, a harbinger of things to come. So I move some moss and try another, smaller spot for the foot that works, but is off balance. There was a 12' easy mossy traverse up and to the left to gain the bottom of the shallow dihedral and the rock we want to climb. I get a piece in at the base and head up. Each move takes a long time, as no one has ever been here before, each move MUST be weighted first. So the process goes like this. A) Reach up and start pulling moss and loose rocks off as high as you can reach. Cough when you get a face full of moss and dust. Find a handhold, grab it. Continue coughing as with the other hand reach up and start pulling more moss off to clear that side. Cough when you get another face full of moss and dust. Look for future footholds and do the same. Brush off the dirt you just put on your footholds and move up. B) Look for pro. No pro? Repeat A. Pretty slow. But some pro gets found and I jam it with cams except for one notable spot where there's this big asses flake thing (maybe 500 lbs) that I put in a nut, figuring that a fall would likely dislodge the nut and not expand the flake to the point of pulling it off on top of me if I was dangling underneath. Just above the flake, what had appeared to be a great crack for pro turns out to be 3 medium sized loose blocks standing next to each other about 2' tall x 8" x 6" separated by about an inch. I pulled on the lower part of one thinking handhold and it slides towards me. This would have been fine as I had 3 solid points on the rock except that a flake on top of this loose mess falls on me when the lower sob moved. A small 8" x 8" rock tumbles off to the right while a bigger 2' long x 6" x 2" flake falls right on top of me and I pin it with my chest. It would have hit my rope and most likely pulled me off. Jim's yelling below, "Hey, that almost hit me", (not something you want to hear anyone, let alone a 64 year old, say) while I try and wrestle this fu*king thing up and over my LEFT shoulder to keep it off the rope and the belayer. I succeed and barely manage to toss the evil thing down just as my quivering muscles complain at this affront. Fortunately, my pro was only at my feet, so a fall shouldn't have been too ugly. Although we cannot see each other, I mention to Jim about the loose rocks twice as I eyeball some kind of stem and way to climb past to avoid them. I later figured out although he had heard me, what I was trying to convey, which was, don't use this choss, didn't register with him. "Watch out for the loose rocks" was acknowledged. Twice. I get to the top of the shallow 60-70' long dihedral and a with my pro further below me than I'd like, especially on a ground up FA, edge to the right onto the face of the ridge and the easier but unprotected loose mossy rock filled spots to gain the first tree @ 100 up and join the original ridge route. I runner the 2nd, smaller tree, and run it out 40' or so to the 1st Rumba Ridge belay tree as Jim yells up "Hey, you're low on rope dude". I tie in exhausted and happy to be alive. Jim starts up and I hear dark mutterings and murmurs drifting from below as Jim takes his turn. Jim has always been a conscientious and masterful cleaner. His efforts accounted for most of the reason that the SE Corner at Beacon got some long crack exposed and available for pro. Everyone else just climbed past. Jim tries to garden and clean as he climbs, wants the rope to be snug, which I try to provide, and thought I was doing, when I hear #$%^%$ and a CRASH from below…..I wait, rope tight and belay locked off….wondering….finally CLIMBING…keep it snug %^##%.... Jim makes it up to my spot, gets tied in and settled and I ask how it went. He looks me in the eyes, shakes my hand and says "Great lead man". It's a very satisfying thing to get a compliment from a fella ya respect. I suspect I was beaming. I mull crossing over the Rumba Ridge route and trying a new line for pitch 2, except that I was beat, in a hurry, and wanted Jim to see the original route anyway. So we book up the next full pitch, Jim embarrassing me as unlike me and my artful use of my knees and struggling style, easily pulling the crux like it's an something he'd been doing every day for a year. We take a break, languishing lazily at the top: taking in the amazing scenic views of Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Wish I remembered my camera, in the other back at the base. Jim makes a comment about me not having a helmet. We start the backing out process by rapping the rings Kyle and I had left on the trees last time, grab our stuff, fill the water bottles in the springs, hit the trail, car, dirt road, main road back to town. Make it to Lil Bill's 5:00 O'clock party at 4:59pm. Little dirty. Real tired. Great day. Oh, Jim's name for the route: "Couchmaster Shuffle". We both laugh remembering he'd tagged my with that moniker over 25 years ago, an old shared joke that's his nickname for me. Planning on heading out today to shoot clay pigeons with my son at another new climbing spot no one knows about. If he wakes up before noon. Edited to add pics of the days event. Ahh, here's the lad preparing to blast, with the awesome Cathedral Rock (at the Gothic Rocks climbing area) as a backdrop. If you look closely, you can see my shit hanging up there still, with 4 ropes fixed. It's right next to that silhouetted feature (which looks like a Lions head from some angles), 2 5 gallon buckets with U-bolts for glueing in. (The lil Dawg wants to work) Here's Shaun sitting on the slash pile with 4 of the shotguns we took. He got 1 shot off with the streetsweeper he's holding there. Claimed it hurt his wrist and wouldn't shoot it again. The 20 ga with the phat recoil pad was the weapon of choice.

Seattle dudes, you have my sympathy: you have bad urban planning. Like LA, just pretty much let it happen. It's is much more difficult to put the genie back in the bottle if you haven't prepared your question in advance. Not only that, but then you have to keep paying these costs forever via crowded traffic and very expensive land purchases later to correct oversights that should have been obvious at the start had anyone bothered to think of it. In southern WA, your Vancouver brothers were given a vote to join Portland when Portland installed the light rail. They were going to get a financial break on the light rail to PDX by suckering the feds into a lot of the bill. They voted no. Traffic coming from Vancouver to Portland was bad then. Now, years later, for a short spot on 1-5, it is in the top ten worst corridors in the country, ie real real bad. Now they want a bridge. 4 billion is the estimate. They want you, and me, to help pay for that. Unlike you, I occasionally use that bridge, mostly to go climbing. Could have had a light rail extension for less, and they could have tossed bikes on and gotten into work about anywhere fast. There would have been no need for a bridge as it's rush hour when the current bridge is absurdly jammed up. I'd support a toll. I'd dislike paying it, but it's a lot fairer than making YOU pay for a bridge you never ever use, and which should have been not needed had your bros voted to approve light rail years ago.

"if you were a pull string doll?" Me: * "live free or Die" * "Organize and execute around written priorities" * "You damn kids pick that shit up"

I have something going or I would for sure. To anyone else considering: I met her at the Butte last year and shes OK in my book.

Oh crap, did I sleep through that election and it's now President Obama? Damn. I got to stop doing that:-0

If they do McCain, I hope that it's as grandpa Simpson, and it's on the editorial page where it belongs. Cause I'd laugh my ass off over that.

The New Yorker got edged into that by one of the Senators from New York I am betting. Obama didn't think it was funny, I didn't think it was funny, and I will bet Obamas wife didn't appreciate being made out to be the extremist American-Hating communist-loving Angela Davis either. Even McCain didn't appreciate it. It seems to me that kind of thing, if it was truly satire, should have been on the editorial page with the full explanation and something declaring it an "Editorial". I'm sure Hillary, Senator from New York, got quite the chuckle out of it like you appeared to get. It was speculated that this kind of thing would be pitched underhandedly by the Hillary camp, and perhaps even continue throughout an Obama Presidency, I, for one, am sad to see it happen and believe it to be unfunny and mean-spirited bullshit of the highest (lowest) order. Maybe this Porter thing below has some truth! Can it be modified so that it's Obama laying there? Cause that would be hilarious! Especially if that Black crewmember is waving the New Yorker cover around as he jumps back!

You may know a lot of things, but you don't know shit about Kevin if thats how you genuinely feel. Kevins a pretty good dude. Not perfect, just a nice person. I've heard that from others who know him too.

So the rest of the pack immediately rushed over to the McCain spokesperson like hounds on the scent and asked "What do you think about what the Obama spokesperson said, he said it was "tasteless and offensive" Whatda think whadaya think? HUH? Dude said "I agree". End of quote. Classy on everyones part except for the lowlifes at the publication IMO.

"The Iraqi Olympic team was greeted with a roaring ovation at the opening ceremony of the Athens Games in 2004. That was the country's first Olympics after the fall of Saddam and Odai, who as head of the Iraqi Olympic committee tortured athletes who failed to reach his standards." To those who have endured so much, I have great sympathy. This is damn sad. I suppose they'll just turn a blind eye to that mu@&$^%er Robert Mugabe so he can keep on F*ing his people in the ass as he and his thugs manipulate the current election?

8 track tapes, pop tarts, lazing around Blue Lake park all summer. Working at McDonalds when I was 14 and having a key to open the store in the morning before lunch, at 10 am. 1968, Carl Buscels Road Runner car with a spoiler.

Nice reply!

Welcome Dave, BTW, I totally agree that anything worth saying once is worth saying twice. I bought 5.

You're welcome Dave, BTW, I totally agree that anything worth saying once is worth saying twice.

Dohhh! Checks in the mail:-)

Uhhh, Not.

It's like what the Monkey said when he peed into the cash register dude. "This is going to run into money."

The stainless Fixe rap rings rate to 12,500 lbs. Your rope will blow first. The older aluminum SMC's rate to 3,000 and are hollow, thus ensuring that as they rapidly wear and rapidly weaken, you will have no idea how strong they are. I was castigated once for clipping 2 that were doubled together at Smith. However, the rope ran much better, so I thanked them for the reminder, shrugged my shoulders and left it alone. So I clip them if the situation warrants and it's dependent on what they are and how they are situated. It's generally better to reduce the length of the chain of things that can go wrong and just clip the bolts or as close as you can all other things being equal. But thats me. Your results may vary.

The folks you love to hate have the best locker that is rarely on sale on sale now. Link $10.93 each. Only 48 grams and you can easily use a Munter Hitch on it.