billcoe

Am I the only one with Roundup and crossbow in the basement?

Damn, just missed this request. These furry fellas woke me up at @ 6am just yesterday morning, I could have covered your requirements from the Elkhorns (Oregon) bigtime. BTW, interesting note in that one of our party was an Oregon Fish and Wildlife biologist, she says that these aminals populations have exploded in this area to approx 300 animals and they are close to exceeding the lands capacity.

OMG!!! I think spit lunch on the computer screen when he pulled that piece of bacon out of his pocket! And it keeps getting better. Damn that's funny stuff Dawg. Thank you!

e-mail sent HB offsets, remaining offset alien, haul bag, waste case

Great reporting Pug, thanks for sharing it!

The camera gear she had weighed more than you. This remarkable sequence was caught by a great photographer, who knew the moment was coming, and was standing in the right position, right there and well prepared for when it did. I'll admit that it looks somewhat surreal in Hanmi's amazing pictures, but then, I will also admit that it sounded bigger than the pics show as well:-) BTW, as an aside, both JH and I have trundled a lot of rocks over the years. Lots. I'm sure I speak for both of us in saying that the direction which his took was a radiacally divergent direction than what both of us expected from our years of knowledge. Point being, be damn careful when cutting a big one loose, cause it's a lot like a pinball machine where the F*ing thing may end up. In this case anyway! Bigtime kudos to Joseph (and Erik Plunkett, BEacon Head ranger) for identifing these and lining up the work party with all the folks who needed to be involved. I'm ready for Ivans story now, his oration is top notch! Ivan, where are ya buddie?

yup, sweet sweet granite lines. Awesome stuff dudes! I don't think I have the time to join you later hound, I fully expect you'll have a great trip.

Great pics Hanmi! I gotta get to work, but heres 2 more. Damn, the site stopped working and I had to book, maybe later, or perhaps JH can load some. Sorry

I was out at Beacon today and climbed with Jimmy O but now I'm at work trying to get some crap done and was pulling up some climbing photos and saw this one. (saw Joseph, Bud Smith and Scott Harpell and partner out there too and that was pretty much it, hardly anyone climbing today). Anyway, Hanmi had taken these great pics on last Thurs cleanup and cause I'd just nuked and repaved my home windows machine, hadn't put a zip utility back on, so had to use the one at work. Check this out, I had to resize it, but JH is at least 300+ maybe 400 some odd feet off the deck, huge exposure (not really shown in the telephoto pic) he pulled this one off with slight pressure he said. Ivan and I were 1 pitch above the Se corner 1st belay, he sort of gasped in shock and called it a f*en asteroid, I had rapped down and was grappling with my own block when I heard it, turned and saw it damn near burning through the sky. Pretty loud too! What a great sight. The tracks were fine. As you get just before the Couchmaster start, just where the trail turns East, look at the trail, they both made impressive impressions: but the impact crater Joes made took off part of the rock that is the trail and is signifigant. Mine broke up, but hit right at the base of the start of Couchmaster/Cruisemaster starts and made an impact crater about 12" off the trail. You won't miss it as you are walking toward SE Corner.

Thanks for sharing it Jim! Great stuff!

My avatar pic looks like me. origonal below: Sadly:-)

Crap, with that runout - on trad - I think that's a cover shot right up there with some of the others or that Motomagic pic leading a sweet granite crack. Do an insert of her face off to the left if you must, but keep this one too. Mrs. Granite can post anything she wants. My opinion anyway.

Link here Now that Mike has an official business, just a note to you Seattleite area folks to remind you 2 things. 1st) How lucky you are to have this resource. 2nd) Don't wait till you are injured to head to this doctor. Do it while you are healthy so that you can stay that way. He will, as part of the initial exam, check for things like specific muscle or joint weakness's you may have no knowledge about, which can lead to bigger problems down the road. He pointed out 2 things for me and gave me some stretching/excercises to get on. I was forced to go to a chiropractor early on when, as a youth (I'm 52 now) I stupidly thought that picking up and humping around 200# kegs of bolts all day was a test of my manhood. The ensuing backpain was worse than when I fell off the garage roof while roofing it, head first: and having my orbital socket shatter and the bone jutting out of my face. For that, once I regained conciousness, I put a bandage on the exposed bone and went back to roofing. Anyway, I grateful to all the Chrios, long before Layton, who helped me get my health back. What I have learned down the road is this: be proactive and see these dudes occasionally while you are still healthy so that you stay that way. Proactive like going to the dentist except that having your teeth drilled just sucks. Congrats on the clinic thing Mike, appreciated you being my Dr. while you were in town. I'm putting it on this thread cause it will stay on the first page for a while, and I see so many folks showing up with complaints about this or that which some one like Mike could help them with.

I thought you were kidding!? These folks want to get on it too. Yeah, pretty bizarre to be almost overheating on the rock in the sun, then driving right into the rain on the way back. My neighbor said it started raining here like noon.

Thanks to the efforts of Joseph, Beacon is open as of right now. If you want to drive out and run up the corner, it's not raining out there currently. Ivan and I pulled off another block JH had identified as a troublemaker. The one @ 40 feet right above the 1st pitch SE corner belay @3 feet tall X 1-1/2 foot wide. Gone, but not forgotten. Be careful early in the season as not all the rocks were pitched and although it looks generally pretty good, there are some smaller loose ones here or there. Ivan and I did SE corner to the Jills rap (to get the block off) then back up and topped out on uprising. Can't say what the winter build up on the rest of the rocks looks like. Hopefully Joseph will flesh this out somewhat and give the full meal details including the monster rock he trundled! All you Beacon folks need to thank him for his efforts. Erik Plunkett "head ranger extraordinaire" as well, who ran into a bit of wall with the RR this year, very last min., we only got the heads up OK that the RR was OK to do this like 4:45PM last night. He'll be working with thim to smooth this for next year, as it benefits them to have a loose killer block brought down in a planed, orderly manner as well as the climbers and any hikers below. The important part again, OPEN FOR CLIMBING RIGHT NOW. Thanks again Joseph, and a thank you to Hanme as well, for both making the RR guy comfortable and happy as she spotted rocks from the tracks with him, and for belaying and climbing with JH and most likely picking up Ivan and Mines slack on the weak terracing job on the upper chutes. We thought that JH and Hanme had done the work, so we just tidied up a bit, but I think we were wrong, so we headed down and changed out the signs.

Not me Geoff. I can't even spell Heil...Helio....Helloi...Hileot.... I dont know.

Nope. Done. Fixed my posts for you. 's better now?

I call Bullshit Max, there was no spray. These guys climbed some great routes in awesome style, and Avitrip put some work into putting together a great Trip Report. Thanks again for sharing it! Awesome shit Trip. Theres some damn solid climbers on this site who haven't done those routes, and these guys cranked em out in a week! Like Tex, I think 1/2 dome rules, and also have wanted to do the West Face in a day but have never had the cahones. I suspect that my window may have passed me by, and appreciate Avitrips enthusiasm. However, even if I don't get on it, I can read about it and love it via the internet! Max, maybe you can point to a Trip Report you did which is the epitome of perfection which can act as a basis of greatness for the rest of us (no offense intended)?

Theses have bigger handles. My forearms are cramping after 2-3 hours of scrapping with a nut tool. I had specialty ground the tips of a couple of nut tools so they are sharp crack weeders. (woke up early from a deep sleep scratching poison oak, so here I sit drinking coffee, it's even too early for the dogs to crawl out of bed)

Quick note to bring this thread current: Glenn/John F and my bolts on Glenns route have been left alone...so far. Glenns route is really nice. It rarely sees ascents because it looks so damn hard, but might be only 5.7 or 8. Those routes which were put in on Bill's Buttress all have bolted top anchors. John's (Nolse's) drill worked like a hot knife through butter to make those holes. There were eventually 6 routes totally (with some more later TR variations) which were cleaned up on the Buttress. Mike Pajunas great route Dream Weaver can now be led from the ground up instead of from the Maple tree which was where it always started. As I said earlier, mostly because I heard more than once from various belayers that the head space for a lead was so great due to poor rock and runouts: I don't care if you put bolts anywhere in that area. Be aware that this is not agreed by everyone though, so I am only saying what I think. It's not my rock. Toproping is available off bolted anchors (again, very contenious as it is bolted), certainly you'll be good with a 70m rope. A 60 meter reaches to the ground on most, but not all of them. Only 1 bolt (total) was put in for protection on all of these routes, mostly cause I was injured, in pain, and feeling wussylike with my tendon sheath in the left forearm having totally blown and separated and it had rolled up like a hard rubber band under the skin. My wife questioned me as I was taping the forearm before leaving the house that day. She knew I'd injured it, cause I'd told her what the Dr. had said, and also had been moping around the house and I hadn't been on rock for 2 weeks. She started laughing as she saw this disaster unfold and said this was typical Bill, and suggested that I was about to really make it hurt. I recognised the wisdom in her words, and laughed as well. My mirth was caused because I knew this would be grist for her good-natured "I told you so" mill for at least 3-4 years as I fully expected her to be right. So I get there and I recognise a car on top and am literally just heading down to start rounding up some noobs to belay me when Bryan Schmidt calls my cell. (thankfully!) He needs to climb and says he's on the way, and later when he showed up I gave him the option of taking the lead which he did. So he led that route (on the far left) which had the bolt anyway. I think he appreciated the bolt too, but he had gotten a tiny alien in a spot under the overhand on a boulder where I never did later find, perhaps 10' below the bolt, which was only a bit underneath where a crack started. I was glad he it did cause my wrist was so F*ed up. Following did not seem too bad, but I noticed that when I rope soloed it later it seemed 2 grades easier than we both had agreed it was when he led it. -anyway- 1 top anchor hanger on the Eastern most buttress routes was later removed about a month later for no apparent reason. I showed up later with a new replacement hanger, put it on, used a torque wrench to put it in place at 22 ft lbs and then covered the top with epoxy to keep any other wrench off of it. It is still there. Someone is doing some recent gardening: great to see, and also, no new bolts have been added to old routes that had no bolts to start with this year, so that controversy seems dead. The Oak dosn't seem to be a target for the gardeners. Maybe someone could show up with some Roundup? Bring some insect spray for the wasps at the left side of Video bluff (just to the right of AC/DC) while you're at it eh? Broken glass seems to still be accumulating, abiet less rapidly, mostly at Video/Bill Buttress area.

Ahhh, you obviously need to get out more:-) Totally concur and agree! I know all about it, esp. is someone posts a pic like this, wherein a gorgeous lookin crack has bolts next to it. Like this: But I've never seen this route. Or been on it. And that pic looks awesome! Like I said earlier, I did see the Croft comments about that pic of him next to a bolted "crack" where he said that crack could not be protected. I bet it couldn't be either. Anyway, the story is that I once retro-bolted a trad FA which I had done 20 years earlier, not knowing the route had ever been done, by me or anyone. -And- I'm not so damn positive of any position I have that I feel the need to cram it down everyones throat. I do not know these routes. I'm confused about most of this shit and all I really know is that good friends, good weather, good rock: make for a deeply spirtiual experince, where my memory carries it for a while, and thats worth something. I don't want to lay a big judgmental thing down for others, even though I do it anyway at times. Anyhoooo, I did that one ground up, clean, small wires and some pins. As far as I can ascertain, there was never, ever a 2nd ascent for the next 20 years, and every climber in what is a popular area would walk right underneath and past this route to climb something else. Oh, it could have been done by someone. Yet it remained an X rated route. A buddy and I spied it, I had forgotten about my bold lead as a youth, and bolted it like 20 years later. It is such a freakin sweet route now. Perhaps because I had done the FA, it has not been chopped. I was telling an old friend about my "NEW" line, and he remembered belaying me on it soooooo long ago. He described every move and yell, and I started to remember doing that near death train wreck. People do climb it. All the time. No one has died on it, mostly beceuase it is now a G rated route. I once was conned into belaying a youth on it who wanted to repeat it all trad, without clipping the bolts. I mad e the mistake of belaying this kid. He was strong. Had a great lead head for classic climbing. Yet I started to beg him to clip the bolts after he had passed the first 3 or 4. He did clip one finally. This has an importance to me in direct contrast to the classic Royal Robbins clean climbing arguements. I have not been able to balance it all out, as I agree with Robbins too. I know that I still love granite slabs. And off hands cracks too:-) Especially off-hands on slabs. My son turns 17 tomorrow. I cannot go for the day and miss my sons birthday. (see Horton comment above) -but- We should climb. PS, why cut the tree(bush) if it's not in your way and might be a great handhold or an emergency rap station?

Oh, and if we can get up it, I want to spend at least 2-3 times longer making it better for all who follow, which will mean brooming and cleaning as we rap.

Dcramer. I'd love to get on it with ya. No clipping, just scrape, plug and go. BUT (always with the butts!) some caveats. I'm not chopping nothing. Nothing. Theres plenty of great and not so great climbers who love that area and are around 24/7 to make that call and they can have that arguement with out me. Or you. I love granite slabs. Love em. Big. Next) If I pee on myself in fear- 150" up with a single #2 RP in, I will clip the bolts. With screamers. Do not place any money against that happening. I have a serious self-preservation thing in place. I just do. About me, I'm slow, old, overweight, balding and weak. I have an offsetting quality in that I will NOT fail you if you need a great belay or a solid anchor. I am truly Horton in "Horton Hatches the Who" and am in for a penny in for a pound. I cannot bang it out this Sat but can line up for another day. My kids have recently grown up (or are so damn close...ahhhh) and I haven't been to Leavenworth for a long while. Leavenworth is THE SCHIZZEL. Really, I'm not kidding. I think - based on what we both say, we are close to agreeing - and I'd love to do a few laps with ya. If this all sounds strange, well, it's Friday and I've taken care of all my cares in the world and have been drinking wine for 3 hours now...... But it's the honest to G truth. You can bring yer gardening tools:-) Bill

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Ya gotta love the internet. I've seen a lot of stuff, but never one of these. Pictures of crack weeders. I think my rack needs one.