catbirdseat

I brought an Offset Friend 1.5-2 to Joshua Tree and indeed I used it a great deal. I'm not saying that I would have been stuck without it, but it was nice to have. I realize there is a natural tendency to find a place for shiny new gear in the rock. Having said that, there was one place on the second pitch of Mike's Books that might have otherwise been a tad runout where the offset fit beautifully. There seems to be a few of these offsets still available on the market if anyone is interested.

That is true if you are applying force with a pointed object. A cord is not a pointed object.

That may be true, however, a loop of cord applies less force to a flat surface than it does to a pointed one. Your knowledge of physics appears to be rule based, Dru.

Pecan pie!

People have this expectation of an instant response these days as a result of too much time spraying on message boards. They are used to instant gratification.

Time to pull plastic, Bob!

You guys have it all wrong. The reason for smoothing out the sharp point at the back of the V is not to prevent the cord from being cut. The reason is to prevent point loading on the ice which could start a fracture. Fractures, once begun have a way of propagating onward from the point of origin. The idea is to avoid this in the first place.

I've done that. The train ran 10 hours late on the way down and 3 hours late on the way back.

They are stronger than ice screws and could be used for that and/or belays. The reason they aren't is simply that they take a bit longer to create. If I am down to one screw and I want to build a belay, you can be sure I'm putting in a V-Thread.

I think that was MisterE with the puffy coat. If we were around camp it would have been early in the morning. I vaguely remember someone saying MisterE was fighting off a virus. He should be back sometime soon to make his own report.

Deflowered, 5.6 Steve's Canyon, Joshua Tree NP

Tell me about it. I grew up there.

What carrier should I use the next time I fly to Southern California?

Missed our flight after standing in line for three hours, then we were told to stand in another long line to rebook! We bailed and went back to my sister's place for the night. What a fiasco! Finally caught a flight out the next day. We were waiting at the gate to board when along came an arrival. They let the passengers into the exit ramp, but forgot to open the door. The passengers were banging on the window. I went to opened the emergency exit. What a way to run an airline!

The first 25 feet is not protectable, but easy. Bolts have appeared and disappeared over the years. Currently, there is no bolt. I should qualify that by saying there IS a Yellow TCU/Alien placement at 18 ft, but it is a bit out of line to the right. You'd want to use a double runner on it.

No. You must mean the bolts on the rap route to the right.

Where's bcollins! He was really talking up Arizona climbing. There is a lot to do there. He showed me some long multipitch routes in a guide book.

When I climbed it, I saw some suspicious stains, but I couldn't say for sure if they were blood or bird shit, so I kept quiet about it. No sense alarming the partner for no reason. They were on the second pitch on the dihedral below the place where you step right to the arete. Not sure how you could actually fall there because there are huge holds, even though there is a small gap of ten feet or so with no protection. If you fall off the arete, there is a rather low angle slab below waiting for you. There was an accident on 11/12/05. Perhaps it was this: Accident on the Swift from SuperTaco

Dru, that was a low blow!

Nice job with the trip report, roboboy! Great pictures! Barry has some good photos on his camera, if we can just get him to log in and contribute them. I got a cool sequence of him approaching the belay on The Wilson. Yours truly went the "wrong way" on his lead of the second pitch and "discovered" an interesting variation that was definitely harder than 5.5. It featured a fingertip traverse past an old piton with bail slings on it. All I can say is someone had to be really desperate to have rapped from that pin. Not only that they missed the best part of the pitch! You know, you really can tell when you are off the trade routes when you are climbing over delicate flakes that surely would have broken off long ago had they seen any significant traffic. Getting off route can sometimes be a lot of fun. By the way, we ran into wirlwind as we were leaving camp. Holy crap! I didn't even recognize him. The old wirlwind had long hair and was clean shaven. The new wirlwind was clean cut with beard. We shared our camp site Thursday night with three very nice people from Canmore, Petr, his son Jan and girlfriend Susan. We climbed Hex Marks the Poot and Double Cross with them and really enjoyed their company. Turns out Petr lives down the street from a well known ice climber. We got a invite to go climb Mt. Assiniboin with them and we invited them to climb Rainier with us.

One of my goals is to get to Joshua Tree and climb more than 3 route I did when I got rained out last year! I want to climb until my fingers are raw and my muscles are sore and a big fat grin is almost permanently etched on my face.

Oh, they weren't Reindeer. They were CARIBOU.

I wonder how much interaction young Osama had with his father?

This thread revival was about last years goals met and unmet. We need to start a new thread to deal with new goals for 2006, mainly so at the end of 2006 we won't get our unrealized goals from 2006 get confused with our previous ones.

This is the time to remember 'Cause it will not last forever These are the days to hold on to 'Cause we won't, although we'll want to...