catbirdseat

Surfing Darrington slabs.

That is a very good point. It is the total number of biners that causes the CF on single loop slings. If you rack multiple pieces per biner then you could probably have only half a dozen there. If you then rack all your slings tripled with two biners you are set when you pull the piece off your rack sans biner.

Forrest, I think Josh already knows where to "stick it"- his tent I mean.

I read in the newspaper yesterday that commute times have actually gone DOWN in the Seattle area over the past two years. We can thank Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. There is less traffic because fewer people are working.

Your post count jumped from 1 to 18, WTF?

Look up the route and offhandedly say to your partner who is about to lead it, "is that blood I see on the rock, there below the crux?"

Years ago, I was heading to my first day at a new job in Bellevue. It was raining. Because of my old job at Lower Queen Anne, I was used to taking the Express Lanes south to downtown for the Mercer Exit. I realized I needed to take I-90, but there is no way to get from the Express Lanes to I-90 since the system was designed by idiots. At the last minute, I got into the Pike Street exit, which is carpool only. It goes under the Convention Center before emerging on Cherry, I think. There is a stop light there. There were two cops on motorcycles picking off cars with only one occupant. Pulling in $$$ for the City of Seattle without having to be out in the wet. Lazy SOBs.

Chance of rain Thurs, but there are places one can go and stay dry.

Gamesmanship is the use in a sport or game of aggressive, often dubious tactics, such as psychological intimidation or disruption of concentration, to gain an advantage over one's opponent. Now, ordinarily, one would not consider ones climbing partner to be an opponent, but sometimes you just get a partner who's starts flipping you shit, or maybe you just get in an ornery mood yourself. Your partner is starting to rack up for the first lead and you come out with, "yep, she sure looks kind of wet today, be sure to watch out for the sandy spots". Or, you might say, "this is the very pitch where old Harry bought the farm. Pulled three cams on the way down. Cratered right where you are standing". Got any stories?

Don't look at me. Klenke and I both drive little POS beaters that get 35 mpg. We're sitting in the catbird seat.

I always rack on the right side. There are rare instances in which I have racked on the left side such as certain chimneys where I wanted to face right and have the gear on the inside. Lots of people prefer to rack on the harness. There are plenty of good reasons to do this, not the least of which is that the weight is lower and more centered. If you are really climbing hard and especially overhanging routes, this would be the preferred way because a sling would hang behind you and where you couldn't reach the gear. For weekend gapers like myself, I prefer the sling because I can just hand the whole thing to my partner, thus saving time. Racking on the harness would require that I hand the pieces one by one to my partner.

Yes, a more breathable and lighter bivy is the true answer.

A disadvantage of the die cut, that is, asymmetrical harnesses is that they are not reversible. If you partner up with a weird person who racks on his left instead of normal people who rack on their right side , then the symmetrical sling can be reversed to keep the small stuff in front and the big stuff in the back. Having said that, I like my asymmetrical Metolius harness with the four loops. I seldom use the fourth loop because it is hard to reach. I do use the auxilary sling on the left. It gets tricams and a few hexes. Main loop #1 gets nuts and microcams and the other two main loops get the rest of the cams.

At peshastin, as the stone weathers, the surface layers become weak and "spald" away. It basically is in the process of reverting to the sand from which it was made. Underneath, the stone is harder. It's a matter of penetrating to the solid stone via the point of the tricam, versus tearing away the the surface with an SLCD.

All leader falls "shock load" the anchor. If the directional pulls out the shock load will depend on how much rope is out, the same way fall factor is calculated. I could be bad if the follower fell just short of the belay, I suppose.

Lyme Disease

I was up there twice, but I am not missing anything. Those logs suck to ski over.

While we are on the topic of thread resurrection, I have a related question about tricams, and that is are they more reliable in friable rock, that is sandstone, such as you might find at Peshastin Pinnacles. It seems intuitively obvious, since you have the force concentrated on a single point, which will bite into the rock more surely than the lobes of an SLCD. Dru? Hey, Dustin, what tricams did you end up purchasing?

It is because all the good posters have been banned and Dave Shuldt has been feeling nostalgic. You can't blame it on Bronco, either. I think the Thread Resurrector mantle must be handed over to Dave.

Supposing your anchor is composed of three pieces all equalized with a cordellette and you want to belay off your harness using a directional. Do you use one of the three pieces comprising your anchor, or do you put a fourth piece in for that purpose (assuming you can)? Would that be totally anal? I suppose the latter would make a lot more sense if none of the three placements were super reliable.

How did that happen? Pendulum? Slack?

Really nice TR.

On Saturday, an acquaintance of mine took a 30 foot grounder at Peshastin when he fell and all his pro pulled out. He walked away with various bruises and abrasions.

There will be two tunnels for safety reasons so that if some accident were to occur in one, the other would be available for escape. The 1100 cars figure was made up by somebody. Even during construction, there will never be that many truck trips in a day.

You are a wicked man, ken4rd.