catbirdseat

If you are a two man rope team on a 30 m rope with no outside assistance, your only option is for your partner to prussik out of the crevasse. If he is injured, you are up shit creek. Ask Jim Wickwire. A C-pulley needs more rope than a Z-pulley because the bight has to reach all of the way down to the fallen climber, whereas the Z-pulley needs to go only a few feet towards the lip. In either case, you need some free rope. The only way to get free rope is to have a team of three on the rope, or if of two, to climb carrying coils.

The solution is to get into the habit of always showing your belayer your tie-in knot. I know it may not seem very cool or whatnot, but it could save your life. I once led a pitch without my harness being doubled back. Had I fallen, I likely would have come out of my harness. Now my belayer and I always check one another.

I'm not sure you are really a newbie, but for those who are, some advice about 30m glacier ropes. Don't use them if you are only a party of two unless it is a heavily travelled route, such as DC on Rainier. Unless there is another rope team to assist in a rescue, you don't have any extra rope to rig a Z-Pulley when tied into the ends of a 30 m rope.

... and no friends.

You are saying the Clinton lied about Kosovo? What lie? America went into that with open eyes. Erik, it wasn't 35,000 US dead. Serbian.

Bob get's it up with help from a little blue pill. Better living through chemistry.

Actually, I don't think that fractal geometry explains the ability of ants to walk on walls and their relative strength. The wall walking has to do with their weight relative to surface area. Strength has more to do with having an exoskeleton and being small.

For info on Self-Loading devices you might talk to Trask and GregW about that. They have semi-automatics and such that can fire as fast as you can squeeze the trigger.

That phrase has been used before. Who was it that used that before? It was one of the youngsters as I recall.

Never underestimate the ability of people to screw up an apparently foolproof system.

I kind of thought you'd get tired of pushing that wheel barrow around by now, even though it is a nice wheel barrow (cool mag wheel).

Avatars are like split personalities. Some personalities can spell and others can't. Ask Joe Retard about it.

Fractal geometry is found throughout nature. It is found in the trees, in water courses and in rock faces. If you extend fractal geometry to rock climbing the reasoning goes like this. As the scale decreases, the number of big holds decrease, but the number of small holds increases. A smaller climber can make use of smaller holds than a larger climber. Therefore, ON AVERAGE, the larger climber does not have an advantage over the smaller climber. The net number of USABLE holds is the same. That isn't to say that on a given route the moves might not be easier for a tall climber than for a short one. This is because routes are not chosen AT RANDOM, but are selected by a climber of a given height. A route pioneered by a short climber, especially with small fingers might be found to be more difficult by taller climbers.

Another Dru avatar for sure.

Is there a way other than banning to de-register a login name? Can one deregister his/her own avatar?

Jock, the painter, often would thin his paint so it would go further. So when the Church decided to do some deferred maintenance, Jock was able to put in the low bid, and got the job. As always, he thinned his paint way down with turpentine. One day while he was up on the scaffolding -- the job almost finished -- he heard a horrendous clap of thunder, and the sky opened. The downpour washed the thinned paint off the church and knocked Jock off his scaffold and onto the lawn among the gravestones and puddles of thinned and worthless paint. Jock knew this was a warning from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” And from the thunder, a mighty voice: “REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!”

Verily, Johnny speaketh the truth.

A middle aged couple walk into a marriage councilor's office. They sit down and the woman speaks first, "We're here because of Frank. He has three problems that are threating to break us up. First he never takes a bath. Also, he's always picking his nose and when we have sex, he never let's me get on top." The councilor says to Frank, "do you have any explanation for your behavior?". To which Frank replied, "Doc, it's all my father's fault. When I was a boy, he was always telling me, 'Son don't get in hot water, keep your nose clean and don't fuck up'."

Doubt it. Might help with nutz though... This link, on the other hand, would be excellent for comparing cams. SLCD = Spring Loaded Cramming Device Doh!!! I guess I need sleep more than I thought. My apologies. You're right, of course. Anyone not smart enough to click on the link "active devices" to get the cam chart probably shouldn't be out climbing rocks anyway.

That's a new one on me. How DO you do that? Don't you need the end of the rope to do it that way?

I'm with ya there, but there are exceptions, the gully coming off Jumbo Mountain, for example. You have to exit the gully and pick up a sort of trail in dense brush. You have to be looking in just the right place to pick it up. A cairn left on the way up can save a lot of grief.

After re-reading your description, I'm clear on the fact that this is not a butterfly variation, but indeed a coil. The key difference between the French Coil and Mountaineer coil is the twists. In a Mountaineer coil, you put one twist in the rope for each coil so that the coils lay perfectly flat and circular. In a French coil, you make no attempt to do this. The coils want to twist into a figure eight pattern. We used to always coil our spinnaker and jib sheets on sailboats this way so that there would be no twists when the rope is in use. Under certain conditions these twists could work their way together until they result in a kink that is variously termed a "hockel" or an "asshole", which often results in a CF. For climbing, I prefer to use the butterfly coiled from one end of the rope to the other (not from both ends, which is stupid). If done carefully, one can simply lay the coil on the ground and it will pay out without snarls. I still prefer to flake the rope, even so.

The single bowline with the Yosemite finish is an easy to tie, clean-looking and safe knot. If you want to be extra cautious, throw in a half-fisherman's, but that is unnecessary.

Mitch, those are excellent points.

Minx, dryad was just saying the other day that since you work in town and head east on I-90 every day you could stop by and join us at Exit 38. We climb with some friends every Wednesday evening at 5 pm.