catbirdseat

I was going to make joke, but nevermind...

First of all you might stop punching out misogynists like CPB. They have very hard heads...

Damn, I must be tired. It took a minute to get the joke. Good one.

The trail to Playground point starts down the hill a ways from Hammerhead Rock. Look for a stream and a gully. The trail begins on the right side of the gully trending left from the road, but quickly switches back to the right and up a sort of ramp. That ramp takes you up on a flat bench well above the road. Follow the trail through pretty trees and meadows until it starts to climb. It will go through a bouldering area known as Mad Meadows. Continue following the trail upwards and it will wend its way through some big boulders and turn left and uphill. The first bolted route you will come to is called Baby Steps, 5.4, and excellent beginner lead. To the left of it is a beginner trad route called Baby Behind the Tree, 5.3. It features one bolt and the rest is protected by nuts and TCU's. Up and to your left is Birthday Boy, a fun 5.7 bolted route. To the left of that is a fun beginner trad route that starts by the tree. It goes at about 5.3-5.4 and takes nuts and TCU's and some larger cams. Have fun.

The main cliff face on Midway is quite polished because that is the way most people face when they climb it. That is where the protection is. When you get to the crux, try turning around and facing the tower, climb it like the chimney it is. You will find all sorts of good friction for your feet. I find it much easier that way.

I just bought at BD Guide belay device to replace a Trango B-52 that had worn to the point where I felt it wasn't safe anymore. I wanted a device that would handle both fat and skinny ropes and which would allow belaying of two seconds (or one) in the autoblock mode, or "guide mode" as BD terms it. One of the shortcomings of the B-52 was that to belay two seconds one needed to hang the device from two carabiners. This redundancy was needed so that the device would hang straight. It doesn't have a dedicated eye for that purpose. This weekend I used the Guide to belay and rappel on a pair of 8.6 mm half ropes, for which it performed just fine, although not as smoothly as the B-52. It has plenty of friction in the "low friction mode" for single ropes. One would only ever want to use the high friction mode for skinny ropes or ones that are iced up. Using a 10.5 mm single, I decided I wanted to belay off the anchor. Normally I might have used a Munter Hitch, but I was standing off to the side of the direction of pull, so I thought I'd use the Guide in autoblock mode. To my surprise, I could not pull the rope in. There was way too much friction! It was hopeless. I gave up and went back to the Munter Hitch. I have yet to try autoblock mode with the 8.6 mm ropes. I'm expecting much less friction. It seems to work in living room tests. There still doesn't seem to be any one device that does everything perfectly. Some are better than others for certain tasks.

Those are some funny dudes! Sounds like they'd be a blast to climb with.

I'd like to go very badly but I am performing with my Jazz band on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I'm available Wednesday however.

Absolutely incredible singer! The best I have heard in a very long time. That piece of music is truly awesome, but anything less than a stellar performance would fall flat. In selecting it Paul went for broke and pulled it off.

Realize that with this knot that if a piece fails, you CAN get extension, depending on which piece fails. My guess is that it would be mitigated by a lot of friction as the rope pulls through the knot. Second point is that since the rope is part of the anchor, it is more difficult to handle emergency situations.

Jail food for supper.

In many cases hexes can be used in inward flaring cracks such as can be found at Tieton and a few at Vantage. Hexes are dirt cheap. Some of the newer cam designs work better in flares because of their greater range. Examples of these are the Max Cam by Trango, the SuperCam by Metolius and the Link Cam by Omega Pacific. These cams tend to be more expensive, however. Regarding nuts, certain stoppers work better in flares than others. You can buy offset nuts, but they tend to work best only in flares. Alternatively, you can buy Metolius Curved Nuts which seem to work pretty well in both standard and flared crack.

Tried to do Saints but I'm quite sure we got off route. We belayed at the bolt anchor rather than going up 20 ft as described on SummitPost. From there we went up and slightly to the right. My best guess from looking at bwrts description is that we must have gone on to Angel. The climbing felt like mostly 5.6-5.7. The rock was quite clean. All the same we had an enjoyable outing.

Found on Friday, June 15 near Ride 'Em Cowboy. PM me if they are yours.

I'll say something nice about Bellevue. They have very nice parks that are wonderfully uncrowded. I used to work in Bellevue and would go running at Wilburton and Bellefields Parks on my lunch break. I would go to the park and there would be several cars in the lot, but almost no people walking or running on the trails. There would be people in the cars, however. They were generally either eating, talking on cell phones, or smoking, or various combinations of the three.

People want to climb. Most don't want climb mank and don't want to have to clean a route before they can climb it. There are some climbs that have to have an old fashioned scrubbing to stay climbable. No amount of traffic will keep them clean.

You got a point there. They are definitely not paid to think.

Pretty far If you read the article you will know why D** changed his name to G-Spotter.

Go out and look for yourself. You will find that in most cases, these "cracks" are problematic on one way or another for trad leading. It most cases, they are either weak flakes, offwidth flakes, laybacks, flares, etc. I'd have to say that in the case of The Javelin that most of those arguments don't fly. As a layback it is simply a lot easier to protect and they thought it would see a lot more traffic that way (bolted), which is true- 5.10- bolted, but 5.10+/5.11- on gear only. Gorilla my dreams is another example, although a more extreme one. It could be led on gear, but you'd need multiple big pieces (5-6") whereas Javelin could be led on a single set to 4". In answer to MCash's question, Ron Cotman did many of the routes at Clem's/Special Spot/Retardant Rock.

Interesting how the Islamists will take advantage of the slightest humanitarian gesture of their enemies, in this case medical care, to attack. Then they complain when harsh measures are taken against them.

It was not clear whether they plan to put the ladder back in place. Should they?

It goes to show how much force two or three burly dudes can exert using a three-to-one tackle. You can not only bend ice axes, but you can hurt the person you are trying to raise if you act blindly.

The cops don't give a hoot about your civil rights or the law. The correct response by the cyclist should have been, "yes,sir. Sorry sir, I didn't see the sign". Then, when the cop turns the corner, you get back on your bike and continue on your way.

Nice work. You just ruined a perfectly good ice axe. What makes you think the shaft needs to be bent? People climbed hard ice for many years with straight shafts. You can put a technical edge on the pick using a file. I've done this myself, but you can't call the result an "ice tool".

I used to have trouble with big calluses forming on the fourth finger on the pad between the 2nd and 3rd joint while bouldering in the gym. It's becoming less of a problem and I attribute that to better technique. You might consider more frequent but shorter workouts, if that is possible.