catbirdseat

No, I never saw a hex, but there is a cam stuck on the start to The Bone just off the right side of the ledge. I looked at it and decided it wasn't worth fooling with. I think a determined individual might get it out. It was a U-stemmed green Camalot, I think, I am not certain though. We did get a #1.25 Friend out of Saber though. Nice condition too.

No, as I said Catapult. Catapult has two pitches. I suppose you could do it as one with a 70 m rope if you moved the belay up from the tree. This was below The Bone and below Stoner's Ledge. You gotta stop at Stoner's Ledge though. It's such a cool place to hang out.

That's strange. I have never had a tent shrink on me, but I have had certain anatomical components shrink drastically while looking up various steep rock pitches.

Leading the first pitch of Catapult on lower Castle Rock, I dislodged two fist-sized chunks. Fortunately, they missed my belayer. I can't be certain there isn't more loose stuff, so keep your eyes open of you climb there. Consider belaying behind the rappel tree.

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said. Unbelievable.

Post deleted by catbirdseat

Fred uses his Subaru as a gear room. Then when he needs stuff, he throws it all out on the road and sorts through it. He's got a system. Not a good system, but A system.

You could also start at the bottom from Heart Lake Road. Follow the fence to the right of the power lines. Take the left fork that goes under the lines. Then take the next left, followed by a right and you are there.

Ouch(!), I hadn't heard that one before. A swell simile.

This story has more to it than just music. It has to do with the need or lack thereof to experience beauty. Another example was the time I was at Smith Rock for the first time, we took a hike over Misery Hill. I was staring at the trees. I had never seen such beautiful trees. These twisted juniper, so weathered, so full of life experience. I tell people about it, and they say, "there are trees at Smith? I guess there are trees there".

Man, you completely miss the point. You are clueless. The point was that people are attracted to NAMES. Everybody would have recognized Van Halen, or his music. This is classical music. The point was would people be able to recognize brilliance when they heard it. Would the music itself speak, rather than the cachet? The answer is no. And the reason for this is that the VAST majority of people have no ear for music at all. They wouldn't know good music if it hit them over the head, which figuratively happened in this case. I am quite certain that you could replicate this experiment almost anywhere in America and get exactly the same results. I'd be willing to bet you couldn't pull it off in any European country.

The only 5.9 that compares for difficulty is Damnation. I've done 5.10c's that are much easier than Saggitarius, but of course none of those were at Index. It's harder than Toxic Shock, Godzilla, and Princely Ambitions. Are there any other good 5.9's I should be doing there?

Well, you completely missed the good part, the mouse squirming until it expires from thirst and exhaustion, followed by the wriggling maggots and insects devouring the body.

This system is called a Purcell Prusik and I have used it. I quit using it because I couldn't find an adequate way to store it when I wasn't using it. It would always dangle down and one time I reached down to pull up rope to clip and ended up clipping through my Purcell, thus fatboying myself. That was it for the Purcell. I went back to the Daisy.

Check again, especially at the bottom. With a 9mm rope, correctly tied knot failure was at 2600 lbs, meaning an incorrectly tied knot could cause a carabiner failure as low as 1560 lbs. Not inconceivable to have this occur before your gear fails. The point of the article was to be aware, and be careful. And for what its worth, the clove is considered a suitable tie in knot without a "backup" by the ACMG and AMGA. A friend of mine prompted me to go back and look at this post of yours. I think that you are confusing knot failure with biner failure. If I read the report correctly, the knot always failed before the biner. Actually the report was rather confusing and incomplete.

If you can get onto the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge before 7 am, you are okay. After that it's terrible.

Right you are. The force in top-roping is double that of rappelling, even if there is no fall distance. This assumes negligible rope friction at the anchor, which is what we strive for anyway. To see this see look at the first force diagram here or the first pulley diagram here Of course you are correct. Still the loads are nothing compared to a leader fall. All I really was saying is that it's so damn easy to put in a couple of UNLOADED backup screws, there is no reason not to.

I got fed up with Hotmail long ago and switched to Yahoo. I use that as well as Seanet. Gotta pay $5/ month for Seanet but it's totally reliable.

You are wrong. Northbound on I-5 in the morning is not bad.

I used to commute from Shoreline (North Seattle) to Bellevue every day. Here are my estimates. 1.Bellevue 30 min 2.Redmond 45 min 3.Edmonds 20 min 4.Kirkland 40 min 5.Downtown 15 min

I had a look at it last weekend, and of course it is covered with snow, but things are warming up and the snow is melting fast. I should think you might climb it in a month or so if you get a spell of dry weather. It's a cool looking objective.

Damn, I wish I'd seen your post sooner. Mark McKillop and I went to the Lower Town Wall today. It was dry, for the most part. We did Princely Ambitions and the first pitch of Saggitarius. Damn, that last one is REALLY hard for 5.9!

Yes, you are correct. You can also use two biners as BD recommends. You can also tie an overhand knot near the end loop.

Camera 2 seems to give the best angle relative to the lighting.

I said exactly the same thing. Predictably, all Fred had to say was, "It's just Bullshit!"