Sol

right now i´m in San Cristobal de las Casas, in chiapas mexico. i´ve been down here traveling for 2 months with my girlfriend, trad chica. its great, can´t really say too much about the climbing down here. left rock gear back in the states after roadtriping for 2 months. we didn´t make it up to the yucatan but reports from other travelers are that it is fully functional as long as you don´t want a $90 room in cancun. be prepared to drop some loot as the yucatan is the most expensive part of mexico. as far as mexico goes we had a great time surfing in puerto escondido for 2 weeks, spent some time in oaxaxa, which is nice as well, and are enjoying are stay in san cristobal. one thing worth mentioning is that there is no reason to limit yourself to mexico, we have also traveled in guatemala and belize. they are both very different than mexico and offer a bit more of a foreign traveling expereience. guatemala is super duper cheap. in guate, check out the town of san pedro la laguna on lake atitlan. its a small lake side town accessible only by boat nestled on the side of a huge caldera filled lake surrounded by volcanoes. we payed $5 a night for a room in a hotel with a private bathroom, about $2 for a meal, and $4 for an ounce of funk. word. in guate also check out livingston and rio dulce on the caribbean coast. completely diffferent than the rest of guatemala, due mostly to the caribe garifuna culture that lives in the region. you haven´t danced until you try to dance to a garifuna band. belize is super cool too. the most relaxed layed back country i´ve ever been too or even imagined. every single person you meet is stoked to strike up a conversation with you. many of the businesses close down when they feel that they´ve made enough money for the day. highlights of our time in belize include dangriga, which is said to be the center of the garifuna culture. also tabacco caye, a tropical island which is the size of about 1.5 football fields, and a 30 minute boatride from dangriga. it was absolutely incredible, super friendly locals, amazing snorkeling 20 feet from the shore, not a damn tv or phone or computer or anything. as close to paridise as we have ever imagined. some places in central americal in which i intend to travel next include: the bay islands in honduras which sports the cheapest scuba diving in the world, panama, and the incredible surfing in nicaragua. pm me if you want any other information, and hey get the hell out of the rainy northwest and go travel, cheers.

thinker...check your pm's.

cascade climber looking for a place to stash my mini-van in salt lake while i travel to mexico for 6 weeks. i will be leaving on nov. 15 and returning on dec. 28. if anyone has an extra spot in their driveway i will pay with beer, belays, or cash. any leads appreciated. thanks. sol

Besides the cams in the flake at the base of iron horse you can also hand place a bomber 3/4 or 1 inch angle at the base of the flake. if you value your life you better hand place the angle. i'm a pretty paranoid climber, and never felt too good about using the flake as my only anchor.

Nice job you guy's. Looks stellar. Who would have ever thought. alright bellinghamsters, the race is on for the coveted second ascent.

hey, from the chockstone we climbed on decent rock not quite on the crest until a couple a pitches later. once we made it onto the crest we moved left around a couple of roofs to a good ledge at the most proabable beginning of the eigth pitch. from here i think we went right, instead of straight up and left (is that where it goes?). either way, from there we climbed one pitch of overhanging choss blocks and runout face climbing directly to the base of pitch 10.

there is no true expando on gd. at the beginning of the second pitch there is a two move flake that gets you to the bolt ladder, it expands a bit, but you don't leave any gear in it, its chill. later on in the pitch whilst cruxing out in the seam you have the option to plug gear into the thin flake out to the right, though it is thin and purported to be loose, it does not expand. there is definetly no expando on the 4th pitch. its steep, easy, and essentially c1 the whole way.

in my experiences hauling with a dynamic line blows. it takes much more force to move the bag when it gets stuck. we once tried to tow a buddy's car out of a ditch with an old dynamic line and it wouldn't budge, but two tugs with the static chain and it was free. i bought a bluewater 9.2mm haul line at the ace hardware(beleive it, they had the most comprehensive assortment of aid trickery i've ever seen)in st george, utah. it seems just about perfect: not too skinny to fix and jug, reasonalbly slow rap speed when rapping with a gri-gri.

that steddy, what a shit talking bastard.

i concur. bring twins.

ha ha ha. yeah right. i just want to tr it and slap the arete at least once.

oh yeah, must've blocked that one out. your still the man for cleaning that stubborn bastard.

it seems pretty dry right now, all the climbs around it look pretty wet though.

small fall small pro. 3 ft fall on Dr. Sniff and the Tuna Boaters onto a black blue alien hybrid, bomber.

my bad, greg child did the FA.

blah ba blah ba blah. c'mon no hard people coming out of the wood work on this one. if you've ever seen this line, it is ssiiiccckkkk! it must be super-hard (sandbag) coming from greg collum and crew.

that sucks. to biskit.

NE Buttress of J-berg Torment-Forbidden traverse in a day Backbone Ridge w/fin direct

blah, blah, blah.

I couldn't help but notice the amazing arete climb Black Power on my way back from Careno Crag the other day. holy shit, that things straight outta hard grit. sick. I noticed some shinyness in the horizontals up high, what's the word on fixed pro up on it? Has this climb seen a repeat since greg collum and partner first climbed it? I'd love to get worked on it, does anyone know the logistics of top-roping it? thanks for any info.

are you kidding me? i didn't spell out japanese for a couple reasons. i'm lazy, i didn't want to take the time to figure out the spelling. i geuss I figured it would be dis-respectful if i mispelled it rather than just abbreviated it. also, who the hell doesn't abbreviate long names for climbs after they've said them about 20-30 times: sag (sagittarius), ten percent (ten percent meterological vinculation), Dr. Sniff (Dr. Sniff and the Tuna Boaters), NAD (narrow arrow direct). i mean cmon i called a chunk of rock jap gardens, not a person. is someone going to complain out of respect for the disrespected and discriminated tuna boaters if i refer to the climb as merely Dr. Sniff. anyhoo, let's just be nice to the little birdies.

there is a small songbird nesting on the first pitch of jap gardens near the base of the first wide section. i was finishing up the day on the route when the bird flew out from the crack right in my face and scared the bee-jeezus out of me. the nest is right on the key foothold inside the crack, that is usually used to get established on the layback. as of monday evening there were little hatchlings just breaking out of little blue shells. cute. i used a biner that someone had already left at the bolt and lowered as to not disturb the happy family. I would recommend that people stay away from the route until the little birdies are big enough to fly away

1. get throttled on sport 5.11's at least once every two weeks. 2. lift weights at least once a week. 3. do not allow yourself to take, fall. 4. aid climb at least once a month to keep the gear skills sharp. 5. when your rapping up the day, instead of getting on 8's and 9's cuz your tired, get on 10's and fall (or not). 6. climb 10's at as many areas as you can in as many styles as possible. personally i find that how much i weigh has very little impact on my trad climbing. i feel it just a little on sport climbs that are at my limit. i do find that when i get really skinny i don't have the energy or endurance that i have when i weigh just a few pounds more.

How did you rap off of ZigZag? IF you go over to the Snag Buttress and rap straight down (following Snag Buttress Direct) I was bouncing to create enough rope stretch to touch the ground with a 60m rope. Do you know a better way down from that area? there are a few ways: 1. if you bring a 70m rope you can rap from the third pitch of zz to the anchors on the slab above Frogs in Space and then one more rap to the ground. definetly the easiest and safest. 2. if you only have a 60, from the top of zz, make a diagonal rap to the rappellers right to snag ledge, then either make a diagonal rap to the rappellers left to the above mentioned anchors on top of frogs in space, then straight to the ground, or just make a short rap straight down from snag ledge and use the anchors for one of those other 11's to make it to the ground. safe, pretty easy. 3. if you don't mind soloing 7 ft of fourth class. you can just rap straight down from the zz anchors to a good stance on the slab, keep hold of one end of the rope, than downclimb to the FIS anchors. sketchy but fast. we were out there yesterday and used option 3. it seems that alot of the bolting done at erie is'nt quite thought out. in a perfect world there should be a set of anchors about 7 feet up from the FIS anchors to facilitate descent from zz, i do beleive that in this location you would then be able to rap from the ground. while were perfecting the world lets move the FIS anchors about 2.5 feet closer to the lip so you can lower after leading of climbing FIS. just my 2 cents.

there are at least 3 crags in WA, west of leavenworth, that have routes which stay dry all year round. unfortunatly, you'll have to find them yourself cuz i don't want to see you and your posse blowing up the scene the next time it rains. sorry. also, don't forget about the lost art of aid climbing.