peacemaker

It took me a long time realize that “Public” is a misnomer. Yeah, I’ve tried to get around permits of all kinds. Even climbed a few peaks in the Himalaya without permits. A permit (under the circumstances) would have been a waste of time and money. I have even had a confrontation on Cascade Pass with a ranger. Yes, He was a complete idiot. No, I did not have a permit. I’m also an Idiot. First to admit it. The deal is: Using public ANYTHING is privilege, not a right. Besides, the permits are reasonable. Do you buy a pass for the Canadian Rockies. Probably. Joshua Tree? Sure. Meganerd, plead stupid next time. It works much better. So what’s the problem? Permits here are small formality, compared to many countries. This topic should realy be in spray. Later-

Discredit? Wick? That would require credibility.

CLIMBING IN THE PNW “As this route and some of his other endeavors prove, he is one of the stronger climbers in the state and should be respected as such.” (Jason Martin) My first encounters with climbers from the Seattle area happened at Smith Rocks 13 or 14 years ago. I wasn’t that impressed. Except for a couple of characters like Mike or Andy, most of the crowd was pretty lame. A lack of strength and ability to pull down was replaced with loud spray, dubious climbing tactics and general “cool” attitude (and I don’t mean this in positive way). This crowd looked pretty lame against mostly honed locals and European contingent. It was time for me to move and with my renewed interest in alpine/ice climbing I decided to move to Washington State about 6 years ago. A first hand look at the local climbing scene made me want to puke. Except a few good climbers of older generation and a couple of strong sport climbers (which by the way ended up moving out of this area in the meantime) there was not much going on. I am not a strong climber, I am weak. I am old; too busy working, not spending enough time climbing. One cannot look back and say: “I used to crank at some point, so I am an ok climber”. There are hundreds of climbers in Italy, France or Spain, who can crank sport, alpine and ice routes. Believe me- they can pull down at a very high level. There are a handful of people who put up hard alpine routes even sport routes, most of them are older, climbed for a long time and their drive to push the limits is significantly diminished. And the tragedy is that nobody is trying to pass them, but they somehow same lamos feel in position to spew some shit beyond belief. Climbers around here are “popping big wood” because someone repeated a 20 year old route??!!! I mean Watussi Rodeo isn’t exactly a cutting edge of alpine climbing, but in almost 20 years received less then 10 ascents? Two weeks of continuous sunshine produced 3 decent climbs!!!!! How about a repeat of Pornstar? Our route on Pyramid Peak isn’t hard. There should be hundreds of climbs like that around here, if only people opened their eyes instead of spraying on bb. I am sure there were several parties slogging up Rainier during that time. Let me spell it out for you: walking up a snow/ice/glacier slope of 30 or even 45 degrees is not climbing. Call it mountaineering, technical hiking or whatever, but it’s not climbing. Don’t even get me started on sport climbing/rock climbing scene as it is as lame as it gets. A classic example was a trip to Horn Lake by 2 members of Vertical World. In 2 days managed to get their rope stuck on some crappy 5.10 (basically they managed to get their assess kicked), declared area as “sucky” and decided never to return to the place again. Alpine climbing starts with good sport climbing background. Hey champ, if you can’t hang on to a 5.10 or a 5.11 clip up at the crag, how can you hang-on on vertical mixed pitch? How fast can you send 5.11 or 12, have you ever done 5.13, how about 14? Sport climbing builds strength, strength gives confidence, confidence gives speed and speed IS safety. I don’t say you’ll be able to start cranking hard alpine routes right away, but it is the necessary step every climber has to take. In this statement I am not trying to diss people who climb just for fun. On the other hand if you just climb for fun doesn’t put you in the position to spray. Just because the climbing you do is hard TO YOU doesn’t mean it is hard in general by today’s standards. And if you can’t crank but you still spray- don’t be surprised if someone calls you on that. 99% of posts on cascade-chuggers are pure shit-spray. Even worse, under an umbrella of anonymity so called climbers say shit, they would be laughed at and discredited immediately. People, little honesty and self- control! Washington and B.C. are an awesome alpine background. A potential for a next generation routes is vast. I’d like to see some younger guns running up some sicko lines, downgrading them and then moving on to the next project. I’d like to see hotshots establishing hard lines and say: “hey grandpa, choke on this one”. But until then shut the fuck up and climb little biatch….