clintcummins

Also, judging from Croft's approach via Stuart Lake and description of cutting steps in the snow/ice, it suggests he did the Upper North Ridge of Stuart (vs. the Complete North Ridge).

Nice report and cool photos. (There's more than two Clints from California? non-Eastwood? Good thing; I coulda never made it up there with those big packs!)

Great report. Thanks for taking the time to write it, and for sharing.

Kong-Bonatti made hangers in this shape with several different metal types (non-stainless steel, stainless steel, aluminum). So you need to be able to ID the metal type. Usually you just look for rust, or the bubbles/expansion/distortion described in these posts. Another way is to use a magnet. Stainless steel = nonmagnetic (usually). Nonstainless steel = magnetic. Aluminum = nonmagnetic (but not often used for hangers). ASCA (American Safe Climbing Association - http://www.safeclimbing.org) and also Climbing magazine ARI (Anchor Replacement Initiative) will provide free stainless hangers, bolts, tuning forks and drills to people doing bolt replacement. It does take time and effort to do the replacement; that's volunteer work. Darryl, nice work in the thread on rcnw, contacting Greg and listing routes to check for non-stainless hangers. As noted on that thread, the bolts observed by Tom on Calling Wolfgang are not stainless. So it is not a stainless/nonstainless metal mismatch, unless I'm wrong about the metal type of the failed hangers.

Acid rain? Who expected rain at Index? What a devious route terrorist! More likely: climbers were being cheap and used non-stainless hangers. Yikes, the same guy sabotaged both? A master of both the grease gun and acid, decades apart? Clearly we have a cluster of sabotages at work. :-) Similar to the faked hangers story - at Crow Hill in the 70s, Henry Barber was doing some really hard climbs. One of the locals had a fun idea. On rappel, he chalked a bunch of holds on a steep wall, then told Henry somebody else had climbed it. Henry made a few moves up it, then tried some of the unusable chalked holds. He climbed back down; was not fooled.

Yes, Kong-Bonatti (non-stainless in this case) - see Tom's post and the shape in Tom's photo. Kong-Bonatti also made aluminum hangers at one time with the same shape. I have one that I took off a climb, on my backyard wall.

Different! Thanks for sharing. One of my longtime climbing partners has had too many headlamp epics from his partners, so he brings two headlamps with him now.

Tom, Thanks for the hanger ID and photos. The FA of Calling Wolfgang was by Greg Child and Andy deKlerk in around 1990, so their other contemporary routes (including several adjacent on the Sport Wall) should be checked for more of these non-stainless Kong-Bonatti hangers. Replace with stainless hangers, clearly. I'm glad that first bolt/hanger held! Like Tom said, emphasis on the "near" death! Regarding SMC hangers, there are 2 main types: - older, thin chrome-moly steel, chrome plated, subject to rust and cracking - newer, thick stainless steel, very strong and reliable

I heard in the 70s it was a very tough bushwhack. Slide alder, less than one mile progress in a full day. Probably this has not changed.

Dru's overlay photo is in the 2009 edition of Fred Beckey's red cover guidebook. Also easy to find online via google.

Those heads are really not so bad. A couple of frayed cable strands, no big deal. It's when say 2/3 of the strands are broken that things get interesting! With the fixed pins below and bolt in the middle for pro, you are not even risking much of a fall. The pitch is A3 if the fixed gear is not in place; to have bolts there instead would defeat the purpose of aid climbing. (The purpose in my view is to place or inspect the gear and move up carefully; not just to cheat past the free climbing in the easiest way possible).

Yeah, the face holds on that direct start looked tempting. But with the lack of obvious pro, I knew it would be easier/faster for me to do the 5.4 around the left side. Other topos show the right side as 4th class, diagonalling from lower right to upper left. So maybe that starts further right? I dunno, it didn't look easy or well protected so I've done the left side both times. If the little corner is a lot harder than 5.6, then the concept of "scrambling" up 20' to reach ropes fixed from the top of p4 is probably not going to work out very well. So I changed it on the topo to "5.7?" ....

Wow, Mark. Surviving a rappel anchor failure and 40/70' fall is really beating the odds. Thanks for sharing your experience. In terms of anchor failure (cord slipping off the boulder), I wonder if webbing would perform better than perlon. I'm seeing more perlon anchors these days, as some people carry cordelettes and use them to make rap anchors. But perlon tends to "roll" off things, while webbing may stick better by providing more surface area contact. This also helps webbing resist cutting better. I think it's still an alpinist trick to have some webbing in the bottom of the pack, in case they have to bail in a spot with unknown anchors.

Beautiful!!! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks to all for sharing your beta. Here's a revised topo, hopefully an improvement over the '06 version.