Ed_Seedhouse

I think you should always avoid a single failure point whenever possible. That's one reason rappelling is so relatively dangerous, since you can't avoid the single point of failure problem. You always want to be in situations where two things have to go badly wrong to cause disaster. Sometimes you can't do it and one point of failure is better than none. Maybe things have changed since I was climbing. These days the stairs are around 5.2 for me...

I still have fond memories of Slab Alley...

Well, on the other side of the Nomash valley you have the Haihte range with plenty of verticality, admittedly on volcanic rock. It's worth a trip up the Nomash main just to gawk at the face of Rugged mountain that glowers over it. But the area is not for those who want to step out of their cars onto the rock, that's for sure.

Not really. I was part of a few trips in the first half of the 2000's, but haven't been back for awhile. At 66 years and a buggered foot I'm not really up to climbing these days (not to mention the excessive weight). Not much going on up there these days, so if you are in a mood for some real exploration and new routing if you are young and would like to develop some untouched rock.

Google Earth has added some new high resolution coverage on Northern Vancouver Island recently, and for the first time this gives a good view of the Wapiti Valley area and Dale Earnhardt dome. Point your program to 49.990854 degrees north and -126.727756 deg. west, the approximate position of the foot of the big slab. Still not as detailed as I'd like, but individual trees are resolved quite nicely and the form of the dome is very clear. You'll know you are in the right area when you see the distinct keyhole shaped hanging lake at 848 meters on the coll between the dome and Bowhead peak. Also is shown a fair amount of steep territory to the west of Grayback peak, notably a steep wall on Bryde peak from about 850 to 1100 meters, and a large white slab on the south side of the ridge betwen Lukwa mountain and Greyback, extending from about 550 to 775 meters altitude, about 350 meters of slab according to the ruler tool. However the quality of the rock may not be so good as a similarly colored but much smaller slab on the east side of Grayback has been explored but was very rotten. Rather hard to get to this backside rock as none of the logging roads from the Nomash valley go close. There are roads up the Little Zebalos river valley but I don't think you can get a vehicle to that valley very easily.

Follow the bolts and chalk marks.

I was climbing in Squamish and knew nothing about it until I got home in Victoria when my dad told me.

Six legs is aid!

Mmmm... dog.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/05/27/calgary-everest-climber-death.html Rest in peace.

Goes without saying.

Old, broken down, and ex.

Fleming Beach has top rope anchors set all along it, and lots of bouldering at a moderate standard. The landings are all on pavement, but at least it's flat. There are a number of other areas around the City and a guide which you should be able to pick up at the local MEC or Valhalla Pure outlets. There's also a climbing gym near the Point Ellice bridge. There is trad and sport multipitch climbining within a half hour of downtown. Tends to be a bit vegetated, though. The weather is much drier than at Squamish and Victoria proper gets less than 30 inches of rain per year. But it can still rain, of course, and it's been a cool winter and spring. Fleming Beach is granodiorite but with a lot of intrusions and very small crystals, quite unlike Squamish - lots of holds, though. At Fleming if you do a climb straight up, then step two feet left or right, there is another climb. Potential for new routes is pretty much zero, nearly everything worth doing was done decades ago, although there is no official guide so to you they can all be first ascents. Folks have been climbing there since the 1960's. It's a park so folks walk there dogs beneath the crags and some of them don't clean up the droppings - be aware! There are other small crags in the vicinity that are almost unvisited. Other crags range from Basalt to Gneiss to Gabbro at East Sooke Park. At East Sooke Park there are several miles (!) of sea cliffs ranging up to 80 feet that are virtually unexplored since you have to hike to get there.

Have a look here: http://islandclimbing.com/

Every pound you lose, I seem to find immediately.

I lived in Tofino for a year and I remember clearly some giant cliffs along the seashore complete with an impressive cave that went back for miles and miles. Of course that was in 1955 when I was only ten, so perhaps my standards of size and impressiveness have changed. And perhaps the vegetation has spread in the meantime. I did know a climber in the 1970's who claimed there was some good climbing along the seashore in various places and boasted of doing some good first ascents around the town. I don't remember his name.

I don't climb myself these days due to a wrecked up foot which won't let me stand on holds anymore, not to mention advanced age and weight. There is lots of climbing around Victoria if you know where to look, and there is even a Guide available at a couple of the local shops. However I wouldn't come here just for the sake of the climbing since in quantity it's minute compared to, say, Squamish. On the other hand there are areas like East Sooke Park with huge untapped potential, but untapped for a reason, it being hard to get to and involving lots of walking. Also the potential does not really include more than a couple of pitches at the most, and very little of more than one. But if you want one pitch sport climbing potential and don't mind exploring and hiking (and scrubbing and bolting), East Sooke Park has hundreds of potential routes. There's a web site on Vancouver Island climbing, including Victoria, at islandclimbing.com

Well John was a climber friend but I think he finally grew up and got a job - I haven't seen him for maybe 20 years. Did some climbs in Squamish and Leavenworth with him. Anyway as I recall he was in business making equipment with Dave for awhile - they produced a simplified "friend" like piece with only two cams instead of four, but the cams were extended. Really not a true camming device except in totally parallel cracks. I used it a bit a Squamish if I recall rightly, as sort of an expandible stopper rather than as a cam. But it's been a long time now...

Buddies! I think he was in business with John Molenaar (sp?) in Victoria for awhile. I had one of their pieces of pro given to me and even used it at Squamish a few times.

Tends to happen a bit more often high on a big steep snow peak in blizzard conditions, though...

Always rope up before even trying to get out of bed every morning.

My take is that all of us, myself most definitely included, do stupid things from time to time. The trick is to do them in situations where the death penalty will not be exacted by the laws of physics (or chemistry or whatever). I have been fortunate enough in this regard to have survived more than six decades so far. But I can easily remember two or three times when it was only pure damn luck that left me alive. This poor guy had the bad luck to have one of his moments in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Before you look down on him and think "it can't happen to me" you'd best consider your past conduct closely. And learn.

Probably the original one I placed in 1982. Was it a 3/8? That's what we used back then. Interesting to know the route isn't being entirely ignored.

> I am somewhere between 75 and 100 feet above sea level > and that's all I really know with any confidence. It's a fairly interesting question here in the Northwest. Do you live above or below the most likely tsunami height when the big one hits? Well, actually I'm on Vancouver Island which, from a Canadian perspective is actually the Southwest, but you know what I mean. I'd like to know if a 30m tsunami will take my house away or if it will just take my lower neighbors. Unfortunately I can't find accurate enough contours on a map to tell me. Maybe I should hire a survey crew to ease my mind...

For summits, Take the map, by far. Not even close. GPS altitudes are generally specified at +/100 meters without WAAS correction, and +/- 10 with WAAS. But even if we assume the GPS altitude is exact, there's another problem: 14,000 feet above what? Above sea level? Sea level varies by several meters every day, and mean-high-tide level by several meters over the world. But your GPS doesn't know anything about sea where you are at, anyway. Oh, and on the scale of tens of meters the Earth itself isn't round. What the GPS gives you is a computed height above the "geoid", which is a mathematical model of mean sea level for the whole planet that it carries in it's memory. Of course, a geoid good enough to give really useful results requires a huge slice of memory, much more than any consumer GPS has, and so the models of the geoid the GPS carries is rather crude, and contributes much to the error of a GPS altitude. No satellite configuration, however good the geometry, can do anything about the crudeness of your GPS's internal geoid model. The summits of mountains on maps were determined by direct survey and the map, even a very old one, has a much better fix on the shape of the geoid at any given locality than any GPS can yet carry. Contours are another matter - there are many errors in countour lines on maps because contours are very hard to do. But significant summits altitudes are known very well and are usually much more accurately reported on a map than any GPS can do with it's internal geoid model. My own Geko 201 GPS reports an altitude for my house, with WAAS correction in effect, that varies by as much as +/- 15 meters depending on when I look at it. I am somewhere between 75 and 100 feet above sea level and that's all I really know with any confidence.