ashw_justin

lol. Now it's more like, when you are too self-centered about your climbing badassness to belay. Haha, yeah, I know that wasn't fair. Somebody flame me!

uh, which mag would that be?

Prove it. Take the first half of data. Build a 6th-degree poly fitting it. Extrapolate the data and see how the predictions compare to the second half of the data. Notice how the predictions suck. QED ok fine, you get 10 points for your post. But you lose 9 of them for ignoring that the 6th-deg poly fit was just a joke!! Well you get them back if you do a periodic (sin/cos function) fit on {Dru} because it will probably be the most accurate prediction!!

Oh man, North Face is looking sweet!!

It's just sad that climbing has become so commodified and commercialized that anybody with a little bit of experience thinks they need to get paid before they're willing to share any of it. But hey, that's what you get in a capitalist system... EVERYTHING is business.

Oh yeah maybe she is even old enough to drive...

I ought to be down for midweek action next week... I think it's a little early for alpine rock and a little warm for ice (unless it's something high on a volcano). So I was thinking something involving skiing, or just some cragging. Or both. JoshK and swaterfall I know you are out there too...

I think we need a dirty hippie emoticon

you're getting lazy man!

yeah I guess that doesn't look that hard does it. Rosario is like all 13's right?

Sport Climbing...

I have no idea so I'm gonna say, Rosario Beach!

As you can already see, this website is not a good place to ask people how to climb safely. (edit: okay, some good posts have popped up while I was madly typing away...) You just get a bunch of young a-holes (myself maybe included) spraying BS because either they don't know and they don't want to admit it, or they do know but it can't be explained. You don't just push on like a dumbass maggot on pile of feces. That's a dumb way to climb. I think you just have to think about what you have control over, and how to maintain control over whatever that happens to be--because whatever those things are, they're the only things that you will be able to use to save yourself. A lot of times this turns out to be very little, because obviously we can't control the mountains. But that's okay because it's better to eliminate irrelevant worries while climbing, i.e. those things that scare us, but over which we have no control. So take SuperSavageBadassLethal Ridge. Once you decide that you are going to give it a shot, and find yourself on the route, climbing by whatever mode you deemed necessary, all you can really do is keep going until something convinces you otherwise. But you have to have enough awareness and experience to know when danger has been elevated to an unnacceptable level, and the judgement to alter your plans if necessary. Personally I doubt that it's even possible to always know exactly when to pull the plug. Sometimes it's even safer just to push on. But I think what's most important is that you are intelligent and aware enough to know when it's time to make a really important decision, that actually matters. What I mean by "matters" is that the choices are based on something you control, that depends on you and not on some uncontrollable aspect of the mountain. For example, you can't decide "the mountain is safe now." That's really not up to you. The only thing you can decide is whether or not you are going to climb it, and how, and under what circumstances you find it necessary to start trying to save your ass. And you won't know the answers to these questions until you get a lot of relevant experience. We can all use more of that. Of course to get this experience you have to climb. Until you feel that you can trust your own judgement, you'll just have to go out and be cautious, pay attention, and think about what you are doing and the possible consequences of your decisions. But don't overthink it to the point of paralyzing yourself. If something bothers you then figure out why and decide whether or not there is something you can do about it. And of course, learn from others, and their successes and failures. Then finally, when you've been climbing "forever," don't let this cloud and diminish your awareness. I don't want to start trying to analyze recent accidents but something like an avalanche or 100mph winds will take away all of your control and take all of the decisions out of your hands. Once you're at that point it's too late to climb safely. Either you made a bad choice during a critical decision that got you to that point, or it really is just bad luck. Sometimes that distinction depends on the climber, sometimes not. IMO the important thing is to know when it does. So as far as 'just going for it' in the face of risk, this is stupid if it's based solely on one's nutsack. For me, if I can convince myself that there is a safe way to keep going then I will. My definition of "safe" may be different from others', we all have our own levels of acceptable risk. But I can safely say that I don't have a great amount of experience, and because of that I tend to bail when I feel that I may be missing something.

damn cracked you cradle-robber, thanks for posting a link to a bunch of 12-year-old premie-sluts.

It's a bluff on the south end of the Chuckanut Mountains, 10 miles or so south of B'ham on Chuckanut Drive. One approach is a 2000 foot climb up from Chuckanut Drive, the other is a shorter hike accessed from some dirt roads a short distance off the freeway. The rock is not that great, but there are a couple of 2 to 3 pitch climbs and a few sport routes at the top. The bottom of the cliffs is a dramatic boulder field with caves. A lot if the rock is dirty or covered with lichen because not many people climb there. Here is a picture of the left portion of the bluff, with an easy route to the top highlighted.

I have yet to have my ass saved by a trad placement. My snowboard has saved me from a couple of imminent disasters, although it's what got me in those situations in the first place. It's kind of disturbing that you guys place the smallest BD stoppers (#1,2) on lead considering that they pretty much tell you that they simply can't hold a fall. Has anybody ever fallen on a makeshfit webbing "stopper" or a loose rock slung and used as a chock?

Just a guess but probably a mix of snow/dirt, and difficult to find a dry flat spot. Reason I say that is the slush level is around 5000 feet.

Sweet. "The Forest Service and the timber industry say new roads are needed to reach old-growth stands located in remote reaches of the Tongass." You know, it's about time timber companies start paying for their own gadamned roads.

What if you just snake it, but don't tell anyone. Is that ethical?

Yeah I doubt the "ELF" would resort to pipe-bombing truckers.

Who said nerds don't have a sense of humor?

Come on I know there are some rock climbers out there with way too much time on their hands... ...besides me...

I have a boulderer friend who really likes to say "it's all about core strength!" and "you just gotta keep your body tight!" but then, his forearms are like the jaws of life and his legs are built like a 12-year-old's. Hmm. But the point is, the only non-climbing workout he does is pull-up variations and hangs. I think he benches like, oh, 140 or so.

But back on the topic of seriously weightlifting, I have this belief that lets me convince myself not to pump iron anymore, and it goes something like this. Isolating a muscle group through an inherently confining and independent range of movement will indeed strengthen that muscle, but in a narrow and specific way. So you do a bunch of bicep excercises, great, your biceps will be stronger. But the problem is, you never use just your biceps while climbing, instead, nearly every move is a balanced and complex coordination of many muscles in your body, transfering forces from your fingertips down through your toes. Yes, your biceps are involved in this move, but not independently, as you have trained them in the gym. So you end up having to re-train these muscles to cooperate with the rest of your body, or else you're just carrying around a lot of inefficient extra muscle mass and trying to force a simple strength-based solution onto a complex balanced-based problem. Of course this is not true of all gym excercises. Pull-ups obviously are a coordinated effort. But "preacher curls" are not. And then take bench press. Pectoral muscles are important in many climbing movements, but there are very few times when the situation demands that particular movement. What, are you going to have to push yourself straight out from the wall with great amounts of force for some reason? So why do you train those muscles for that particular range of motion? If I was going to work pecs I'd chose some more climbing-related movements instead. Basically this is all based on my belief that muscle training is movement-specific. My problem with gym workouts is that the goal of most excercises is isolate one particular muscle group and work it by itself, through one particular confined movement. I think if you can just train by climbing, and maintain the same intensity as you would with a gym workout (maybe that's the hard part), you're at least as well off or better for building climbing-related strength. That's why everyone should cancel their gym memberships and use the extra $$ to build home bouldering walls instead. And invite me over to climb so I get the big crazy monkey strength.