dylan_taylor

I've got the xenix and the myo 3 i think? The Myo 5 has 5 LED's right? I don't even use my Myo 3 anymore. With the hallogen on, it is definitly brighter than the bright bulb on the xenix, but it goes dead a lot faster. For a one night thing, and if you need all the brighness you can get, the myo might be better. But take it on longer trips and you gotta haul a lot of batteries around too.

Black water is my favorite, even though I took the pisser off of the upper crux. I was suprised at how quality it was - for a sport climb. I want to do flight of the challenger in my next life.

I trust most found biners with my life but I look them over real close first. There sure are a lot of them out there.

The climbing article could be a little better. I think the average is probably about 18 days for many parties. 22-25days tops. I've guided the rib and the buttress a couple of times. The rib seems to take a couple days longer than the buttress on average, but we climb the rib capsule style (we take 1500' of fixed line) so that could be part of it. For climbing the rib, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to take a week to reach 14k, rest for several days, and do some acclimatization cruises to 17k, then dash down to 8k on the Kahiltna, grab your food and climbing gear stash that you should have left there, and head up the NE fork of the Kahiltna, and climb the route in alpine style in 3-6 days. If you do it this way, you might want to also leave a food/fuel cache at 16,300' on the rib, since it is easy to access from the 14k buttress camp in a few hours. Besides Colby Coombs' AK guidebook, there is also useful info in the Chip Faurot letter and Michael Covington letter regarding routefinding in the NE fork, and tips for climbing the rib. You can find these letters in the filing cabinet in the Talkeetna Ranger station, but they are deteriorating mimographs. I have them typed up as word documents, along with my guiding notes. PM me and I can email them to you if you are interested. cheers, -DT

Please do! And do tell! I've only seen the dye penetrent used once - on a steel 6 cylinder continental for a cessna 185. Showed a crack streaking out from the spark-plug hole beautifully. Indeed, it would be a tedious task on biners.

I suppose it might work. Otherwise, put a good flick on the TV, sit comfortably on the couch, gather yur biners, and look closely at the metal around the pin while . I just remembered, I've seen a crack in a Bedayn and an REI too.

Fromage, there is a big difference between shortroping and roping up for glacier travel. From what you described, it sounds more like shortroping (although 10 feet is a little far to be shortroping someone). Chamonix guides shortrope their clients all over the place. The terrain there is often perfect for it. But the point here is glacier travel mode, not shortroping. I second what Sobo and Stephen R described. Slack is bad! Generally, you want to have the rope droop enough between climbers so that it skims the snow for about a third of the distance between the climbers. So if you are say, 45 feet apart, the rope skims the snow for 15 to 20 feet in the middle. Thats sort of an oversimplified rule of thumb. Also, you have to think about how much rope you want in the system. For two people, in the cascades, early season when things are hidden, 40-45 feet ought to do it. (distance varies depending on conditions, size of the average crevasse, your skill, etc...) Maybe a little less later in the season, or a little more if you will be crossing sketchy bridges. For teams of three or more people, you can shrink the distance a little bit. For ski mountaineering, I think self arrest can be tough, so I want more rope between me and my partner. In Alaska, with on partner, with enormous gapers hiding beneath the snow, that distance can be 60-80 feet or more. Another guides trick for glacier travel: tie butterfly knots in your rope at a 2-3 meter interval between you and your partner (for 2-man teams). The knots can catch in the lip of the crevasse if someone takes a dive, and they can save your ass if you botch your self arrest. I tested these in the Ruth Gorge two years ago, and I was amazed at how well it works. On the downside, you will have some knots to pass during the Z-pulley rescue. But its not that hard to deal with it.

Thanks for describing the broken stuff. I think it's important for us to know the limitations of our gear. I guess the good thing about most of these accidents, is that the gear that failed was either old and fatigues, or was used improperly, or was manipulated into a failure-prone position by vibration, etc... With diligence, gear failure in all but the most extreme situations shouldn't happen. Catbirdseat: the cracks in the biners I have looked at are suprisingly large (maybe 0.05 - 0.2mm wide?).I feel like I can almost get my fingernail in there. Although the salt-caused stress corrosion cracking seems a plausible explanation, do you think the force exerted by the crystallization of salt is sufficient enough to crack the aluminum that wide? I had been under the impression that when the steel notch and gate pins are driven into the pre-drilled holes in a carabiner, they would have to be driven in under a lot of pressure. The pressure exerted by the more competent steel onto the surrounding aluminum over years and years may be enough to cause cracks? 3 out of 4 of the cracked biners I saw were probably at least 20 years old (big fat coon-yards, like I said). This was just a speculation of mine. Perhaps it's way off base? Perhaps the salt crystallization initiates a crack into already stressed aluminum, and the crack keeps growing? I dunno. Thanks for the input. I gotta go. I'll be back at a computer in a month.

Maybe it needs a nighttime courtesy trundle.

So who has broken gear in the past? Either by falling on it, or discovering a little crack in it? What types? What brands? I know I have found at least four biners with hairline cracks in them. In all four, the crack either propagated from the steel pin at the notch, or the steel pin at the gate axel. Two were old coon-yard ovals, one was an old BD quicksilver, and one was a euro bentgate POS. Three of these biners were on other peoples racks, and I found them while killing time at a hanging belay! Any other broken gear stories? Broken cam shafts on rigid friends? Cam axels? slings? micro nuts?

inspecting your gear goes without saying. All the biners I don't trust get turned into coat hangers, bottle openers, dog-leash connectors, and kite-skiing hooks. But 99% of the booty biners I find look pretty darn fresh, and i don't think twice rappin off them - or adding them to my rack if they're spiffier than the ones I already have!

I heard about some testing done on quicklinks in the mid 90's. Sorry, I don't have a link or magazine article to refer to. Basically the Taiwan quicklinks occasionally broke below their "rated" strength of 800kg and the french made Maillon Rapides broke at nearly double their stamped strength. But again, this was 10 years ago, so maybe quality control has improved and this is a moot point. However, it would be interesting to see which QL's corode faster, in regard to which types should be left on permanent chain stations. These days, if someone's old QL looks thick enough, and it isn't worn through, I'll rap off of it, regardless of where it was made. And if it looks dodgy, I'll leave my own 'biner anyway. I've seen some awfully skinny quick links being left on bail slings out there. Basically, I keep finding booty 'biners faster than I need to leave them. So thats why I'm not in the market for quick links.

I think if you are buying 3/8" quick links and installing 2 of them, for lowering and rappel purposes only, you don't need to worry about failure. My $.02 I don't buy heavy quicklinks. I leave biners.

I here there's a new theft-proof car on the market...

Yep. I don't trust the little ones that say "taiwan" on them. The better one's are Maillon Rapide. The're more $$. That's why i just bail off of biners that I bootied from somewhere else anyway. Kudos to you for fixing up a bunk anchor.

Tex, Gray areas suck, don't they? In the end, we all end up creating our own "definitions". I hate getting all caught up in an arguement about what could be construed as "contrived". The strictest users of the term "onsight" would probably consider an onsight attempt in progress once the climber's feet leave the ground. What you consider the "ground" is up to you. If the route is a 5.11 but there is a 4th class section up to the "real climbing", I think we can all agree that this short scrambly section isn't really part of the route. But again, this is up to you. In the climbing I've done, I've never really had to stop and scratch my head and think about where the "route" really begins. It seems like it's obvious in most places. There's the ground, and there's the route. I only get fussy about using the term "onsight" if it is on a route that is very near my limit. If my limit is usually lld and I "onsight" a 12a, it feels pretty cool. If I "onsight" a 5.8 I don;t spend that much time thinking about it. But if someone else has never climbed as hard as 5.8, and they "onsight" one, that is awsome. And I'm not saying downclimbing is "off bounds" during a redpoint attempt. But downclimbing to the ground during an onsight attempt is. Also, handjaming on a sport route isn't "cheating", it's using good technique!

Roger that! Quicklinks work great, and are cheaper than biners. But if you need to rap from say, 15 pitches up, biners are a lot more realistic to have brought along... Also, if you leave a biner, it can be a good idea to wrap duct tape or athletic tape around the gate to turn it into a "locker". Shame on somebody for tying a sloppy water knot!

Yes, my =

CBS: since your lump came about so fast, maybe there's hope that it's related to a little trauma or injury that you have sustained? Hopefully it will go away in 6 weeks? Me - I've had these damn things on my hands for over a year now, and it sucks on long bike rides, and when trying to parallel park my VW (no power steering), and when grabbing sharp JT slopers. I think the knife is in my future...

I don't think the definition of onsight has ever been based on one dubious ascent by Scott Franklin. I think my facts are straight. The climbing community I have involved myself in for nearly 15 years (colorado based - maybe the ethics are looser in the PNW? - just kidding!) has considered onsight climbing to be the purest form of ascent. That means "On Sight". NO prior info means not having been on the route before - i.e. no climbing halfway up and then backing off back to the ground because you didn't have the guns to fire it the first time. You are right that semantics change over the years. Todd Skinner and Paul Piana's free ascent of the Salathe was poo-pooed by subsequent ascentionists and critics as being less pure because each climber only led half the pitches. Whatever. So later ascentionists have claimed "more pure" ascents by leading all the pitches. I would hate to see the purity of an onsight become diluted because people think you can dink around on a route and take a break from it and then "onsight it" as long as you didn't say "take" or fall. You have your definition, I have mine. Forgive me if I think mine more pure...

RuMR, In 20 years of climbing you've never heard that an onsight means climbing it first try? Unfortuately, there's no webster's for climbing terminology but if you do a search for climbing terminology and onsight, I think the definition is pretty consistent.

Dylan, I'm not so sure I agree with you....yet. What's your basis for making that statement? CO is the result of incomplete combustion (of either fuel type). It seems to me that complete combustion would be much easier to approach with the butane/propane mixture in the canisters than it would with the petroleum based fuel. Where's CBS when we need him..... Lets not split hairs here. Maybe one pumps out a few ppm more than the other. But I would tend to think that they are both equally lethal when used improperly or in a poorly ventilated place. However, neither cannister stoves nor liquid fuel stoves achieve 100% complete combustion of the fuel. And liquid fuel stoves burn pretty damn clean when they are well taken care of, burning clean fuel, etc... If you cook in a poorly ventilated spot, you will eventually exhaust the fresh supply of O2 due to having only a finite volume of air to draw from in the first place. That means the stove can't perform the complete combustion reaction stoichiometrically. That means it is going to put out more CO (a positive feedback loop) but my degree is in geochem, not organic chem, so forgive me for speculating.

For many years it seems, an onsight meant that you had climbed a route successfully, with no beta, and no previous experience on the route. If you downclimb to the ground, rest, and fire it, thats a redpoint. There is no difference between doing that and falling, or saying take, then lowering to the ground, and firing it. You are succeeding on your second attempt . Your first attempt must be considered a preview, and thus precludes you from ever onsigting this route. This is what makes onsight climbing the purest form of roped ascent. If a climber climbed to the crux of some gritstone testpiece, and backed off by climbing to the ground before returning to climb it successfully, he has decreased the level of committment of the ascent by gaining knowledge (no matter how valuable or non-valuable) about the route. I hope that this definition remains the same for some years to come.

Liquid fuel and cannister stoves pump just as much CO into your tent. Liquid fuel stoves just stink more when you shut them off, and they are dangerous to prime inside a tent. CO is 200 times the affinity for attaching to your red blood cells than good ol O2. So if you suck in a bunch at altitude you aren't doing yourself a favor. I've tried cooking in my tent (a bibler) with canister stoves and I suck at it. I have burned a hole in both sides of my sleeping bag when it touched a swinging superfly ascent, and I dumped a liter of boiling water off the top of my pocket rocket. I never cook in the tent if there is a vestibule. Only when I don't have the vesty and it is nuking outside.

I think all the pics should be on it now. If not, they ought to be in my gallery. The biggest bummer with Spurr now is that since the eruption of 1992, the crater lake no longer exists. When it was there, those few who ventured there could soak in 106 degree water right in the belly of the beast. We had to settle for a steamy muddy crater that smelled like someone had eaten too many freeze-dried meals.