dylan_taylor

probably the permeable and porous kind.

Only three hours to get off Mt. Wilson? Makes me embarassed to admit the time it took me about 12 hours to descend wilson. I guess about 8 of those hours were spent spooning around a scrappy fire with my partner on a lumpy ledge while wearing cotton after we chose the wrong gulley to descend. But I think I have learned a lot since then. I guess the moral is that approaches and descents in RR shouldn't take more than a couple hours unless something doesn't go quite right... But then again, if you do epic, at least you'll have cool stories to tell...

There is usually a lot more that goes into installing a fixed line. How long will it be - just your one 60m? How many people will be using it? How steep is the terrain? What are you using it to protect you from? will you be climbing up it with prussiks, and rapping down it? Or just using it as a hand line on slippery 4th class? Dru is right - no reason to put in a fixed line unless the anchors for it are bomber. But some anchors are more permanent and low maintenance than others. Depending on how long it is, and how many people would use it, you might want to build additional intermediate anchors (buried pickets in good snow, etc...) so that if there are several people on the line at once, they are not all stressing the upper anchor. If there is no jugging or rapping expected, or if you are leaving it for a while, you should leave each section of the line tight. If jugging or rapping is anticipated, leave 6 or so feet of slack in each segment of the line.

I think it is good advice to assume that you are the only one using it. I always leave an old biner anytime I am rapping off of webbing. Ice climbs tend to be wet places, and with wet webbing or cord it is hard to pull the ropes through. (also, wet webbing is way weaker, but thats a different story). The last time I didn't leave a biner on a webbing rap was on an alpine route in south america, and the ropes froze to the webbing, and one of us had to prussik back up and leave a biner anyway. V-threads can get stronger or weaker after you are done using it. In some cases, I've yanked webbing out of a v-thread with my hand, in other cases, I have trusted old v-threads with my life, after inspecting the webbing and noting that the holes had filled with water, and then frozen.

what are the prices?

FWIW, I haven't had too much of a problem putting pants on over crampons when the pant zips only go up to the hip. I have done it at hanging belays without even puncturing my pants! You have to be kind of careful with balance, it can be a bit tricky... You would never be able to do this with ankle length zips, furthermore, it is a pain to put pants on over plastic boots with ankle zips. Full sidezips are all but obsolete. I second that the hip length zips are far more comfy when carrying a pack. They are also way more comfy when you have to bivy with the pants on.

This idea seems pretty cool, the only thing I wonder about, is this: How do you manage the clusterf%&k at each station when you are rapping with a partner, or say, with two partners? I'm sure you probably have something figured out that works well, but I know that one hassel I am always trying to deal with is making transitions at each station easy to deal with when there is more than one person to rappel. There is one thing I have done in the past when rapping long routes with bolted anchors. Premake a cordattle or double length sling into two legs and a powerpoint, same as if you were building an anchor on lead. Make two of these. The first person down takes the rig, and clips it into the bolts. Since most bolts are placed on an almost horizontal plane, your powerpoint is equalized almost instantly. Then, you can clip in with the sling that is girthed to your harness, the way most of us do - but you are clipping into two bolts, not one, and there is room for your partners to clip as well. Once the ropes are pulled and re-rigged, there is no order that you are forced to rappel in. Since everyone is clipped to the anchor the same way, anyone can rap first. Re: prussik above or below belay device: I don't know anyone who puts the prussik below, but I know plenty of people who put an autobloc below! It is easy, super fast, and it is not nearly as much of a pain to undo as having a prussik above your device.

Butterfly knots work great in most summer cascades/Alaskan snow conditions, but not so well in soft (powder/slush) or rock-hard snow. They are a good last resort for two man teams, but that said, don't go hog wild and tie too many of them. I tie one 8-10 feet from me, and one 8-10 feet from my partner. A couple of other tips: So far there has been much discussion of pickets used this way and pickets used that way. What about flukes? They are way easier to place when you are lying on your belly with the weight of your partner trying to drag you backwards. Plus, they are a dynamic anchor, and will self-adjust to meet your second anchor (a picket) if they are overloaded by a bouncing (prussiking) fall victim. Pickets. To avoid trouble with taking them off your pack: Rack up tp 2-3 of them on your strong side, clip a biner from the front picket sling to the upper part of the webbing which runs down your pack shoulder harness, clip each biner from the next picket in line below that. That way they are always easy to remove, even in awkward situations. Pulley systems: The more I practice it, the more I think the 6:1 Z to C is a little overrated. I think a 5:1 is way better, especially when a dynamic rope is being used, along with biners as pulleys. In a lab, under static frictionless conditions, the 6:1 is obviously better, but notice that when you practice hauling someone out, you have to pull about 5-6 feet of stretch through the system. The 5:1 has less stretch, and only one prusik to reset, rather than two. On forces. No properly set up pulley system should ever multiply forces on an anchor. The only way of multiplying forces on an anchor is to set up a haul so that you are pulling towards the crevasse. This is bad. Make sure you are pulling away from the crevasse. On rigging yourself for glacier travel: The texas kick is great. But one system that allows you to set up swank rescue sysems is to attach a short cordallette for your feet, and nothing for your waist. Leave a waist-prusik sizes sling clipped through one of your two lockers on your harness, and clip a locker with a tibloc to the other end, and clip this to your gear loop. If you go in a hole, it is quick and easy to pop the tibloc on the rope below your leg prusik (depending on adjustment), and start jugging. If you have to rescue, your leg prusik gets attached to your initial anchor with a munter mule if you can. A third prusik get added where your texas waist would have been put for a Z to C, and your tibloc prusik can be used to self belay to the lip, or, in the case where you are using butterfly knots, can be added into the system in between the top pulley and your leg prusik. Once the load is transfered to the tibloc (after your knot-pass), you no longer have to tend this prusik, just haul away.

I've found the megamid really usefull. Cheap, light, and works great in snow. Wind does suck sometimes. I've had mine up in some pretty strong winds, and it has never let me down, but the bad part is when grit and sand constantly blow underneath. I don't take the pole, on snow, where the bottom is dug down really deep, I clip my ski poles together (via the wrist leashes) and then use a cordalette to splint them. Then I can make a pole that goes up to over 6 ft. I try to lean the pole into the prevailing wind direction.

Exactly! Brilliant! I'll be retrofitting my alphas and my leather flip-flops ASAP!

I thought it got all scorched from the big fire 2years ago and got put off limits. Go to Cynical Pinnacle & sunshine wall if you've never been there. It is kind of city-of-rocks-ish except that is is bigger, more sandbagged, and generally more bad-ass. I think COR is probably 2.5 hours from SLC if you drive fast, so maybe for you, <10hrs from the fort.

Good point. Some of those dynafit boots aren't compatible with fritchis. I'm waiting for someone to start making a real climbing boot modified with the little metal gizmos for dynafit bindings. Maybe with a drill press and a dremel tool...

Todd, what do you need city of rocks for if you're so close to boulder? Is Eldo tapped out yet? Hell, go spend a few days in the Platte (bummer about Turkey Rocks) or heck, the Black is probably perfect right now! Or ride the next heat wave up to the Diamond! See you in the ham.

I believe he means from a territory near the Peoples Republic of Boulder. Takes about 12 hours + or -.

Hey T! COR ought to make a nice rest stop 2/3 of the way from boulder to b'ham! I went there years ago in early july and it was hot. May seems perfect, but it's been years since I was there and I don't remember much.

have you looked at the Dynafit TLT 4pro?

and !

If I tried to free solo the challenger (or anything else) I would definitly be entering my next life way too soon.

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.