eldiente

This always happens at popular climbing destinations. Climbers abuse free-camping and the man has to crack down and start charging a few bucks. This is very similar to what happened around Moab years ago. There used to be unlimited free camping along the river. People trashed it and the gov had to to step and start charging to camp there to keep the place clean. I would agree that it is tough to pay anything to stay in a campground with no facilities, for $5 they ought to provide some services.

Good point, I don't recall ever falling on a back-clipped draw so I can't say for sure how often it would fail. However just playing around with a a rope and a draw hanging from a tree branch, it fails every time I back-clip and pull on the rope.

I'm still a bit confused on this. Am I the only dense one on CC.com? If you backclip the rope, 9 times out of 10 it will fail and you'll fall until you come to a piece that was clipped correctly, or you'll hit the ground. From what montypiton described, his friends backclipped the rope and the predictable thing happened, the rope came unclipped. Did I miss something? It doesn't matter what type of biner you use or what direction the climber moves, a back-clipped draw will almost always fail. A correctly clipped draw will not come unclipped no matter which direction you move or what type of biner is there. On steep roofs or caves it it easy to back-clip as you might be looking at it upside down clipping from below. I've done it several time in steep sport routes. With long slings it can also be tricky to tell if your back-clipped as the biner spins around on the sling. Take a second to pull the slack out of the sling to see which direction the biner is going to hang before you clip it.

I dislike non-freestanding tents. I had one and ended up giving it away to a friend. I'm a bit lazy and the hassle of having to stake it out correctly wasn't worth it. If weight is a concern bivy without a tent or splurge for a single wall tent from BD. Also if you are looking for a tent to take above tree-line a freestanding tent is the only way to go.

I suppose I should add mine too since I sprayed. Dragontail Peak - Backbone Ridge Fin Direct Grand Wall Squamish West Face North Early Winter Spire Zebra/Zion to the top- Smith Rock (come on Oregon needs some love)

I'd like to know more about this story. This friend, did he back-clip the draws and this is why they failed? If you back clip a draw it will almost certainly fail. However I can't see how a biner would unclip if used correctly, and the four of the them in a row would be impossible. Can you explain this? I'm very curious. I've heard of draws breaking when run over an edge but not unclip. Once in a blue moon I well use a locker on a piece of pro if I'm really run out and the gear is way back inside of a crack. However on normal route I really can't see the point in putting lockers on bolts.

Kevin needs to get out more often if he thinks "Blownout" makes the top five of anything in the PNW. Maybe the top 5 at Beacon.

If your high rolling get two sets of draws, one for sport and one for trad/alpine. The super light skinny slings and biners tend to get destroyed from lots of cragging use. Save this for your alpine days. If money is an issue save a few bucks on your crag draws by using cheap biners on the bolt end and nicer/easier to clip biners for the rope. Don't worry about the weight for crag draws, if your draw rack is really weighting you down consider pre-hanging the draws before your red point so weight is non-issue. For your alpine/trad draws go wires on everything if you have a choice. Aside from the weight savings, it is really nice just to glance at a biner and know which side your going to clip through.

I would bet it is dry now, it faces West into late day sun. Might be a bit dirty early season as not a lot of people climb there.

Bill is very wise. Fixed draws on a low angle 5.10 make no sense all. On overhanging terrain cleaning the draws might prove to be a major undertaking so I can see why you would want to leave them up. Some of us that enjoy steep sport lines are grateful to come across fixed draws, no more monkeying around for hours trying clean draws while on rap. Also it is fun to throw yourself at a hard routes that you might not get up. If you don't send, no worries just pull your rope and have a nice day. Again this is more aimed at steep sport routes at developed sport crag.

Taking draws off a sport route is bad form and stealing. If you see several draws on a route it is obvious that the person didn't leave them there as a bail bineer. if the draws have been up all year and becoming worn, by all means take them down and stack them on ground next to the route. I would agree that fixed draws are sort of an eye-sore and should be used sparingly only for routes that is being actively projected at sport crag. Also, just because you hiked a route with fixed draws doesn't mean you get to steal the draws.

The skin up is 3 miles on the trail, very easy walk and you can stay at the TJ hut and spend the night. With a heavy pack plan for a two hour hike to Cloud Cap.

Depends on which route your doing or what the snowpack is like, but generally I don't mind getting a late start and topping out late in the day. Less people and softer snow for the ski down.

What kind of climbing are you looking to do? The alpine climbing in CO gets a bad rap because there are so many walk-up summits. (drive-up maybe? ) If you start looking at some of the lower peaks you'll find some steeper stuff. Take a tour into the San Juan and be prepared to crash your car as you drive around looking at all of the peaks. I would agree that some of the climbing in CO is spread out and takes a lot of driving between areas. However the big plus is that every style of climbing you can think of can be done in CO, and at a very high level. There's some fun granite in the NW, but comparing any of those places to the best crags in CO is total stretch. I mean really, low angle wet slab climbing that is climbable 10 days out of the year (Darrington) compared to the Diamond? Get a partner and get out there and report back.

I haven't been up there recently, but typically the the road is not drivable until June or even July.

I too got some strange emails from NW hikers guy.

Alright here's a few photos that I was able to get in between camera malfunction. Looking up Levitation 29 from the base. Cruxes marked. Hiding on a cave to keep out of the rain. Caustic Cock Sport climbing 5.11b Zach Bouldering Kraft Bouders, V5ish. Yes, it seems like Fiddler on the Roof is getting rave reviews from everyone. That pitch above the roof does look wild.

" CNN is reporting that Navy sharpshooters were secretly parachuted onto the fantail of the USS Bainbridge and hid there, out of view of the pirates. "

For Triassic we did a total of 6 pitches. After the 4th bolted anchors there is no clear route to follow, head mostly straight-up and slightly left on low 5th class terrain with a few spots of 5.7 for 300 feet or so. There is a little boulder that blocks the finish to the summit, maybe 10 feet of 5.9. Shortening your rope and simul-climbing to the summit would be a smart move. You end up right next to Frog land and use the same descent, easy 20-30 minutes down left and to your packs. I haven't actually seen anything in the guidebooks for topping out this route, but it seems fairly obvious once your up there (and the only choice if you forgot the rap line on the ground) Yeah you should give Cloud Tower a try, it definitely has the "holy shit" factor going for it when you look up at at some of those pithes, however it is all splitter crack and you can pull on gear to get you past the tough stuff. Unique for RR in that there is almost no holds, it climbs like a multi pitch Indian Creek climb. -Nate

I'd agree that the Cloud Tower is very near the top for the best route at RR. I climbed Cloud Tower last year and highly recommend it even though I got spanked on the crux pitch, that pitch is thin! For Wholesome Fullback I was just going with what the guidebook gave for a grade, not sure why there was an "R" in guidebook for this. There is a 20 foot horizontal traverse about a 100 feet up on the first pitch that might be ugly if you blew it, I would guess this is what the author was thinking when they gave it an "R" rating. I didn't think the traverse was too bad, I noticed SuperTopo did not give it an "R" rating so who knows. I've never been on top of Rainbow mountain, but would love to walk off one of the routes on that formation at some point.

Trip: Red Rocks - Levitation 29 Various Date: 4/3/2009 Trip Report: Just got back from a quick 4 day trip to Red Rocks this past weekend. Unfortunately we were having problems with our camera all weekend so we didn't get a lot of pictures. I might have a few pictures from my partners camera that I'll upload later Day 1. Cold and windy. Cragging around the Black Corridor and the Gallery. No joke, we froze our asses off. It even snowed for a few minutes before turning to rain. Still, we were amped to climb and ended up climbing a half dozen routes in the .11 -.11+ range. We called it quits by 3:00PM when the wind gusted to 50MPH. Went back to our condo we rented for the weekend. Side note. I hate the campground in RR, it is a dumb and costs way too much. We rented a 3bdr place near the park for $75 a night. Gated community and all. Although there was a knife fight outside our condo one night. Umh. Day 2. Levitation 29. 5.11c 7-9 pitches(?) For me this was the big goal for the trip. I have been thinking about doing this route for a few years but never was able to find the time or the motivation to hike back in there. Often regarded as the best climb in Red Rocks, I was anxious to see if all the hype was justified. Weather was again cold but sunny, even in direct sun I wore a jacket all day. This route is high-up and gets a lot of wind, come prepared. The hike in is indeed long but straightforward,the beta in the SuperTopo is spot on. We actually ended up jumping out of the ravine early and bushwhacked straight-up some 4th/5th class slabs to the base of the route instead of going to the two big pine tress and walking up the slabs. The route we took to the base of the route is actually the descent for the black orpheus. 2 hours I would guess with a lot of elevation gain at the end. All the pitch by pitch beta is well detailed in many guides. The beta from here is good Some other details about the pitches. Pitch 1 is slick and micro nuts are needed between the bolts, not a crack but lots of strange side pulls and flared pods. Hard for the grade. P2 Crux roof thingy. Not an endurance crux, more like a V4 boulder problem from a good stance. I up and down-climbed these moves a few times before committing to the move. It is a hard move or two but jugs out very quickly. There is bolts every few feet at the crux, but lower down on the pitch medium sized gear is needed between the bolts. P5 Other Crux pitch. The angle of the wall gets really steep on this pitch, slightly overhanging and very exposed. The crux for this pitch is low on the route where a fist crack goes through a roof and into some face climbing. I botched my on sight and fell in this spot trying to crimp my way from the fist crack to a shallow finger lock. Too bad as this was the only fall I took on the route. The correct beta is using the fist crack pod like an undercling and getting really high feet gunning for an edge with your left hand. From there it is just sustained 5.11 face climbing with lots of bolts, so many that I actually z-clipped on one occasion. This pitch isn't really a crack, but your following a shallow feature that has a few jams every so often that you can use to take a break from the crimping. Best route at Red Rocks? Ahhh I say no. Lots of fun, and amazing pitches, but at the end of the day it really comes down to it being a steep multi pitch sport route. I happily clipped all of the bolts up there, but all of that hardware gave the route a very mellow feeling to it, like you would get at the crag. Nothing too crazy, just fun bolt clipping on steep rock. The 5.11 c grade seems about right compared to other sport routes. Even if your not climbing that grade do this route anyway, it would be really easy to dog your way up this route with the closely spaced bolts. Gear. Yes, bring some. Small rack, single green alien through #1 BD and a #3 for the 4th pitch move off the belay. A few small to medium nuts. 12-15 draws. You can rap the route with a 70M rope no problem or use double 60s. Day 3. More Sport climbing Calico Basin. Climbed some super routes on the Cannibal Boulder Calico Basin. Short steep routes, projected a few .12s on the South side of the boulder that were more like tall boulder problems than routes. At sunset I soloed up the 2 pitch physical graffiti (5.7) and the the shorter one pitch of Classic Corner (5.8) Both of these routes are perfect hands/off hands cracks that you wish would go on forever. The 2nd pitch of Physical Graffiti features almost 200 feet of perfect hands. Day 4. Crack climbing. Meet up with a guy I met online to do some crack climbing for a change of pace. Went up to Whiskey peak and climbed three good routes. First up was triassic sands, 5.10c 6 pitches. This is the best route in RR, IMO. I did this last year and liked it so much I had to do it again. The real joy of this route is the second pitch, 130 feet of steep hand crack. There is a short boulder problem right at the belay, sort of barn door flake move into an overhanging hand crack, but after that is just straight-in jamming for 100+ feet. Bring many #2s and #3s for this pitch. The walk off is easy and worth topping out on. Wholesome Fullback (5.10 R 2 pitches) was next on the list for the day and I was surprised at how burly this 2 pitch route was. The first pitch is long, 180 feet and features all types of cracks, from fingers to fists. The burly part comes when your forced to make a long traverse right switching cracks. The end of the first pitch is a airy gear belay. 2nd pitch is a squeeze chimney to keep it interesting. Bring at least double cams with maybe and even triples in the hand size as you'll need some gear to build the belay. Our Father (5.10D 3 pitches) We did one more route before my flight. The 2nd pitch on this route is 5.9 and had me shaking. I found 1 bolt and 1 bad nut in 100 feet of slab climbing. 3rd pitch is what we came for, steep corner crack going from hands to tips layback. The tips section is tough, a thank God crimp on the right wall was the only way I saved a whipper and moved up to a nice finger crack below the anchors. Amazing pitch, hard for the grade. This crux pitch takes gear of all sizes, need Aliens or C3s to protect the crux layback Doubles of everything up to #2 would do it. Fly back to PDX.

I dont think he was talking about Trout Creek. This was the place I had in mind...

I know of a no bolt crag somewhere near Warm Springs that is rumored to have splitter cracks and no lead bolts. There is however bolted anchors. Would this meet your requirement for a zero bolt crag? I'm all for the development of new area that emphasizes natural pro, however not installing anchors at a crag is just plain lazy. If the routes are dirty, nobody is going to bother climbing on them and keep them clean if the anchor is a pain in the ass to set-up. Also, installing bolted anchors doesn't "lower" the route or make it a "sport" route. Nor does tying off a bunch of bushes for your anchor make you some sort of bold climber. This is the the anchor were talking about, not the actual route. The anchor has not bearing on the difficultly or skill required to climb a route. Not having a fixed anchor only makes future climbers curse your name as they dig around in the dirt for a bush to tie off at the end of a lead. On multi pitch routes I would agree that bolted anchors make the route easier and bit less committing knowing you can rap at any point without leaving behind gear. In some areas it would be nice to see a few less anchor bolts on longer routes to preserve the committing feeling of the route.

Most of the State Parks in Minnesota are bolt free and it is no good. A standard kit for many of the routes includes 200' feet of static line to tie off trees and boulders that are a long way back from the edge. On a busy weekend there will be dozens of these ropes tied off to trees, bushes, and boulders creating a hell of an eye sore for the non-climbers hiking along the top of the cliff. Really dumb, a few bolts would clean up this mess. So long story short, if you want a bolt free crag, head on up to Minnesota, beautiful weather up there.

Here is a good article on the real problem GM is having. Sounds like consumer demand is the least of their problems. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/gms-problems-are-50-years-in-making.html