JosephH

Wastral, actually I am. It actually took us quite awhile before we trusted stitch plates for vertical multipitch trad; we knew, used, and trusted our hip belays. We did in fact use hip belays on roofs from hanging belays and I wouldn't hesitate to do the same today. We led Foops in the Gunks that way and held plenty of solid falls on hip belays at home, the Gunks, and in Eldo on them during that time. The notion that you need a device to safely hold falls of any length is entirely a modern myth. The increasing lack of competency with the technique over time, though, has clearly bred the entirely mistaken notion that you can't give a 'real' belay without a device - nothing could be further from the truth. No device is necessary at all to provide solid and safe belays on vertical multipitch rock. But make no mistake about it, and as Wastral says above, competent hip belaying - on vertical rock or alpine - is a technical exercise where you have to stay engaged and pay attention to the details. Hell, I forgot my harness (with ATC) a couple of weeks ago and led Blownout at Beacon tied into the rope, belaying with a hip belay, and rapping off on a biner brake. When I'm in Red Rocks and climbing with Larry DeAngelo we do multipitch FA's back up in the canyons on hip (me) and shoulder (him) belays. It's a basic climbing craft and sadly one that, along with stancing, is all but a lost art. Do I use a belay device? Sure, I use a Kong Ghost, but it's strictly a convience, not a necessity, and certainly not one my climbing is in any way dependent upon. P.S. One technical note relative to your comment about burning your back sans shirt or coat. In a proper hip belay the rope should never be higher than the top of your pants, i.e., should never be up on your waist. You want it down on your hips between the thigh socket and the crest at the top of your hip, there is a notch between the two and that's where you want to keep the rope.

Wanking sounds like what you folks do when hip belaying as opposed to providing a sound and solid belay that can be counted on. As for 'well-rounded', I have zero interest in being well-rounded, I only have an interest in climbs and movement I consider creative and interesting and just don't find the vast majority of granite to fit that criteria. From a pure movement perspective I find granite particualarly boring. In the end, I'm more than open to valid criticisms of hip belaying, but not from people who aren't competent doing one.

I'm saying that a hip belay with a single non-locking carabiner through your harness loops on the side of the rope going to the climber is absolutely as solid as any device of any kind. From your comments here I can tell I wouldn't want to be in the position of taking falls on you doing a hip belay. Ditto for several of you guys. Again, hip belaying, outside of some wank alpine version, clearly hasn't been a part of the culture up here. It's pretty much the same with the Beacon crew as well, none of them have any real experience with getting technical with hip belaying or holding big falls rock climbing with them.

Pretty hard to climb without belaying and belaying half the time if you're climbing with peers. And yes, older folks have different perspectives on various topics as well. A lot of it has to do with rock type and morphology - old granite climbers tend to view 'anchors' as a very different thing from old sandstone climbers. For me anchors are strictly a backup to my stance and belay unless it's a hanging belay. But then, almost all of us old guys from that thread often arrived at a belay with either no, one, or two passive pieces back in the day. You had to make do with stancing. And stancing is all but a lost art today along with real hip belaying. As far as flight time goes - in the 70's we climbed steep and roofs - falling happened way, way more than not falling. On the new line I've been working nowadays that's still the case. Bottom line, with a single non-locking carabiner I can competently belay any multipitch rock route and wouldn't hesitate to either have my leader take repeated 50+' falls on to it or take those falls myself (at least if my old partner or someone as competent was belaying).

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=731822&tn=80 Your point? Read that entire thread if you want a valid perspective on the topic of belaying from a number of different older and very experienced folks.

This is factually incorrect and you appear to be another who never learned how to do a decent hip belay. The NW is filled with alpine guys so I have no doubt that what passes for a hip belay up this way among that crew is pretty sketch. But I'm strictly a rock climber and hip belayed multipitch .9s-.11s exclusively on hip belays for a decade including lots of big falls and falls directly on me off the anchor. Again, it appears to be a case of few folks, particularly in the NW, ever really learn how to do them - probably never a part of the culture up here. From what I keep reading I'd be mad too if I got to the top of a pitch and found any of you guys hip belaying me. The amount of FUD and misinformation on hip belaying here is somewhat surprising from a crew who claims to be otherwise competent.

It might if one doesn't know how to do one. Well, then I'd say it's likely you don't know how to do one. "Well understood" appears to be the challenge - it shouldn't be used unless you are going to put the time into learning how to do one right. Again, a munter is a suck thing to do to a rope. Only do it if you can't figure out how to do a hip belay or the weight differential is too great.

I only link them when I'm rope-soloing because I'm feeding the rope out of my backpack so there is no drag. I don't run them together when I'm with a partner.

Hmmm, you do this move way differently - way to the left and from the look of it with a lower approach. Just saw someone else do this the other day for the first time. Looks maybe much harder as I'm thinking you wouldn't get as good a use of the diagonal crack at the apex? Do you then also stay to the left side to get established standing just above there or do you do a straight-on mantle?

Go climb there. You will see. Pictures don't tell the whole story. It is a shithole - please, don't go climb there.

It was Thursday night, trying to get in some pitches before the rain. Yesterday was raining on and off here in town, glad you snuck it in before the weather hit.

Missed this at first. Funny how hard it is to recognize parts of YW from a distance - looks entirely different.

The left wing eagerly marches towards totalitarianism - their preferred state of being. Where was your outrage at a totalitarian Bush regime stripping the nation of constintutional and consumer protections, intruding on private citizens at will, snatching people off the streets and torturing them with no due process, and establishing an imperial executive? Are you a complete fucking moron?

What a day and night! It was perfect out there in every respect. good temp, no wind, hardly anyone there - perfect. Got on rock a bit after 4pm and got in 18 pitches by midnight with an unexpected hour and a half break from 8:30-10. Got in Free For All and Dods to Big Ledge where I hooked up with Bryan and Zack. On rapping back down, Bryan and I then did a quick run up to the high anchor on Menopause. After that, those guys had to split so we head for the cars and I started leisurely cleaning up the back of my car and racking for YW when an ugly domestic scene begins to unfold. I was just re-racking gear for YW when this tall, young brunette appears out of nowhere crying hysterically and asks to use my cell. As she's talking on it a car pulls up on the other side of the bathrooms and a guy starts yelling her name. She hands the phone back to me and goes over to the car where a lot of loud talking and shuffling in and out of the car commences. I couldn't make out what was being said or exactly what was happening, all I know is it was going on for way too long when Vivian rolls up and is on them and a few minutes later two sherrif cars pull in to back her up. I keep sorting out my gear and get ready to head down the trail when Vivian comes over and wants to know what I saw and heard. A few minutes later one of the deputies does the same asking if I saw the guy hitting her and the next thing you know I'm writing out a witness statement. By this point it's going on 10pm and I'm thinking the vibe is blown and I should just bag it, but end up heading down to YW anyway after letting Rhoda know I was going to be home later than expected. By the time I make it down the trail and start YW the moon is already pretty high up and coursing to the west and this turns out to be a good thing. All the previous times I've done full moon romps on YW I've started about 8pm and, I guess because the moon is still coming up and the angle of the shadows isn't quite right, I've had to use my headlamp for a moment at the p2 crux and twice on the first half of p3. Last night however I never needed it at all and in fact stowed it and my helmet at the bottom of the pack under the rope along with my shirt - it was warm and way lit up! Turns out a later 10pm start is really the way to go. And while I have to agree with Ivan that climbing in real darkness with a headlamp is pretty tedious, that's not at all the scene climbing sans headlamp in the bright light of a full moon under clear skies. The whole Gorge is lit up in a B&W only punctuated with a smattering of color from the red lights on the towers down by the dam and the beams of passing locomotives. It's a wild landscape that looks exactly like the 'night' scenes in the old B&W cowboy movies of my childhood where you can see from the horses shadows that it was really filmed in broad daylight with some sort of dark filter. That and you still get the full affects of exposure while climbing. And even though I'd done seven pitches earlier, getting started roped soloing under those conditions and after coming down the trail under a headlamp set on its dimmest setting, it takes a few minutes to adjust to things and getting to that first pin on YW makes for some nervous climbing. After that though, it all kicks back in over the course of running the first two pitches together on up to the p2 anchor and by the time I'm passing the p1 anchor cleaning the pitches it's all settled down into a surreal casual. The rest of the climb is just fabulous and with no one about I could clean all the irritating rocks that have been accumulating on the third pitch. About the only thing I really had to be careful of was making sure I landed every handhold lightly as the tree frogs are really out of their nooks at night and you have to be careful of the little guys or you'll end up with a real messy and startling grip. On getting to the rest just above the first bolt on p4 I looked back over my right shoulder and was greeted with a stunning view of the 'Lost Variation'. The striking interplay of light and shadow made everything on it stand out in 3D with the richness of a classic Ansel Adams photo. I ended up spending quite a bit of time just standing there taking that in and enjoying the vistas across and down the river as well. I ran p4 out on up the full 60 meters to notch where it meets with the SE Face route at the base of the corner ramp and on arriving back at the notch after cleaning the pitches I began to hear the wierdest train sounds. Sure enough, moments later a train comes into sight from the west, but it's not your average train. This one is a slow conga line of track grinding cars each spraying giant jets of sparks straight out perpindicular from the train. At each end of the train is a locomotive and two water tank cars; each locomotive, front and back, is spraying massive jets of water into the woods alongside the tracks on both sides to keep the sparks from setting fires. From the top of YW this gave the train the appear of a loud, bright, orange fireworks version of hairy catapiller crawling down the tracks. All in all it was a pretty transfixing sight to watch while I cleaned and stowed the rope and gear for the solo up and off the corner ramp. It faded crawling to the east, but as I turned to head up the ramp the sound of it started to grow louder again. Sure enough, it had stopped and was coming back by Beacon for another pass over the tracks which it did two more times filling the air with the smell of the acrid smoke of steel grinding. Another advantage of the late start is that just before midnight the moon had crossed to the west enough to then really light up the tourist trail well enough so that I could do my usual run down, this time completely unimpeded by tourists. When I stowed my gear back up at the Corner ramp notch I had dug out my handlamp and put in my pocket and I now had to use it, again on its dimmest setting, once I cleared the gate and got back down into the woods. Beautiful night, just can't recommend the sans headlamp YW experience enough and overall another amazing day out at Beacon. We're blessed.

Dods and Menopause down. The sun and the moon dance together for a moment while Young Warriors rest in the shadows.

Heading out ther now...

Chicago and Illinois is home base to a lot of insurance power - Rahm and Obama have never and will never do the right thing on healthcare and clearly stated as much during the campaign. They only grudgingly even talked about it. Healthcare is exactly why he wasn't my candidate during the primary.

I agree, nothing significant will be accomplished unless the Glass-Steagall Act is reconstituted and the gov't actually starts oversight on the heretofore unregulated ABS / derivatives markets. Not much different then his half-hearted attempts at 'reforming' healthcare.

It's not a new climb, it's just a context change and one that brings out how well you really know the climb or not into sharp focus. Women? Night, day, dusky...it's all good.

The main ABC of using a munter for anything is: A) never use a munter B) never use a munter C) never use a munter EXCEPT in a rescue or self-rescue scenario or as part of various hauling-related tasks aid climbing. Otherwise, a munter is a lousy thing to do with a rope. Learn to hip belay with a single carabiner through your harness loops clipped to the rope on the side to the climber and keep the rope down on your hips, not up on your waist. Lock off by diving your brake hand between your legs. Tie off by just tying off the brake side to the climber side. Pretty straightforward. Hip belaying done right is incredibly effective in all aspects, as good and as safe as any device, but do use the munter if the climber seriously out-weighs you (like by 35-50 lbs.). That's the old guy spray anyway...

Geoff was up for it Friday, but I wouldn't mind a lap on it Thursday night either. Gotta see how the cloud vs. clear thing is as well as it may have just been shot to hell; but that would just mean we'd have to use the headlamps more... pm me...

Yeah, I do bring a headlamp to use for about 10 seconds on p2 and another on p3, but otherwise the thing is lit up like high noon once your eyes are adjusted. Missed the last one, would like to catch this one. Anyone game...?

Thanks, that helps...

Dane, I'm trying to figure out the diff between your rock shoes and mtn boot - street shoes help in that comparison, but still would still like to know your EU sportiva sizing.

Curious what size you take in a sportiva rock shoe.