JosephH

The Beacon park staff have one of these and it's how they clear the larger boulders that come down on the tourist trail.

With the very first batch of Master Cams they had an issue where machining oil wasn't fully cleaned from some of the cam lobe string holes. They addressed the problem at the time and I hadn't heard of any more incidents of this. You don't mention a date on the cam or when you purchased it. I'm sure Metolius would love to hear about your cam in case the problem's cropped up again. Somewhere there was a thread on this back when they first came out, but I can't find it. Give them a call and I'm sure they'll make it right. From their website: ---------------------------------------------------------- Returns/Repairs Please call our customer service line at (541) 382-7585 to request a Return Authorization Number (RA#). Write the RA# on the outside of the box. Then ship it on to us at Metolius. Metolius Climbing 63189 Nels Anderson Rd. Bend, Oregon 97701

Somehow missed Brutus' take on the subject - pretty well sums it up.

I don't think 'old school = sandbag' at all. There are old school places where a lot of sandbagging goes on, but I don't feel that way about Beacon. The grades there are pretty self-consistent. Does that mean there are no sandbag lines out there? No. Does that mean there are no routes out there put up before there were .11s or .12s and no one had the gumption to re-rate them appropriately? No. But by and large I don't see much deliberate sandbagging out there - just solid standards. Jill's .10a? Not to my mind, solid .9. YW's is basically a long 5.7 with just a couple of .8 and .9 moves on it. I know Vern felt both FFS and Stone Rodeo should be up-bumped a letter notch and I agree with those. But I think if you take BSS at .10c as the gold standard by which other routes are measured out there, then Blownout is definitely .10a. Not re-rating things is not the FA's fault. My partner and I put up several climbs in the mid-70s and we debated long and hard about calling our poor offerings .11+s at all because that's all there was at the time. Later crews uprated a couple to .12s and one to .13a - we didn't purposely intend to sandbag anyone, hell we were nervous about being considered presumptious for calling them what we did as it was.

No idea, but they made for perfect start / end platforms similar to what you see in circus acts. The groove also really helped stabilize the wire / line.

He used to have two beautifully crafted iron and oak rope 'benches' up there that looked like the chairs the shoe salespeople use. They had a grove in the heavy oak tops and differently length legs to fit the contours of the rock. Hopefully he still has pictures of them as they were quite the works of art.

Isn't that what Donini is talking about then...?

Looks like some of Adam's wire rig is still on the cave floor. They were pretty cool, too bad they didn't get preserved.

Kevin, so long as you're here and know both places, how do Ozone and Beacon grades compare?

this is what happens as one grows older, joseph. you start forgetting things, little things at first, and pretty soon... Already being quite old, the little things went long, long ago. And given I'm operating with reduced mental capacities there's not much point in attempting to clutter things up with details I'm not going to remember anyway. Besides, this way I'm only as good as the day I'm climbing and that keeps me motivated.

Do this google search: "Human Performance Laboratory" Hyrdation One of the links (from 2005) in particular looks interesting: ACSM Roundtable on Hydration and Physical Activity: Consensus Statements The UConn HPL looks to be a leader in this sort of research...

And there are other people who find trad too frightening or too tedious and others who find sport boring as snott.

Actually, no, I wasn't griping about grades at all. Donini certainly was, I wasn't and am in no position to because I don't sport climb.

Well now it's true that both Donini and I are past our primes as I know our ages. Can't speak to anyone else posting here. I for one am not 'griping about grades' because the past year or so I find myself at this point where I don't really care about grades or even names of climbs - just lines unadorned by all our adjectives. I did post about the sport / trad differential most folks list for themselves and go on about - always an enduring mystery to me.

Burly good sushi chef to boot, it was a pleasure to meet him however briefly...

I don't know anything about the technical details of the topic, only my experience. I know for myself that eating a good load and balance of proteins and carbs the night before and then drinking a liter of water over the hour immediately prior to climbing sets me up for a solid day of climbing with very minimal need for food or water during the day. This approach has worked for me over decades now and I'm always amazed when I see folks bring and downing large quantities of food and and water while climbing. The idea of it almost makes me ill, particularly when watching them eat so much. I've proven this approach works for me on climbs like Epinephrine where we each climbed with a 1-liter camelsback of water and a cliff bar and felt completely fine with it until we were back to the car for more water and back to town for food.

We obviously climb very different trad lines...

Pretty simple: more weight, more decisions, more responsibility for self, more risk. By an large, most people climb a sport a grade or two higher than trad because they can't think and control their emotions at the same time. Sport climbing dispenses with a majority of the weight, physical manipulations / time per protection point, and decision-making which together provides the bandwidth and relief necessary to control their emotions. The weight of being responsibie for your own safety - and confidently trusting yourself - is a significant emotional burden which alone accounts for most individuals grade differentials. But those differentials typically apply when sport vs. trad grades are equivalent. Donini isn't talking about that - he's say sport grades are typically soft compared to trad grades. That I can't speak to given I don't sport climb, but I do have my suspicions. Maybe someone here in PDX can contrast Ozone .10s /.11s with equivalent classic Beacon routes of the same grade. How do they stack up against each other?

It's actually not about necessity or looking good - both are a matter of feeling good. If you not feeling it, it ain't gonna happen.

Horsesh#t, it would have been nothing but a mild concussion if he'd been wearing his helmet, but no, he couldn't be bothered and thought it might clash with his mane.

As Bill said, choices you make have a lot of bearing on the necessity of a helmet. In general, when I see clutches of today's climbers out at the crag, wearing a helmet or not is usually down on the priority list of things that might benefit from a bit of attention, thought, and change.

I have two of each of these: Petzl Ecrin Roc for serious endeavors, Petzl Meteor III for casual ones.

Worldwide, how many of the people who are going to get dropped by their belayer this week will be wearing a helmet?

Where do payday loan shark joints and 500% interest fall in terms of criminality, [economic] violence, and virtuous society?

Are you friggin' nuts? You do all that?