JosephH

Who do I talk to if I want to donate something for the auction...?

For some reason I've been obsessed with Dods for the last few weeks. Probably because I'm normally fat when Beacon opens each year and always get spanked on Dods my first time out each year. Even after getting in shape each year I typically never quite get 'comfortable' on the damn thing - it's never helped that I can't really jam worth a damn. This year though, I miraculously kept it somewhat together over the winter and of late have decied to 'come to terms' with Dods once and for all. To my complete surprise - and I have no idea why - the jamming thing seemed to just suddenly start 'happening' out of the blue when I first got on the line a couple of weeks back. Not that I didn't still layback the thing, but those initial, unavoidable jams seemed to just flow smoothly and the whole crux section ended up thorouhly enjoyable. It was relaxed enough that I decided a couple of days later to go up and try to rope-solo it for the first time. That ended up going really well, even if seconding it was a bit more edgy and arduous than actually leading it. After a rest up on Big Ledge, I then started up Dastardly only to run out of gas almost immediately, backing off, and rapping off of Big Ledge calling it a day. A week later I came back and roped soloed the line again making it up Dastardly to the trail railing with no problems at all. I then had to slack off climbing for a couple of weeks because of work, a trip to LA, and another to Seattle. On getting back to climbing this weekend, Hanmi and I headed up FFA and Dods so that, between her husband Jim and I, she could start getting in some laps on them herself (she's doing great on them, too). That also went really well - in fact, I told myself it was 'casual' - so today I figured I'd make another rope solo journey up to the railing again just to kind of 'lock' the whole thing in so I can move on to other things. Well, it actually all did go casually to the tree, but then on heading up the business it all unravelled amazingly fast. I got my sequence off the tree wrong managing to stick the second cam where my hand neeeded to go and it all over pretty damn quick. Two more falls followed trying to relocate the cam and then the obligatory aid up to where it eases off, and then bailing. In the end, instead of 'locking it all in' I got my ass completely handed to me for getting too cocky and now I'm sitting here trying figure out how I get my Dods mojo back. I mean it was literally almost like I'd never been up the damn thing. Where I was hoping to move the damn thing off my plate once and for all, it's now back as irritating as ever. Oh well - it's the seminal Beacon lesson - don't get too ahead of yourself or cocky as you're never more than one move away from a spanking. How did Marsellus put it? Oh yeah: The thing is, Butch, right now, you've got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don't last. And your days are just about over. Now, that's a hard motherfucking fact of life. But it's a fact of life your ass is gonna have to get realistic about. See, this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't. Besides, Butch, how many fights you think you got left in you anyway? Two? Boxers don't have an "old timer's league". You came close, but you never made it, and if you were gonna make it, you would have made it before now.

I've been really impressed with the ardent loyalty and support Kevin has inspired in his friends - count me in on this great way the rest of us can help out supporting Kevin and his family.

That's complete and total bullshit. We have not emboldened any of our enemies - we've scared the shit out of them. Really? If you believe that then I have a bridge in NYC I'd like to sell you...

Really an incredible amount of misconception and 'need to make ourselves feel good' delusion on display here. Mattp is actually, and factually, correct - there is no "war on terrorism" - winnable or otherwise - any more than there is a "war on drugs" or "war on illegal immigration". All are simply feel-good anthems and labels for systemic problems we refuse to deal with in any effective way - i.e., that might make us wince slightly. Terrorism, like drug use, is rooted in environmental conditions and normal human responses to them. Our nation was born of terrorism fueled by Britian's failure to recognize or address the root causes of our discontent. Militant Islam similarly feeds off, and is nurtured by, the discontent and displeasure of broad tracts of the population in the ME. This is, and will remain, the "new normal" in a media-saturated world only too capable of illustrating the sharp disparity and divide between the most and least fortunate among us. Selling the idea that it is a "war" is as sad pandering which precludes any rationale approach to alleviating the worst of the conditions which breed terrorism - it is a bankrupt mentality and a non-starter to boot. The requisite approach is addressing the conditions which breed terrorism, respond ruthlessly with overwhelming might when you must resort to military action, and continue to loopback with infrastructure and economic improvements which alleviate the original conditions. It isn't rocket science, except to the incompetent simps in the administration whose performance to date has broadly emboldened our enemies, large and small alike. Again, if Hu Jintao, Ahmadinejad, and OBL sat down on 9/10 and tried to hammer out a script for what would happen to the U.S. over the next seven years they couldn't have done half as well as the aftermath which has followed a commanding peformance of squandering and pillaging by W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and their cast of robotic minions.

The unfortunate reality is there is no "winning" with the current approach or the approaches of either candidate - it's like saying we shouldn't have stuck our hand in that hornet's nest but we are going to stay until we "win" when what you need is a can of RAID. If we were serious about "winning" then we wouldn't have been or be screwing around - we'd have 500k troops minimum on the ground in Iraq. The borders would be secured and sealed tight with 100k of them, Baghdad with 100k, outlying towns of significance with 100k, and we'd have 200k involved with protecting and rebuilding their infrastructure. Had we done that in the beginning we could have been in and out of there in two to three years. Better yet, we could have just killed Saddam and his sons remotely and explained we'd like a few changes and we'll keep killing the leadership until we got them. What we've done instead - and since - has displayed an almost indescribable level of incompetence and a complete inability to wield U.S. military might effectively. So long as we approach such problems in a manner which won't disturb anyone's delicate suburban sensibilities we'll continue to drown in circumstances we refuse to take responsibility for or deal with as they've been dealt. And the similarities of our inability to deal effectively with the Iraq, New Orleans, and rebuilding the WTC are not lost on China who take all three to be a clear statement we lack the ability to project our will or endure pain. A huge strategic mistake on our part as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing the sign of times whether short or long hair (for those who've had both) is sort of like dealing with falling. Good to know where the edge is - sometimes you hang it over, sometimes you don't. Sort of like pissing in the wind - good to know which way the wind is blowing so that, while feeling great relief, you aren't just pissing on yourself at the same time...

All the way up the corner, took awhile to get them out and the result looking halfway decent. Can't really tell anymore unless you know where they were.

I resemble that remark, but it's not me...

So some bright person kicked over the new sign at the first turn in the trail, cool. That sign post was and is supposed to be for a sign that hasn't been made yet that warns tourists off the climbers trail so we aren't dealing with them down below. Once that sign is made it will host both signs. I've recommended that the 'overnight' sign not be placed at that spot but rather at the top of the trail - but the problem then is that the sign causes confusion with non-climbers, hence the BRSP wanting it down on the trail. But the bottom line - don't fuck with any of the signs regardless of whether you like the message or not - it will shut down all WSP cooperation on early opens if people do. You may not give a shit whether or not you get to climb earlier than July 15th every year, but I and others do. So piss on the damn thing if you must and if it makes you feel better, but leave it the fuck alone from here on out...

Hmmm, Dave, must have been someone else as Shane, Kellie, and Sam moved pretty smoothly with a minimum of yelling. And they started after me and a while after you guys had left. Hopefully the next full moon will be as good the last one and this one which should still be good for the next few nights. It really is spectacular and the main problem climbing is that, once you let your eyes adjust to the darkness, the moon is then too damn bright and creating deep, deep black shadows when it's more in your face than on the rock. Then you either have to remember where holds are, feel for them, or use your headlamp for long enough to sort things out.

Had to settle for a roped solo lap up YW - cool temps, solid breeze, and lit up to about half daylight - perfect. Topped it off with breakfast at Cake 'n Steak - perfect as well. Also, kudos to Shane's new roomate Kellie who did her first-ever go at rock climbing by doing the SE Corner by moonlight as well.

What 'work' are you going to be doing? It's all fairly dependent on that...

No one...? It should be much cooler later...

That's my latest laptrack these days, good solid yardage to the railing. Anyone up for a full moon lap on it this evening (Sunset: 8:20pm / Moonrise: 7:02pm)?

Fractured ribs...???

Yep, if you can't do the route-finding without chalking arrows then either you or the person you're with probably shouln't be out there at all. Someone please clean it up the next time they're up that way...

Steve, you can say that again - pretty much a Beacon classic no matter how you look at it. As far as the pro on p2 goes, there's pro on the right, center, and left, but I've personally never thought any of it is was so great as to be worth bothering with. I'd do an #10 HB alloy nut on the left if I was going to use any, though; I don't like the idea of a cam in any of it. And I think the real key to protection through those two moves up to the next piece of pro in the slot is less a matter of gear and more about distributing your weight across the four points of your body you have on the rock. It's essential to be delicate, fluid, and well-distributed across whatever holds you might use through there. You absolutely have to be able to withstand blowing any single point of rock throughout any sequence you choose. The plane in which you impart pressure to any individual flake or edge is also incredibly important - you want to minimize any outward (away from the rock face) pressure on any of them - keep the pressure you apply in-plane with that of the overall flake system. They are easy moves and I think Dave's comment about it all being largely psychological is pretty spot on. Pink, always good to hear the history. But there is still a bolt stud up and left of the p1 anchor. I've done the direct left and center variations off of the anchor on TR and they are interesting, though the lefthand one has some of the same delicate flake issues as the way it is normally done these days.

Ha!

Bill, sometime when we're both out you'll have to point out some of these for me, still having a hard time visualizing a couple of them, though I'll try a look for that tat you're talking about.

That's what we thought too when we headed up after studying it all. But not much of anything was actually solid once we got up into the mix. A lot of those blocks are fractured in-plane and heavily layered like a book made up of a lot of thin pages. Those don't take pro, pins, or bolts unless you had some really long ones. Like I said, never had a remote interest in ever going back up there again, just plain ugly.

So you guys were up there before us; and as usual there's probably lots more to the story from the sound of it. Hmmm, we did see a green sling at the top of the pyramid thing, but I don't recall the pin. Easy enough to miss, though (just saw another dolt or dolt-copy on Dastardly Sunday afternoon). Whew, glad I was nowhere near Southern Belle when that went down. Everything I've heard about Caylor, even from him, makes it sound like he had a hard time recognizing boundary conditions when he was younger and was damn lucky to live through his twenties.

Bill, great story - is Steve still around? Pretty much similar to the experience my partner Jim Tangen-Foster and I had back in '87 when we tried to head up through those big roofs, except for the part of the big block cutting on him. We headed up the wall straight out from the big tree where the trail first turns down from the parking lot. We naively went up there with a double set of Chouinard nuts and I think three original Friends. We barely escaped with our lives and once down I have never had a second thought about returning up to the big East Face roofs.

Kevin, it's a fair question and one I've been asking for the past four years - "where's the line?" The result of a lot of talks with the BRSP and Lisa Lantz, the WSP SW Resource Steward (she "owns" Beacon, but is climber-friendly) is basically a picture that looks sort of like this - with the caveat that nothing is final until Lisa makes it down from Olympia to set the final delineation. The line in the photo below is based on the position of the last anchor to the north out on the face proper (as opposed to any of the lines starting, and climbing out from, anywhere back under the East Face roofs). It also represents the rising, vertical, right-arching edge of the southern-most of the two major upper East Face roof structures. Basically, anything right of that line means you're going under the major East Face roof structures. This line represents pretty much the best 'deal' we as climbers can expect or hope to be able to make due to concerns about the endangered species and archeological contexts which both exist across the breadth of the area under and above the major East Face roofs and north-end vertical faces.

It is! Everything right of the old yellow / orange anchor to the right of Rythmn Method/Menopause and everything under the roofs is closed.