JosephH

I have to call BS here, JH. You and I exchanged emails about this project. Tim also contacted you. I saw the emails. My understanding is that he at least tried to set up a meet with you. You're saying that never happened? And I repeatedly asked him to get together with the crew who are the ones that have the beef with him, and from my perspective he did not make any effort in that regard. Instead, he was incredibly cryptic, oblique, secretive, faild to mention things, and was difficult in general to communicate with in every attempt I made to have a conversation with him. It still seems amazing to me that he wouldn't simply ask folks down to Lucky Lab for a beer to give their individual and collective thoughts on the matter. I wasn't in the bolt war with him and it wasn't my routes subject to misinformation - I actully tried to facilitate them reconciling their differences. Effort was made, and not in any open way, he simply tried to pump me for info to complete and 'verify' a project he worked on without a word to anyone. And yeah, he might not have won folks over - I was quite upfront and honest about my personal feelings about all guides. And of course, what makes simply respecting those collectively voiced wishes and not publishing a topo such a non-option? I'm still at a complete loss as to just what, all these years later, could possibly drive him to feel the need to publish this topo other than hubris, ego, and/or financial gain. I personally find it more than just a bit sad. If he wanted to do something for Beacon he could come out and clean old routes and remove a bunch of the funky hardware he still has littering the place. Tim has clearly moved on relative to climbing at Beacon, but is just as cryptic and uncommunicative about his projects and intentions today as everyone I've talked to described him back in the day. Had Tim simply 'moved on' there would be no topo and he wouldn't be exploiting the place this in this way. At best we can only hope he left out the stars.

No problem, and I don't have any desire to make or keep Beacon "secret" - it's a bit too obvious for that. But an armchair guide was never required for the place. As for folks 'wasting their time' exploring Beacon, it takes less than three minutes to traverse the base of the entire south face. How much time could they waste? Pretty much everyone just walks by the center columns giving them the instant no-go decision on the spot. That leaves the SE and SW corners. The SW corner doesn't require much exploring and the lines are obvious. The SE corner holds some adventure, but most of it manageble with an end target in sight. From my perspective, it's just not an instant gratification sort of place and I believe that is the source of some of the tension around it as some of us don't look at the place that way even if it is close to town. [ Note: If people want beta, they should adopt a southface column route and clean it when it opens this year - then they'd have all the beta they need by the time they're done... ]

Are you okay...I mean I hope you are not just blowing some random figure out your ass. Where else would I get a number like that? Where would anyone get a number like that? There are no numbers like that. You can only estimate numbers like that, which is what I did. You think it's wildly off? I don't. On any given day, I'm guessing of the percentage of folks who own a harness and have been climbing in the last year, only 15-20% are prepared to lead trad. That if gyms and sport routes weren't available there would be an overnight collapse in the number of climbers. It goes hand-in-hand with the fact that most are only looking for risk-averse entertainment; climbing which requires them to personally assume risk is not on their radar. The problem with this new majority is the amount of rock that needs to be bolted to support them outside of gyms. My sole concern is insuring Beacon is not thrown under that particular train even if every other rock in a 100 mile radius of PDX is...

I only have one - one - interest, and that's protecting Beacon as a trad climbing area. I couldn't care less who climbs there so long as they respect the character and traditions of the place. I'm not remotely interested in Beacon ever being a safe, fun place to climb - just the contrary, I'm looking for it to stay a serious place to climb. I agree with most of what you say here. But regardless of it's proximity to PDX, keeping the essential character of Beacon intact is my only priority - as opposed to providing entertainment for a risk-averse public. There are no shortage of safe, well-documented, sport areas around - no need to bring Beacon down to that level. Anyone driving down 84 can find Beacon. No guide or topo was ever necessary.. It would be better if there were none at all as far as I'm concerned. Beacon will remain only as 'real' as folks keep it...

The only beta I've used of late was for the descent of Epi. I don't use guidebooks or topos and don't want beta before I climb. So no, I've not been influenced by such things - not sure how you consider magazines in that mix. I have provided a TR on the one route that is overbolted such that it draws endless traffic yet has significant routefinding difficult. The pitches where it can go wrong can do so on terrain that has the potential to get ugly fast. If the route were not bolted in a manner which attracts a large number of folks who could potentially get in trouble I wouldn't have bothered. It is the one preventative I have posted for the sake of preventing rescues. You so miss the mark, by a mile. 'Socialized' is about climbers losing both self-reliance and self-responsibility. Pretty apparent in the number of people who mainly climb in groups. 'Commercialized' is about selling climbing as just another form of risk-free entertainment. 'Homogenized' is more about reducing all climbs to the same risk profile [bolting] to provide that risk-free entertainment for the masses. 'Risk averse' is about gyms and the production of 'safe' routes that together allows 80-85% of today's climbers to identify themselves as climbers. If bolts disappeared tomorrow, those 80-85% would no longer be climbers the next day. Tim still hasn't reconciled the ill-will from his last publishing misadventure. He made no effort to get together with the Beacon crew to resolve those conflicts let alone produce a "master" topo of the place. This topo is the product of pure hubris and driven by ego and money. No doubt he'll be moving down the road to add insult to injury.

Actually, almost all guidebooks present the information I have no interest in and leave out all the info I am - the story of the FA and what was going on with the climbers that led to the route's existence. That may be the case in alpine or on a big wall, but otherwise I disagree. They do provide this service to people incapable or unwilling to providing it for themselves. No, but there's absolutely nothing stopping folks from developing the eye and the skill to simply drop in on a crag, completely ignore who has climbed what, and just jump on whatever catches their eye. No it's not. It has nothing to do with either localism or elistism. It is purely a product of coming up in an area where everything we touched was an FA and a deep desire to not know anything about lines before I get on them. I don't even like knowing a line is a route - in fact, until after the fact I couldn't care less if a line has been climbed or not. I like just walking in, eyeballing lines and jumping on whatever I get obsessed with. Do I epic and retreat sometimes? You bet your ass; again and again, and those are some of the most memorable climbs of all. Every climb I do isn't an FA, but I try to treat every one like it is. Break out a guide book when you hit a new crag and you are instantly passing on the first real opportunity presented to you - cluelessness. You can, but you'll miss out on the essential unknown and adventure available to you. As far as I'm concerned you are quite welcome to the socialized, commercialized, homogenized, and risk-averse climbing many of you seem to prefer.

Trog, personally, I am and have always been anti-beta and anti-guide - both are basically the antithesis of everything I climb for. As for tat people may leave bailing, we can deal with that no problem. As for "it increases the risk of serious injury" I totally disagree. Beacon is inherently a dangerous place, if you're not capable of bailing if you find you're in over your head you shouldn't be out there. To be completely blunt, I find the very idea that a lack of a guide or beta at any crag "increases the risk of serious injury" is ridiculous on the face of it and about as sad an indictment of today's climbing scene as I can possibly imagine.

Well, Tim was asked individually and collectively on several occasions that it not be published. Kind of a shame he'd choose to revisit this type of energy all over again given the hard feelings still clearly evident from the last go around...

What do you care.....its not like you climb that climb. True, I haven't been on it for a long time. Your point relative to me passing along a scrap of history...? Or are you just thumping. I would like to see you do that clean, have no doubt you can.

Peter, thanks much for those photos - we did manage to finally track David down and get him in touch with Stephane. I'll be getting together with him next month and look forward to learning more about him and his gear...

John, sorry, somehow I completely missed this post until Kevin quoted it. On Dodd's I am basically forced to do one quasi/proto-jam until I can turn it into a layback. I say quasi/proto because if I'm doing it you couldn't really call it an intentional jam so much as a lucky clutch on the way to a layback. Hey, show some and even I may get a chalk bag...

Kevin, man - hell, even I knew Hot Henry stampeded through town. I heard he also chastised the locals about the intermediate anchor on FFS...

Off, I'm always up for a lesson from an old pro if you have somewhere up there...

They've been saying it's been in the 80's on Royal Arches...

Bummer to hear. Sad but true in today's meth-driven world. There are folks on both sides of the river who pretty much make a living driving each side of the Gorge a couple of times a day hitting all the main parking lots. Nowhere is safe: Dog Mountain, Beacon, Eagle Creek - they're all major targets. Don't leave anything - zilch, nada, nothing - in sight in a vehicle. Better yet don't leave anything period.

Yeah, the Creek looks like another place you pretty much have to have jamming skills. I see pics of lots of corners where you wouldn't, but on those blank walls with splitters and no side displacement you aren't going to get very far laybacking...

Off, look at the pic back up thread from SoIll - the rock in Giant City SP didn't have a single crack or edge climb in it - it was all pockets, ribs, and knobs. We were all masters at laybacking. And given half our climbing and climbs was more about a person being able to just see and puzzle out one of our climbs we had little respect for crack climbs which were obvious and just a matter of being able to do them as seeing them was no challenge (also why we despised chalk). Hell, in Eldo we'd layback Supremacy Crack no problem. And pretty much everywhere I've been except the five days I was in the Valley in '00 I've been able to quite successfully never jam at a very high level of climbing. But it was all too obvious in that couple of days on slick, white granite that was not going to fly there. Given I'd like to do some more climbing there, particularly on the left half of Sentinel, I figure I better get the jamming thing down once and for all (or what's left of "all").

Cairns, great shots! Give me a shout if you're still climbing and make it down to PDX sometime... Boys, pony up sometime with just stoppers and hexs and give Blownout a whirl. I bet you'd have a whole new perspective of the climb. Maybe we should hold a 'RetroDay' and party afterwards this summer...

Mark, I'll go look for it...thanks...

myth, I keep finding myself drawn to the darkside (granite), more for the routes than the rock which I don't care much for. But is seems like it would come in handy to actual be able to climb some of those lines before I'm done...

Well, if you're not going to move you need to come up for the open.

Kevin, I have no need of jams on Blownout at all. I stem and layback.

I'm mainly only interested in it for granite. I don't know if I could bring myself to jam out at Beacon. To be honest it's the antithesis of everything I like about climbing. That, and where I came up there were no cracks so never developed a taste for it. Should learn though, but not out at Beacon, maybe Trout Creek, but I'd like some options here in town...

Sorry to hear the news - now move back to Portland...

Not to be indelicate, but what the hell happened? Cancer, flu, mono, pnemonia, malaria, dengue, CA-MRSA, gunshot, knifing, PTST, dirty needle, nasty STD, bad fall, auto, bike, stairs (just got me recently), ladder, angry SO, angry SOB, or what ????