JosephH

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Well, Tim was asked individually and collectively on several occasions that it not be published.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 ????

MisterMo posted up a cool shot of a concrete/bridge hand jam on the 'Wayback' thread. I'm guessing folks must know where some buildering/bridge/retaining wall cracks of various sizes are. If so post up a location and photo if you have one - otherwise we need to go on the hunt for them and post them up here. I could be way, way behind on all this as I basically don't jam anything, but am suddenly getting the urge to learn and don't have time to build a crack machine...

We need to catalog the various jams like that around PDX...

Fair enough Mike, it may have been plausible to drop from the chute (which, as you say travels parallel to the left and above quite close) onto the p4 anchor spot and then up p4, but it still seems pretty damn unlikely. Erik said you guys took the chute all the way to where it empties onto the left side of the face above the roof lip and traverses left-to-right across the lip bypassing the actual roof moves and the slabs below. Again, I'd pretty surprised if you guys made it up those slabs, up the boulder problem below the roof, and up through the roof without pro in some spots and without leaving some in others. The roof can be avoided pretty much just like the crux on YW - by going left up to where the chute empties and then do the high traverse back right - but there would be no bypassing the slab and boulder problem up to the roof, and dropping out of the chute onto that p4 anchor to go that way wouldn't be easy or obvious either. I will give you the point that, what with it starting on YW and ending by freeing the second half of the Lost Variation (hence LW), that it covers some well-traveled common ground for two of the six pitches. But I wouldn't call it contrived in any way, however, as there was just no other independent way to get into or off the heart p3-p5 pitches. Like I said, come do it again with me this summer and come work on the new ones where we can all be assured no one has ever been. Regardless of the murky FA status of the various stretches, the route is a pretty good and varied addition to the family of stout routes out there and will be a good "warmup" to acclimatize for the routes up through the roofs to the right...

Here's about the only other one I have - Doug Drewes, circa '76, on "Student Center South - By The Column" [very technical, V5/6 (I would guess) ]. As the name implies the problem goes up the column and then out the roof pods to where Doug is about to attempt the very careful transition to a full hang before firing the top. The first transition from the column top into to the knee jams in the roof pods is one crux, moving across the pods to get established on that edge is the second, and then negotiating that "careful transition" to a full hang while maintaining full control of how your feet lower out is the third crux - manage that one badly such that your feet just cut/swing and you get ripped off the edge suffering a desperate face-planting wrist-breaker onto the concrete below. We did it both on this lower South portico and on the 20 foot or so East portico.

Kevin, that was actually more Karsten's call on the grade - we settled on 11+ / 11c... Mike and Marcus said they thought the upper of the two cruxes was the harder of the two and Karsten and I thought the lower one was more challenging and still do after doing them a bunch. P.S. Once it opens and I'm back in shape we should hit it together and see what you think, you can also check with Jason and Ken for their thoughts on the grade...

Mike, when I talked with Erik he said you guys struck out right from the middle of YW p3 into the obvious chute running above (left) of the LW p3/4 and met LW instantly above the roof moves in the shot above. Do you recall differently? I think your comment that the "first aid pitch was different" would mean you did LW p3 with Marcus which would also mean you wouldn't have done LW p4 with Erik as the chute you guys went up bypasses the LW p3/p4 belays up and left. It's also hard to imagine there wouldn't have been any fixed/left small gear on the LW p3/4 if you had gone that way. The loose material on those pitches also suggested no traffic. Now, from above the roof to the top has certainly seen [mixed free/aid] traffic going back to the 60's, particularly where it meets and tops out through the 'Lost Variation'. Are you saying you also freed all of that last pitch to the top out? Kudos if so. So is it possible you and Erik did what we are currently calling LW? Possible, but I find it pretty hard to believe that the current LW P2-4 ever had anyone on them. But we should go up there together this coming season, scope it all out again and compare notes. Also, we'll be working on a couple of more independent lines to the right you should get in on.