JosephH

I was out on rock in sustained 50-60kt gusts last Friday, that's enough to knock you off a stance if you aren't real careful. I would imagine someone could [real slowly] soldier on up through about 70-80kt and after that you'd be having a lousy day or in a cave. The odds of accomplishing any more than just staying alive yourself would have to be pretty much zero if you didn't know exactly where someone was. [edit: I'll pass on further comment as well...]

Jon, Look, your original assertions is hard to interpret much of any other way other than that folks are either being constrained or that they aren't capable. If folks are being constrained you aren't going to be any help as a Rambo on the scene; as for not being capable, that would be an incredibly brash and naive assumption. It's not like the none of the locals have done Denali or a lot of other big name peaks in tough conditions. This isn't the first rescue on Hood either - some of them do actually know what they're doing up there and doing everything possible to extract these guys alive.

There are definitely plenty of folks around Hood River and PDX in their 50's (and I'm not one of them) who have remarkable wisdom, experience, skills, as well as amazing power and endurance who I'd love to know had my back in a bad alpine incident. Beckey isn't the only old guy in the PNW who ever powered up stuff on a regular basis.

Ha, I was counting down on that one - good for you! You held out for almost two whole hours! ---------------------------- 'The first rule of...'

Sounds like a serious recipe for disaster to me. If a few of the Crag Rats who I know grew up on that mountain aren't making it up then no one else is likely to Rambo their way up without regretting it and making the whole situation more complicated for all concerned.

Whomever 'they' are, they were clearly part of the herd when they visited. Stay off the loop road and hike back into any number of the canyons and there will be no herd and endless trad lines. Hell, you could spend half an enternity up in Black Velvet way past Epinephrine doing endless trad lines without ever seeing a soul.

Dropping acid with pigs of any variety, is bold business. I once dropped a hit after being (literally) thrown in a paddy wagon in Chicago and ended up having one of the more unusual and memorable trips of those days. But even I would stop short of navigating the East Ledges under the influence with pigs in tow. Good to hear you ended up hunkering down.

We should go out there and hit it some time...

Well, climbing in ripping cold and extremely dry east winds the premise of "heat" sweating is out the window. It's possible you are, as pink claims to be, one of the poor 1% or the population afflicted by Hyperhiosis (excessive sweating) and actually really need chalk inspite of the fact those dry east winds would be evaporating it at a rapid rate. Otherwise, the rock right now on the Corner, on Young Warriors, or on FFA/Dodds, requires no chalk whatsoever. You may require chalk, but that's your issue - there is no objective need for it whatsoever.

Like we tried to tell you from the start. Rain, does wonders with chalk. Well, and like I tried to tell you from the start, I don't like wading through the half a bag of the shit on the first half of first pitch of everything the first week when of all times it definitely doesn't need it - or waiting until winter for it to get cleaned. And it certainly isn't necessary this time of year. A drag folks put so little thought goes into its use.

Yep, all three days out there this past week I think the only chalk was from one of the two guys I went with later in the week and he certainly didn't need it for the temperature or the friction. Not sure how well chalk would work when using ice for holds, but that might have helped last Sunday (either that or licking your fingers before grabbing it).

For the past two years of anchor work rapping with a haul bag I used a figure 8 setup as seen in this photo with myself on one strand and the haul bag off the other. These photos were just taken after the two years of using it and after the sport tape was removed from the sling / 8 connection. It was all quite well taped to prevent the girth hitch from cutting and to make it clear which sling was for me and which was for the haul bag. I clipped the sling for me into my harness loops and used a Petzl Shunt directly off the belay loop below it. The system is hard to beat for rapping with a load - particularly if you need to do a lot of stopping and starting.

After my first trip I went back and got 25 more hits the next day and dropped every third day with a different 'agenda' each time and with different people who I wanted to spend time with. I climbed about a third of those and put up an FA called the 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". About a year later when the last move on a route we were putting up turned back every thing we tried and I dropped some dot and went over it again and again in my head for about four hours then went out at first light and stuck it first try. Then again, the last time I did shrooms was on a big day sailing at Doug's Beach and the woman I did them with and I ended up a totally unable to sail and instead just floated down the river holding hands across our boards too baked to deal with it all.

It doesn't matter if it's a sub hitting a boat or a sea mount or an incident like this, it's imperative to hold ship captains accountable. If not things can get out of hand pretty quickly. The captain is mainly responsible for the operating "tone" of the crew relative to how much effort and professionalism they put into their jobs. Think of it more like the head of Yosar not paying attention to a creeping sense on his team that it's alright to be cavalier about belaying (which is exactly what happened in this ice diving accident).

All you PDX ice climbers be careful this year if things don't set up hard again. Seems like I remember last season there being a few injuries...

In the case of just the Supersafes, I'm pretty much with bigwalling, you can basically go until they are core shot in the middle; they'll take an incredible amount of abuse. I started climbing on goldline and have seen a lot of funk rope go by over the years. Some ropes out there today I wouldn't use more than a year and others, like the Suresafe and some Yates big wall ropes, that I'd basically use until they are either visually core shot or have a substantially deformed core when examined by feel. A UAII study showed that ropes basically lose sharp edge resistance over time, not basic strength. So from my perspective there is no simple answer other than "what you're comfortable with". Some older folk were duct taping the fuzz balls down on yellow "MSR Knot Special" solid-weave ropes (all sheath, no core) back in the '70s and would only retire them when the amount of duct tape made pulling the rope through the biners on lead too much of a pain in the ass. Folks with such a background probably have a different perspective on how long a rope lasts compared to today's climbers and tend to wait until ropes are physically damaged. I stop short of that standard if I know I've treated one badly or it does "fuzz up". Then again, I only climb on Mammut Supersafe and Eternity ropes - the Eternity is basically a 10mm version of the Supersafe that comes in a bi-color, when not back ordered, where the Supersafe for some reason does not. They are, as my teen daughter used to say, bomb (though I don't think she does anymore). Edit: Oh, I also did just replace all 16 of my Mammut 8mm Dyneema slings after two/three years. So its not like I don't think about this stuff in general. Interesting thing about those is they were all quite shrunken compared to the replacements - like an 1" for the short ones and 1.5" for the long ones (I didn't have any of the 48" jobs). Curious...

Well, I bought a SuperSafe as part of an ebay sale of five ropes and a Climb Moab haul bag about two and half years ago. The seller, who was from PA, had them listed as "not for climbing". I emailed him and asked what the deal was and how many lead falls the ropes had seen (and the Supersafe in particular). He said no lead falls, but the ropes were three years old and had to be retired. Basically hardly anyone bid on them because of the way he had it listed and I won it at $250 and turned around and sold the haul bag for $80 bucks bringing the five ropes in at $170 all of them in great shape. There was a 50m, a set of double 60's, a 60m, and the Supersafe which I was mainly after. Over the last two years since, it took an easy dozen good lead falls (two over sharp edges), put up a couple of routes, and it was mercilessly beaten to death replacing anchors and rapping with solid loads on top of my weight. It got machine washed about a dozen times over the course of that work to the point it lost its middle marks which were replaced with a Sharpie pattern. It finally just got retired by a new Supersafe, though I'd still lead on it in a pinch but, hey, enough is enough. Short version, your's is completely shot - but I'd give you $50 for it to help you out with a new rope... P.S. Oh, and Supersafes have teflon coated sheathes and cores so they never really "fuzz out" or end up looking "10.8ish"; at least mine didn't...

That's what we all tell ourselves - it's certainly what I used to think, but the experiences I had tripping cruelly disabused me of that notion entirely.

I'm saying a decade later, after an afternoon of dogging, he sent a route we worked on for considerably longer but with no dogging, this at time when he was onsighting hard lines right and left.

You make it sound like NOBODY else was going to come along and do the route sober. Sounds like a little ego coming out of the acid trip. And I'd reply you'd have to climb them before legitimately making that statement. Both climbs turned back myself and four other climbers including my partner who did rings at a national level as a gymnast. I was told this past year that the third route we put up at the same time saw Todd Skinner "hanging from it like a xmas ornament" in '86 at the top of his game...

Yeah, I would be if those two times actually resulted in a more drastic permanent result. Instead I'm still firmly in the ranks of the 'jumpers' with everyone else. But I did learn the to accept and acknowledge I was jumping and that actually allowed me to be more aware and concious of it when I'm doing it and so do it a bit less. But at the time it did enable me to break through a long plateau to another level entirely by forcing me to look at my own [straight, whining] behavior. In someways it sucks because now I always feel like I'm jumping and know it's all too true...

I would very much beg to differ, though technically I don't consider hallucinogens "performance enhancing" so much as they simply tend to make you less prone to jumping off the rock. I say that because I don't believe almost all climbers "fall" off routes - they jump off of them 99.9% of the time. I think few climbers will ever climb at their true physical limit or at best will climb at that limit a couple of times in a lifetime of climbing. The rest of time we're all "jumping" off climbs at our emotional limit. Few, if any, climbers are willing to admit such a thing as everyone wants to believe they aren't "giving up" so much as reaching their physical limit. I fervently believe that is the [unfortunate] truth, though. That short of a select few folks who break through, or in circumstances where death is eminent, few climbers ever experience climbing at their physical limit. Hallucinogens tend to dampen that effect and allow you to push through that emotional barrier and play at or at least nearer your physical limit. I put up two hard FA's in the '70s that repulsed extremely determined and sustained efforts on our part only to succeed on the first attempt on each after dropping specifically for the routes. The result was 'The Electric Koolaid Acid Test' and 'Leaves of the Failing Faith'. Neither would have happened for decades or at all by any other path...

Computers suck. Do not get emotionally involved with any brand. Get the cheapest thing that works for you. I personally crank through IBM Thinkpads off ebay with great abandon because I tend to destroy them fairly quickly. I get Thinkpads because I do alot of MS-oriented development, I happen to like the trackpoint mouse feature, and also the "Ultrabay" slot that lets me alternately use it for a second hard drive or battery. Getting them off ebay way works for me, but I have a fair understanding of both ebay and computers to get away with this approach. In general, everyone should have a 1-4gb USB drive for their notebook, keep all your stuff in one root folder and back it up relentlessly. My desktops and servers all run on mirrored hard drives as I never trust a single drive of any make for any reason. Actually I run them with two sets of mirrored hard drives - one set for the operating system and program files and one for data files.

Edelrid EDDY "Eddy is the perfect belaying device for sport climbing for either novice or the experienced climber. The Eddy doesn't need much explanation and in simplicity is safety. Easy to thread, the rope follows logically the rope flow. A controlled descent with an emergency break system eliminates the "panic pull" syndrome which can lead to serious accidents. The Eddy provides maximum safety whether top roping or lead climbing with easy paying out of rope to the leader. Can be used for single ropes with diameters from 9 to 11.4 mm."

Personally, I think Bush should be impeached and then along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Perle tried as traitors. But that isn't what the country needs. It would also take two years and the Senate would never convict them; it would be what it was for Clinton, an attempt to deliberately stain and cripple a presidency - and we can't afford that now.