JosephH

Being a born-again atheist, I would have thought it would make ya think 'bout not riding motorcycles. But no doubt to each his own. Pretty much just what we were talking about - the choices we make relative to what gambling we're prepared to do with objective hazards. And not being judgmental, but for myself the benefits of riding a motorcycle just don't begin to compensate for what I perceive as the inherent risks involved. And my perception is, helmet or no, that it's gambling with way less optimal odds under the best of circumstances, let alone mixing it up with PNW drivers and weather. Glad you didn't get any more badly hurt.

Don't kid yourselves - the right wing has thoroughly adopted anti-vaccine propaganda as another leg in their anti-science / anti-government agenda adding it alongside climate-change and evolution as just another example of 'big government' imposing on our lives.

Oh, got it - no, you are absolutely right. It wasn't discovered that I was severely myopic until I was almost thirteen. Prior to that I literally wandered about oblivious in a diffuse ADHD haze. Because of that I never adapted to any form of speed, be it me moving (carnival rides - horrifying) or, god forbid, spheroid objects flying in my direction out of random three-dimensional space (always too late). Along with that my ability to keep pace with, and react to, fast-changing circumstances could at best be called 'paralytic'. And that's what I like about rock climbing - rocks are seldom turbulent, cagey, or moving faster than I can keep up with. Hell, I get moving faster than I can keep up with sometimes (breathing) and as a result I by and large limit my exposure to those mediums where I can evaluate and approach them at my own glacial speed. At one point I did [briefly] learn to ski steep runs (there was a woman involved), but to be honest, I would have much preferred it if there had been a red button on the top of the right ski pole that I could push at any time and just make it all stop. Similarly with bikes, in college I ran into the back of a parked car at night while thinking about something else entirely in not one, but two separate incidents six months apart. Luckily both were dark fastbacks which is why they got away from me; it was early in my Darwinian "be here now" phase. But I did grow up on a river and took enough rides down it in all weather conditions to know I have no business doing whitewater - the only hope I would have would be to just give myself over to the river and hope for the best. Somehow I don't think it works like that. Windsurfing is the only speed sport I do, but there I can always let out the sail and stop even on my 2.8m in a 60kt wind (big waves at the coast are another matter altogether). Oh, and in college I did manage to sort out barefoot water-skiing, but that really didn't involve much more than holding on and abusing yourself. All of the above is why I tend to see things in a very binary way as subjective (under my control) or objective (not under my control) as well as either static (rock) or dynamic (mountains). I can fine-tune my own game under static/subjective circumstances (rock climbing) and suck to a greater or lesser extent at the various dynamic/objective ones. And with rock climbing there are added bonus points for the fact that year-in, year-out the rocks are, for the most part, in exactly the same place as the last time I was out. As for motorcycles - PNW drivers are utterly frightening on so many levels even on blue sky days when you're in a car. Exposing yourself to them out in the open on a bike or motorcycle seems completely insane. Baby jebus christ, to encounter worse drivers you have to go to FL and AZ retirement communities filled with New Yorkers who never drove before retiring. And don't even get me started about horses...

I don't need 100% to commit to an unreversable set of moves - I just need to be able to convince myself I'm in the ballpark. I free climb over a lot of marginal pro on FAs and have taken no shortage of 50+ footers over the years. It is a fine line though and I've backed off of as many of those situations as I've pushed. Edit: I should state that I'm ridiculously rational when climbing - in fact, turning off thinking and evaluating is probably my biggest challenge in a clutch along with breathing which I often forget to do. That as opposed to my old partner who in a clutch could sort of roll his eyes back, get almost malevolently primitive with a strange breathing pattern - when you saw that you knew you were with the best possible rope gun in circumstances where you both might die. I've always been alternately somewhat frightened and envious of him in that regard.

Thanks, that's interesting data.

True that.

Every time I've come close to dying while climbing I distinctly remember not want to even be there just then. In fact, the time I was closest to dying I actually had a slo-mo 'life-flashing-before-your-eyes' moment (in b&w no less) while placing the piece that saved my life and then a heartbeat later, at the instant of clipping / falling which happened simultaneously, the thought and image flashed by that I'd rather be on my toilet reading a magazine. Ever since I've never bought into the 'he died doing what he loved' line you hear so often and I can categorically state here for the record I definitely don't want to die climbing. Again, both risk perception and actual risk are a strange, not well-studied aspect of human behavior. My old climbing partner did his masters on risk perception and proposed a number of entirely safe experiments, but his thesis committee [ironically] ruled them all out as 'too risky'. I lived in Hood River for six years and lived and hung out with all manner of windsurfers, mtn. bikers, and skiiers. From a serius injury perspective up there it was all mtn. biking with skiing a somewhat close second. Matter of fact, knee braces were as common as dogs up there in the 87-93 timeframe. Deaths seemed to be fewer in mtn. biking and much higher in skiing, however. Would be curious to know how many folks die at ski resorts every year in the US and I suspect it's not a small [or published] number.

Sssshhhhhh! Quiet! Negotiations in progress! God forbid documents submitted to public officials should be public. And lawdy, we's all knoes dems officials is so easily confused. And if they're easily confused, god only knows just how confusing it would all be for the poor average cc.com climber who makes it out to Beacon a few times a year but doesn't know the secret handshake and aren't part of the club - definitely no need for them to see or comment on any of the details. Sigh. I always did wonder exactly what 'formal' meant. Same as it ever was. All in all a proud display of openness and the true potential of social media. Ya, ubetcha.

Curious whether they were they on rock or on a mountain...? One was a highly respected professional ski mountaineering guide, he slid off a cliff, one was a climber/scrambler, unroped who fell off a typical chossy Cascade peak, the third rapped off the end of a rope. All three were totally preventable. It doesn't matter what they were doing that got them dead, it's that they were all completely convinced that they had minimized the risk as much as possible. And unfortunately, they were probably right. Sounds like two due to misjudging objective hazards and one to a subjective mistake. Always a bummer however it happens.

Curious whether they were they on rock or on a mountain...?

I certainly believe frequency of risk exposure plays into it all, but my take on it after thirty eight years is still that the predominant driver and divide is subjective vs. objective risk and that is the real gulf between rock climbing and alpine / mountain climbing. I know of far and away more experienced climbers who have died in the mountains than on rock. Almost all the deaths on rock were due to some form of pilot error doing something they'd done thousands of times and, while that does speak to the 'frequency of risk exposure' argument, they were all subjective risks. The mountain deaths on the other hand were almost all related to objective hazards beyond their control beyond them simply making other judgment calls to not be where they were when bad [objective] circumstances descended up on them. I would also say on the subjective side (rock climbing) that 'risk context' plays heavily into the picture - i.e. when Alex Hounold free solos, he does so in a 'risk context' that is highly constrained by both the level of his skills and the depth of his experience - sure he's gambling, but he is extremely familiar with the odds. It is simply much harder, if not impossible, to 'constrain' the objective hazards on a mountain - i.e. you can't control the mountain, you can only gamble on it's behavior. It's also telling that top-tier alpine climbers are injured and die at a far higher rate than do top-tier rock climbers. For me it boils down to what I'm betting on - am I betting on myself (as subjective a hazard as they get), or on how what I'm climbing is going to behave (objective hazards - low on rock, high on mountains). I climbed Glenwood Falls in '76 and three days later it was laying across I-70 spilling into the Colorado River; at the time I was on it I had no idea that was even part of the bet. So I'm still thinking it's a lot easier and more common to 'fool' yourself into believing you'll get away with a dubious bet in alpine versus rock settings. P.S. Can't argue with Ivan on that one...

I suspect the better analogy with regard to NFL players, and boxers - particularly in the context of lying to themselves - would be the possibility for permanent brain injuries... [ P.S. love the banner ad for studying mortuary science at some edu that was just up above this thread... ]

It's a pretty simple proposition - gather all the closures folks know about into one sticky post at the top of the Access Issues forum. And the problem with that is what?

Risk perception is a funny deal when you really get down to it and it's not something humans are necessarily always good at just because we are captive to an relatively odd mixed bag of our instincts, physical perceptions, novelty, habits, confidence, aversions, fears, experience, and rote behaviors. We have the strange ability to prioritize risks that result in making the physical realities and potential consequences of traveling down a highway at 75mph disappear into an unconscious background while focusing not on the road, but rather on finding just the right tune for the moment or checking our email. We seek out novelty and stimulation while simultaneously attempting to avoid risk and establish stability. We are walking conflicts fully capable of working against our best interests with nary a worry or clue (DAW - Darwin At Work). Against that backdrop it's easy to see how some of us, in the course of mastering novelty, end up reducing certain aspects of experience to an un- or little-considered background hum when in reality they represent high risks states that should instead be constantly monitored. It's under those conditions that cavalier attitudes, over-confidence, denial, and willful obfuscation of the obvious can set in putting us at risk. And, hell, that's without even factoring in hubris, addiction, compulsion and obsession. Our ability to drive experience from novelty to normalcy is definitely a double-edged sword when it comes to mastery in highly-technical, performance-based, life-and-death activities. It is a well-study phenom in some occupations such as commercial aviation where, despite a driving 'sameness' which develops over years, pilots must learn what aspects of their experience have to stay on a constantly vigilant front burner of their awareness. In short, it's easy to let the realities and potential consequences of the easy free solo or quick dash up Hood get lost in any number of ways without even getting to lying to ourselves. I think we get into an active lying stage when our choices more obviously conflict with self-image and / or external responsibilities, e.g. "I've still got it! (you don't, but want to find out one way or the other anyway)" or you do have it, but have infants in cribs waiting at home. I come from a family of test and commercial pilots with a father who started in biplanes and retired from 747s. All this business is why he used to say if a person actually needs to get to a destination, then they shouldn't be the one flying the plane - it twists priorities, clouds judgment, and leads the person into series of 'small denials' that can have catastrophic results. It's certainly not a black and white issue by any means nor one that a single individual can execute perfectly on even if they want to (that's why the plane has two pilots). And the "old and bold" colloquialisms aside, it's a worthy topic and a challenging aspect of climbing if you intended to do it decade after decade. I know I've had to survive myself again and again over the years - but I will say, rock is a pretty unforgiving mirror that tends to dispel delusion and self-grandeur pretty quickly in all but the most hardcore. I pretty much know whether I've 'got it' or not just walking up to the rock or at the first touch at the latest. I think it's probably a bigger issue in alpine, where you're gambling with objective hazards and you are definitely trying to "get somewhere" in spite of them.

After 25 years in the NW (and a couple before in NH with Mt. Washington) I'm of the firm opinion that people - collectively (socially) and individually tend to badly underestimate the risks involved with climbing NW volcanoes. The ease of access and quasi-technical scope of the climbing lends itself to success for most all of those 10-12k people who do the trek each year and, sure, most all of them can get up and down if nothing goes wrong - but what percentage of those same 10-12k people are actually capable of responding appropriately in the case things go south? I'm guessing an astonishingly low percentage of them. I also think that same dynamic pervades personal, social, and online attitudes among NW alpine climbers as well. The high success rate for summitting makes for some pretty cavalier social attitudes around "running up Hood" from what I've seen over the years. And year in, year out accidents happen on the mountain to cc.com members variously related to weather, equipment, conditions, etc. which, from my perspective, and almost to an incident, all boil down to failures of judgment, with, I suspect, attitude playing a role in the mix more often than not. Overall, mountain climbing turns the mix of objective and subjective risk you experience in rock climbing on its head - instead of low objective risks, mountain climbing exhibits comparatively high levels of objective risk even on a good day. That change in the subjective / objective risk ratio towards higher objective risks basically and undeniably equates to mountain climbing entailing a greater or lesser degree of gambling around those objective hazards (weather, conditions, avalanches, falling rocks and ice, etc). In the end, being a wise gambler means learning quick, always being on your game, and knowing when to fold them. Being cavalier about climbing Hood, whether its your first or fiftieth time is likely not a smart approach to dealing with the mountain. That all said, if shit goes south really badly I'm with the old adage, "the deader, the better."

Well, there you have the essence of lead roped soloing - stevetimetravlr hasn't had any problems, others say they have - it's up to anyone who rope solos to sort out and dial in their own system and to make their own judgment calls around what does or doesn't work for them. I've made my choices, stevetimetravlr has made his, you'll have to make your own given you'll be the only one on the end of your rope...

There have been numerous reports over the past decade on Supertopo.com, RockClimbing.com, and others regarding the SP failing and / or working sub-optimally under cold conditions on dry ropes. From: http://www.summitpost.org/outdoor-gear/no-name/266 and seen elsewhere.

Word of caution on that; the one complaint about the SP that turns up repeatedly is it not working well in cold weather.

it's no longer kewl to hate fags. pretty much all we got left capable of public derision are bus drivers and their occasional dipshit passengers The present crop of American liberals still seem to do ok limiting their hate to Christians, Jews, and Sara Palin. Palin should be free to marry, but not breed under the Protect America's Intellect Act.

The don't catch upside down or even body horizontal falls - stick with the SP.

Just saw this post up thread - where exactly is this nest relative to Trout and is it known to be an eagle nest (as opposed to say a hawk)? If that nest is the reason for the closure then that would certainly make monitoring of the place easy enough to determine if a nesting pair chooses to use it or not this year.

Yeah, I agree, it's totally frustrating. But with the BLM / FS you're dealing with a mixed bag of personnel of various personal political persuasions and differing experiences dealing with a variety of adversarial and antagonistic user groups. You're also dealing with long institutional histories of federal agencies acting unilaterally without a lot of oversight up until recent decades. Not great as you say, but the choices remain the same regardless - either you, a) learn what you can and work with the hand you're dealt, b) walk away and climb elsewhere during the closure, or c) become a perpetually wailing victim. Personally, I'd recommend either a) or b), but to each his own.

Yeah, there are a lot of people upset over raptor wind farm kills, but then wind energy isn't 'free' in any sense of the word when it comes to bats and raptors. For the NW to produce wind energy there will always be a toll on raptors. So are climbers being asked to pay a 'price' for that? Indirectly, but u-betcha, absolutely. Given the rapid growth of wind farms in OR and WA the number of raptor kills has gone way, way up in total numbers in the NW. To compensate, especially given the range of eagles, those wind farm losses translate to pressure on managers to be diligent in managing protections wherever else they can. It impacts climbers in another way as well. Raptor biologists who would normally be available for monitoring climbing sites are instead now buried up to their ears processing the environmental impact statements (EIS) associated with proposed wind farm applications and running kill and kill abatement studies on existing farms. Because of that, they can't monitor climbing sites with anywhere near the frequency they otherwise would prior to the wind farms. That's further compounded in the federal case simply by the amount of land under BLM and FS management here out west relative to the biologists they have available to do the required work. That's why the Feds are far more likely to do broader blanket, static, and unmonitored raptor closures with the Feb 1st-Aug 31st dates typical in federal closures throughout the west. My guess is in this case they actually had every intent of doing the the studies and analysis, but in the end couldn't line up the requisite resources to actually do them so just moved forward with the closure due to the management pressure from the wind farm kills. The fact western BLM and FS managers are working with limited biology resources is all the more reason to not get adversarial with them, but rather try to establish a working relationship with them and especially their raptor biologists. See if you can get out and go monitoring with them and learn where the traditional eagle nests in the vicinity of Trout are. Build that relationship and you at least have a shot of monitoring the closure and getting early opens if they don't nest, or once the chicks have fledged if they have. It's a raw deal, but given steady climbing out at Trout is a relatively recent, but fast growing, phenom no one should be surprised it's now hit BLM's radar given its proximity to Smith with its climbing and raptor closures. My take on it is if you guys have any relationship with Cassandra at all you should do everything possible to build on that and try to establish your own monitoring out there with whatever folks are willing and available. The BLM out west here isn't known for working closely with climbers outside of a few select locales like Red Rock where they have no choice, but I'd strongly suggest you give working with them a shot because if you take an antagonistic stance with them they'll just lock it up with a static closure and your only recourse will be in federal court and I can guarantee that avenue will go absolutely nowhere in a hurry. Even with the AF fully engaged you're better off not pissing them off as the AF is engaged with the BLM across the west and those BLM managers have email. And who knows, maybe you can set some cooperative precedents with them out at Trout. Bummer the place is out of the closet now, but this sort of thing naturally happens when a crag suddenly becomes as highly publicized and popular as fast as Trout has. That's because 'complainers', who choose to remain deliberately ignorant on the issue, and who adopt highly adversarial, victim-based stances and approaches to 'dealing' with closures are both entirely counterproductive and butt stupid. And hell, steady breaches of the closure, endlessly misrepresenting facts, and relentless shit-talking of agency personnel was a real winner at Beacon. And that was at a state park where access to WSP and WDFW personnel have been entirely open all along. Federal agency personnel aren't nearly so accessible, open, or responsive as the state agencies of record at Beacon and the BLM and FS also have far broader leeway to act as they see fit in the interests of their charters with less effective oversight than state agencies. That's because the recourse through federal courts are expensive, arduous, and largely unproductive for something like climbing, particularly when Audubon drops in to all those federal proceedings. In other words, by all means, you Trout folks can certainly adopt the 'Beacon' approach to dealing with this closure; but then you should just skip the website, organizing, and politics and just move right onto the closure breaches, shit-talking Cassandra & Co., and endless bitching. That way, anyone who comes along later who might want to try to do something about the closure will basically be behind the curve and working against the tide from the onset.

Ouch, that sucks. August 31st is a typical Federal lands open date. August 1st is what it should be at the latest. If folks are interested enough, it would be good to contact Cassandra and find out: * Are there any known nest locations in the area surrounding Trout? * Are there any known nests at Trout itself? * Are there any known nests within 300 yards of either end of Trout? * Will there be any BLM resources monitoring the Golden Eagles in that area during the closure dates? * If yes, who will those resources be? * If yes, what physical locations will they be monitoring from? * If yes, will the BLM be prepared to declare an early open if there is no nesting activity within 300 yards of Trout? * If no, will they allow interested folks to cooperatively monitor in lieu of a BLM resource?

I'm not riled up, just amazed to see 'Beacon climbers' bothering to go to the trouble of putting together a proposal for a partial close and then deliver it to entirely the wrong people. The point is, doing stuff like talking with a wholly unsympathetic Audubon and making proposals to the wrong people just serves to highlight and underscore a continued unwillingness to get real about the closure. And at what point is it all just willful, wishful, and deliberate ignorance? If the AF operated in a similar 'the-world-is-the-way-we-want-it-to-be-dammit' bubble of denial like this they would never have recovered or protected a single climbing area in their entire history. Sure, on the surface it's all a pretty straightforward proposition - just convince the WDFW they should partially or fully lift the closure. Under the hood it's a entirely a different story; you (and they) have to justify any change in some legitimate manner which addresses the various biological, legal, policy, management, resource, and enforcement constraints associated with any change in the closure's status. And that's just within the WDFW; there are a lot of other stakeholders, like Audubon, who would be involved (more like pile on) in the requisite public comment period that would precede any official move to change or lift the closure. The bottom line is that spending year after year wallowing in a lament of fervent belief the 'true' answer lies in finding and convincing the 'right' people just how cruel an injustice it all is may be a great bonding, feel-good activity in an ass-grabbing, pass-the-bong, lets-all-howl-at-the-moon, drum-circle sort of way, but it's an entirely counterproductive approach to dealing with the closure. And in the end it just ushers generation after generation of new kids who don't know any better into a [personality] cult of collective victimhood. I know that's harsh and you hate hearing it, but sorry, that's exactly what's been going on out there for way, way too long now. And, hey, you can be out there all the time, become a social media or TV celebrity, and sleep with people in high places, but in the end it doesn't mean squat to the WDFW or WA / Federal law. And after years of relentless whining and bitching - particularly when resources like Kevbone's wife, Brian, and Geoff who are all attorneys are available to get real answers one way or the other (not to mention Kenny who for god's fucking sake works for the very agency imposing the closure) - it all gets oppressively tiring. You know, how did Kevin put it? A real downer and wet blanket over the whole friggin' place. Maybe it's finally time to instead consider either getting real or moving on and just letting it go (or not I suppose). But then of course, what the fuck, I'm just the crazy one. Right on dudes and c'est la fuckin' vie - works for me any day of week - better crazy than a perpetually clueless victim.