JosephH

I've got a couple of available Burans I could let you have cheap...

Yeah, saw the phenom in windsurfing - people who were [chronically] overweight 10-20lbs progressively trading in rig components for lwt carbon-fiber ones in the attempt to shave weight for better performance. But in terms of performance on the water it didn't really matter whether the extra weight was on you or your rig - they would have been way better off just losing a couple of pounds.

Learn to speak and think in Mandarin.

I know I've been thinking about trading all my climbing gear for a piece of land big enough to permanently park my new shopping cart on...

Beacon closed February 1st and will be closed until young Peregrines are flying competently - sometime between June 17th and August 1st historically over the past decade.

These dozen heavy pots have never cracked or broken in 15 years on the deck and in one week they all completely crack and delaminate and it's not an unusual event? I don't buy it at all. I also just discovered the neck cracked and dropped off of the thick glass hummingbird feeder hanging in the back of the yard. Whatever freeze/thaw event happened was fast and dramatic. Want to blow it off as nothing out of the ordinary, cool? But I'll be checking any and all flakes I'm on as the weather turns nicer and I start to get out more.

Exactly. Over the years the worst bolts I've replaced were 5pc bolts sunk in the 90's. Outwardly looked pretty good, but were completely rusted shite in reality. Visual appearance really means very little and age doesn't mean much either if you're talking non-SS bolts.

Many of those buttonheads are made of a metal far stronger and harder than any modern bolt and remain still essentially bomb and indestructible today - something that unfortunately can't be said for most of the hangers attached to them. Aside from the hanger issue, it seems like most people's concern with those bolts isn't the bolt breaking, it's the bolt ripping out of the hole - no? I once tried pulling two at Beacon, had all the requisite gear down to custom-made LA tuning forks. Nada, no-go, not budging, never-going-to-come-out. Then I went and got the battery powered Sawzall with a brand new Lennox T2 bi-metal blade - and I can cut 5pc bolts all day long with these blades like so much butter. The buttonheads? First one utterly smoked two blades in no time at all without so much as making a perceptible notch in the bolt. The damn things are still there completely unfazed and undamaged from the experience. The hangers on them? Basically shite on their way out, but I'd still dive on either.

Many of those buttonheads are made of a metal far stronger and harder than any modern bolt and remain still essentially bomb and indestructible today - something that unfortunately can't be said for most of the hangers attached to them.

No rush, I've had no use for them for months now and always have a spare set for emergencies (which at this point climbing of any kind would be).

Haven't climbed since I lost them... Glad someone still has the nuts to climb.

This +1. Dark BiColor ropes are VERY hard to spot pattern changes on. See Joseph's picture of the Maxim above for a great example of what DOESN'T work. Funny, I've never had the slightest trouble finding the change in this rope and I'm on my second one...

Bill will hold the "Slim Pickens" trundling award for all time out at Beacon - often imitated, never duplicated.

The generational difference really boils down to your 'falling' to 'take' ratio.

Yeah, I have a set, send me a pm...

Have sharpied every Mammut Supersafe I've owned sooner or later given Mammut's weak middle marking - no problem so far, but then again, they're Supersafes which are a very burly rope to begin with. Not sure I'd be doing it to a 9.2. Also, when I have the slightest doubt about where the middle is - night or day - I get ahold of both ends and lower it from those ends to the middle so there is absolutely no doubt regardless of pattern or markings.

I understand Metolius can't [legally] recommend you alter one of their products (maybe you'd sew the middle marker through the 1/3 point instead of the midpoint), but I know hand-sewing some thread through the rope a couple of times with closely spaced passes is both how they prototyped it and how they do it in production.

The Metolius guys just hand sewed the prototypes of those middle markers for awhile before they went into production and I believe it was stuff from a fly fishing place. I use them and also love this 9.9 'Glider' rope: from here at decent prices: http://bit.ly/fCG6L8

Every winter we leave some fairly heavy ceramic / red clay pots out on our deck. We've done this for years with no damage to any of the pots. Now while this hasn't been a particularly hard winter in PDX, something unusual occurred earlier this winter - all the pots on the deck either fractured or exhibit odd layer splintering / delaminating. Pots cracking, yeah, once in a blue moon, but this was a specific and sharp event that cracked and delaminated pretty much all the pots. It has left me wondering if some of the more fracture-prone rock in PDX might have been similarly affected - places like Ozone and Broughton come to mind, particularly with respect to delaminating flakes. Anyway, just a heads up as we launch into spring that you might want to double-check fragile holds / flakes that have been solid in the past...

Exactly, or with anything else real or imagined.

I shouldn't worry too much about the threat of resource shortages of stuff we pull out of the earth, they are likely the very least of our problems going forward. At the current rate of habitat destruction and species extinction I would personally be way, way more concerned about emerging pandemic threats (if I were a worrying sort).

Yeah, that is a nice chart as well, but I am not convinced with regard to peak oil relative to overall energy. We haven't even scratched the surface of conservation, vehicle efficiency, effective use of nuclear / solar / wind / wave, transmission efficiencies, etc. I more suspect peak oil will simply be about getting us out of the same old rut than a real threat of any kind. We did survive running out of whale oil...

I'm guessing every generation thinks that their times are unique...