JosephH

Bummer I can't get out there today as I'm feeling particularly scummy and villainous here at work.

[Sorry, meant as a reply to Bill, not Mr. Hands] The rock on most of p1 and lower p2 of YW is too soft to try and pull the old bolts without destroying the rock, I know, I tried to reuse those exact holes and stopped. Again, two of the bolts we're ok for another couple of years, the rest popped right off with less than a full turn of the wrench and had cross-sections that sucked as bad as I thought they would. They're now 1/2" SS in virtually the same locations they were in for climbing purposes, all went in at a known year, and will last long past the time anyone arguing here will ever give a shit. As I said, get on the route and let me know how it's any different at all to climb. I'd love to hear given my objective was to insure there wasn't any difference. Again, if I were retrobolting it half the bolts on p1 would be gone.

How so? Again, no bolt got added, removed, or moved - it was rebolted in place exactly as it was. So, how is it exactly you take the fanciful flight from that to retrobolting Winter Delight? It's quite amazing that somehow the distinction between the two is lost on several of you. P.S. If I had been retrobolting it you'd know because the half of the p1 bolts that are completely unnecessary would be gone now.

If I were adding, removing or moving a bolt on YW or any other route then I'd be following the FA's wishes. But not rebolting bad bolts in the face of these comments: Sorry, all bets were off in the face of that sort of nonsense. Again, the route and the experience of climbing it is completely unaltered from the rebolting - go climb it and tell me otherwise. Rock fall blasting the hand rail off of the top of the p3 crux changed the experience of climbing the route; Jim, Bill and I trundling a ton or two of former holds off of the top of p1 changed it substantially; and folks muscling off a few holds here and there sure did as well - but my rebolting it, not at all. If anyone thinks otherwise then climb it and post up how the experience has changed. Otherwise, it just got new 1/2" SS bolts that will still be pristine when the whiners among you are bitching in your deathbed.

I would say your comments are always welcome, but I wouldn't want to taint you in the process.

You clearly aren't familiar with the prince of the fine whine...

Coming from someone who is definitely too busy looking for his baseball to do anything but bitch, I'll take that as a high complement.

Other than actually doing something, I'm no more 'empowered' than you or anyone else. And nothing is happening out there randomly, bad anchors have simply been replaced. The latter doesn't happen without the former. The route wasn't modified. As stated before that would be 'retrobolting'. The route has been modified several times over the last five years by rockfall and people tearing holds off, but that's it. Hey, pull out your keyboard and start misrepresenting the facts, shit-talking my way, or taking conversations negative and you're likely to get what you get. No entitlement involved. You want to take a shot at getting the closure lifted or modified? Have at it. Clean out one of the column routes? Very cool! I have a tool set just for that you're welcome to use. An anchor, pin, or bolt needs replacing? I have plenty of hangars, bolts, pins, rings, and slings available for you to use and a drill and hammer if you need one. Trash needs to be picked up? Pick it up and haul it out. Big, bad loose rock juju somewhere? Sort out a strategy for dealing with it safely with the BRSP. Need any help doing any of the above? Pm me here, I'm up for it. Bitch and whine like a little cyber girl and do nothing? You're on your own.

Good luck with that, for sure. I'm a stepfather and we purposefully stayed in PDX so my stepdaughter could grow up near her father. I can't imagine anyone thinking separating that bond could somehow be good for a child. More power to you.

Kenny, 'rebolting' lacks the 'tro' that would redefine it as 'retrobolting'. The difference between the two could only be considered subtle under some pretty special circumstances. perhaps, but only in a special understanding of it all. you did "re(tro)bolt" YW, though, Well, who could have anticipated? Apparently you actually don't know the difference between retrobolting and rebolting. Ok then, cool, but I think someone else is going to have to help you out with understanding the difference. Hmmm, almost hard to respond to a statement this convoluted, but what the hell, it's cc.com, so let's just jump in there with both feet. Now, questions of just how apropos the Internet is for discussing Jim's ideas and remembrances aside, I'll just assume you're misquoting whatever he actually did say. First off, the bolts on YW were/are in horrible shape and needed to be replaced. I let Jim know what I had in mind, to which he replied, in effect, every bolt on the route was in perfect shape and wouldn't need replacing and could never be replaced without screwing up the route because every bolt was in the 'perfect' spot. You may or may not forgive me, but I took those statements to be a bit laden with hyperbole, and so offered to do it with him so he could look at the condition of each bolt himself. We were lined up to do that before he hurt his knee. But it was a task I had set myself to get done last year as lugging all that shit around is better done at the end of the season than the start of it, and I did in fact go ahead with the replacements once I found out he was out of commission for the foreseeable future. Of the p1 and p2 bolts I replaced, two were solid and probably would have gone another five years, the rest were shot. The bolts were not 'moved' other than to provide a minimal distance from the previous hole. So, that's what actually went down; but let's be clear, under no circumstances, or at anytime, have I ever told anyone that "Jim said it was ok" But hey, there are no shortage of folks who have climbed the route since those bolts were swapped out and they are all welcome to chime in here with their statements about how the route climbs differently at all or "how it is all fucked up now". Please, would love to hear those comments. Maybe start with you given you said you just climbed it - how did the rebolting degrade your experience on those pitches? P.S. Oh, and I also fixed the loose bolt on the p4 crux, feel free to comment on the trouble with that decision as well.

Now that you mention it, I gave Cartier a belay on it last year or the year before and I believe he was saying at the time that the start seemed a bit spicer than he recalled from the time he had last done it - probably because that pin never got put back in. Bottom line with angles is that between the back of the spine and the edge of the flanges they just have too little material in actual contact with the rock to really last reliably over the long haul.

Kenny, 'rebolting' lacks the 'tro' that would redefine it as 'retrobolting'. The difference between the two could only be considered subtle under some pretty special circumstances.

There was a pin buried [very] low on RR that had been completely overgrown by a big hump of moss. It's there and reset, but as I said quite low. If Arent pulled one from higher up on the approach it would have been nice to know that so it could have been replaced and just not had the bolt in/out episode. If Arent knows where he pulled it from he or someone else should put one back, or I'd be happy to go out with him and see if we can figure out where it came from and replace it. RR is really the only 'attractive nuisance' of a line out there and then really only because of the rating / stars Olson gave it in PRC. [ EDIT: NEVERMIND, I at first thought you were still talking RR, but I see you were actually talking about that pin on BSS, my bad. I thought Arent replaced that angle awhile back, or did he decide it was a placement that take pro well enough? ]

Only if you don't know anything about pins or how well the bolts at Beacon have performed. Then don't be so damn clueless in jumping to wishful conclusions and denigrating those guys' free climbing abilities without talking to them - all the free climbing they did at Beacon was on lines whose fixed protection is virtually unaltered today from when they did them. Anyone suggesting otherwise is completely full of shit and has no idea what they're talking about. There is no way to do what you said you wanted to do without retrobolting. And hey, re-read my first response to your post about the issue and you'll see nothing about it was negative - I simply stated my opinion on the matter and then you immediately took, and continue to take, this conversation negative. Sure, once I'm back in shape to actually get up it. As it stands now I've only been out for one day of non-maintenance climbing and was violently ill that day as it turned out. Check back with me sometime next month if that's what you want to climb and that will be fine.

Probably Ozone. If dropzone, it was likely a practice as those guys have been onto the place since they hauled Stewart out of there.

I don't have anymore of the CMI pins, but I have as many conventional pins as you need for existing, non-clean, aid lines if fixing any of those pin placements will prevent damage to the rock.

It must be an interesting to live in a world where there are only opinions and no facts - wow, just make up any shit you want. Cool. Build a consensus of nonsense and you can no doubt justify bolting anything. The only thing I posted above that is opinion, is what I think about 'safe' climbing and Winter Delight's X-ness. Outside of that it is a fact that all the people I listed above have free climbed pretty much any route you can name exactly as they are today. It is fact that I didn't remove any necessary pins from any route. It is a fact it hasn't been raining pins off routes out there and they aren't changed from earlier free ascents. And it's a fact 85% of the anchor bolts replaced were bad, while only 25% or so of the pins were. Facts and opinions, you actually have to work pretty hard to screw up the difference between them and those are facts - each and every one of them - none are a matter of opinion. You guys can have as many flat-Earth opinions as you want, but it doesn't change the facts. Again, don't like Beacon scarefests? Don't climb them.

All of the above is fact, every word of it. Period. A 'consensus' of lies, innuendo, misremembrances, and incorrect statements doesn't alter any of the facts involved and that's in effect what you're talking about. I have no doubt whatsoever you and others can fabricate the 'reality' you need in order to justify retrobolting at Beacon. No, I replaced anchors and for essentially every sling you see there was a sling or chain there prior to the replacement. I've placed some pins on my FAs, I haven't placed a pin on an existing route where there wasn't one previously. I can only imagine what you consider dangerous. No, as I just said, those routes have all seen multiple free leads exactly as they are right now. You wish they "probably used pins" only because you can't envision it otherwise - the reality is they did not. No one has pulled any pins from those routes and they have not fallen out either - they're just stout, old school endeavors. Climb something else if you aren't up to the challenge. Many times and you don't sound like someone who climbs anything but 'safe' routes. You won't know unless you climb it. Again, what you want is not possible without retrobolting an existing line.

Maybe elsewhere, and particularly in granite, but not out at Beacon. In 2007 I checked the soundness of all the pins across the South Face on every route and either found them sound, reset them if loose, or replaced them if corroded (with John Middendorf's spare pin rack bought for the purpose). This came on the heels of replacing 68 anchor sets. In 54 of the 68 anchor sets both bolts were bad or spinners; a whopping 85% were bad. By contrast, only about 25% of the pins required any maintenance and most all of those were way older than the bad bolts. So, as I said, at Beacon, the pins have vastly outperformed the bolts. When you clip an old pin out at Beacon on any of the trade routes you can bet they are likely way more bomb than any of the old protection bolts on those same routes. That would require retrobolting one of the lines that are there. That would be one person's opinion. It's not one I share, nor do many others. The split-shank, buttonhead bolts used at Beacon are way, way burlier than any modern bolt ever sunk, the one I did try to remove burned two new Lennox Sawzall blades without so much as a nick and either of those blades would have gone through 20 5-pc bolts like butter. The only question with those old buttonheads is the condition of the hangers. No you don't know any such facts. Ask Olson, Wallace, Cartier, Nakahira, Yoder, Stiefel, Lyford, Sowerby, pink or any of the others if they were using pins on their many free ascents of any line of your choice - they weren't - they free climbed them with exactly what's there today. And anyone who claims I pulled a necessary pin on any line - let alone a line I haven't climbed - is flat out a liar, period. I removed three - count'em - three small, worthless angles which wouldn't hold falls and were in obvious placements that each take solid pro (and none of the three were on any of the lines you're talking about). In fact, the reality is just the opposite, I replaced about a half-dozen pins that Opdycke said had been pulled and stolen in the intervening years. There is no other story, and anyone who claims there is has no idea what they're talking about and never talked with me about what was done or not done. All facets of this statement are patently false in every respect. Winter Delight is not X rated and there is no way of doing what you want without retrobolting an existing line.

There are a lot of scarefests at Beacon. There was place-and-remove pin use back when lines out there were aided, but as free climbs they didn't use the technique and all those lines have gone free as they are. There is the odd case here and there a pin was taken, but Bluebird Direct is not one of them. To quote Olson: I'm personally completely against retrobolting existing lines at Beacon for any reason, but particularly to make them 'safer'. Given my age, and with a daughter up at UW, I can certainly empathize with both being a family man and, in my case, being old, but that's the cycle of life and the choices we make for ourselves. Other folks are younger, single and either haven't made those choices yet, or chose differently, and are up for assuming more risk and challenges than you or I. So there's just no good reason I can see for retrobolting to remove risks on existing lines for those of us who made choices we consider incompatible with the risks associated with some of them. Start down that slope and someone else comes along and want's things 'safer' than the next guy and pretty soon you've thrown open the door to with a lowest-common-denominator approach to retrobolting. From my perspective that sort of retrobolting is the antithesis of what Beacon is all about. It also wouldn't be in line with Opdycke's mantra of "keeping it real". That, and there are plenty of other great lines to climb out there which protect just fine. [ Note: The pins out at Beacon way outperformed the bolts of the same eras and are every bit as solid as them, so it's not like a pin out there represents a 'lesser' or less secure form of fixed pro by any means. ]

Of course! Let's get money from people who don't have any. Dude, the treasury will score BIG!!! Now why didn't we think of that sooner?

Yes, exactly, those very same people...

Snow is one of the republicans who demanded the offsets, check it yourself - they are wholly of republican origin. And how would you pay for extending tax cuts for the wealthy?

Well, not sure about the number thing, but if you want to come down to Beacon sometime I could take you up 'Little Wing' out there...

You're in denial. The Democrats voted for it, Obama signed it. Nobody "forced" them to do anything. Are you retarded? The republicans who voted for the bill demanded the offsets as the price of their votes and the cash had to come from somewhere; no democrat wanted to cut those programs nor would they have if not for those crossover republicans. Do I hear you and republicans screaming for similar offsets to pay for any extension of W's giveaway to the rich? I'm sure some wealthy folks will end up on foodstamps if those unpaid for tax cuts aren't extended.