JosephH

True, incompetence and addiction do seem to go hand in hand, maybe the poor sot who did in the anchor had just been using too much of the stuff and got way ahead of himself. At least he wasn't chalking or carving arrows up the route for a second who couldn't follow a rope - another perennial favorite.

I suppose one would have to be hinduphobic as well on this count...

In some cases that's true, but in other cases it's not, and not all the anchors have slings and rings. Without the slings in some places the pull is going to suck real bad such as windsurfer and the top of FFS. Rings are also the tradition at Beacon and the sliding-X configuration makes 'picking' your spot to lay the rappel ropes over the rock clean while still equalizing. And last they make rapping off different sides of some columns possible which I do in a few spots depending on which side of the column I'm headed down.

Said slings are fine on Windsurfer as well, but I have no doubt our knife-wielding date accountant will have at them all. Again, clueless.

First off, the webbing wasn't three years old when installed, it was brand new off the spool - it was three years old, barely, when said gumby cut it off. And the anchor slings in question looked and were entirely fine and the person who did the butchering was going solely by the date, and even there had no idea what he was doing. Bottomline the guy was clueless regardless of how long he's been climbing and incompetent to be replacing anchors for other people (especially in light of his replacement). We get one through about every other year.

If anyone thinks a three year old, doubled and redundant, hardly-faded-at-all, sling anchor is anything but bomb, they need to go back to sport climbing and skip trad and alpine climbing altogether (and possibly climbing outdoors at all). That and be sure and collect your weenie and paranoia merit badges (especially for going by the date versus the condition of the anchor) - either way you're a regular Boy Scout and probably not ready for the nasty realities of trad climbing.

No, his argument was not valid, he was mistaken and his judgment was entirely off - the slings on that anchor were entirely fine and bomb - particularly compared with the garbage he left. If you did a pull test of what was there and what he left, I'd guess what he left would pull at half the load of what was there. Far older 1" webbing in any number of pull tests comes in at around 14-19kn and the slings he cut off were fully redundant and doubled and would likely pull in the 25-30kn range (the bolts would probably go first). They were just under three years old and by the standard of faded, old webbing that gets tested it wouldn't even qualify as 'old' in any event. [ Edit: just made arrangements to pull test the anchor that's at the top of 'Flying Swallow' which has been out exposed more than just about any other anchor out there and is coming up on five years old. I'll take it off and replace it entirely so as to leave it intact with rap hangers and rings for the testing. I anticipate the anchor will be mounted for testing as it was up on the route. Won't happen for a bit, but I'll post up on this thread when the results are in. I'm betting it goes at over 25k or that the load tester maxs out, but we'll have to wait and see. ]

Not giving me a stroke, half the anchors would disappear entirely if it were up to me. And if you don't like upper Dastardly without bolts I suspect half the anchors disappearing might give you a stroke or at least a minor seizure or two. I personally have no problem with the captive Fixe chain / ring units other than they're expensive; freehanging chains I do have a problem with. I'm also guessing on granite the chains don't wear patterns in the rock the way chain will on basalt in heavy Gorge winds. That, and replacing anchors on El Cap is a different proposition than on Beacon, where it's comparatively no trouble at all. But in this case, just like with the closure, my own personal opinion about it is entirely irrelevant, the WSP SW Resource Steward made the call.

Actually, I think in almost every case so far it's just been a matter of inexperience, high anxiety, or incompetent judgment. He certainly can, but I'd be removing them as fast as he put them in. Do you get to decide what is appropriate and what is not? Well, isn't that the frigging question of the hour, who does decide?

No, they're pretty important to sport climbing.

One of the then younger climbers went a little bolt crazy up there and on Big Ledge, but didn't have the technique down so left too much bolt out of the rock. That and the bolts he placed in upper Dastardly flew in the face of forty years of tradition of doing it without them. Kind of a "if you can't do it without them, then don't do it" sort of deal. Are we again talking about the temp work anchor? If so I'm not sure which part of 'temp' and 'work' anchor you're not getting. Appropriate bolts and pins should stay fixed, inappropriate stuff should go. There's nothing about bolts making it into rock that graces them with some right-to-be-there. They can be removed just as easy as placed. Sure we're talking about the same rock? The one directly in line with you and the anchor when you finish pulling the vertical moves (down and right)? The one barely on there and wedged from behind by a large, long narrow rock? If so, it wouldn't take a crow bar and everyone should refrain from going anywhere near it. It is also so high up and aimed slightly towards the tracks that it's a real good bet it might make it onto them - a bad outcome all the way around if it did. The BRSP and WSP SW Resource Coordinator wanted all the chains and colored tat down. The ok was given to replace them with natural colored slings. That and chains suck.

What do you know about those upper Dastardly bolts? As for the bolts at the top of the rock scar, they were temp work anchors, they weren't there before and they aren't necessary now beyond being convenient for monitoring the scar over the next year. But given the precarious nature of the large rock between the top of YW and that anchor I think it's entirely prudent to chop them as soon as possible which I'll be doing later this week when I go up to fix the anchor on YW.

Get's rapped a lot by folks who don't get up p2 or aren't trying to get up p2, ditto for p3. Are we chopping bolts all over Beacon?

Please do not alter, replace, remove, or augment the sling/ring anchors out at Beacon. The sling anchors in place are two independent and fully redundant sliding-X of 1" mil-spec webbing with two 50kn SS rings. They'll last a decade no problem, but in any case are dated with the year installed, actively maintained, and replaced every 2-4 years depending on how much traffic a route sees. If you see or suspect a problem with one of the anchors please post up here, or pm me and it will get resolved asap. The reason for the post is the slings were removed on Young Warriors p1 and p2, with the bomb slings/rings on p2 replaced with a merely adequate, non-redundant arrangement and one of the SS rings was taken. Again, the slings on the anchors and raps of all the trade routes in particular out at Beacon need nothing done to them unless they have somehow been damaged.

Young Warriors got top down cleaning last night. Tried to be fairly thorough, dumping all the loose rock off the route. Got most of the larger rock chips, moss and dirt on the direct line as well, though it will still be dusty here and there until we get some rain.

Or - seeing how globalization appears to be working and leveling the playing field - we just take our place along side every other struggling third world country given our unwillingness to foster a healthy, highly-skilled workforce. That was another of Thurow's comments that day: His point being no nation can run a decent school system with everyone doing their own thing with no national standards of achievement. P.S. Oh, and it isn't the teachers who are to blame - it's the parents.

What's the fastest c2c time on it with a dog?

Yes, the secret door to the Reptilian HQ has been exposed!!!

The orange line is Riverside.

Good to know. Already have a pretty bum left shoulder, always trying to avoid screwing it up worse or overdoing the right one. Yeah, Riverside is on the Upper Grassy Ledges. You can get up there by starting the first bit up to the LoLP and cutting left. I get up there by going down to the last step before stepping down to the little ledge at the top of Flying Dutchman and doing the boulder moves right there on the corner. Either way will get you there and Riverside is pretty obvious both by it's left-leaning arc and by the nice moss-carpeted ledge at the base of it.

Yes, finally got out and was checking on all the YW fixed pro. Was seconding p4 when Rick went by under me. I had stopped to clean things up a bit, and had hung my rope-soloing pack from the rope while I did so I could move around easier. Need to go up and really clean p3 down to the ground in one of the next few late nights. What a mess.

Sorry to hear that, but you did the right thing relative to 'pouring more ommf' into the start of it, not much else can be done there but that. Might have to get that shoulder looked at if it's still out of whack. Do you recall the particular movement or position you were in when it happened (always looking to avoid shit like this myself)?

How did the wide section go?

The laughable thing is I drove one that same model Rolls in Chicago once - what a piece of shit, and a noisy one at that. You want a luxury car of that class, get a Maserati sedan.