JosephH

Probably wouldn't happen, but jugging has always made me a bit nervous, even to watch. It's why I really like the idea of Beal's new Unicore ropes.

Hard to tell, but the line I'm pulling on is attached to the wedging block under Bill's feet and he's jumping up and down like a mad man on that diving board piece of rock trying to lever the big boy off. I stopped him and asked him if he thought that was a good idea and he stopped, looked at me for a second, and went back to jumping up and down on it until the whole shebang cut loose, him with it until his rap line kicked in and pulled him off of it and to the side with me.

Hanmi - Great shots! Bill about to ride the big boy after it got hung up after only about 8'! What a sight that was. Thanks for posting these up and for all your help.

Maybe try Craigslist rideshare (in both Seattle and Montana).

If REI take it back there, otherwise probably just call the guys at Metolius directly.

Haven't been up it to see if there's pro on the line, but it would have to be a real bolt ladder before I'd say anything. If folks want to practice aid on that face I don't have too many complaints; just a suggestion to be careful with big loose stuff up high.

She's been slammed but will be posting the whole saga up shortly...

Sorry, Bill talking about trundling made me nervous about it again. But then I can testify he's a world class trundler after his 'Slim Pickens' ride on the big one the other day - that was a sight to behold.

I'd be up for a mellow day...

Hey, glad you guys like going up there, but that panel is free-climbable without additional fixed pro or removing anything and it saw no shortage of aid ascents in the past without altering, adding or removing anything. It would be a bummer to lose the ability to free climb the line just for the sake of convenience.

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.