JosephH

Yep, won't say a word about any ideas for lifting or changing the closure, should any appear. Other than that just answering Plaidman's question.

No, the Peregrines at Smith and in PDX have 1-2 week old chicks, the Peregrines further up the Gorge have eggs or just hatched, at Beacon we don't know yet as we can't see into the nest. They are definitely NOT flying and won't be for some number of weeks.

You can do that, but where are all the ideas for eliminating, shortening, or changing the closure?

I was going to say he looks ass backwards...

One less nut at the next Tea Party.

Any ideas at all yet...?

Which is the other thread...?

Amazingly, it wasn't until quite recently that having an honorable DD214 didn't mean you were a citizen or able to become one. And we are still recruiting non-citizens for the military.

No more to tell, it's turned off in all my cars; end of story.

Not at all, the seatbelts are backup just like a rope is when climbing. Back when I had a '63 Impala without them I had to rig them with Skyhooks under the seats for anchors and doubled 1" webbing up thru the seat/back. You guys clearly don't know shit about ALBs or driving in inclement conditions or you wouldn't be saying shit like this. These are compensatory systems which have really don't have the smarts to deal with the all the differences between wet, snow/ice, and black ice. The traction control system in the Ford is especially bad in terms of black ice and basically made the car completely undrivable in those conditions before I figured out how to turn it off. Sucks would be too kind in describing it. Toyota's is no better.

Wow, that pithy riposte is your response? Dude, it's your time to shine man, I'm waiting for your dazzling insight and / or devastating critique of any of the above. Come on now, as a biologist whom I assume can do more than count fish and sex geese, please tear that shit up and lay the real facts on me and everyone else here. Folks are pretty much fed up with my shit and you're the perfect guy to set me straight in all this business where I'm clearly in over my head. Go for it dude! What is the real story and what facts should folks know about the Peregrines, the closure, the law, and your agency's policies that keep us from climbing? Exactly why would a three month closure be adequate? What would be the impact of such a change on the birds? Hell, I'm dying to hear it myself...

You're serious? We've had three cars with ALB and I disconnected or turned off all three along with the traction control on the 2008 Ford Edge. There is no circumstance under which I'd allow those systems to be active in a car I drive.

The exact same thing can be done with less hassle and no device swap whatsoever if you just bring the second up on your waist keeping them on belay as they setup for the next pitch and then launch - doesn't get any simpler. The whole lazy, 'do a bunch of other shit' thing is a really bad mindset to establish and get used to - odds are fair sooner or later it's going to bite you in the ass in some way.

Does that mean mere 'development' was inadequate to the task and climbing now has to resort to all out 'construction'? Must be a real natural line...

My turn to ask if you're serious here...

It's how I second every pitch when I'm roped soloing.

I doubt that happens too often, but I can believe you end up with a bunch of folks over time who can't follow you. Belaying is also a lot easier if you don't climb with people who dog up everything and maybe that in the end is what we're really talking about in this thread.

Seatbelts are a reasonable backup system no different from a rope. Antilock brakes is another matter and is definitely designed to compensate for people who don't know how to deal with driving in inclement weather and skidding. I don't know a single soul from back home in Chicago who would buy a car with antilock brakes or one that didn't allow you to turn it off. The car I'm driving now has the antilock system turned off for exactly that reason - they suck and respond badly more often than correctly.

I'm guessing off hand that it's a good bet I rope-solo more than pretty much anyone else on cc.com. Roped soloing is another case of a calculated trade-off being made for a specific purpose such as speed climbing, etc. It also requires total attentiveness and non-stop monitoring of your device / mechanism of choice. If I needed encouragement or help dealing with problems while doing it I wouldn't do it - it's all about the purity of self-reliance.

Communication between a climber and belayer is optimal, but as you point out, not always possible. Part of belaying as a craft and skill is learning how to know what a climbers is doing by feel. By holding a very slight tension on the line you should, over time, start to learn how to visualize what the climber is doing based on the feedback through the rope. This is a lot easier to learn if you have a steady partner who's habits on lead you can become familiar with than it is with random partners. After awhile though, you should get to the point where you can have a pretty good idea at any point what's going on with an out-of-sight climber.

You're about a 100 million times more likely to be dropped by an inattentive belayer then you are because they got hit by a rock. You should consider working on that. I can stay sharp and attentive belaying over however many pitches I'm doing or I wouldn't do them. As to "new terrain", when I'm doing FAs I definitely want an attentive belayer. I don't even know quite how to respond to the "and having fun" comment; the idea that having fun and belaying might be incompatible when rock climbing is too scary to even having contemplated the possibility prior to this moment. Now that would make climbing so boring I don't doubt people would doze off...

No, that isn't correct and you're misinterpreting. I'm saying IF you are using or counting on autoblocking to compensate for some actual or potential failing of your, or your partner's, belaying then you should address the root problem and not attempt to compensate with some device.

No, we agree, I should have qualified the statement with 'if teaching belaying with a device, then...'...

From my perspective, and I'm admittedly very old school about it, if I need a backup to compensate for any aspect of the person belaying me, then I'm not tying in with them. The loss of feel and control involved with moving a belay from you to the anchor is simply unaccetable to me. I can see legitimate circumstances for making that trade-off relative to speed or weather on bigger walls and alpine, but that's it and it is a trade-off.

Funny, that's not what you take away from any of a myriad of threads on RC.com where they've even polled on it. Being dropped is incredibly common these days. I'd go so far as to say that, indoors or out, it's likely someone somewhere is being dropped every 15 minutes, 24x7 around the globe.