JosephH

Two pieces of gear pulled in an area with adequate placements; the second was injured to one degree or another belaying; they were a relatively new pair of climbers. I think we can chalk it up to a combination of a bit of zealousness and inexperience without overthinking the details too much in the aftermath. They sound like they'll be ok and hopefully learned a lesson that will serve them well in the future.

Yes, my fifth grade teacher. Amazing, though, how you often manage to see such trees yet miss the forest.

We know where to find the Koreans and more or less understand them. There was eventually a quite a bit of action in the wake of the Cole once folks got a bead on who might be involved, but not really much of it was made particularly public. And it's not like there weren't folks putting the first WTC, Nairobi/Dar es Salaam, and Cole bombings together from an intent perspective. However, the operative perception of '[keeping] it over there' is what, in the end, we ran afoul of and shaped the dynamics of our domestic approach to terrorism in the prelude and run-up to 9/11.

Your thinking about the guest worker program with its injectible nano-visa which, as a nice touch, induces temporary sterility for the duration of the job.

Well, an implantable, contactless national ID card with a Depo or Implanon backing would kill two birds with one silicone stone...

Nah, the multi-certificate, biometric, contactless smartcard technology we sell today really can't be 'faked'. Add the five years it would take to roll it out here and the cards and certificate infrastructure will be pretty solid - certainly way beyond the means of all but a few governments to be able to spoof the system. It really wouldn't be worth the effort and a large number of dupe cards with multiple valid certs would be tough to generate without being detected pretty quick.

Nope, worthless.

You want to stop illegal employment from the supply side then you have to have national ID cards. Period. How else can employers tell the real Americans among the unwashed masses of non-white applicants?

Good going Ben...

Multiple gear pulls and burned hands - sounds like they may have gotten a bit ahead of themselves, glad they'll live to tell the tale which is always good.

Good to see the pics that go with the tale...sounds like it was a good time regardless.

Mark, that's by and large what I've been doing over the years.

Peter, we eventually got 150' ropes around '76, never saw a 165' for sale in a climbing store until a few years later. I was just climbing at first to take photos - no books, no ropes, no nothing; was a monkey boy up in trees my whole childhood so was just jumping on things with interesting orchids and ferns in pockets. After a few weeks on rock I met a couple of other folks who were learning and we all learned out of basic and advanced rockcraft. But learning outside and on your own you are by nature cautious about risks and you experience and learn in a fairly gradual and step-by-step manner. You gain experience as you go, particularly as it pertains to anchors, exposure and operating around edges. You get limited to no experience with any of the three in a gym. Or at least I don't know of any gyms where you end up standing unroped at the top of a climb. Transitioning to outdoor climbing and trad (and multipitch) from gyms and sport entails several significant leaps which can be problematic. Most people backoff and that's why the majority cite big differentials in the ratings of sport and trad routes they'll lead. In that is an implicit respect for the differences in risk and complexity which is probably healthy overall so that people don't get in over their heads at first.

Yep, goldline, MSR knot specials, and early kermantle...120'

Summit, I guess I'm saying that I don't perceive today's scene as 'safer'; quite the contrary. I think the combination of the 'safety' of the gear combined with most folks learning in gyms has resulted in a much less safe scene. People coming out of gyms without the requisite experience with edges, exposure, and anchoring along with no notion of stancing and a very cavalier notion of belaying (//particularly in groups//) makes for some dangerous transitions from indoor to outdoor climbing and from sport to trad. Similar to the interactions of windsurfers and barges in the Gorge, I'm always astounded there aren't a lot more casualties climbing than there are.

Oh, don't get me wrong, a twenty foot fall directly onto your waist by a leader who doesn't get a first piece in is a crushing and brutal experience you don't want to have. And I had this happen a couple of times back in the days of 120' ropes, hip belaying, and before cams when anchors were often dubious or marginal. In those circumstances you didn't redirect through your sometimes dubious anchor, rather you protected the anchor both by staying off of it with your stance and by putting your [soft] body between a leader fall and the anchor. A lot of my experiences like these were on early and solid Eldo 10's in the mid-70s. Coming from a background of climbing those lines in EBs with short ropes and just a set or two of nuts and hexs while hip belaying leaves you with a very different sensibility around anchors, stancing, belaying, and safety in general. Today's scene basically has incredibly safe, if not luxurious equipment. Yet the flipside of that is today's cams-over-nuts mentality and an almost unconscious, unaware, and / or cavalier disregard for many aspects of climbing that are fundamental to staying alive over the long haul. Because of that I sometimes I think it was a bad idea in general to introduce springs and mechanics into climbing gear. The addition of springs in the form of cams has fostered a real [unexamined] plug-and-go mentality and the mechanics of grigris has fostered unconscious belaying.

While I think your other advice is good I have a bit of a hard time with this statement. Are gloves a bad idea? No, but if there's any kind of "burning" going on then it's an improper belay from my perspective and gloves shouldn't be used to compensate for bad belaying. In drop tests an anchored GriGri will let a couple of meters of rope slip. Just imagine what happens with a tube device. rgold on stuportace and cockrhyming has been saying for years that hard falls onto the anchor are best handled with gloves and he's caught a couple. A grigri without a human braking the rope over the lip is not a belay. Tube devices have neglible 'slip' when used correctly. Yes, rgold and I have gone a few rounds on the topic in the past. I've caught a lot of big and hard falls, many hip belaying with no device at all; several straight on me before a first piece could be placed - I totally disagree with him on the point. In 36 years of belaying and holding hundreds of significant falls I've never once experience any 'slip' or 'burning' with either a device or a hip belay.

Just got off the phone with Metolius. They don't commit to a numerical percentage of cams pulling in parallel-sided placements other than to say that if the placement is a decking one then you can't rely 100% on such placements no matter how good they look - you should always back them up. They are definitely of the mind there is no 'setting' of cams - you set nuts, not cams.

A couple of comments... As Bill said, Metolius crew has stated that 1 in 20 cams in perfectly parallel-sided placements will pull. However, it is also my understanding that they think there is no value in 'setting' cams beyond the psychological. (I have a call in to verify both statements) While I think your other advice is good I have a bit of a hard time with this statement. Are gloves a bad idea? No, but if there's any kind of "burning" going on then it's an improper belay from my perspective and gloves shouldn't be used to compensate for bad belaying.

Two new journal entries... April - Early May, 2010 Monday, May 17, 2010

It's been sold to a small group of guys who have complete control over the 'shareholders' - what William Kanders wants, he will get...

I have a pair of Fires, three pairs of blue Kauks, one of Anasazi slippers, one of Miuras, one of TC Pros, and two pairs of Sportiva Ventors. I only trad climb and 95% of the time I'm in the Ventors as my footwork isn't all that great anyway. I variously still use all the others (yes, even the Fires) on an as needed basis. Not sure about the TC Pros yet, though I'm thinking I don't like the rubber on them (slick) and may have them repaved. And if anyone hasn't noticed, I'm looking to buy a pair of 41.5 Ventors if you have a pair you'd part with...

Google 'spill over your city' app...

One more try...

Looks like a great unit other than no viewfinder which I can't do without myself. Hopefully Canon will beef up it's SD line to make them a bit more rugged. But I did drop my old Canon SD300 from the top of Blownout in its LowePro Rezo 10 case and it still worked when I found it in the woods...