JosephH

It's interesting to see an aid renaissance cycle through so many years after a free one. Turn! Turn! Turn! To every thing there is a season...

Those spring-stitch plates are still the shit for teaching new climbers to belay.

Lot of good reasons in my case.

Works for me, anyway...

we used shunts all the time when working on cellpone towers but id be hard to find any solid use for them in any aspect of rock climbing Used as I describe above they're THE way to effortlessly rap with heavy loads - particularly when doing anchor replacement or cleaning routes.

Pics?

It isn't an improvement of any type; it's an entirely different deal altogether. Don't use it a for backing up a rap (though you could)- use it for rapping with loads.

Get a Petzl Shunt if you're going to be rapping with significant loads with any frequency. Put it directly on your belay loop and put your rap device off the belay loop above the Shunt by a draw's length. Put your load off the belay device and forget about both the load and the belay device. Rap with your high hand on the Shunt and your low hand on the rope. Effortless.

My motto is: "if you can't climb hard, climb strange" I can still do some of the former and a lot of the latter.

You started when I was 5 and I'm frigging 57 and been climbing for 36 years this month - dude, you're what I still aspire to - way to pull on it.

I'm too old but do it anyway. So should you. There's an old SoIll saying that's relevant here - "f#ck'em if they can't take a joke".

RB is the most dangerous place I've ever climbed, especially this time of year what with the rain. Be execptionally careful wandering around anywhere near an edge out there - that clay gets slick as snot and it's easy to lose your balance when wearing one of those hazmat suits. Also, if you need a skilled Russian interpreter for the cleanup then Bill Coe is your man. Oh, and watch out for the phantom chopper.

Hopefully we won't be blessed like the eight year f#cking we got the last time the repubs had office.

Well, hopefully they won't f#ck us any worse than they already have.

http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Satellite/Infrared.aspx?region=hipacsat&animate=true *Very stormy period developing for all of California; potential for major flooding*

(1) A person who engages in mountain climbing during the months of November, December, January, February, and March shall use an electronic signaling device when climbing a mountain at a point above the timberline.

Thank god that maintenance guy from the school saw the commotion and offered to haul the stuff away - I was beginning to wonder how I was going to do it with the Camry or where I'd take it.

I think the progression on the Friends can be best seen in what kind of nut secures the ends of the axle. Mine were all stolen in the late 80's in front of my now wife's house. Always had them double slinged East coast style for horizontals and never had a complaint except for a #3 that exploded into a million pieces in Eldo once. Good thing it was backed up by a bomb nut.

I can't believe you even bother with a rope on Blackberry. You should be forced to down-solo it blindfolded so that it would at least be a challenge. I happen to like the lines out at the Butte and don't mind winching the occasional dishwasher or engine block out of the place, but I don't think the environs do it for most folks. And for some reason I don't mind other folks at the Butte, probably so that someone can tell the wife in case I do the slip-and-slide off the top.

Will enjoy reading that one myself. I went round and round between the Montbell and Mtn Hardware before setttling on the Compressor - really like all the Montbell stuff I have.

They're why I don't climb there, but I do appreciate them not being out at Beacon.

What is wrong with Ozone? When was the last time you climbed there JH? The twenty cars and your relentless promotion of it.

Bill, good write up. I agree with most of that. Ozone is a perfect example of the rapid result of bolting at a close-in crag. Are there other crags out there? Sure, but for every one that gets bolted, more folks climb, and they in turn want new routes to climb after awhile, so word gets out and the cycle repeats itself. Guys like you attempting to stay ahead of the hordes surf the wake of that cycle by going further afield each time. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen at Ozone and so it gets down to either 'harvesting' those quiet, club-like development days and moving on or, once the deed is done, join the crowds. I've just always suggested the 'whoosh' of development frenzy might just be rapidly trading away the very thing folks are there for when it's happening. That maybe a little balance in that could slow the pace and thus the cycle even though the underlying engine beneath the hood is the gyms versus the bolts alone. As for bolt numbers in Oregon, o.k. let's call it 1k at Smith (probably another 250 in the entire Bend area), then throw in the PDX/Gorge/Mt Hood corridor, Eugene environs, Roseburg and points south, and Hells Canyon and it adds up pretty quick.

Not at all.