JosephH

The only beta in 'my thread' is about an anchor location which isn't obvious. Other than that, folks are on their own if they head up it.

Dude, you need to work on your reading comprehension. As I said repeatedly at the time, it had nothing whatsoever to do with what I personally wanted. If it were up to me I would have trundled it.

There are undoubtably many roads to Rome - but being fairly Edisonian in my approach to such matters I stop once I find a verifiable solution to a problem. Mark's is very much just that. Why should I screw around with anything else when I know this approach yields exactly the result I'm after?

Doesn't sound anything like the workout of the 54yo guy who just led all the pitches of the Nose in 15 hours. He must be doing it wrong.

Will probably just go do YW if not. Another thought, if someone else is willing, is to go around left of Jensens Ridge and whack a section out of the base of the big oak vines over on stellar routes like 'Lay Lady Lay' and 'Rip City'.

Anyone up for climbing wed or thu?

I'll admit, those anchor moves are damn tricky.

Route beta? No.

That's clearly the case on Hood.

Not everything, just most everything.

The day we were lashed down getting hypothermic on Canon the forecast was for a clear, sunny, warm mid-August day.

No one looking for those things would be looking in the Columbia River Gorge forum. Oh, and BETA is for Dicks.

What do you have to do with the Gorge?

It isn't. The cam works differently and it threads the reverse of a grigri. If both rope ends are hanging down it basically can't lock up. Oh, and if something snags the handle and pulls it back all the way it relocks on the rope.

When purity counts... [video:youtube]

Having lived in Francestown, I'd have to say I'd be considerably embarassed to die on Monadanock, soloing at Joe English Hill maybe, but Monadanock? That would be tough to live down, even for a dead person.

I lived and climbed in NH for two years back in the mid-80's and was 'lucky' enough to experience one the wild weather swings while on Canon in '86. We were doing Reppy's/MG and started out in t-shirts under a bright, sunny, and blue mid-August sky. I don't recall what pitch we were on when it all when hell in an instant. But at one anchor we literally had to sink more pro and lash ourselves together and to it for about an hour while an incredibly windy and extremely cold freight train roared through. Fortunately it motored past and returned to near the conditions we had started in, had it kept up and gotten worse we might have died. I believe at the time I heard folks had died of exposure on Washington in August and after our experience I have every reason to believe it.

Mutation rate drops as you leave the equator heading south or north.

Yep, there are just way more objective hazards involved with alpine. The point, however, was relative to beacons compensating for lack of skills and the problem with that line of reasoning is the average skill, experience, and knowledge level on Hood isn't all that great to begin with - a lot of folks just get away with it.

The problem with any conversation around skills development is that if there were a skills-based test for climbing Hood, what percentage of the annual number of climbers on the mountain would likely possess the skills to [personally] respond appropropriately if things went badly wrong? Beacons or no, the skills situation up on Hood isn't great on the whole - probably better than on the cable route on Half Dome, but not by a lot relative to the potential objective hazards and risks.

Oral, thanks for unleashing economic ministries of charismatic felons upon our country.

Weather was perfect that day - but the forecast on the backend succinctly forecast conditions that would create bad avalanche conditions and minimize options for any self or SAR rescue in the event things went bad. As far as I'm concerned if you do a winter ascent of a significant mountain with less than a 72-hour weather window you are gambling. How well you gamble is dependent on your level of skill and experience. Go with less than a 36-hour window you better be damn good and prepared to deal with all eventualities. But then this is the same mountain with a level of accessibility where thousands of the people summit and make it up and down - so long as nothing goes wrong. If it does go wrong then probably 90% or more of them don't really have the skills or experience to deal.

Apparently not given the recurring nature of the theme.

I would think what might be at least or maybe even more productive as beacons would be a Cascade climbers' weather service that would put out clear winter weather window advisories. The critical issue from my perspective isn't so much the day-of weather, but the quality and duration of an available backside window in which to mount self or SAR rescues should anything go wrong.