JosephH

Not really - it wasn't something that varied from person to person - you've just been had by another Opdyckian troll.

Ah, now that finally explains all of Ryan's 'le buffe' ascents - a desperate bid for ass sponsorship.

Well, if he is in it I wouldn't want to be the husband - pretty much ranks up there with leaving the infant seat with the kid in it on top of the car as you drive away...

The '- / +' designation was never an indicator of how sustained a route was any more than letter grading is - it was simply a gerneral indicator of the difficulty of the crux prior to the common use of letter grading.

So, what's the consensus then on The Bumbling?

Yes, it was a joke, though you could do Flying Circus, but it's just a lot easier to layback it.

All it means is the demographics have exploded. Back in the day the ratio of climbers who sucked to those who were good couldn't support even a half dozen of the best climbers in the U.S. Today every climber with more than two pairs of shoes and an internet connection thinks they have a shot. It tells you that ratio is through the roof these days and that represents a pool of loose change everyone hopes to take a drink from.

Look, so what if Potter and O'Neill can link-up Half Dome's Regular Route, the South Face of Watkins, and the Nose in about the same amount of time. No doubt they could do the SE Corner in a sub-5 minute time - but, you made it up and back down alive, had an adventure, made the movie, and are ready for whatever comes next. And what the hell, you climbed Snake Dike! Can't beat that with a frigging stick no matter how you look at it.

Ssshhhh! It took a year to remove them the last time someone scratched arrows up the entire corner for their second because they apparently couldn't follow the rope...

Now wait a damn minute here - I am my own sponsor and just how the the hell do you folks propose I make it through the winter, let alone crank it all back up again next summer, without my two main forms of hope and motivation...

I was once told by someone who would know that, "it doesn't matter who you are, EVERYONE gets schooled hard in the Valley at some point or another." I've certainly gotten a bit of mine.

As I said on the other thread, I often lack in patience and social grace...

Hmmm. With all due respect, I would posit that people looking at that anchor and thinking twice about it says more about the state of trad knowledge and experience today. The interpretation of "08" is a matter of basic common sense and at the very least should have conveyed the notion that it was an actively maintained anchor. There was nothing about the appearance of the anchor that should have given one pause from a materials standpoint. Two independent 1" sliding-X slings installed in 2008 would be solid to hang your car from for the next five years minimum. Testing has shown one inch milspec sling material is bomb after completely fading out to white, and the fading wasn't significant on the anchor in question. The tie-wraps keep the the tandem sliding-X slings paired and organized and they do actually afford all necessary inspection of the installation. BUT, you do have to some idea what you're looking at and some familiarity with the materials in question. That anyone would think they're better off replacing two independent slings and SS rings of any age with a badly installed single sling and ring combo (or just skipping the webbing and rings altogether) defies all notions of common sense and logic. Bottomline? However well intended, it was a bad judgment call from a trad climbing perspective and one that belies either rank inexperience, gross incompetence, or both. In either case it was done by someone who doesn't realize they have neither the experience nor judgment to be making such calls on such a public and well-travelled venue. But, c'est la vie.

Now that's funny...

Believe me, I wish that were the case, but it isn't and down that road lies future bolt wars, never seeing early opens, never getting the West face out from under the closer, and no possibility of ever lifting the Peregrine closure. It's fundamentally a fantasy of folks inclined to wish Beacon were a reality distortion field where everyone can remain 12 years old forever - no one wishes that were the case more than me. And no one hates dealing with this shit more than I, but more to the point, no one resents not being able to climb out there than I do. It's the cards we've been dealt, however.

Well, as much as some folks think I do, it's not like I make this shit up. It's all in down in b&w dictated by WA state law and boils down to whether local trad climbers or folks from the broader NW climbing community will control Beacon's destiny over the long haul. I certainly understand the inclination and illusion we can permanently ignore the situation, but it's simply not the reality. Also, and contrary to what Andrew may think, I'm pretty much selfish, have lousy social skills, and most of the time I don't have much interest in or use for "community". And if I were good at 'organizing' we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I think Andrew and I do have some things in common, though. I have to be interested enough at any given time to bother even being a climber, let alone be a solid climber, and I don't think he's all that much different in that regard.

At Beacon, as opposed to say alpine granite of your choice, pins basically weld in place largely unaffected by the freeze thaw cycle. Again, prior to stainless bolts being widely affordable, pins have outperformed non-SS bolts in every respect out at Beacon. Beyond what I've written in the post above and here, I'm not sure how else to explain why the two are releatively indistinguishable as fixed protection, or why the CMP, WSP Resource Steward, and the BRSP have an interest in managing the inventory of fixed installations on the rock - this is not any different than at any number of other [publicly managaged] climbing areas around the country. You do not need an application for a new route; you do need an application for the installation of fixed protection or anchors whether on a new route or retro'ing an existing route. The new application process described in the post above greatly simplifies the process by switching it from a per piece to a per route applicaiton.

Well, first off I'd say your perception that "Pins by their nature are not really permenant" is incorrect, that even a quick survey of Beacon or most older climbing areas will show that in fact the pins have far out lasted the older non-SS bolts, and by a long shot. Out at Beacon it would be more accurate to say "Bolts by their nature are not really permenant", because they haven't performed nearly as well as the pins. That's from the performance perspective. From the removal perspective I can chop a bolt out there faster than I can pull a pin. From my perspective, pin or bolt, fixed pro is just that and all fixed pro installations will need checking/maintanence at least once a decade. Ivan's recent aid revival has employed non-clean aid, which I'd be more concerned about if they were using the tactic on lines that saw any free ascents. But non-clean aid climbing shouldn't be confused with the application of fixed pro - when I put up an FA and apply fixed pro, be it a pin or a bolt, it's just that - fixed - as in I have no intention of it ever coming out. All FAs or retro fixed pro needs to go through the relatively painless fixed pro application process as per the CMP. So offhand I'd say you're just confusing intent and application - non-clean aid climbing with the application of fixed pro - they're two very different endeavors with different intent and results on stone.

How's that midlife retirement going? Not to worry, I'm sure you'll see rock again before you're 50 or so...

No one is doing any blasting for the suggestion, just trying to sort things out...

Don't know how close the trains are to the lower town wall, but at Beacon that's one of the busier tracks on the west coast and the first time you bivy up on it you realize just how much the trains shake the entire formation. What I think really does the job on the place, though, is the vibration from the trains as thick ice is thawing, that as the ice load comes off it weakens or pulls a fair amount of stone in the process each winter/spring, just less so on the south face than the other sides. I suspect the west and northwest faces bear the brunt of it judging from the amount of rock that has been coming down them over the years. On the south face the majority of rock fall is, unfortunately, generated from the chutes and faces high above the start to the SE Corner.

The anchor's been replaced, but it still defies any notion of logic or sanity that they thought the trash they left was somehow better or safer than what was there.

Simply put, navigating any number of routes at Beacon requires a modicum of finesse and a shred of awareness and control over your weight distribution during moves if we collectively don't want those climbs to change on a weekly or monthly basis. I won't do apes the disservice of desrcibing what went on as 'aping' up the route completely oblivous to the impact of wailing on everything you touch. Beacon is subject to significant 24x7 vibrations from trains as well as a strong freeze thaw icing cycle and that inevitably leads to loose rock, but nature doesn't need our help in cluelessly accelerating the loss of holds or rocks that are stablizing ledges and trails. As it stands now we are likely to witness some serious over-winter erosion of the p1/p2 traverse past the tree and, if nothing is done about it, the disinegration of the area around the p2 crux moves. As it is today, the p2 crux horn and surrounding rock will be lucky to survive the rest of the season. I'm personally ok with dealing with that, but in all likelyhood the combination of existing and newly missing holds along with traverse erosion will make the line that much more intimidating affair for beginners and new leaders.

I normally try to be reasonbly objective in tone and stick to the facts in these posts, but I'll make an exception with this one. Someone basically thrashed, stomped, and strong-armed their way up the SE Corner recently and removed and f#cked up the p1 anchor, unnecessarily and dangerously trundled a bunch of rocks off the p1/p2 traverse, tore holds off the start of p2 and topped it off by yarding on the p2 crux horn so hard that now it's just a matter of time before it's gone. This party of climbers was either a) malicious or b) so extraordinarily inept, misguided, and unable to control their movement to the point they should just quit climbing all together or, at the very least, foresake even the idea of trad climbing ever again. So the deal with the anchors out at Beacon. Every anchor you could likely ever arrive at out there (unless you're climbing with Ivan) is actively maintained - they don't need to be removed, replaced, or 'augmented' with more sling material. The SE Corner anchor that was tampered with was even date stamped '08' - you could have trundled your car onto it and it would have held just fine. Instead, two 1" independent sliding X slings and 50kn SS rings were removed and replaced, with a great deal of effort, in order to replace them with a single piece of lousily installed 1" and only one of the two rings (the other they just took). Again, all the anchors you'll run into out at Beacon are bomb - they don't require anything. Of late I've heard a couple of people state "I was taught to never use existing anchors" - which is great and might make some sense if you're always in some remote alpine setting - but at Beacon just look at and examine what you've encountered and use some common sense - not static, dogmatic rulesets. In fact, static and dogmatically applied 'rules' is a lousy way to approach trad climbing. There are no hard and fast 'rules' trad climbing - every climb, every pitch, every hold, and every situation is unique even on a route you've done a thousand times. You need to rely on and develop your own knowledgebase, intuition, instinct, judgment, and above all, common sense, - not some mindlessly arbitrary set of 'rules'. And the 'loose' rock business. It's Beacon. The trail, ledges and routes all have 'loose' rocks on them; many of those 'loose' rocks are key foot or hand holds. If you're going to climb out at Beacon then you need to learn to accept and deal with that - to step, walk, pull, and climb lightly with control over your movements and weight distribution in order to be gentle on things. And if you find a hold that's slightly loose, well, it's probably been that way for decades and thousands of people have been using it and can likely use it for decades to come. Please don't yard them off simply because they happen to make you a little queasy. If you encounter something, anything, you think needs attention then just pm me / Ivan / kevbone / Bill Coe / etc., email brca@googlegroups.com, or tell Opdycke about it if you see him and it be dealt with straight away. But don't mess with the anchors and under no circumstances randomly pitch rocks off of routes - stack them off to the side in some nook, base of a bush, or small ledge and they'll get cleaned either some night or before the start of the next season. State="Off">

Tyler, pm with your address. I have a funkness, pins, and a few random hangers and bolts set aside to send you...