crimper

i usually love seeing old pitons. but not in this case, because it meant i had risked my ass for something that was obviously not a first ascent...."there's a piton here? wtf?" (opdycke was here..)

lotta chatter, some rumor...here's a brief history of facts: it was called drop zone by stewart and mark d in 2005 because of the insane amount of garbage "dropped" over parts of the crag. i moved back from bend in 2007 and started putting up routes there with stewart and a couple others (ryan and arent). later, bill and jim and joseph and their buddies came along and started hanging fixed lines everywhere and also doing great trail work and maintenance (thanks guys!). they then started calling it "the far side" because they weren't aware the crag already had a name and because those of us who have young kids were only out ther every couple weeks, so we hardly had a presence besides the few bolts (on faces) and the bones (in cracks) that we left. HOWEVER jim says he was there in the 1970s, but i guess he never named it....but i believe him because he claims to have pounded the ancient piton i discovered halfway up the wall on my first ground-up attempt out there. i guess we have similar tastes. i bailed from bomber gear right above it....then rapped in, cleaned the stopper section above, then led what i call the first ascent of a 10d crack right above that piton. i left the piton for those with a fetish for history... anyeway, it will always be the drop zone to me because that's what we called it...but the far side is a good name too...

hey mark. i posted a photo you took of cougar. i think you took it from the parking lot with a telephoto lens or something. i just thought one photo of the actual rock would spice things up. (i think i pointed out that you took the photo)

i wish it still was my local crag but i've been back in pdx for 2.5 years now. i'm lucky to get 1-2 trips per summer to cougar these days. also, there are some small crags in central oregon, and here in the columbia gorge, that would suffer from more traffic because thay are so small to begin with. and i haven't mentioned and won't be mentioning them here. but to me, cougar is not in that category. it's relatively huge, and it would be nice to see people do more than the same 10-15 sport routes in addition to the buttress. this thread is more like "favorite climbs nobody talk about, but it's not taboo to talk about them."

jlag, backclipped, you can just PM me instead. we probably already know each other, at least by sight. there's no reason to call even more attention to this thread. (i'm already on your team)

hey backclipped, i hear you on "protecting" your local crags....but cougar is hardly a secret. and i posted a photo taken from a parking lot - not a topo, or even driving directions. (PM if you want to chat more, i'm all ears and at least we can chat about the crag we both love.) the 3.5 hour drive from portland, the lack of access to a topo that actually identifies the routes, and a short season of may to october, are going to weed out all but the most dedicated -and for those who are dedicated enough, good for them. i showed a photo that might get some people psyched to come down and do some new routes. and more likely, this thread will be forgotten by may anyway...

agreed. and for perspective, the short gray buttress on the left that is split with a dark chimney is about 50 feet tall. and the sick aretes in the top right corner are mainly boltfree.

here's a shot of cougar. the shiny headwall at the very top is pretty obvious. the buttress starts pretty dead center on the orange rock, then heads up the left-leaning corner (black streak just below headwall)to gain the huge ledge at the base of the headwall.

er, i guess you have climbed it, you said it was 'nice." sorry i missed that.

fgw: have you climbed cougar buttress? it's like 400 sustained feet of 5-8 or 5-9 comparable to the best parts of white satin, thin air, etc. at smith - and from right off the ground until the base of the headwall 400 feet later. (from there you can do either a 4th class escape left of the headwall, 11c trad straight up the headwall, or 5-10 trad to cut into the 4th class escape)

the climbs in bend that backclipped (do we know each other??)mentioned are at "cougar" on a 400-500 foot high crag 11 miles west of bend, visible from the road below. it's andesite. it looks like spring mountain in some ways but has faces with edges and patinas more similar to granite (really). it sees amazingly little traffic despite its proximity and pretty short approach. it saw its first ascents in the late 1970s: groundup trad. then in the 80s and 90s it got some rap-bolted routes from guys like jim davis and mike pajunas who had been bolting in smith. (they also put up trad lines, but mainly sport routes) a bunch of groundup first ascents of both single and multi pitch routes went on back in 2005-2007, adding to the maybe 35-45 routes that existed before then. there's maybe 50-60 routes now. if not for smith 30-40 miles northeast i am sure it would be overly bolted and heavily trafficked. i could spray all day but i won't...but i will say that the 4 pitch cougar buttress (from the 70s) has got to be the best 5-9 multi in oregon, not that that is saying much....

the crag is mark's pic is 11 miles west of bend and is at over 4,500 feet elevation, so it's great from may to october. it's hardly a secret because it looms over a well-traveled road. go get it. the crag right next door is even larger and has over 50 established routes, some over 400 feet. when i lived in bend i went here instead of smith all summer long. i miss it madly, and so does mark. but it's hardly an alternative to beacon, or a place to climb when beacon isn't open...it's for the eastsiders...

my son turned 3 my daughter turned 1 managed to climb outside about every other weekend, almost all around home (portland) and not too much excitement. got the FA of two boltless 5-10-ish crack climbs within 20 miles of downtown pdx (not lake o, not the gorge, not rocky butte, and one is a 100 foot route!) retrieved a bail biner from a route i FA'ed (that was a first, and it felt nice in an ego-stroking way...plus, hey, free bail biner!) got back to smith for the first time in 2 years - and i can report that heinous cling is still crimpy and sustained!

...you're like a child, who wanders into a conversation...you have no frame of reference...you are out of your element here ....life does not start and stop at your convenience kevbone!

i was there for new years 2006 and only brought shoes because my research on routes kept mentioning corroded anchors and bolts. i also found enough bouldering at lover's/divorce beach to keep me busy for a couple hours, but it was all on cliffbands, only a couple actual boulders. so don't get your hopes up and you'll have a good time. as you proceed north and away from the beach, you can wander inland and see some anchors and what must be routes, but they looked pretty spicy to me as i scrambled around below them. flares, grooves, no real cracks. looked like a good way to have an epic or get hurt. stick with shoes and chalk, definitely no need for a pad on the sand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aMKvykdbpA is he on a bolted climb? or cruising? and what is a "puss"?

looks like a taller version of ozone or broughton or any other standard issue basalt crag around portland. what's the big deal? simply that it hasn't been bolted?

also at carver there's a long 5.9 just to the right of notorious (meaning the far left side of the crag) that starts with 30-40 feet of chimney moves. it also protects pretty well, with varyingh sized gear placements. i'm spacing the name of the route at the moment....i also think the upper part might be dirty, but there are intermediate anchors you can access if you want to bail early.

as for madrone: the rules for fight club apply. there are crags to spray about, and crags to not.

counterpoint: if the humbling and crumbling were both rated 11c, a lot of people would be calling them sandbags, right?

so does that mean you use the one paper clip for both lobes? and how is the trigger atcion treating you?

thanks tomtom but i don't want to to spend $33 on a cam repair kit, and i don't trust myself to do the repair in any event. but the answer seems to be that the cam can be salvaged, and i have a call in to old larry to see if he can do the fixing...thanks to all..

that's right. and thanks! but should it be retired, or repaired?

I just looked at this cam and saw that one of the 4 wires (each wire goes to a different cam lobe, of course) has frayed so that only one tiny strand of wire (maybe 10-20% of the original thickness of the wire?) still connects to the cam lobe. If that wire blows, as it soon will, that means only 3 lobes will be functioning, right? is this a no-brainer, and I should just toss this cam out? Or is there someone or some store who can repair the wire? Finally, it's an old alien, at least 2003, and maybe older. Thanks, Bryan.

you know, i've sent several harder-graded routes at ozone, but it took me at least 4 or 5 times to make the crux moves even on toprope on rolling thunder. that just shouldn't happen for me on a 10d sport climb. then again, a couple 10d sport climbs on broughton's hanging garden wall seem about that hard (which is to say, more like 11b!) which is what i know kevin had in mind when he picked 10d as the grade.