crimper

no bubble to burst, i was just surprised there was no chalk, and it made the climb feel a little more intimidating. (maybe the low angle washes the chalk away after each rain?) i've heard that people do step on the pin but never heard that's why it was placed BITD... i seem to stem around it everytime though so i gues i'm in yer 1%. i guess there's no reason to pull it, i was just wondering if it's solid enough to count as real gear. has anyone taken a true fall on it?

Trip: beacon rock - wrong gull Date: 10/7/2009 Trip Report: I hopped on this yesterday and there wasn't even a hint of chalk on it. This isn't the case with any other route at beacon i've been on yet this year. Is it possible I was the first one on it this season? If so, that's crazy. This is an awesome line with reasonable protection if you are solid at the grade. (I'm not even sure I'm solid but I dealt with it) On another note, my partner and I discussed whether the pin at the upper crux is either a) bomber or b) necessary, as there is good pro within 2-3 feet both below and above it. Joseph, did you test this one? Take care, bryan. Gear Notes: gear to 2 inches (optional 3 inch piece for the finish)

i was there with my now-wife, but i don't have a memory of swimming...i do remember some fun bouldering at the SE side of the lake though, on little mini-crags...

i actually did the exact same thing a few years back. camped at ice lake, then next day sumitted the matterhorn (make sure to peek down the west side at the biggest wall in Oregon!) and did the ridge to sacagawea (never had to even use our hands). We then made a neat loop by continuing to follow the sacagaewa ridgeline east/downhill into the obvious drainage leading back to ice lake. Again, I don't recall ever "climbing" at any point... it was utterly straightforward until entering the drainage. i remember the drainage actually became a cool slot canyon, except composed of that weird granite/limestone mix of rock, and there was some sketchy scrambling involved (though you could always detour around the sketchiness if you wanted to spend the extra time). the drainage was really neat, i wish i had spent more time poking around in there. this was over labor day weekend, btw. have fun!!

Gotta second Hemp Liberation being a great piece of stone but with some terrible bolt placements; anyone who leads it will find out why. Kool Ranch Flavor gets an 11a in the supplement but seems at least a grade or two harder at the brief but burly crux. Left Wing (a newer bolted climb in the lower gorge) is pretty stout for 10b - but most aretes seem harder to me anyway. Cling On's second pitch was a serious alpine style 5-9. has anyone else been on that? ugh.

powderhound, why are you ragging on ozone so much? i guess i'm taking it personally because i spent a lot of time there when it was being developed, and we tried hard to please everyone, though we knew we never could. we left just 1, 2, 3 pieces of pro on routes because we didn't bolt cracks - pleasing the trad crowd, but bumming out the sportos. we tried to groundup routes when possible or even remotely safe but that was usually close to impossible, or at least insanely dangerous (would you risk dying for the FA of a mediocre 5-9?). we knew that bolting begets bolting, and that the crag would be developed further: and it now looks like - well, broughton, madrone, carver, and any other local crag besides beacon. so i don't get your point about ozone deserving to be raped: if a crag offers moderate terrain that beginners can actually climb, and if most of that terrain gets rap-bolted beause it was chossy and mossy, it no longer deserves to be treated via the same ethics that apply at other crags? when women dress nicely, they don't deserve to get raped. when a crag gets rap-bolted, ethics still apply. and if you don't like ozone, don't climb there. right?

on one hand, this thread provides a good lesson to any aspiring FA'er: the process/journey of putting up a route that requires cleaning or rap-bolting ought to be at least as important as the ego-satisfaction of ultimately getting the FA. if you only care about being the first to get the send, then having your line stolen like this would be a huge letdown. (i think this is kevbone's perspective, and i share it some extent) but if you feel less "ownership" of the route, and actually detach your ego and have a broader view of why you have rapped in X number of times and spent X hours hanging on a rope and cleaning, you could shrug it off somewhat, knowing that you already got back what you put into the route even if you don't get the FA. that said, i'd still be pissed, because it's hard to be that detached. but it just goes to show that in the real world nobody owns the rock, so you'd better not get too attached to any one vertical sliver.

ozone is a good bet for sport in that range. high concentration of all bolted routes, plus mixed and trad routes as well. only a couple 5.8 or under bolted routes, but if you can lead 10a on bolts there's more to do than most climbers would lead in a day. guidebooks are limited edition, and might be available at climbmax in NE portland - but call to confirm this. (sometimes at portland rock gym also, but right now i believe they are sold out) however, go here and jon bell can get you one if climbmax is out: http://www.ozoneguide.blogspot.com/ PM me if this isn't enough...

hey kevbone, post up and tell us the history behind your installation of this bolt. this hanger first came off in my hand over 3 years ago, while on lead (freaky!!!), but i thought you had fixed it after that incident. you also told me then that you had trouble tightening the nut, and maybe your story will help prevent other bogus hanger jobs from going up.

chechat, i dig your experiment on cc.com and it's both provided me with some free entertainment and given me some food for thought. but never forget that this is a highly self-selected group of climbers. basically a bunch of either 1) people who work in cubicles but mainly spray on this site or 2) trustfunder types who are doing the same thing from home in between packing bowls. there are SO many climbers who never go onto this site, or others, and they likely hold very different opinions than the ones expressed here by at most 10-20 guys (no women) scattered throughout oregon and washington. so just because everyone here speaks with a megaphone doesn't make them representative of anything at all. as for kevbone, you should have gone with PMs long ago. then again, i would have missed out on some free entertainment!

41 miles from eugene (oakridge's location) is WAY different than 41 miles from portland. put ozone in oakridge at the end of your hobbit trail and you'd have a tenth or a hundredth of the traffic, and your anchorless routes would probably stay that way a long time. location, location, location.

I think the further a crag is from a road, the less likely it is to be climbed at. If the Lack (right?) has a burly approach, even if it's close to a city, then it's less and less likely to get bolted. As for your idealism, again, right on. And there are plenty of people in Oregon that don't see every new crag through a Smith Rock lens. just as one example, mark d commented earlier - and i'll take this moment to spray for him (and he'll hate it) - he has over 100 FAs throughout central oregon behind him in just the past 5-6 years, and i'd bet over half were groundup and boltless. together we put up over 15-20 new pitches (or what we thought was new - which is part of your point,as there were no bolts there to tell us otherwise) at Cougar, outside Bend, almost all groundup and not one with a bolt for lead protection. (there are bolted anchors) this isn't meant as spray - the routes are not exactly cutting edge or unprotected scarefests - but only to say that none of those routes at cougar or elsewhere have had bolts added to them. mark, correct me if i'm wrong. anyway, i'll say it again: if a crag is convenient to access, people will want convenient anchors to lower off, and that usually means bolts. can you see the difference between lead bolts and anchor bolts that way? or is there no compromise?

PS - i didn't mean for my words to be discouraging (though i guess they were). i encourage you to stick to your vision and at least keep your own routes bolt free, but just don't be surprised or crushed if fixed anchor bolts appear. Also, consider the likelihood that the person who drilled them may have had the best intentions, thinking they were "helping out" someone who lacked a drill, or making the post-lead part of the climb safer or more convenient for not only themselves but others.

if a crag is generally a single pitch cliff that is close enough to where people live that they can go there after work or for only a half-day, then: unless the majority of routes are top-outs, with trees for anchors to belay up the second, and an easy walk back down to the base (or burly trees with permanent webbing for the thousands of craggers who will require safe rappels after each pitch) - then a bolt-free crag is not likely to last because when climbers go to CRAG (see above definition) they don't want to even go through the above procedures between routes, let alone deal with an involved walk-off, sketchy rappel, or having to leave their own gear. in other words, cragging is inseparable from convenience, and routes at crags pretty much have to have fixed anchors enabling you to move on to the next pitch. if they don't yet, they will soon, once a cragger with a drill "fixes" things. if there weren't convenient fixed anchors, it wouldn't be cragging, and you'd be doing a multi or alpine climbing. and as ivan and kevbone have said, unless you become the rock police and thus invite conflict, bolts will appear because craggers will see the crag as a crag -and not the romantic and aesthetic ideal you wish for. sorry to be a buzzkill, but i think a bolt-free crag won't last unless it's far enough backcountry to be alpine. in which case, it wouldn't be a crag.

Kevin was the Public Works Director for the City of Troutdale (he wasn't your average dirtbag) and therefore was lucky to have Broughton in his backyard. I would meet him there on those mild April/May weekdays after work and I remember him talking me through the lower crux of "Shoot From the Hip" when I was just about to give up and hang on a piece, mystified. Then he abandoned me as soon as I figured out the move. He wasn't one to hand out beta, so I must have seemed truly pathetic at that moment. He intuitively knew that the truest satisfaction in climbing wasn't necessarily the hardest redpoint, but in knowing that you had faced and handled a challenge on your own. I am not a religious man but I try and make sense of things, and sometimes I rationalized that Kevin had been chosen by someone for this brutal disease because some force out there knew that he could handle it better than any of the rest of us. As if his quiet strength and stoicism singled him out for a sacrifice the rest of us could not withstand. We love you Kevin.

Just to be clear about what you are asking. You want me to name local routes that are run out and irresponsible? Correct? Wellwhat you are asking is from me is to name routes that I think are run out and or done irresponsible..this is such a subjective thing to ask of someone. Why would I name namesjust so you start to slam me for my opinion? At the end of the day.it would be my opinion vs your opinion. No one is right or wrong.therefore no. One persons run-out is another persons over bolted climb. Got anything else? you sure use a lot of words to say nothing at all.

i'm not trolling, i'm asking you to name some local routes put up groundup that are runout/irresponsible. if you don't start naming 'em, then the rest of us know you don't have a clue what you are talking about. but if you can name them, then we can actually have a discussion instead of discussing the semantics of "routesetter," etc. and wouldn't that be better?

answer the question, kevbone. now you've been called out twice. start naming routes or else quit trolling.

joe's one bolt route is "just" 10+, kev, so get after it!

kevbone, i think you have about 2 routes in mind that you consider a "waste of rock" or that are "irresponsible. please prove me wrong and name 10 groundup routes in the portland area that you think are irresponsible and a waste of rock. otherwise, i think you are just spraying...and trolling...and slacking at work...like usual...like me right now...

you said that establishing climbs in a groundup ethic is irresponsible. but it's a fact that there are classic groundup climbs all over the planet, and plenty of them are reasonable and safe. so how can you possibly call those FA parties "irresponsible"? as if they even had a responsibility to you or any other future party! (beyond competently installing any fixed protection so that it would actually work as designed) face it, you don't like climbing above a bolt - but that's your problem, and you can't criticize the FA party because they didn't place as many bolts as you would have. and i don't like runouts either, and i've backed off plenty - but i would never blame the FA party for "ruining the route for me" or "wasting rock" or whatever you usually call a route you won't lead.

kevbone, i'll try to be gentle so you don't get upset, but: you are just afraid to climb face climbs that were established groundup. your argument could be expressed through this law: "there shall not exist any climbs having fewer bolts than i deem safe enough physically and/or psychologically for me to lead - if thou bolts too meagerly, thou art irresponsible to me, the future ascentionist, of whom you should have been thinking." some of the best, most popular, classic, etc. single pitch and multi-pitch routes on the planet were undeniably established groundup and have been climbed tens of thousands of times by now. or we can agree with you and call all those FA parties irresponsible because they didn't hike to the summit and drill bolts every 5-6 feet all the way down.

the indian creek climber was on "ruby's cafe," like 13a. he pulled a TCU or two out as he fell and then crashed down on his ass next to the belayer and a bystander. i remember some drivel from the peanut gallery hardmen about how blue and not yellow TCUs go where he placed his undercammed yellows. and there are a lot of stills. google it, stewart.

hey bill. i never even got within 75 feet of the belayer and only spoke for 4-5 minutes. i also never said, point blank "your bolts will be chopped," although if they even had the slightest clue, they should have realized i was implying that the community would disapprove of their bolts, and likely remove them. so i can't say i have any inside line as to how they might react when faced with either holes or patches, but i do think that if they are going to be chopped, the quicker the better.

kevbone, you kill me. with 1 or 2 exceptions, it's otherwise been pretty unanimous that people want the bolts gone, and it's only a matter of how and when. so are you trolling us?