counterfeitfake

I'm gonna predict locusts.

There is no reason to use a #4 anywhere on the route. The bottom half of the OW will take a #5. Without a #6 I would be shitting my pants, but maybe you can handle a 30 foot runout on a 5.9 OW.

Pinky jam! Tape up! Yep - climber cleanly till the last move then fell off again and again and again... So I climbed GM to Heart of the Country yesterday with jaredvg. Excellent climb. On the way down we toproped this. I thought for the most part it was hard and really fun! I haven't climbed too many 5.11b routes. I took two laps on it and got it clean the second time. As for the finish... can ANYONE mantle that? I don't get how it is possible. Maybe if your head is really heavy? I got my right hand on the sloper, put my left foot up high, and just levered up until I could grab the chain. So I guess I climbed it at A0. I took another stab at mantling the left part of the slopey ledge and actually stood up, but then could not move to go right towards the anchor, and just fell off backwards in slow-mo. NO KIDDING. Holy jebus. Cummins' topo says 10c and even that seems too easy. Standing on nothing while crimping on nothing.

I'm not sure what you really want to know- I was up at Washington Pass a little over a week ago, and looking at that east face it seemed ready to go. I don't see any reason Liberty Crack wouldn't be climbable. You'll be approaching on compact snow.

70 L is too big for an overnighter. Get something smaller, 50 L or less, and lighter. Carry less gear. Be lighter and faster. I would not try to get one sleeping bag for all seasons. Summertime here, 30 degrees, wintertime, probably fifteen-zero degrees. I love my Serratus Icefall but that company doesn't exist anymore. I've seen a lot of Cold Cold World packs on the backs of friends and other climbers I respect. A guy here named crackers runs Cilogear and a lot of people here like his stuff.

Gas station boycott! It's funny that some people understand economics even less than I do.

They break.

Excellent. I've been intrigued by this route since seeing that picture in Squamish Select. Nice to know someone actually climbs it.

I am skeptical about this until you give some examples.

Those pictures were very helpful to us Blake. The only gap in our comprehension was between the leaning block and the offwidth- do you remember what you did?

Trip: Burgundy Spire - North Face Date: 6/15/2008 Trip Report: Myself, fenderfour, madeinmontana, and Jeff went to Burgundy Spire last weekend. Despite the fact that the climb is mostly loose blocks perched on top of kitty litter, we had a really good time. The weather was perfect. The approach is brutal but short. We hit snow around 6000 feet and camped around 6500. Our plan was to climb Paisano Pinnacle to get up to the NF of Burgundy. We spent a lot of time at our bivy site staring up at the route, and figured we had a good idea where it was. There it is. From here you can't tell Paisano isn't attached to Burgundy. Sadly two of us were wearing sneakers, nobody had crampons and we had brought only one ice axe. If we'd been smart we would have actually kicked steps up to the base of Paisano, this would have fixed our footwear issues as well as our routefinding issues. But we weren't smart. In the morning the snow was very solid. We found a boot pack going up to Burgundy Col and followed it, planning to traverse right to Paisano at some point. When we started to do this, it was pretty sketchy. Crampons and an axe would have made it a cake walk. We got to a notch and only then understood where we needed to be. We had screwed up. After some conversation we decided to go with the sure thing, and rapped back to the boot pack and headed up to do Burgundy. The look of "we're screwed". We did the climb in about 6 pitches. The first was mostly 4th class, up to the wide gravelly benches below the "amphitheatre". We did another pitch from here to halfway up the amphitheatre, then a third up through the notch in the wall at the top. From here a long traverse rightward under a leaning block brought us within site of the 3 offwidth options to the summit. We didn't really understand where the route went from here, there were a lot of good-looking lines above us, but no obvious way to get onto them. Pulling a few slab moves on lichen would have gained us the sweet little dihedral, but with no pro it would have taken a bigger man than I. I ended up going right around a little corner and climbing a cool dihedral, probably the most fun pitch of the route for me. From there Nate led sideways across an easy traverse (with psychological pro placed behind wimpy flakes) and then up into the 5.8 offwidth. It was his first OW lead and pretty spicy for that; he led it with aplomb. offwidths r hard After a bit Robert and Jeff joined us on the summit. We lounged for a little bit enjoying the view, but as the climb had taken us longer than anyone had planned, we headed down before long. It took us 6 double-length rappelsl, which went pretty smoothly, except for one stuck rope I had to lead up to retrieve. Summit shot! It was almost as bad as it looks. Once at the col we gathered our stuff and changed into our boots quickly, and headed down through the snow which now was, of course, very soft. Hitting the bivy site we packed in a hurry and continued down the steep steep dusty trail. Everything went smoothly and although the last steep climb back up to the car is a real punisher, we were all glad to have gotten back before dark. After a long day the drive back from Washington Pass takes forever. Dinner at Burger King was the best we could do, at least it was calories. Good weekend. Gear Notes: Rope and light alpine rack. If you're comfortable with a short OW you only need up to a #3 C4, otherwise... ? I'm sure if you wanted you could place a #4, #5, and #6. Crampons and axes would have been really nice in the AM. Approach Notes: Very steep but short. We hit snow around 6000 feet.

qu'est-ce que c'est?

Also snow started at about 6000' below Burgundy Spire, I'd guess the west side of the Liberty Bell group is similar.

Have you been given a speeding ticket by an SPD officer?

You could definitely post a picture of that wall. Then it would be harder to doubt you.

I hear PAM works great. No, really.

Absolutely wear a helmet. If he fell far enough to invert, the second piece was a ways down there. Double up your placements, triple them, whatever.

On Flying Circus it would be possible to snag a foot on a ledge and flip. I think practice falls are ridiculous, especially onto trad gear. Aid climbing gives you the experience you're looking for. But if you must practice fall onto trad gear... sew it up. Please. That is the real foolishness of this story.

My second time up R&D I was rusty and overconfident. Going up the short fist crack on P3 (I think?), I blew it and fell backwards. A gold DMM cam caught me. I wound up lying on my back in the little low-angle ditch. Silly. For some reason I remember the second one, falling onto a red ABC Huevo on Clandestine Affair, in Squamish. That one was actually vertical and much more exciting.

I think most would say that is too much excess weight. So you have to make one of the compromises you mention.

They didn't have it at REI. What is up with that? When did it come out?

But it's still true that they don't like cold. You can search around here and the rest of the internet, and find various heat exchanger solutions people have made.

Use chain.

That is very sad. I generally don't like to armchair-speculate. But I can't understand going up there with way the weather has been.

What is the short-axis strength of a 'biner? Isn't it more than 10 kN? Don't you think when a force around 10 kN was applied to a carabiner attached to your soft belay loop, the 'biner would rotate into the long-axis configuration? If anyone has ever caught a falling leader and had the 'biner remain stuck in the short-axis configuration, I want to hear about it.