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area51

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  1. This is also for the sub-category 'poor fashion decisions'....

    Probably 1986 - Feeeraayss toooo!

     

    a51bitd.jpg

     

    beer points if you name the boulder problem!

     

    And yes that is the front page of the local paper.... (now at mom's house).

  2. These are the wanker columns an old T.O. portland guide refers to. Park on Hwy 14 just west of the waterfall and head up. Do note that while I live 15 minutes from there, I have not been there in 12 years, mostly b/c of the amazingly high density of poison oak at the base:(

  3. isn't this where bill chimes in and points out how great of a guy joseph is an how we should all thank him for all his hard work....

     

    Since Bill won't I will! I thank Joseph each time I clip into those Metolius rap anchors. And I thank him each time he helps me out on my software.

     

    Paul Cou sar

  4. Did not mean to imply I'm using those b/c I'm not. I have put up a few fixe cold shuts, but mostly I'm a metolius rap hanger fan.

     

    Good on you for putting the money into those anchors, its a sweet set up.

     

    And not that anybody asked, but I assemble the bolt and hanger at home, then paint with primer. So no shine at all.

     

     

  5. Copy_of_DSCF0667.jpg

     

    The SW chutes last saturday were pretty good up high. At about 8,000' the snow got soft and there were multiple wet avalanches along the edges, from rock fall and snow sluffing I think. We made it through no trouble.

     

    But look closely at the photo (taken from south of trout lake), there is a new slide in there - smack in the middle of the chute (I had stayed boarders right of that area). Hope no-one got caught it in, but it does look skiier caused.

     

     

    goingdown.jpg

  6. We do have a route over at wankers called rattlesnake, as I was rattled off of it. My belayer thought I was having an epileptic attack as I was shaking and downclimbing feverishly and erratically!

     

    Although the worst encounter was getting rattled at on the trail at the base of sinks in WY, and back-pedaling and tripping and nearly falling off the approach ledge....

  7. Nice write-up Sherri! Black-O was one of my intros to long routes too.

     

    I climbed BO spring break 1986. Had just moved west from U-Maine to Colorado State and my first road trip ever was to RR with Craig Lueben and a few other guys! Back in ’86 you could drive pretty far up the canyon and camp out.

     

    We still got up early and watched Halley’s comet overhead as we sipped coffee in the pre-dawn darkness. I remember much fun climbing, then to the rap gulley. Looking at the new guide, it show’s the descent off to the climbers left. We however headed right, and started down a tree filled gulley….

     

    With much cursing over stuck ropes and climbing up to free them, darkness was falling. About half-way down we came across some other poor soul’s rope that had been cut in half. We grabbed that and continued on. A few raps later our rope got really stuck. Hoping we were close to the ground we could not see in this pre-headlamp ownership era, we decided to tie the ropes together and continue on.

     

    We had about half the rope available from what was stuck up higher, so we tied that into an anchor, tied our other rope into the end of that and down I went, over 200 ft. Shit, not long enough. I still had the found piece. So in the darkness I groped for a crack, sunk a single nut, and rapped another 80 ft to a ledge.

     

    At this point there must have been some moon light, b/c I could just make out the ground another 20 ft or so down. Nothing to do but down solo, so we did. A bit of stumbling through the cactus got us back to camp, and the good natured heckling of Craig and the others!

     

  8. David S made a good point about assigning a grade, that if you are having a good day, it may seem a bit easy; an off day and its a bit hard. So to really get a good feel for a routes difficulty, you need to climb it a bunch over time.

     

    Just sending a route once makes ones opinion a bit less robust imo.

  9. I have 2 crag ropes, 10.2 70 m bluewater and the 9.1 70m joker.

     

    If I plan on just cragging in my comfort zone, the 10.2 comes along. If I want to try to send some hard for me routes, the 9.1 comes out. And yeah it stretches. The lightness however is only 1/2 the pleasure, the other 1/2 is how will it handles and runs through pro.

     

    I started using a fader sum for the 9.1 - it locks up agressivly (way more than a gri-gri) and feeds way better too. Lowering though needs your full attention. After a few months, it fattens up a bit that a "newish" gri-gri worked fine.

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