Raindawg

Ethics are, like, so inconvenient! Dwayner says: BOOO BOOO BOOOOO BOOOO

Most of them.

Do yourself a favor and celebrate in style. Take all THREE of these fun-lovin' chicas out for a big night on the town. Satisfaction guaranteed!

Hey! Who hid my quick-draws?

No,dude....you just made that up. That's right, YOU JUST MADE THAT UP! Curb your fantasies. By your own "standards", you don't get to comment about Lundin Peak and a whole load of other topics you know nothing about.

Anything else that would keep you from climbing it???? How about your ethical conscience???: it's an illegitimate, rap-bolted sport-climb on a mountain in a wilderness area!!! Consider that before you choose to endorse such behavior by climbing it.

Dude....first of all, why are you posting Lundin Peak jive in the rock climbing forum? Second of all, junior, show some respect. The moderator you are chastising with your "don't post" comment [in deconstructed form,= "shut up"] has probably been climbing more years than you've been alive!

No, not really.

Yah....but the trash of the concert-goers can usually be easily picked up and disposed of....unlike the permanently-drilled metallic garbage left all over the Vantage crags by smug rap-bolting sport-climbers.

No, dude....it was the Northeast Face, remember? Whose memory is fading? Way to throw your old buddy under the bus, Jason. You have no idea what I have been up to in the mountains nor how fast or slow I might be. But happy birthday, Lucky....I hope your next 55 years are full of fun and adventure.

I was trying to be polite if not funny to you. Waste of time as usual.

You, like so many other clueless "climbers", seem to excuse your permanent alterations of the environment by constantly citing logging, roads, and road cuts to the extent that you think you're justified to do anything else as long as it's on a lesser scale. That's lame. The average backpacker has far more environmental consciousness about leaving little trace than the average modern rock climber who thinks it's just fine (and the status quo) to leave their permanent metallic mark - again- no matter what the scale - wherever they please. Grow up. Rock climbing at one time was developing a clue but then sold out to convenience and easy safety. The sport climbing "revolution" was a tragedy, not a progression. It was,in a sense, environmental devolution. While you think you're progressing with a bunch of artificial and rehearsed scenarios, much of the world of outdoor endeavors has long ethically passed you by and shake their heads in wonder as to why you refuse to clean up your act.

I've climbed Pinnacle Peak something like 167 times (it was my first ever climb in 1973 and I love the peak) including over 30 ascents of the North Ridge, numerous on the east ridge and two different routes on the spooky and crumbly north face. I've climbed the east ridge to the summit from the road in 35 minutes and round trip from Paradise in less than two hours. Could I do it that fast again? Maybe...but right now, I ain't got the time or energy to try. But two hours car to car ain't shabby.

Anybody know if Mt. Index is in a designated wilderness area?

Here it comes! I'll take the bait even though the exchanges I've been reading sound pretty fishy/naive. Gecko and Company: learn a little history before you go on that thing. It's an illegitimate route, power-drilled in a wilderness area. If you got any ethics beyond your own personal thrills, you should boycott it and certainly not add to the mess. The only reason it hasn't been removed yet is because realistically its going to take a heck of a lot of time and effort to do so. Personally, I would like to see the guys originally responsible step up and remove it themselves.

Nice that you did it when there was snow and water available. Me and Mike Adams did the traverse in August 1977(?). We started from our car, went up to Lake Serene (where we got all of our water)and climbed the North Face of the North Peak and bivouacked on its very summit and ran out of water not long after. I recall a rappel followed by sketchy traverses to find the correct ledge to another rappel to the North/Middle peak notch. As you note, climbing out of the notch was probably the crux of the whole route, and was barely protectable..there was one fixed pin and it was maybe 5.7...maybe 80 feet, veering a bit to the right. I'm glad Mike led it. Traversing the Middle Peak was fun and mostly unroped until the Middle/Main notch where there was some easy and fun climbing with some tricky routefinding to the generally flat summit of the main peak. We had left the summit of the North Peak at dawn and climbed without water all day which probably slowed us down. There were a few little rain pools on the Main Peak, some with mosquito larvae in them, but we were so thirsty that we just laid flat and drank out of them. The descent down some gullies to get to Lake Serene was pretty funky,and involved at least one rappel, and we returned exhausted to the lake where we passed out on some rocks and hiked out the next day. (And that was the old trail, which some of you might remember as a vertical root scramble.) We did sign a register on the North Peak summit and it might be up there somewhere. There were a few,but not many,names listed in it back then.

Random example?? Ya dude....random....I just picked something randomly from the on-line list to have a look at a sample route description and it was "Cookie Monster".

Just trying to a little dignity to the sad situation by dropping the "Say What?" from the topic title.

Although I didn't know him well, I used to work with an excellent climber named Jeff Splitgerber when we both were both mountain guides with Jim Donini's Leavenworth Alpine Guides. Jeff was a pioneer of paragliding and met his end that way. (See the link below.) Early Paragliding Fortunately, the equipment is much, much safer now and you can even buy an emergency BASE-jumping-like chute to back you up should things go really wrong. But Jeff's demise is probably what put some fear into me. R.I.P. Jeff Splitgerber.

I actually went to a paragliding school based out of Ellensburg, WA. My ultimate goal was to be able to use a device called a "Pago Jet" used in conjunction with a paraglider....it's basically a big propeller pack that you wear that will allow you to launch from nearly anywhere and control your speed and destination. I wanted to used it for desert exploration...fly across the sand rather than trudging or driving through it. I went to the school with a buddy of mine who was really nervous about climbing. It turned out that paragliding scared the heck out of me and he loved it, and now has a commercial pilot's license and works with the civil air patrol. I had a couple of scary flights, including an asymetrical collapse of my wing that sent me slamming into a hillside (even after I recovered from my spiral), but there were some things I did like, such as the fact that it's the simplest form of flight you'll probably ever experience, you essentially have a parachute over your head the whole time, and it's quiet and amazing and feels like you're floating on air....cuz you are! But...there is a serious learning curve if you want to do anything more than short flights off of small hills. The gear is also expensive....a new set-up will probably cost you 3 - 5 thousand dollars. I suggest you take an introductory course or flight (even "tandem" with an instructor) and see if it intrigues you or scares you. It definitely scared me but I might just give it another try someday!

Whatever, dude. I know who Chris is...and I own his truly awesome Yosemite big wall book. (And his new book also looks beautifully produced.) But I have no respect for the messy disease of "sport climbing" spreading or being promoted on national lands. Here's a random (and honestly-stated) example of one of the climbs featured in the book: "Cookie Monster": "On the first ascent, this route was boldly led on RPs and nuts and rated 5.12c. The climb was downgraded to 5.12a after it was bolted. With bolts, the route changed from a seldom-repeated trad lead to probably the most popular 5.12 sport climb in Yosemite. While there is occasionally talk among locals of chopping the bolts, this has yet to happen." ANOTHER BOLD,CLEAN CLIMB DUMBED DOWN FOR THE MASSES. and it makes me WANT TO HURL!!! (Kind of reminds me of Dan's Dreadful Direct on Castle Rock up here in Washington...except the locals actually finished the job.) However... DO BUY THIS HIGH-QUALITY BOOK FOR THE TOP-ROPES. By the way "stevetimetravlr"...you don't like my perspective? Don't subscribe to it. Are you surprised that not everyone agrees with you? There are plenty of us. Kick my @ss because you disagree with my opinion? Is that a threat? Real mature! It's hereby publicly noted.

Sport climbs don't belong in Yosemite Valley. Top-ropes? O.K. But keep your metallic highways out of America's national treasures.

This topic shouldn't be in spray, but should be up front and prominent. I had similar surgery in February during which they took out much of my upper lip. Immediately after the cancer was removed, it looked like I had been shot in the face with a .357. A very talented plastic surgeon restored my face with a collection of incisions involving my nose, lip (split down the center) and my cheek. Months later, it's hard to tell I had such drastic surgery. ("cuz you still ugly".ha, preempted you) although I'm still recovering. The likely origins date back 30 years or so from severe sunburns acquired from many days on glaciers while wearing (or not) weak-sauce sunscreen. The lesson? Figure it out. Use the screen or it might come back and bite you in the butt (or elsewhere, like your back or face) harshly years from now. Thanks for sharing your story, sobo, and don't be surprised if weeks from now you might spit out a few of the internal stitches that don't always dissolve. A little hole will form and you'll see a piece of string. (Or someone else will since it's on your back...unless your neck turns around 180 degrees like that puking green-faced little girl in "The Exorcist") Give it an uncomfortable tug and you might find several inches of catgut with a knot in it. Nice souvernir! But ask your doctor first. aloha, Dwayner/Raindawg/Don

[blah,blah] Dude....what's up with the above?....was that really necessary? What the heck! The term "epic" is utterly relative to the situation and the people involved. If the guy thinks he had an "epic", he had an epic. And then you can form a review committee of your "peers" and issue a ruling.