Julian

That route looks absolutely freaking ridiculous! People are going to be up in arms over the grading, but Will is one of the few guys who can credibly make a grade claim like that, and if his description is accurate (M10 difficulty on ice) it doesn't seem unreasonable. Also unlike Rights of Passage ("WI"8 on a serac), this is legitimately water-ice (and freaking cool water-ice at that!).

Awesome, looks like you had a great climb. Keeping my fingers crossed for a few days of stable weather next weekend.

Would anyone's opinions of this route honestly be any different if the bolts had been hand-drilled? It seems like the whole "power drilling in a wilderness area!" thing is just a convenient excuse for people to rail against a climb they wouldn't like anyway regardless of that issue.

Isn't every post in Spray just a long-winded version of this one?

Anyone been up on Hood recently and have any info about conditions and/or photos? Specifically would like to know about the north/northeast face, but any info about non-SS routes would be great. Also if anyone has been up on I-Rock lately that would be cool to know about too.

Mike & Ikes and peanut M&Ms are my fuels of choice for climbing, along with the obligatory GUs/ClifShots. Dried apricots are another favorite of mine, and I like wasabi peas too. It's taken a lot of trial and error to figure out which foods I find palatable when I'm stretched out and not feeling too great.

Comparing that to IB is like complaining about someone bolting a new line in Aggro Gully at Smith by sarcastically asking them to bolt the lower East Face of the Monkey Face.

Awesome, thanks guys (and especially Dane for getting my tools shipped! ). On a related subject (stacking/matching and tool mods), Dane did you get a chance to look at the new trigrest matching point on the new Quarks at the OR show? Is this going to be available as a standalone add-on, and if so do you think it might work on the Aztars?

Anyone got advice and experiences with stacking tools? I'm trying to learn about what the best/most efficient tool stacks are in various situations (axes on ice vs. rock, best place on the picks to stack them, etc.), and the benefits/disadvantages of stacking vs. matching (especially on tools that don't have a good "matching point" higher on the shaft).

For every route you chop, I'm going to rap-bolt three!

I hope the trigrests are available as a separate component and work on old tools. If so they will be my next add-on after getting my griprest-modded Aztars back from Dane.

Anyone have any good experiences with a really light/thin point-and-shoot digital camera? I'm talking the sort of thing that can fit in the breast pocket of a jacket and you can yank out while alpine climbing to snap a photo, put back in, and it won't be bothering you while you are moving.

Just amazing. What a route, what a location, what commitment. An all-time great line put up by two of the all-time great alpinists.

While this very informative thread has mostly been about tools and ethics (imagine that, given the title), I thought this was interesting to get an idea of some of the physical and mental changes that have occurred in ice and mixed climbing over the years: Will Gadd - 24 Hours of Ice

The Camp Pulse is a great idea to accommodate the needs of an ever-growing niche in the market. If I did more skiing I would buy one for sure.

They'd be better off mandating everyone carry a micro-stove and a fuel canister, that would have a much greater chance of saving your life than a PLB. But of course, practical climbing safety gear like stove/fuel, a bivvy sack, a shovel, etc. doesn't play as well with the general public as the Magic Rescue Button, so we aren't likely to see that sort of legislation any time soon.

Me rocking an Edelrid Shield foam core helmet after a dirty pitch at Moolack. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that despite all my gear wankery, the one place I cheap out is on a helmet. I've had this one for 5 years and repaired it twice with super glue (but not anything crazy like super-gluing the foam back together in an impact zone - all things related to the tightening mechanism). It's not that I'm too cheap to replace this helmet, it's that I love it and the way it fits and don't want to give it up.

Not that I have any interest in doing this (or more accurately, not that I have the skill to even consider it), but are there bolts in the roof and on the wall between the base and the nowr free-hanging curtain? Seems like a perfect hard mixed route in those conditions (with the pillar having fallen off).

Badass looking tool. Very apropos for the world's most badass climber.

Dane's gear porn is one of the reasons I come to this site so often.

Does a headlamp count as an electronic signaling device? It runs on batteries and emits a "signal" (hell, you can send morse code with it if you want).

Backcountry Gear has previous generation BD Fusions on clearance: http://www.backcountrygear.com/catalog/climbdetail.cfm/BD816 Still pricey but not bad for such a nice tool.

Mark Twight's review of Vertical Limit: Strap On The Nitro

Can you send the stairs free yet, or are you still using an aid placement for every 2nd move?

The posting is gone already, what was it?