el jefe

definitely sounds like a cascades classic!

vive la france!

looks like you guys had splendid weather. nice pics!

vaya con dios, stim. a genuine man of quality.

good luck with your guidebook, i hope you are able to recover your residual costs. i had noticed the other thread re: good bolts but don't care anymore. the point i've been trying to make is that i'm tired of people such as you who think it is your job to tell the rest of us what our relationship to climbing should be. i think people approach the sport for different reasons and to get different things from it, and that it isn't up to me or you to decide for them what that should be. some people prefer flagstone to the lack, others prefer the lack to flagstone. that's fine by me, each to his own. i like a diverse diet so the fact that there are different areas where different styles of climbing are practiced ensures that i will get what i want. i hope you have a happy time passing judgment on all the different climbing areas you encounter, putting them into your little categories of good bolts and badly bolted and overbolted and whatever. as i said, each to his own.

my world is dark? i'm not the guy with the cache of firearms to protect me from the government and/or my fellow citizens suddenly turning on me and stealing my rights, you are. talk about living in a dark world. checat started this thread about the bolt-free nirvana called "the lack" and, as markd pointed out, he seems to think he is entitled to pick and choose which of the local ethics he wants to adhere to (e.g., no bolts) and the ones he doesn't want to adhere to (e.g., no guidebook). i'm wondering about the motivation of a guy who is willing to publish a guidebook to an area where the community of climbers has long been opposed to having one: clearly he isn't speaking for the community consensus, so he is either out to make a buck or magnanimously spreading the gospel of bolt-free to the ignorant savages who are still out clipping bolts. perhaps checat is this kind, noble, magnanimous soul dedicated to raising the consciousness of benighted boltclippers throughout the great state of oregon and is planning to donate all the proceeds from his guidebook for bolt replacement -- no, i mean, tree replacement or?

good point, markd. my guess is that the whole reason for this thread in the first place was that checat wants to hype his guidebook -- you know, get people talking about the place so that sales are better. a guide to a place no one has ever heard of is unlikely to return much money to the author.

I guess you know it all then. Good luck! And for the rest of you, you knew this was coming so just let me get it out of my system. Behold, the elusive BLT's at the Exit 38 Deli....so many choices!: oops! looks like grampa raindawg is off his meds again.

sheshat is the krackers kind of elitist who started this whole thread just so he could tell everyone how kool is he for klimbing at moolack where the real he-men like him go climbing and anyone who still clips bolt lacks skill, brass cahones, etc. now he is annoyed because we aren't impressed with how awesome his crag is or how he-manly he is or whatever. therefore: i think it is just way beyond amazing that your crag has no bolts and that you guys are so far out cutting edge i plan to change my whole approach to climbing just because of your efforts to purify climbing and change the course of climbing history here in oregon. amazing geniuses who discovered that you can rap off of a tree! holy shit, what an amazing revelation. thank you for leading us all to salvation and away from the certain perdition that awaits anyone who clips another bolt after having heard word of the holy and sanctified bolt-free moolack and its patron saint, the benevolent checat and his apostle, powderhound. amen.

bravo!

it is about time we heard from you, ivan. please, grace us with your opinion which we presume is -- as always -- timely, subtle and incisive.

gotta go with corvallis on this one. the fact that there aren't any bolts at "the lack" is probably a sign of a lack of interest by the rest of the climbing community...

i thought when i heard you boast about being john frieh's "favorite partner" it meant you didn't like girls...

well, in order to become czar, you are going to have to talk to JosephH because he is the one who decides who gets to be climbing czar. next question: is this place called "the lack" because it lacks bolts?

"Call me a youth groping and grasping to a time and when climbing was an adventure; NOT a homogenous and antiseptics effort to cater to the lowest common denominator." okay, you're a groping and grasping youth -- just don't grope my daughter and everything will be fine. ca 1920 or so the british climbing community decried the german invention of the carabiner because it robbed the sport of adventure. before the 'biner, the leader had to untie, thread his rope through the eye of the piton, then tie back in. i'm okay with using 'biners and i suspect you use them, too. where would you like to arbitrarily turn the clock back to in your search for adventure? my point here is that we all decide for ourselves what level of adventure interests/intrigues/draws us. you want to follow leo houlding, fine by me. i could care less what leo says. i'll make my own decision, thank you. i'm certainly okay with the idea that "the lack" is a trad area with its weird no bolt anchors ethic. to each his own, let the local community decide for itself. it would never occur to me to go into someone else's area and impose my ideas on them. i just find the pompous attitude that it is so clean and pure and shouldn't everyone aspire to this standard so much malarkey. clean and pure because it got no bolts and bolts is all bad always, evil stuff, cams good because "natural" -- so simple to be dogmatic, so much harder to actually think about the choices we make. at the smoke bluffs people used trees for rap anchors for decades, then decided after learning that they were harming the trees that bolt anchors were a better idea. pluses and minuses to either option, but at least put some thought into it. don't just quote some pothead brit. so at this adventurous crag with no bolts -- were routes cleaned on lead or on toprope? is the pro really sketchy, requiring genuine boldness, or is it bomber and you can sew it up, a cam every 3 feet in a crack that was meticulously cleaned on rappel, inspected as to what size gear was necessary prior to its "adventurous" first ascent?

what a load of pompous bullshit. are you speaking for all climbers or is that the royal "we" you are using? you joke about being climbing czar but...

There are only a couple (two I believe) designated rap trees the rest are webbing free. Moss grows back, trails grow over, and 100+foot tall several feet wide tree are not going to be strangled by webbing. I see trees that over grow barbed wire all over the place, this is just webbing. But....bolt holes and bolts are not overgrown by the rock. ask an arborist whether wrapping slings around trees is harmless. the moss isn't going to grow back as long as people keep climbing there, nor will the trails grow over as long as people keep using them to get to the crag. the point is that human activity changes things, so if you want it to remain "natural", then you have to ban all activity and close the place to climbing. you guys are a laugh. you think you are so pure because you aren't using bolts but you are still changing the environment. the carbon footprint of manufacturing trad gear has to be greater than that of manufacturing what you need to climb a sport route (the bolts are reused by every climber who does the route whereas trad route requires everyone to have their own equipment). the "capitalistic" climbing gear industry makes a lot more money selling you a cam than it does selling you a quickdraw, yet somehow the cam is some sort of anti-capitalist thing and the quickdraw is selling out to the man. like i said, what a load of bs...

joseph, i'd say that, as per usual, it was you who didn't get the joke. luvshaker, i can't imagine anything more tedious or pointless than another bolting discussion. apparently scrubbing moss, building trails, and strangling trees with webbing are all activities deemed "natural", but putting in a nice bolt anchor that would protect the trees from abuse is somehow "capitlistic". what a load of bs...

Bill, did I miss something? Why do I suddenly feel like Geronimo on Columbus Day... anyone surprised by the fact that joseph is ignorant of what is happening in the larger world outside the backwater of beacon rock?

is this another one of those "bolts aren't natural" spiels? like cams and stoppers aren't manmade artifacts just like bolts, every bit as much a product of the capitalistic interests of the rock climbing industry? like said capitalists aren't probably more interested in selling all of us multiple sets of expensive camming devices rather than a mere 10 quickdraws each? the rediscovery of trad climbing has been a good thing for the bottom line of the capitalists because now they get to sell more toys. no bolts would be good for the capitalistic climbing industry.

climbing pictures are always a good idea, bill. let's see more of them.

from this thread it looks like one could quibble endlessly with the studies comparing the quality of health care delivered in the u.s. relative to that delivered in other first world countries, but the thing i find interesting is that the neither the citizens nor the politicians of these other countries are talking about scrapping their systems in favor of one organized like ours. if the u.s. system was delivering the results its proponents claim, then it seems likely that someone somewhere in the developed world would be interested in adopting it, and that just isn't the case.

i think this argument is specious, jayb. canadian diets and habits aren't that different from ours and traumatic injuries (gunshot wounds, stabbings, etc -- homicides are usually the result of penetrating trauma) are considered a public health issue, so the comparison is still valid as a measure of the effectiveness of a health care delivery system. infant mortality is higher in the u.s. than canada as well -- do you think homicide rates matter as far as this is concerned? are u.s. infants more likely to smoke cigarettes? is canadian breast milk healthier than american? give me a break. we're talking about statistics based upon populations measured in the millions. you just don't want to believe the data because it doesn't support your ideology.

"Do you disagree that hospital billing practices represent an effort to shift costs from parties who don't pay the full cost of their care onto those who can?" of course hospitals shift the cost of providing care for those who don't pay onto those who do -- what choice do they have? the law requires hospitals to provide a medical screening exam to anyone who shows up seeking care and to treat accordingly or, if they lack the specialized resources/technology/staff necessary to provide care, then they have to arrange transfer to a center that has the resources necessary to treat. it is illegal to turn away someone seeking care or to refuse care regardless of whether the person seeking care can pay or will pay. yet at the same time, the hospital doesn't get its resources (staff, equipment, electricity, etc) for free, so how do you make the books balance? the only recourse is to jack up the prices and thus shift cost for unreimbursed care onto those who do pay.

"And the rightwing mantra of "leave medicine to the doctors, not the gov't" - what utter bullshit - these are the same clowns who took over, raped, and all but destroyed our medical system in the '80s and '90s with 'managed care'. The republicans explicitly didn't want doctors making medical decisions - they manufactured a system which explicitly took decision-making out of doctor's hands and gave it to insurance companies." let's use the complete statement if you are going to quote from it, jayb. seems to me that joseph is saying that rightwing shills used fear of guvmint bureaucrats restricting treatment options as a smokescreen to shift this power to corporate bureaucrats instead. try going to a specialist who is "outside" your hmo, ppo, or whatever and you'll find it isn't covered -- in other words, your treatment options are being limited. myself, i'd rather this decision be made by the government bureaucrats because i can, at least on some level, influence that decision by how i vote. corporate bureaucrats, on the other hand, have the best interests of the corporation in mind, not the public interest.