Edlinger

I am seeking directions to the much hyped secret sport crag in the greater mt. Vernon area. Have enough of the projects been sufficiently sent to allow the openers to pm me with directions? Any takers?

Wear tennis shoes as far as possible. Don't converse with rangers (you'll rarely get the beta you need, and more times then not you'll be notified of a regulation you've accidently broken even if you've tried everything in your power to be good). Always throw a light pair of rock slippers in your backpack in summer. When seconding a pitch, go so fast that you risk falling off nearly every move. Carry a charged phone Don't join any branch of the Mountaineers (they are all lame) Learn to ski, you'll feel much more comfortable on steep snow slopes. Cache unneeded gear as you ascend and get it on the way down. Sport climb a lot. You'll get sick strong and build a safety reserve of arresting crimp strength that will make soloing that wet 5.7 section in your boots with a pack on more sane. Don't strap shit to the outside of your pack. Don't use hydration bladders. Have fun and be safe.

I agree with you Porter. ========================================================== You can put this in spray if you want.

I wanted to put this in the section marked "spray", but under the spray title on the main forum page it says "everything not about climbing".

I guess I didn't mean for the thread to really name names but instead to be more retrospective. Thumb through the backs of some of the newer guidebooks and you'll notice that 98% of our newish sport routes are put up by 2% of the community. That is fine and many of the routes are amazing classics, but a few folk's names have in the course of conversation with others consistenly get mentioned as having literally gone apeshit with a powerdrill and put in tons of routes that many are poorly authored. I'm just saying, slow down, we don't need to throw a three bolt rig on every piece of eastern washington basalt or north bend stone.

If you could be a fairy godmother and take away the powerdrill of any one resident of the cascades, who would it be? Were talking bolting squeeze jobed, garbage routing, bolting alpine routing, bolting with clips every 24" inches, or bolting repetitive vantage style routes, or just putting in 20+ routes per year where many of them suck. As a longtime lurker, I've noticed that some of the longest threads on this site have been about a limited number of highly controversial bolted climbs. Many by the same perpetrators. Or just thumb through some of newer guidebooks after a day of climbing some routes that you thought sucked. Some folks are opening 3-4 routes in a single two day weekend! -Not a slanderous thread, just a retrospective thread that may yield some higher quality sport routes. Allez!

As the alder trees around the crag have grown up, the crag gets far less sun and seems to be a lot dirtier and wetter than it used to be than 20 years ago. Plus it is getting way less traffic with the north bend rock climbing scene now in place. Back in the day, it was virtually the only rock climbing up the i-90 corridor, and I'd run into other climbers at fun forest. Who added the bolts to the crack routes at fun forest?