forrest_m

and whats more, his most famous route? (drumroll please...) CAVEMAN M9+ (i'm not making this up)

i think lambone was just inspired by sean issac's slideshow the other night...

the double fish vs. overhand (aka Euro Death Knot, or EDK) question has been debated at great length on rec.climbing by people who actually have access to testing equipment. the latest "consensus" is summarized in the FAQ at tradgirl.com http://www.tradgirl.com/rc/faq5.htm#rappel which includes a link to some spreadsheets of testing, discussions of failure mechanisms, etc. the argument basically comes down to this: the double fishermans is unquestionably far stronger than the EDK, especially if tied poorly. however, the EDK is by far strong enough for rappelling, and has other advantages (primarily that it is less bulky and the knot rotates upwards when pulling the ropes so your ropes are less likely to get stuck). some people say: i want the strongest knot, period. some people say that reducing the risk of a stuck rope is worth the reduction in strength. you make the call. tech geeks of the world unite.

holly - well, it's the internet, so you have no 100% guarantee. the tradgirl stuff all names its sources, i.e. if you look at the spreadsheets, they have explanations of where they come from, mostly testing performed by the poster him/herself. you implied earlier that you trust the breaking strengths given on the camalot tag, so i guess you consider the black diamond catalog authoritative? most manufacturers have this kind of stuff on their website. i have read that the uiaa has done a bunch of knot testing, but as far as i know, the raw data were published in academic-type papers. probably in the library. if you want to have a 100% guarantee of testing accuracy, i guess you should go do the tests yourself. (some of the tradgirl test were done by a guy with a strain gauge a comealong, and a bunch of retired ropes of various diameters.)

I did a really cool climb in august of Mesachie Peak via the Mesachie Icefall/East ridge, it was a really fun weekend out. It was pretty melted out, so we didn't rope up, just simlulsoloed the whole thing. One 10 foot vertical ice step, 300 feet of 50 degree snow, then a long moderate (5.5 max), mostly solid ridge, with several sections of almost perfectly flat "sidewalk" with great exposure. We didn't bring a rope, but you might want one if the glacier was snow covered. We left easy pass trailhead at 4:30 pm and were back by 1 the next afternoon. From easy pass, climb about 2-300 vertical feet then traverse level for about a mile into a small bowl beneath mesachie pass (bivy spots). Cross the pass, drop down and traverse under the icefall, climb up to the ridge and to the summit. Descend to the top of the gully, then traverse the south side of the peak back to camp. You could also go do daylward and my new route on mt. hardy :-) http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000184.html

just getting this back up to the top... please come to our slide show!

PP - Actually, my feeling is that very few climbers with a broad range of experience would choose to define themselves in such limited terms as "trad" or "sport", whether or not they engage in sport climbing or some other facet of the sport. So I was implying that the people who do (self) define themselves as "sport climbers" are very often people with less experience and therefore much of the abuse that they suffer is the veteran-novice razzing that happens in any activity, made more complicated by the fact that many "old-school" climbers are disconcerted by the incredibly fast progression through the grades that most people make today (compared to 15 or 30 years ago.) Obviously the bolting issues you raise are far from settled. I'm just saying that it's getting a little ridiculous around here that everytime someone says "quickdraw", the thread turns into "Dan's Dreadful Direct Part XVIII"

quote: Originally posted by Peter Puget: Forrest – Since the bolting question has been killed would you please provide the definitive answers to my three questions? I must have missed them while the debate raged! PP - although I am all knowing and all powerful, I choose not to provide you with the definitive answers to your open ended questions. ;-) I'm not dissing your posts or the seriousness of the issues you are raising, I just feel that they have been discussed as nauseum lately, and it seems to me that you and some other posters use even the most tangential link to drag threads onto the bolting soap box. Again, these are important issues, but I thought that in this case, MN had started the much more entertaining thread of "why do old-school climbers dis on sport climbers." If you want to make a serious discussion out of it, you could inquire into why some people define themselves as sport climbers or "trad" climbers, but I think the discussion of "what is a sport climb" is boring.

Just reread the initial post and thought I'd take a different stab at it - all the bolting discussion has been done to death... If I'm reading MysticNacho right, part of what he's saying is that he's tired of getting grief from "trad" climbers for only participating in "sport" climbing. I think this attitude comes in from 2 sources, in varying proportions: 1) It is the only way to maintain your dignity when some 14 year old kid - who wasn't even born when you started climbing - sends a route that you couldn't get to the second clip on. 2) A lot of it stems from frustration. It's like when one of your friends claims to know all about food, to really love eating, but who has only eaten italian food. It's not that italian is bad, we all like a good bowl of pasta, but it's hardly the whole of the culinary experience. To really know about food, you have to risk eating some things you might not like, not just continue ordering the same dish that you know is good, over and over and over... most "old school" climbers also sport climb, they have a wide enough experience to recognize that while it's fun, it's the pizza of the climbing world, tasty if done well, but only a small part of a spectrum that includes mexican, thai, indian, basque, japanese, ethiopian....

m10 to rambo comparison... half a pound heavier, that means 4 oz per boot, right? i think not enough to make any difference performance-wise, i'll bet you lose that much if you change from dual to mono points? i'd make my decision on which fit my boots better or try to demo both and see which ones i liked better. also, i have a personal CM fetish, since in 8 years of hard use, 3 tools and 2 crampons i have never broken anything, never had a pick come loose, never had a mechanical breakdown of any kind - and that counts for a lot with me.

early morning spire sits a little in front of the main dorado needle ridge, connected to it by a ridge sort of thing. We scrambled from the summit northwards to a saddle, then did a short rap on the north side (there were fixed slings) onto snow, then kept going around the top of a steep bowl and back *up* a steep snow gully up to the main dorado needle ridge. We turned right and followed the ridge south/west for perhaps 100 yards, untill the slope on the far side began to mellow a bit, then downclimbed straight down steep snow for one ropelength before beginning to traverse lower angle snow to the eldo/dorado needle col. This descent was a bit hairy, but much, much faster than any of the descents on the marble creek side, getting us to camp in around an hour from the summit.

Just used my brand new moser m-10s last week up in the canadian rockies. They rocked the house, but then I'm just now making the leap to vertical points from horizontals, so I'd probably be equally psysched by any of the top-end units. The m-10s allow an absurd number of adjustments: mono or dual, offset or even frontpoints, points long or short, points flat or canted downwards. Pretty much whatever configuration you like, they can do it.

its called a gi-gi

back on topic... i've done logan via easy pass/douglas glacier (i posted a trip report here that's probably still around), in may on skis, and i've hiked parts of that trail in the summer. might go in a day, but real long. lets see, hiking fast, you can get to easy pass in around 2 hours, another 2-3 downhill to get to the valley below the douglas (is that thunder creek? anyway, it's below thunder peak...) but then you gotta bushwack uphill quite a ways, and the valley is pretty swampy and foliated. in may on skis, we were *barely* able to navigate through the slide alder springing up around us, i imagine it's a real slog without snow covering it all. so lets say 4 hours of bushwacking to the basin below the douglas. moving pretty well on skis, we went from the basin to the summit in 4 hours, but came down probably a lot faster than you would be on foot, so lets say 6-7 hours round trip from the basin. bushwacking down probably not much faster than going up, say 3 hours, then 3-5 hours to get back up the trail to easy pass and back down. hmmm, let me add that up... well, at minimum 21 hours, so maybe it'd go. a lot of elevation gain and some bushwacking. The trail times might be a bit optimistic, esp. towards the end of the day. I guess the only way to know it it'd go is to try it, eh? Good luck and post a report (telling us how the unplanned bivy went...) when you get back.

haven't climbed there a lot, but i can highly recommend 2 memorable climbs: the second pitch of Local Knowledge is one of the coolest 5.9s in the state, and the name of Pure Joy says it all. (10c fingers) both at royal columns

Well, the form I've got (copied from the mountaineers MOFA book) has spaces for a bunch of info that in an emergency you might forget to record but that emergency crews would like to know - heart rate, breathing, a bunch of other stuff. Plus you can write down time, location etc - that way you could, for example, pass the sheet off to someone you meet on the trail and stay with your buddy, etc. Last year, a friend of mine was a witness to a multiple-injury accident just below Headlee pass; he and several others were doing first aid, and flagged down another passerby to go get help. However, the guy didn't get the number of victems right, so when the helo arrived, there wasn't enough space for all the injured, and everyone else had an epic night assisting the (least) injured dude down to the trailhead. Ever play that game telephone? It's really easy for information to get distorted, especially in a high-stress situation... writing it down can help.

This came up on another topic, and I'm curious... For a long time, I carried no first aid kit at all, assuming I could improvise whatever I needed. Later experience (mostly vicarious, thankfully) made me decide that this was self deception, and I now carry a very minimal first aid kit most of the time. We all joke about the 10 essentials (or 50 or 1), but I'd like to know what other people consider the minimum acceptable emergency gear. Here's what I carry - - 2 maxi-pads for blood absorption - Half a roll of athletic tape - Some band aids and 4x4 sterile bandages - Painkillers (ibuprofin, but i'd like to supplement with a couple percoset or something similarly strong for last resort) - A stubby pencil and one o' them accident report forms plus, I also usually have a couple of those chemical handwarmers and a small lighter.

Well, i'm kidding about keeping score (now a deck of cards is *really* unnecessary weight)and bragging... but what are you going to do when you meet the future mrs. caveman on some alpine climb and she offers you her phone number?

a stubby pencil an a sheet of paper are a good addition to even the lightest first aid kit. a MOFA or WFR type course will instill you with the importance of writing down pertinent info when you go for help. weighs nothing, plus it ensures that can you brag in the summit register about your new record time on the route and keep accurate score when you play card games on storm days ;-)

"what has occured" or more colloquially, "what happened?"

--- [This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 08-22-2001).]

Hard to believe this was still unclimbed in 2001! More pictures and a topo: http://www.saarch.com/forrest/hardyfull.htm [This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 08-22-2001).]

i will post some photos and a topo later this week

allthumbs - well, there's the problem... you see i think my biggest problem with the program is the idea that you can NEVER use public lands without paying. i don't mind there being fees for certain special areas - national parks - or for areas where overcrowding is a big issue, or where some services are being provided - sno parks, NF campgrounds. But I strongly object to the idea that all areas are fee areas. But your question got me thinking, what if the forest service license an independant group to sell the passes. With some sort of transparent decision making process, this group would then directly spend the money on maintenance? Power to local authorities, kind of a Republican solution... Actually, I would prefer that they just allocate more public money to trail maintenance. It's a public resource. They currently lose huge amounts of money on the timber sales. If they tightened up their finances, it would remove a public subsidy of private profits and the net FS budget would remain the same. As to the other comments - didn't you see the letter above? It is one of dozens I have sent. You suggest being "involved in the conservation effort," well, this is what involvement looks like. Unfortunately, the typical lobbying groups for this sort of thing (sierra club, et. al.) and I are not in agreement on this issue. I realize that my letters alone are not going to turn things around, but it is what I personally can do, so I do it. There is still a reason not to participate: the USFS uses participation as evidence of public support - but they fine you if you aren't in "support" of the program. [This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 08-10-2001).]

allthumbs - well, yeah, but there's more at stake than a $15 or $30 sticker - the fee program is a misguided attempt to distract us from larger issues on which their policy is fucked up, i.e. timber and mining. so fighting this is actually a strategic position in that larger fight. I have been accused of being selfish or tightfisted, but really, if it were just a few bucks, I wouldn't care. (Hell, if the money actually went to conservation I'd have a lot less of a problem paying it) But the user fee program is the fightable tip of a much larger, more sinister iceberg. no vinegar, just pissed