dberdinka

You're High

Unfortunately Scott you are one of the few right-wingers left around here, so I guess it's up to you to present their views and opinions. Based on a lot of your posts I'm curious if you'd be willing to answer the following question in a thorough manner. I don't think there is a single right answer but I'd love to know where you're coming from... What was the motiviation or reasoning behind the 9/11 attacks? Thanks DB

Climb: Tang Tower-Brush Humpers Delight Date of Climb: 10/14/2004 Trip Report: With visions of first ascents dancing in our heads we couldn't help ourselves. So on what might have been the last truely beautiful and warm fall day of the year, Wednesday October 14th, Gene Pires and I met once again in the predawn darkness of a Monroe parking lot. Twentyone miles back up the Sultan Basin Road, four miles of hiking back up to Boulder Lake, another wet thrash around the lake, steep scree and then death-defying shrub pulling to a high col. Time for a short break and a chance to admire the inaccessible rock horn of Peak 5144. Two quick rappels followed by a long traverse on slabs and thick brush, then finally a good view of our objective, a thousand foot tall buttress of slabby granite leading towards the summit of "Tang Tower". More thrashing got us to it's base. We climbed a line that started just left of it's lowest toe. Thin cracks connected by friction climbing was once again the theme of the day. The second pitch went through the left edge of the faint white scar in the following photo. The climbing was generally good, though the lichen was definitely thicker than what we had found the previous week on the slabs of Sine your Pity. A fair amount of hollow, detached flakes spiced the climbing up a fair bit as well. The views aren't bad either... After five long pitches, mostly 5.6 or 5.7 with an occasional crux move up to 5.10-, we reached the top of a tower which required a mandatory rappel. One very rotten, very faded sling of indetermitable age indicated that we were not the first people to have passed this way. Oh well, we had still experienced a surprisingly stiff adventure. We rapped then did a traversing pitch along a shrubby, gendarmed ridgeline. Rather than climb another four hundred feet of low 5th class to the summit we traversed off so we could make it home in time for tea and cookies. We made it back down to the car in only two hours rounding out a twelve hour day. Evidently Chris Greyell and Dave Tower were active in this area maybe twenty years ago and established several routes on what they called "Boulder Crags". They also developed a handful of routes on Prospect Peak, including "the most classic handcrack in Washington" and climbed a number of peaks in the area. I assume they did something technical on Peak 5144. Reagrdless of whether it's been climbed out or not, this area is definitely off the map. If you choose to go you're guarenteed a full-on adventure and will probably get to climb a thousand plus feet of good granite to boot. Gear Notes: Medium rack plus kifeblades and lost arrows. Leather gloves for the approach. Approach Notes: B2+

There is a top-ropable seam below the first pitch of Dana's Arch that is excellent for practicing hard aid. If you want to practice actually placing heads you'll need to first put in some elbow grease cleaning out heads and deadheads.

First off I'm no expert but....I have a 3/8 inch chisel I filed dull that works fine. For just about any route in existence the heads are all fixed and you just might need to replace a dead head or two. In my experience those fixed placements are not shallow, barely-there indentations. They are well defined crevices to shallow or flared for pitons or nuts. The barely there stuff is where you find rivets and bathooks. After you've beat the hell out of a head pull it out and look how little the back of the head has actually molded to the crack. Hardly at all! Your best bet to get it too stick is to pick a good, secure placement and preshape the head with some wacks of your hammer before placing it. Maybe that sounds stoopid but unless you're putting up new pitches it's probably the reality of the situation.

I tried to pick my climbs based on the gap between expectation and reality. Clearly something like Northwest Passage is probably far worse but you wouldn't get on it expecting it to be great.

I think the following 5 climbs all tend to make the list of things to do but turn out to be total crap. #1 worst climb North Buttress - Mt Chaval: Go climb it I dare ya! #2 Lighting Crack - Peyshastin: Another vote for the worst crag climb anywhere #3 Sunday Cruise - Witch Doctor Wall: The ultimate D-town adventure climb #4 Ultimate Everything: No climb does a worse job of living up to its name. #5 South Buttress - Cutthroat: So pretty from the car, so mediocre once on route.

Planning his revenge........

Axis of Evil Endorses Bush Forwarded to me by the late Necronomicon

A little one sided? I finally read this article the other day. It's an implicit approval of Infinite Hubris and essentially claims the hubbub over the route centers around a misreading of maps and a few spoil sports who don't like new trails. It saddens me that the question of whether bolted alpine sport routes are ethical is never even raised. Am I that crusty? He certainly goes out of his way to slam users of an unnamed internet bulletin board. Hmmmmm....who could that be?

Ummm..can you leave climbing out of this......

Mount Olympus - Blue Glacier - A beautiful mountain Mount Redoubt - NE Face - Great, remote alpine ice route. Cathedral Peak - SE Buttress - Best rock in the northwest, maybe the world. Mount Slesse - North Rib - 25 sustained pitches on good rock Forbidden Peak - NW Face - Awesome & committing line Two of them I did this summer, so freshness of memory has an influence. They are all hard to get too and take time. It's hard to limit it to 5.

HAS THERE EVER BEEN A DOCUMENTED, REAL-LIFE ASS-KICKING AS A RESULT OF A CC.COM CONFLAGERATION? WHO? WHERE? WHO WON?

It is a very different line from the more standard aid lines on the UTW in that the rock is more massive and less featured. Interestingly enough it's also the only non-clean aid route (A) in the PNW I've been on that it not heavily scarred by pitons. The start of the crux pitch is definitely a bit sketchy. A mix of old rusty tied-off pins, hooks, expando cams in thin flakes and fixed heads for the first 30 feet. Then it gets easier. A3 for sure. There are rumors of it having gone clean. The corners generally don't take camhooks, so maybe on a triple set of Lowe Balls or something. Unless there is a definitive answer to that I say bring your hammer and have fun. It's a great place to beat lots of iron and a nice route to boot. Bring..... doubles of short LA's that's #1,#2,#3 two short, thick Bugaboos two baby angles hooks from small to big std aid rack to 3"

Anyone in B'ham have the skills and the equipment to fix the trigger wires on an Alien? Thanks. DB

For what it's worth..........

HOLY SHIT! go type the following four words into google and hit search. Look at the fourth link down.... uranium centrifuge misled Bush Do it. JUST DO IT! Afterwards click the link and read what someone else posted so as to have a better understanding of how full of shit Peter Puget is how, yes, Bush Co misled us (assuming you bought their bullshit to begin with).

That lump is actually a small bio-metallic "spider" thats has fused itself into Bush's spinal cord. The lizard people use it for mind control.

STATIC POINT 2 MILES TO THE WEST

I think Lance posted a aerial photo of Frostbite-Weber? For what it's worth here is an aerial photo of the Tang Tower and surroundings, I follow it up with a photo of Static Point to give an idea of how much granite is out there. TANG TOWER SLABS

MEC ain't the deal it use to be, bummer.... But the liquor at the duty free is still a steal! Maybe Sumas will once again be a bustling hub of Canadians buying dairy products. Goddamn Cheeseheads!

Approx dist and times from B'ham 110 miles, 2.5 hrs Yak Peak/Needle Peak/Coquihalla 115 miles, 3 hrs Anderson River Peaks (need a key) 70 miles 2 hours Slesse/Rexford TH 80+ miles 3+ hrs Old Settler (recently improved road access?) 93 miles 2 hours Squamish

I am all for this approach. All I ask is that you let me know what route you are doing and when so that I can, um... make sure your placements were good? I never claimed it was cheap. However it works and does have a place, particularly in an alpine enviroment where difficult sections are typically short and rock flakes abound for both anchors and pro. I used it once and felt fairly secure. Hi Rad

ummmm...... We would be spending 200 BILLION DOLLARS on a war. There wouldn't be a 1000+ dead americans. We might actually be pursuing the real terrorists threats. Countries like Iran, N Korea etc might not be so inclined to build nukes as a deterent to another preemptive strike. Iraq would be a tightly controlled dictatorship not a free for all of insurgents, terrorists, islamic extremists etc. Saddam would be no closer to having WMDs that he was before we invaded (see todays news on WMD report) The rest of the world powers might actually be interested in collaberating with us to eliminate terrorist organizations. We wouldn't have to listen to this shit every single day... Whether the Iraqi people are better off is a different question. In the long run I certainly hope so.

So 4th class rock likely has small trees or good rock flakes on it. Bring an 8mm dynamic rope, hopefully something short like 30 meters long. Tie into one end of it. At the base of a stretch of rock you want to self-belay tie a sling around a solid anchor (tree,flake,nut,piton). Pass your rope through the sling and tie into it with a clovehitch on a biner maybe 20' from the end you tied directly into your harness. Now you can climb 10' before the loop of rope comes tight against the anchor. Now tie several clovehitches on seperate biners with about 20' of slack between each one. Now you can.... climb 10' and undo the first knot. climb another 10' and undo the second knot climb another 10' and undo the last knot now the single strand of rope from your harness tie-in is just lying through the anchor. Keep climbing, having left only a sling behind. Need be you could place pro as well, leaving it behind or pulling it as you go. The whole point being at the top of the hard bit you don't need to anchor the rope,rappel, undo the lower anchor and reclimb the pitch.