tieton river canyon climbing

[thelawgoddess]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cpt.Caveman:

You're making up excuses. Get out there and take more whippers.

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i'm sure i will. and i'm definitely not blaming my fall on the shoes. my feet were solid (when i had something to put them on); it's my arms that gave out!

[richard_noggin]

quote:

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Originally posted by Peter Puget:

Bored so here are few of my comments on Andy's recomendations:

 

Inca Roads (classic 5.9 finger crack)

I remember this as being a bit larger than fingers and only so so. The route to the left is a fun TR or lead.

 

Orange Sunshine (.10b gently overhanging fingercrack)

Sandy on top. Not really sure why people like this guy so much.

 

Paul Maul (sustained .10c fingers)

I Hated this one. Not really jamming at all as the crack has weird constrictions.

 

Price of Complacency (.11b overhanging arete, sport)

Stellar route! Excellent rock. Steep too!

 

Morning After (.12a arete, sport, great finish)

Lots of thin edging! Good route.

 

The Bend:

 

Salmon Song (.10a roof)

Rock quality only so-so

 

Pure Joy (.10c fingers, balance)

Much harder lead than the rating would suggest. Off balance is right! Good route.

 

Ambient Domain (.10c stemming)

Hard to place pro on this guy. Crack a bit grubby. Maybe it is me but I wouldn't recomend this one. Backed off 10 years ago and did it a couple ago and hated the experience. I felt it was a much harder lead that Trag. Hip.

 

Tragically Hip (.11b/c true arete liebacking, 1988 bolting style corrected in 2000 [i.e., I retrobolted it])

Retrobolt made this climb much more fun.

 

The Cave (all sport):

Some of the long routes here are great. My fav is the one that goes over the roof near the top. Lots of climbing in only a few feet. I bet in a few years they will be grease fests tho so go do them now.

 

Rainbow Rocks (all sport):

 

Black Celebration (.11a)

OK crux near bottom. Short.

 

Ice Cream Girls (.11d, exceptional)

Best route I have done in the Tieton! One of the best sportos in WA.

 

Lava Point (all sport):

Great views! The routes are short.

 

Honeycomb Buttress (all sport):

 

Honeycombs (.11a, unique)

Fun climb! As are most of the routes on this face

 

Land Down Under (.11c, unique)

Awkward. Can be climbed in the rain.

 

Anaphylactic Shock (.11d/.12a, unique)

Second(?) bolt was a desparate clip with groundfall potential if I remember correctly. Otherwise good route. Top gets wet in rain.

 

Wildcat:

 

Wildcat Crack (long .10c fingers)

Can do this climb with little real jamming. Good pro.

 

Colonnade (.11a/b, mixed, finger crack & bolts)

If this is the route (trad bottom and bolted top to left of Wildcat)I am thinking of its. Bring thin stuff!

 

Tieton

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The Royal columns and the bend suck for sport climbing ,It's like vertical slab. I climb a lot of sport but I wish they would not put sport climbs up there it's a stellar crack area .

Don't be dis'in orange sunshine or Inca roads a little hard for the grade but classic none the less. The river is up for the rafters you can cross at the cable or 40 minute hike from the bend parking lot.

Not trying to insite a flame PP just my opinion

[Peter_Puget]

quote:

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Originally posted by richard noggin:

The Royal columns and the bend suck for sport climbing ,It's like vertical slab. I climb a lot of sport but I wish they would not put sport climbs up there it's a stellar crack area .

Don't be dis'in orange sunshine or Inca roads a little hard for the grade but classic none the less. The river is up for the rafters you can cross at the cable or 40 minute hike from the bend parking lot.

Not trying to insite a flame PP just my opinion

[/QB]

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When have I flamed anyone for honest opinions! Both the routes Andy mentions that are sport at the Royal Columns have been around for along time. Price is without a doubt a good climb and at least as steep as the average Smith route. Do you really think it is a shitty climb and if so, give me some better sport routes of the same grade in WA. As far as ratings go Yakima seems pretty fairly rated although those at Lava Point seem a little inconsistant.

[MtnGoat]

I was running the Tieton R last Sat, and the Bend is indeed scorched all to hell. Looks like crap, not sure about access but there is a lot of bare dirt, it's pretty ugly. Unless you've got a real jones for one of those routes I'd personally hit one of the other areas, this one is skanked right now.

 

Local guy at sporting goods store up the road (who happens to carry some of those cool pic-tour maps) said the FS suspects arson... GRRRR.

 

[ 09-17-2002, 04:44 PM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[richard_noggin]

When have I flamed anyone for honest opinions! Both the routes Andy mentions that are sport at the Royal Columns have been around for along time. Price is without a doubt a good climb and at least as steep as the average Smith route. Do you really think it is a shitty climb and if so, give me some better sport routes of the same grade in WA. As far as ratings go Yakima seems pretty fairly rated although those at Lava Point seem a little inconsistant.[/QB]

The sport climbs are just too thin for cool sport moves. Don't you think there should be at least some trad only areas in Washington .You will not see sport climbers coming to the columns or the bend for sport test pieces. Even myself I think the drill should be left out of some areas and this is the one I would pick. The bend and the columns has real crack climbing, you don't just plug in gear and face climb. It will be a bummer if a new guide book comes out and I like the bridge being out (less people)Love it when the rattle snakes run everyone out of the crag (now thats ball'z climbing)

With a post name like mine how much value can you put on my opinion

[Peter_Puget]

quote:

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Originally posted by richard noggin:

The sport climbs are just too thin for cool sport moves. Don't you think there should be at least some trad only areas in Washington .You will not see sport climbers coming to the columns or the bend for sport test pieces. Even myself I think the drill should be left out of some areas and this is the one I would pick. The bend and the columns has real crack climbing, you don't just plug in gear and face climb. It will be a bummer if a new guide book comes out and I like the bridge being out (less people)Love it when the rattle snakes run everyone out of the crag (now thats ball'z climbing)

With a post name like mine how much value can you put on my opinion

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You sir are one of the best here at cc.com!

 

Funny how you see it that way as I LOVE crack climbing but think that basically the crack routes in the Tieton on average aren't that good! (originally wrote suck which was hyperbole) Not that there aren't good some routes but I have climbed most of the routes at Royal Columbs and to me the best ones are the bolted ones. I tried to think of better sport routes than Price (I meant at the same difficulty) and couldn't come up with a clearly superior route in WA. Honestly I couldn't find its equal. By the way thin = good! What would be bad is if every three feet there was another bolt route! But I don't think this is the case. Actually some of the routes there have pretty porr (originally wrote shitty pro for routes I assume were not placed onsight & onlead. eg: Stress Management would have been much cooler with a few more bolts. I think that guy is 5.10 too!

 

PP

 

[ 09-17-2002, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Peter Puget ]

[richard_noggin]

PP

I think we see climbing differently when I think of good sport I think of steeeep gymnastic moves on bigggg holds and when i think of crack I think of hand and foot jams with good pro and when I climb trad I put away the numbers.

Give me the rhino jugs of north bend the incuts of Vantage but also give me the jams of the Bend and the columns.

Climbers can't agree but we can get along

[Andy_Fitz]

PP: Stress Management was originally protected by 3 fixed pins and something like a #2 RP at the crux. Someone unknown added the two bolts (one of which is in a totally weird place) a year or two after Matt Christensen's first ascent. I agree it's 5.10.

 

I also agree a lot of the fixed pro at the Colums could use a face lift. As for the funk, there are a couple explanations. First, most of the bolts at the Columns were hand drilled and I endured enough struggles with bound bits to keep the drilling minimal. Second, the bolting style was definitely influenced by the period (1987-89) and my concern to not "overbolt".

 

Mr. Head: The Columns and the Bend have never been strictly "traditional." Nearly all the bolted routes at the Bend and Columns were put up before there was a SINGLE bolted route at Frenchman Coulee. House Rules was one of the earliest routes at the Bend, put up at the same time the cracks around it were cleaned. As to whether they are prototypical "sport routes," I'll let others decide. We just thought they were "face climbs" when we did them.

[richard_noggin]

Woa! dude I think the established routes should be left alone unless retroed by the FA'ist. Some climbers think they are cool even some of my crew

My thought was that with all the sport routes going up there was no need for more sport routes at the columns or the bend and it would be welcomed by a lot of the trad only climbers if the drill was left out of the area in the future.

[Andy_Fitz]

I agree!! The climbs I have in mind are Imperial Master and Columns Holiday (both of which I FA'd) and Thriller Pillar Direct, which I bolted but "gave" to my partner to FA. All have 5/16" hand-drilled bolts that I want to remove and replace with better hardware, using the same holes.

[Andy_Fitz]

A couple more thoughts...

 

Richard, you make a point about not having more bolted routes at RC or the Bend. I agree. (With room for a potential future exception!) I said the same thing in my post above.

 

I also REALLY don't want to see more routes squeezed in established sections of the sport cliffs upriver, e.g., in the spaces between Casting Stones and Aboriginal Design at the Cave, or between any of the routes on the Lava Wall at Lava Point (now "filled," in my view, with either completed routes or active projects). These routes currently enjoy their own sense of space and individuality. I bolted the majority of them, and they are deliberately spaced. I wish cliffs like Nevermind had been left alone when they reached the same density, instead of...

 

OK, that's my last word on this thread. Unless I change my mind.

[Peter_Puget]

A year or so ago I wrote quite critically of the Exit 38 area. My concern was the impact of land managers seeing 38 as a "model" of what climbers impact on an area will be. There has undeniably been a significant climber impact to the "38" region. I do not think that it would be much of a leap to think that a land manager would say "hey climbers have 38 which has been proclaimed as the best sport area in WA by many advocates so no bolts here at this new area. They already have 38." To me putting all our eggs in one basket is at best short sighted. It is even more of an egregious error when it is obvious that many consider 38 to be a good place for a workout but not really a super duper area. At the time nobody seemed to consider this fear of mine to be valid yet I am struck that Richard, a climber, has been pushing this view.

 

Hyper development anywhere has ramifications everywhere. Because we personally prefer one area over another is hardly a good reason to limit bolting anywhere. One man's meat is another man's poison.

 

Second Unrelated Issue:

 

As far a retro-bolting goes I personally am of conflicted views on this. A onsight lead of a runout route generally should be respected. Think for example that old stand by Bachar Yerian or even You Asked For It. But imagine Mr. Bachar just running wild all over slabs essentially blocking out the future development of well protected easier routes. This would be nothing to be respected especially given the scarcity of virgin rock. Of course in this example I am assuming that the traditional onsight ascent is made. Most often here in Washington this manner of ascent is not used. The tradeoff I believe one makes in abandoning tradition is that the FA assumes the responsibility of making a well-crafted route. Anything else is simply goofy. ANY preinspection or knowledge of a route destroys anything of the traditional FA glory. While it is arguably permissible to remove bolts from a botched route why isn't it equally arguable to add of change bolt locations from a botched route? I say clearly it is! But yet.....

 

[ 09-24-2002, 02:46 PM: Message edited by: Peter Puget ]

[Dwayner]

Hey Peter Puget -

 

You used those same lines on me! Get some new material!

 

- Dwayner

[Peter_Puget]

Dwayner - Because common sense and friendly engagement are always in style!

[richard_noggin]

PP It's columar basalt cracks and climbing don't over analyze the shit. From now on I will keep my DH oppinion to myself and just spray.

I get a lot of beta from this trailer park bulletin board but I also get a lot of aggravation.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Maybe you can pick a line you dont like that is bolted and hand a dead rattlesnake carcass throught the first or last bolt hangers