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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 17, 2008 - 03:11am PT
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Mighty Hiker's post got me thinking back...
Few times TR'ing in Joshua Tree as a kid, including my first time.
Swami belts on the Short Wall.
Stretchy fricking rope
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 17, 2008 - 04:06am PT
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You bring back some ancient memories. I used Goldline exclusively from 1967-69, because it was about $24.00 for 150 feet. Edelrid or Mammut cost at least $10.00 more. The first years I climbed, I tied in with a bowline-on-a-coil. I didn't climb in the Valley until 1969, whereupon I discovered perlon and swami belts. I still used Goldline the rest of that year, though.
Goldline streched a lot with very little weight. My first time jumaring on it I was jumaring in place for at least 20 feet. It was also quite a bit stiffer than perlon. This had its advantages. In 1969, the first pendulum on Royal Arches was from a piton driven under a roof. We had trouble reaching it, so we threaded our Goldline through it from a distance. Fortunately, we tested the pin before the pendulum; it pulled and we retreated. When I came back a few months later, someone replaced the pin with two bolts, probably because the section of the roof that held the piton was gone.
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Strider
Trad climber
one of god's mountain temples....
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May 17, 2008 - 07:21am PT
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"We had trouble reaching it, so we threaded our Goldline through it from a distance"
I am amazed! How did you thread your rope through the piton "from a distance"!?!?!!
seriously,
-n
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Gunkie
climber
East Coast US
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May 17, 2008 - 07:44am PT
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Am I the only one who has ever taken a lead fall on Goldline... with a waist tie-in [bowline on a coil]? It was like falling onto a bungee cord. The fall was even onto a tied off LA that I had just pounded in with a ballpeen hammer.
I should have kept an old Goldline, just to show my kids.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 17, 2008 - 08:23am PT
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Can't resist a thread with this title ... like cheese on a mousetrap.
Don Knight trailing 7/16" lead rope and 3/8" rap line on Higher Cathedral Spire, 1969:
Am I the only one who has ever taken a lead fall on Goldline...
Naw.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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May 17, 2008 - 09:14am PT
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Checking in as a member of the rubber lariat generation. Led with a bowline on a bite & pins and was way too scared to ever do anything I could fall on.
Did catch a 160lb block of cement's fall (CMC belay test rig) with a goldline, hip belay 'sucker outweighed me by a good fidy, back in them days.
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Bazo
Boulder climber
Ky
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May 17, 2008 - 09:17am PT
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Yup, The first rope I ever had was a 150' 7/16'...Since all I used it for ( for 5 years ) was top roping at Grand Ledge MI, the length was kinda overkill..
It was really furry when I was finally done with it..
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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May 17, 2008 - 09:29am PT
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Yeah;...it was cheaper, and didn't stretch so much with top ropes or extentions. It was bomber...
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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May 17, 2008 - 09:35am PT
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Yep, and thinking about going into the garage and digging some out. I never used a swami in those days, just wrapped the rope around myself three or four times and got going. AHHHH, the days when men were men and ladies stayed home and baked cookies.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 17, 2008 - 09:44am PT
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Ladies climbed on goldline too.
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Double D
climber
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May 17, 2008 - 09:56am PT
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bowline-on-a-coil...yep.
leader falls on goldline...yep
I went to a high school where instead of a baseball team, we had a climbing team of sorts. Our fearless teacher's aid, Dave Lund, made us all take a belay test prior to letting us belay leaders.
The test: from the bleachers Dave took 150 lbs of gym plates tied to a goldline with 15' of slack and threw it earthbound as hard as he could while we did a hip-belay from below. At the time I weighed all of 120#'s wet, flipped upside-down, burn the crap out of my hands but...I got belay leads from then on!
Oh yeah, lesson learned?...don't use Bactine on rope burns!
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More Air
Big Wall climber
S.L.C.
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May 17, 2008 - 09:58am PT
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Bought a 120' Goldline back in the mid 70's...cheaper than perlon. This was my first climbing rope, boy that rope was stiff.
Little story here.
In 1965 Salt Lake climbers George Lowe and Mark McQuarrie were attempting a new route on the Church Buttress in Little Cottonwood Canyon. About 400' up, Mark who was leading, took a fall. His rope, a 9mm perlon was cut over a 1" rib if rock, causing him to fall to his death.
Earlier, in 1964 or 65 Royal Robbins had come to Utah and the Wasatch Mountains to give a climbing clinic. He said that 9mm perlon ropes were safe to climb on. George had been in attendance, and took his advise. After Marks death, George switched back to Goldline ropes. For a while, his climbing partners said he wouldn't climb with anything else.
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Larry
Trad climber
Bisbee
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May 17, 2008 - 10:26am PT
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The first rope I ever owned was a 120 footer from MSR. You had to heat-treat it in the washing machine before you could safely climb in it.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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May 17, 2008 - 10:31am PT
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I'm kinda a young'un round here, having only been climbing for thirty years. One of my first times out climbing, my caving mentor Alf Latham [not much of a climber, though to this day I still burp his name in vain] tested me out to see if I could hold him on a toprope body belay, with the Goldline wrapped round my waist.
We were the McMaster University Caving and Climbing Club, at the time one of the world's leading cave exploration and science centres. All of our ropes were caving ropes, so the Goldline I used with Alf was probably well saturated with dry mud, and rather stiff. Not the best climbing rope.
A few months ago we were several miles underground in Roppel Cave, following a traverse across Mexico Pit - so named because it's about a hundred feet deep. The traverse was first made 25 years earlier, and a hunk of Goldline hung suspended in a long arc down, across, and back up the top of the pit. The bolts to which the rope was anchored on the near side of the pit were in wet rock and had disintegrated into puddles of rust. Heaven only knew what the other side of the rope was rigged to.
I rapped down [on new rope, from new bolts] and swung across the pit, then started jugging up both ropes at the same time - the new rope on the near side of the pit, and the Goldline anchored on the far side of the pit. It was a bit scary near the top as more and more of my weight came onto the Goldline - I had images in my mind of the anchor failing and me whipping across the pit on my new rope and crashing into the far side.
Turns out the Goldline was anchored to an OK bolt in dry passage so it hadn't rusted, and was backed up to a bomber piton in a crack whose axis was pretty much ninety degrees to the pull of the rope. I was surprised the original explorers didn't use the two perfect natural columns of rock twenty feet farther down the passage, which I used to get back from.
At any rate, the passage does indeed end shortly after the traverse in an undiggable breakdown blockage.
As for Goldline, you find the stuff rigged in caves every now and then. Assuming there is no water pouring on it, there is no better place to store a rope than in a cave - cool and dark. 25 years later, the Goldline across Mexico Pit is still pretty much as good as new.
Have not had the pleasure of taking a leader fall on Goldline, nor even on a swami belt, for we had a New Invention known as the Whillans Sit Harness. When we talked about The Sopranos back then, it wasn't referring to a TV show.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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May 17, 2008 - 10:37am PT
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High five double Digeleman, (sorry about butchering your name) sounds like about the same test and personel situation.
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DonC
climber
CA
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May 17, 2008 - 10:39am PT
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1969 - goldline, and 1" swami, before we went to 2"
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al_piner
climber
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May 17, 2008 - 10:53am PT
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Cool pic . I'm throwing away my B-52 and goin' old school !
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Maysho
climber
Truckee, CA
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May 17, 2008 - 11:09am PT
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Yeah Diegs Bro and Jaybro,
Ye old Sierra Club RCS belay test, my proudest accomplishment in 7th grade, I might have weighed in at a hair over a hundred, maybe not, lifted me up off the ground, landed back down on my head, but I stopped the f*kin weight and passed! After that got to hang with a good possee of car owning folks who would drive me to the Valley and let me lead the hard pitches, luckily we took the kernmantles on those trips.
All the RCS goldlines were stored at Richard Leonards' house, as he lived just a block below me I got to pick em up and take em back after the Sunday climbing sessions, and chat a bit with the man who helped bring us all the technique of belaying the leader.
Peter
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F10 Climber F11 Drinker
Trad climber
medicated and flat on my back
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May 17, 2008 - 11:14am PT
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Good old 120' Goldline with a bowline on a coil.
Sometimes would do a "Dulfer" rap instead of some webbing and a biner break. Boy did that goldline feel good after dulfer rap had to put out the hot spots.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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May 17, 2008 - 11:16am PT
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Gosh, some of the 'oldies' are 'fessin' up.
I climbed on goldline too, but fortunately never
took a lead fall on it. Heck it stretched plenty when
you took a top roped fall on it. Sort of like a
bungy cord. And I still have my gorgeous 2" tubular
royal blue swami belt. Lot's of memories on it.
Edit
Oh, and I forgot about the kinking. Oh gawd, what a pain
to untangle.
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