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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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As soon as you man up and pull that devil's club out of the ground so that the trail to the climb is cleaner.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I am reminded of the flogging scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and picture Ghost dressed in a nun's habit, begging for a thrashing. Totally medieval. Anyone else?
And then there was some route that Ed Drummond did in England, called something like Two Ton Sardine. Hopefully no sardines will be trundled.
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Oplopanax
Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
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For all transgressions real or imagined, I confess that I pulled an innocent (though soft) plant in the vastness of the WOODS and wiped with satisfaction.
Damn! This gave me a major inspiration! Remember that thread that was up over the last few days about the video of those weird dudes that were apologizing to all women "on behalf of their gender"? [I think it was "How not to get laid"]
I think we should make a video of Anders apologizing to all plants on behalf of his species. F*#kin' hell if that wouldn't be a fine thing to do.
The first thing I thought of was Tami's cartoon where the grown up former climber sneaks out in the woods to have a nice sh#t in the forest and once again wipes with poison oak...
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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I think ghost is onto something.
Just the same thing that you're onto. That is that while arborism and agriculture are both fine occupations/passtimes, when I go rock climbing what I want is rock. Not trees and dirt.
Oh, sure, a nice old tree on a belay ledge is great. But as for the rest of the climb, I prefer clean rock.
There are places where savage gardening is an environmental no-no, but the PNW and Southwest BC are not those places.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I'm areligious, so that theory won't work.
Exasperator used to be a jungle gym.
Hardly. Exasperator and Apron Strings were naturally two of the cleanest ground-level climbs at Squamish. The first pitch had only a root, about half way up, that one could stand on. Now gone. There was a downhanging dying shrub at the end of the first pitch, which I removed in autumn 1976. When Eric and Dave did the FFA of the second pitch in 1975, it took them only a few hours to do needed cleaning. They left the two or three little trees which provided helpful holds and anchors, but over time those have died or been removed. They in no way impeded 'progress'.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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It isn't a real Squamish climb unless at some point you've relied on vegetation for progress or anchors.
As for Exasperator - well, I did the second free ascent. (Photo posted elsewhere.) The two or three shrubs that were later removed were quite handy. Their removal made no difference at all to the climb's difficulty, and did not improve its quality. There were several trees at the top, where the climb intersects the Peasant's Route corner, but that's another matter.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Perhaps it's that I think of climbers, and the climbing community, as stewards of parks, rather than mere users. Particularly given that the provincial government has limited resources to act as such. If the cat is away, us mice need to behave like a cat, instead of taking advantage of the situation.
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JFrimer
Trad climber
BC
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 2, 2011 - 03:33am PT
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Anders, investing months of labour to make a bush bash into a rock climb... is that really "taking advantage". You'll need to fill in the logical gap between volunteerism and banditry. Some of your villains are my heros. The Squamish hero wields a mattock and dreams of Agent Orange.
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kc
Trad climber
sj, ca
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Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the guy doing the trundling was only tied in by one point of contact?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Bruce
...recovery can be alarmingly rapid True, but only when people stop climbing the routes. Otherwise the cracks continue losing whatever soil was there in the first place.
Plenty of routes in the Valley you can now see clearly from the ground with the naked eye, pitches 3 or 4 hundred feet up, which were not so easy to spot 40 years ago. The cracks and rock adjacent look as if they've been deliberately gardened and bleached. Which I believe they haven't.
Or the brightly shining patches on well worked boulder problems, not even chalk but the lichens eroded away. The lifecycle of lichens is measured in thousands of years (see Lichenometry for aging exposed rock surfaces: "lichens are presumed to increase in size radially at specific rates as they grow. Measuring the diameter of the largest lichen of a species on a rock surface can therefore be used to determine the amount of time that the rock has been exposed. Lichen can be preserved on old rock faces for up to 10,000 years, providing the maximum age limit of the technique"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichenometry
My point is we have to be thoughtful about when and where we garden and "improve" routes. They are not our personal playgrounds. In many ways they are part of the enveloping ecosystem, from lichens up to Peregrine Falcons.
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Hoser
climber
vancouver
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Dont forget how much rubber dust kills lichen too, alot more than climbers. Tires wear out...where do you think that rubber goes...dust on the lichen, suffocates them
roadside crag vegetation is dying whether we like it or not.
Rubber dust...shit is nasty!!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Well, leave it to me to do an anti-trundle. I spent a day last weekend and day this weekend restoring some old routes on the upper Apron at Squamish. (Just above Broadway.) 50 - 100 m long routes, mostly 5.9 to easy 5.10, but with few protection bolts - one, two or perhaps three in each pitch. Checking the old bolts and replacing spinners and the rusty (galvanized) ones, replacing the old SMC hangers with new ones, and restoring a rappel route down a groove/tree line on the left side (Granville Street). Last weekend I noticed a number of perched rocks on Granville Street, ones just sitting. So today I "trundled" them, by carrying them down in my pack. As it's a high traffic area, I couldn't think of anything else to do with them.
I left my pet rocks in a nice cairn on a big ledge, for lack of any better idea. They're no threat there, but could be carried farther down if someone wanted. Not a good place for trundling. The bottom rock weighed about 25 kg. (Inspected by Jim B when he passed by later.)
Here's some of the old gear I removed from the climbs.
The bolts were placed in 1986 or 1987. Many of the nuts and hangers were epoxied on, which was sometimes a nuisance.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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investing months of labour to make a bush bash into a rock climb... is that really "taking advantage".
Yes, sometimes.
As for going against the grain - not so sure of that. Different perspective, perhaps.
The comments about the slow growth of lichens are well put.
One thing that BC Parks should so, sometime soon, is work with climbers to identify some "off limits" areas, both as a baseline and so that a representative selection of the different mini-biogeoclimatic zones at the Chief are protected. Maybe 10 - 20% of the rock, or something like that. Perhaps there's nothing special, but perhaps there is - why found out the hard way?
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Mimi
climber
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Ed or Banquo, what is the signficance of F1 being about twice P? Is it due to the angle of forward force being applied to push the block over? They appear different or is it the sketch?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Ed or Banquo, what is the signficance of F1 being about twice P? Is it due to the angle of forward force being applied to push the block over? They appear different or is it the sketch?
That's the lamest excuse for Saturday night sh#t-talking that I've ever seen! Have another beer.
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Mimi
climber
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Ha! Anders, the International Beerfest today was splendid. 160 beers from 15 countries. Didn't quite hit 160, but I tried.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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interesting question...
I just calculated the force required to move the block assuming you are pushing on the "lever arm" that intersects the upper left and lower right corners of the block in the diagram... F⊥ ("F perp" is the force perpendicular to that line) vector summed with F|| ("F parallel") add up to the gravitational force on the block F. To move the block, you have to press on it with more than F⊥.
Banquo calculated the force around the center-of-gravity (I believe) for which the length of the arm is half the one I used...
But he should speak up... I think I did it correctly, but I'm just a physicist...
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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That's nothing. The blocks I moved yesterday required several bazillion Hartounis of energy to load up and carry down. You try rappelling with a 25 kg block in your daypack. It was hard enough just getting the suckers safely strapped on - I didn't dare drop anything.
It would have required help from half the climbers of Squamish to block off access to the area if I'd trundled the blocks, pissed off the other half, and probably needed an environmental impact statement given the high visibility. Admittedly a stuck hang glider diverted a lot of attention, but that couldn't have been predicted. (In the end self-rescued.)
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
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I've jugged and rapped with a mega sized deep cycle battery on my back. Probably closer to 50 kg. Good times.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Owning a fluffy orange cat isn't enough.
That depends on the orange fluffy cat. I've been around some orange fluffy cats that would rip your legs off if they thought you'd left any vegetation within sight of a climb.
Edit to add: I'm just back from a weekend of ripping vegetation off rock.
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