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Grant Meisenholder
Trad climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2008 - 04:29pm PT
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I was going to wait to post this in a different thread, but perhaps it is appropriate here...
Early on in my learning curve, I had only been to the local crags and Josh on a regular basis. Friends of mine had been up to Tahquitz a few times and made it sound like a blast. But I knew that it was more committing than the short, bouldery routes I had done up to then and wanted to be a little more proficient at leading before attempting a multipitch route.
Nevertheless, one fine weekend we (my then girlfriend/now wife and The Irish) headed off to Idyllwild. We arrived too late to start anything, so we stayed in camp drinking and telling stories until the early morning hours.
We finally got things together around 11 the next morning and headed off to Tahquitz. I had been up a little longer (the Irish like to sleep in) and had bouldered around the camp. I was nursing a pretty significant hangover and started feeling like this was a bad idea, spending the day on unfamiliar rock in the blazing sun. But no one wanted to hear my whining and really, how bad could it be?
After what seemed like hours climbing the scree, we ended up at the Maiden Buttress and tried to choose a nice, easy route. My head was pounding and I had a thirst that wouldn’t quit. “Devil’s Fright” sounded waaay too scary and “White Maiden” sounded too easy. We finally settled on “The Uneventful.” I weighed myself down with as much gear as possible because “who knows just what you’re gonna need.”
I got voted to go first since I was the most experienced. Great. Di & I made our way slowly up the first 3 pitches with The Irish having to dodge the pebbles and small shrubbery we managed to dislodge.
I was wearing a helmet which I had decided was a bad choice as it made it hot, difficult to hear, and was just plain dweeby looking. At the 3rd belay, I took it off and set it aside on a rock while I brought up Di. I began to admire the view and was looking forward to lunch when I caught the helmet with a loop of the rope and off it went, tumbling down the face. Happily it didn’t hit anyone. Good riddance anyway.
We had lunch and decided that at our pace we’d never make it to the top and back down before nightfall, so we’d better just rap down. I tied a long sling with some rap rings around a sturdy looking fallen branch and threaded the rope through. Everyone took a look at the anchor and agreed it was safe.
The Irish rapped first, then Di. As people were rapping, I got this bad feeling like something was very wrong. I kept scrutinizing the anchor, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Diana slipped and fell on her butt, but was ok. As I prepared to rap I double checked my harness, the rap ring, & bounced the rope to be sure it wasn’t going to pop. Check, check, check. Ugh, God I hate rapping….
About halfway down I feel a “pop” and some slack. I look up to see the rope snaking down towards me as I’m falling backwards. In slow motion I fall on my butt, flip over to my front (head down) and see 300 feet of air below me. I have time to think about what it’s going to be like to hit the bottom. Gonna be lucky to get out of this alive, probably be luckier to be killed instantly. Yes, let’s hope this happens… Oh man, how sad that my friends have to watch this happen. How are they going to deal with this? How sad for my family, especially my dad who I know will be devastated. Yes, let’s hope for no survivable massive head wounds.. The feeling of sadness is overwhelming. Not so much fear though.
Next thing I’m aware of is my friends yelling at me to not move. I see that I’m laying on a narrow ledge, probably 8 inches wide and maybe 4 feet long. The rope is still attached and I am aware of who I am and why I’m here. Good news. I see that there is a crack I can slip a cam into so I do that and tie off. I realize that I’m reasonably safe and tell my friends to not come over, I think I can get to them. Blood is seeping out of my chin, I’ve bitten through my tongue, my left knee has a gaping hole in it, my forearms are shredded, and there are other comparitively minor scrapes and bruises all over my body. I make an anchor and try to stand up to rap 20 feet over to the group. My feet are very painful. Not like that’s going to stop me. I’m shaken, but in emergency survival mode.
I notice that the rap rings are still attached to the rope. Weird. The slings were old, but they shouldn’t have failed.
We rap down the last 2 pitches, but with 4 people at each station, it’s a little crowded. I’m not interested in having another anchor failure, so we leave triple protection at each station. Someone got some fine booty for sure. Poor Jackie can’t stand the sight of blood, and at each rap station she winds up at eye level with my knee. I think she’s gonna hurl, but she keeps it together.
At the bottom, I kiss the ground and tear off towards the parking lot. I can’t walk, but I can sure scramble on all fours. At the bottom I swear an oath to never set eyes on Idyllwild again.
Unfortunately, Di wasn’t as quick as I was and got lost on the trail down. It’s getting dark and we’re all yelling her name. Finally she appears out of the woods, weepy and scared.
The injuries turn out to be pretty minor considering. Broken cuboid bones in both feet, concussion, numerous lacerations and contusions, and my knee has just missed being completely trashed.
What happened, you ask? In the interest of not having a repeat performance, I hired Bob Gaines to teach me the basics of anchoring and rope work. Best money I’ve ever spent on a sport. After going over the point by point reconstruction of the day, we determined that the cause was multifold. Firstly, climbing with a significant (or any, really) hangover hampers your thought process. Then, I was very dehydrated, causing further confusion.
The immediate cause of the failure was this: the slings we used were too short and as such, there was insufficient overlap (tails) after the knot. Compounding this was that the angle on the knot approached 140 degrees, massively increasing the force on the knot. The real kicker is that we didn’t tie a water knot (not enough excess), we tied a square knot. So as each person rapped, the knot was slowly slipping until finally it came apart. Hence the rap rings were still attached to the rope without the slings.
So please let that be a lesson you don’t have to learn.
This was originally published in ANAM ’98 and on wreckdot some years later.
Have I gone back? Yes, joyfully. Another friend convinced me that such things are avoidable and there’s too much fun to be had to let it stop you. The hardest thing I did after that was that first rap. And the 2000 or so since then….
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Apr 14, 2008 - 04:35pm PT
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I have made a couple of 'mistakes' of my own.
A few years ago I'm at Courtright resevoir climbing with my wife. She climbs and belays well enough but doesn't have an experienced eye to recognize a brewing problem...or so I thought.
I decide that since none of my other more experienced partners is with us, we'd do something easy for me to lead and easy for her to toprope afterwards. We head to Marmot (spring) Dome and I settle for Drill Instructor, an long 5.5 route with alot of bolts.
I cruise up the thing, no problem, clip the anchors at the top and clip the anchors into my lead line so my wife can lower me. About 1/3 to half way down she stops and I spin around and ask her what's up. She says,"Do you know I only have about 6 feet of rope left to lower you?"
Doh!!!
Should have brought a second rope.
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rhyang
Ice climber
SJC
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Apr 14, 2008 - 04:42pm PT
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Nice story. I believe Drill Instructor is on Trapper Dome though, and rated 5.4. There is also a walkoff if you continue up the dome past the bolts.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Apr 14, 2008 - 04:48pm PT
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We got a lot of interesting reacitons when sporting the candy-colored new replacement rack after ours burned up.
...People hauled ass to avoid having us get in front of them.
...One guy was in total shock as J cruised an .11 that he'd sort of tried to pesuade us not to try.
...And one gal made a really snotty comment to show her distain for the yuppie scum and/or trustfunder that I surely must have been.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Apr 14, 2008 - 04:58pm PT
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I was always conservative and cautious enough to avoid any dramatic blunders for the most part. Nothing worth telling anyway. My friend Zeke had a great story about his first climb in Tuolumne though.
He and a friend decided to zip up to the Meadows and do something. His buddy was "the leader" of the expedition since his redpoint of a 5.10 in the gym the previous week made him the dominant climber. The decided upon Hobbit Book and trudged up to the base. Zeke led the first pitch, making an anchor at the top with a slung horn and one or two nuts. The "leader" followed up and then racked for pitch 2, but seeing the expansive face above him with no apparent bolts in sight, he started up a parallel crack to the right of the face, hoping that it would provide him with an opportunity to hop on to the face near the top.
I'm not sure what that crack goes at, but he managed to get a ways up, placing gear as he went, but was unable to move over onto the face when the crack petered out. He sketched out for a while and finally fell, ripping all but his very last piece before the anchor. Zeke, hanging on his anchor that was only set for a DOWNWARD pull, gets yanked up into the air ripping the nuts out and pulling the sling right off the horn.
So there they both hung...one pitch off the ground and both of them hanging by one piece. Needless to say they bailed as soon as they could get their wits about them and retreated back to SoCal.
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chossyslab
climber
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Apr 14, 2008 - 05:15pm PT
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the past 3 times ive led groups out to mission gorge (a dirty local crag with mediocre at best climbing) i saw 2 different climbers deck and a third group toproping with the rope running through a single bolt hanger at the top of the route.
One of the deckings was a dad who took his (maybe 15yo) son out who had never lead belayed before. He came off about 10' up and pulled his only stopper landing right on top of his son. had the son not been there dad would have gone another 15' over the ledge they were standing on.
that crag scares me. gumbies abound.
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Big T
Trad climber
Running Springs, CA
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Apr 14, 2008 - 05:39pm PT
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Crimson Chrysalis at Red Rocks... I was astonished to see a guy seconding the first pitch with a very large pack clipped to a six-foot-long daisy attached to his harness. I'm guessing he thought this might make any wide crack sections easier (though there really aren't any on the first pitch--you're mostly face climbing). Anyway, he's just barely able to move with this thing hanging from him. Each move looked like it must have taken Herculean effort. And this giant pack keeps swinging and pulling him off balance and getting hung up on the multitude of flakes and what not. Of course, it is dangling so far below him that he can't easily remedy these occurrences. At one point he pulls the pack up with the daisy to get it past an obstruction, but then lets it plummet six feet! This, of course, yanked him off his own holds--to his surprise.
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Jay Wood
Trad climber
Fairfax, CA
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Apr 14, 2008 - 06:38pm PT
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Melissa,
I hope you guys took the opportunity to mess with people's heads.
Ask which end of the rope to use, etc.
Unlike many stories, funny but not dangerous or sad.
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LittlePinkTricam
Trad climber
Providence, RI
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Apr 14, 2008 - 09:21pm PT
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My (now ex-)boyfriend had started taking me climbing three months earlier and I'd been thrashing up easy stuff behind him ever since. He was primarily a boulderer and sport climber at that time, but he had once harbored bigwall dreams and took me on a few trad climbs. He would never, ever let me lead, though. I inspected every piece of gear anyone placed in my vicinity and read everything I could get my hands on and, absent any experience, became a complete elitist--ground-up, passive pro, no falls. When I finally got out from under his tyrannical thumb I convinced a friend from highschool to go to the Adirondacks with me. He was in love with me and let me do everything I wanted--including hop on the sharp end with his rack on the 2nd pitch of a climb (I might have neglected to tell him I'd never trad lead before). I started up a 5.5G, got lost, and ended on a 5.7X with a twenty meter runnout above sketchy nuts (as a purist, I was too cool for cams). I finally got to a seeping flake and whacked in a hex that had maybe 20% surface contact with the rock. I go to clip it (directly into the piece--I didn't have any slings) and I can't pull a bite of rope up far enough. I call down, and he tells me that I'm at the end of the rope--that his figure 8 is butting up against his ATC. I tell him to pull out the anchor and climb up a few feet so I can clip. When I finally clip, my feet pop, and I end up hanging from this atrocious hex. I whack in two other marginal pieces, clove hitch them together hastily as he climbs up (at which point if he'd fallen, we both would have died), and by the time he gets to me I'm chilling in a hanging belay from a flake that's about to pop off the face, going, "That was AWESOME! Can I lead the next one, too?" It's amazing any of us survive our learning years...
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JerryGarcia
Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe
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Apr 14, 2008 - 10:28pm PT
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Top roped with a very used extremely thick tree climbers rope, im pretty sure it was the safety line. People came up to us but we ignored them. This happened in 1991 @ Carderock, Maryland which is a busy top roping area.
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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 14, 2008 - 11:38pm PT
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My buddy Paul had been bouldering at Indian Rock for a few years. I had been bouldering there for about six months. I decided this was it. This was now what I wanted to do. So I got a set of stoppers, a set of hexes and a set of Trango Monocams that had just been discontinued so they were cheap. Paul hooked up with some of the Indian Rock guys and followed Bookmark at the Leap so he was ready. I hired a guide, Robert Munios, to show me the ropes. We went to Pinnacles. His guide style for newbees is great. He told me,"We are going to climb as much rock as we can fit in the day". And we did. He lead Swallow Crack, Portent, Ordeal, Wet Kiss, Entrance, Monolith East Face Direct, The top 2/3 of Subterranian Tango and Coyote Ugly. Frankly, I was reeling. I'd just grab the gear unclip and drop it, it would slide down the rope and hit my knot. A skill at which I still excel today. My Indian rock training turned out to be perfect for Pinnacles. Thank God!
Now Paul and I were ready. He choose The Saw 5.5 at the Pie Shop as our first lead. I racked up at the base and tried to make the first move. It was a little bulge with a flaring hand crack. Well, the thing is.... there are no hand cracks at Indian Rock! I couldn't do it! I looked over at Paul and we both just cracked up laughing. The 5.5 was 40 feet up the climb but I couldn't even do the first move! Finaly I high stepped onto a ruggosity and liebacked the flare. Barely made it. The rest was pretty easy until I got up under a roof about half way to the top. I looked around the left side and it looked kind of dicey so I built a belay right there under the roof. Paul followed up and soon he was racked and turning the roof. He couldn't find any pro! His first lead was fifty feet of unprotected mid fifth. Later we went back and there is plenty of pro. We just hadn't learned to see it.
Ahh, those were the days.
Zander
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Apr 15, 2008 - 01:25am PT
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This guy wasn't a climber, but he was like a PRE-NOOB, without a shiny rack.
He and his girlfriend were walking down the approach trail of the SW face, about where Sacherer Cracker is, the Blast Point for half a dozen walls, this time it was Cosmos.
This idiot asked me if I was going to "plaster up there", because I was wearing white cotton clothes, head to foot.
He thought he could push down on me, to push himself up, in front of his girlfriend (Newton's Third Law of Social Interaction).
I graciously allowed his affront to slide past, and replied,
"Well, yes, up there we are going to get VERY plastered. See these big bags of booze?" There were two overstuffed Metolious pigs, 100+ lbs each, and ready for Launch.
He became silent, and he and the non-impressed girlfriend then walked past and away. I told them to steer into the trees right there (not stay close to the wall at that section) which was the correct thing to do.
They followed my advice, and were the better for it.
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland: what's not to love?
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Apr 15, 2008 - 02:06am PT
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My first trad lead was in the Garden of the Gods, in CO - Cowboy Boot Flake, 5.6.
20 ft up the climb I pull up rope to clip my second piece, a plastic hex (the rack was borrowed from a friend that had bought them in Australia). This pull causes my only piece below to flip up and out of the crack.
Now staring at a 60 ft ground fall, since the climb starts on a ledge, I'm gripped and quickly clip the rope into my plastic hex. Phew! Relax and on I go.
Eventually make the top, and while lowering can't clean the life-saving plastic hex for the life of me - pulling up, to the side, out, it won't budge.
Finally I pull straight down and out it comes, easy as pie. Scratched my head and thought about what that meant, but not for too long since I was soon racing over to lead the Finger Ramp.
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 15, 2008 - 10:56am PT
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That's spot on khanom; "route finding is a skill that can take a long time to master."
It comes with experience.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:03am PT
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All funny stories, how did we survive the start?
The scene was somewhere around Tiger Wall at Courtright, a wall which is a smaller version of Tiger Wall with many moderate and easy cracks. The crew was a bunch of n00bs being watched over by a good veteran who was obviously concerned for our safety.
I wasn't ready to lead, what with all of a half dozen trad climbs under my belt. The rest of the crew had even less experience, but all were eager to lead, 'cause that was cool.
I went to the top to set top-ropes with the vet, and learned a few tricks. Meanwhile, Bill, one of the best guys to ever walk the planet, tops out and builds his anchor. He slings a boulder and a tree. The vet walks over to examine it. He gives the dead tree a little push and it falls over. He rolls, with one hand, the "boulder" over the sling that was around it. Then he gave Bill an anchor lesson.
I would like to get back to that little wall, it was very cool.
Like Grant, I signed up with Bob Gaines early on. I spent four days out with Scott Cosgrove in Josh placing gear and building anchors. I learned a lot. Scott has some different ideas about some things, which taught me to not accept the orthodox view just on blind faith.
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ChrisW
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:23am PT
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Does a new Shiny Rack make a person a "Noob" Or is that person just plain a "NOob" to begin with? I would like to think I wasn't a "Noob" when I first started rockclimbing at 18yrs. old, with my One set of BD Nuts and five hand knoted BD oval quick draws. i thought could get me up anything with that rack and did.For awhile, I wonder why people would look at my rack strangely with a "Are u outof your mind!! are U frigin crazy, you just climbed that with that rack????. And I would look back at them and be like, Why do you carry all that sh#t up there when you don't even use it all? And what are those springy contractraption things hanging from your harness, those things look pretty cool. One guy in Eldo actually told me i was gong to DIE after leading This route at the roof routes (5.10s). I replyed, "what you mean, I just read FREEDOM of THE HILLS (I think it was a 1st or 2nd edition) Last night and I totally know what i am doing".Hell after reading that I was ready to carry some pitons And hammer with me, also. then I brought a set of Hexes and thought I was really the sh#t. Good to be young and DUM and not know any difference.
LittlePinkTricam, That's a rad story.....Can i climb with you???
Chris.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:29am PT
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Being ancient, I've always seen the shiny-rack-n00bs thing as a sign of our economic times -- n00bs (like so many other folks) are much richer than they useta be, so they start out with an investment.
In the Hippy Era when my friends and I started buying into climbing, it was out of the question for anyone we knew to afford a shiny new rack. Instead we visited Chouinard's shop in Ventura and bought stuff he had in bins as "seconds," dinged pitons or too-short ropes or the like. My first investment was two pitons and two carabiners. My partner got two different pitons, so we could pool them together as a rack. When another friend ran out of money and had to sell his own gear cheap, we were all set to go.
Equipped with 6 pitons (all seconds), 4 Clog nuts, hiking boots and a borrowed goldline rope, we took off on our first major climb -- 8 pitches, West Lark on Tahquitz. Felt venturesome at the time, but no epic occurred, and we topped out very happy.
The gear-laden beginner seemed to come along later, child of a different era.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:30am PT
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can't clean the life-saving plastic hex for the life of me
The aluminum hexes weren't much easier, at times.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:40am PT
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I can usually tell if someone has been climbing awhile - the rack is only 1 indicator and a weak one at that. A lot of noobs start off on used or second hand racks and it only takes a few months of active climbing to wipe the shine off of a new one. I think you're still a noob if you look at someone's gear and rate them based on just that, but this sort of insecurity is definitely a a part of our climbing culture.
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ChrisW
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Apr 15, 2008 - 11:46am PT
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I agree with that JLP. Alot of times you can tell how confident a climber is for the grade they are climbing by what's on there rack. Some people think they need enough gear for the entire climb when actually they only need enough to get them 200 feet up the climb. I like to play the game, what's the least i can bring. Sometimes I lose.
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