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john hansen
climber
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Sep 15, 2006 - 01:26am PT
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I think its kinda steep for rappeling..
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WBraun
climber
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Sep 15, 2006 - 01:28am PT
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It's real overhanging healyje. We don't really know the full deal yet. But he doesn't want to try yet. Maybe he doesn't know how? Or doesn't think it's possible.
You got to bounce sometimes hard on overhanging walls to get back or down aid in places.
I don't know.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 15, 2006 - 01:39am PT
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Thanks Werner (and Mimi and John). I would imagine a steep retreat would be all the harder with a heavy bag...
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Mimi
climber
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Sep 15, 2006 - 01:47am PT
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Pigs do fly, don't they?
Edit: Take shelter from pigs on the wing. Pink Floyd - Animals
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Sep 15, 2006 - 02:03am PT
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The only reason I made it up the Trip and Zodiac a while back was because I was too scared to retreat and no one had been rescued yet from that side. It was sort of a given that once past a certain pitch there was no retreat. Had to deal with it. I think retreating off a wall can be scarier than finishing it.
Ken
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Mimi
climber
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Sep 15, 2006 - 02:12am PT
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I had to downclimb the Hollow Flake and reverse the penji. I crawled inside and tried to suffer, but I could not. You really take a ride and slam into that corner! All off of the original short thin LA. And then you have to jug on it nice and easy.
After bailing (my partner didn't want any part of it either) and switching to the Shield, while we fixed the Free Blast, we watched this guy basically free solo the flake up and down twice doing the Frankenstein lieback (both ways) while his girlfriend sat on the ledge holding a limp rope and staring out into the meadow. His big paws milking the rounded edge with perfect technique. I yelled over to my partner, Mike Davis (Spike) and said you gotta check this out! It was fun to watch. I'm blanking on the guy's name but he's a SOCAL climber; real tall and skinny. Pickett I think.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Sep 15, 2006 - 03:25am PT
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(sorry for the thread hijack)
Werner, I bet the soloist on Tangerine Trip is not sure how to do the "downaiding" to reverse pitch 5. Maybe if he had read Andy Kirkpatrick's explanation ahead of time, he could have handled it:
http://www.psychovertical.com/?escapewall
(See second paragraph under "Retreating as a team")
Short version: fix rope at top of pitch, rap/jumar down it, placing gear to maintain contact with the rock. When you reach anchor at bottom of pitch, fix rope to it with some slack. Then jumar back up, removing gear. Then rap back down with the bag(s).
I haven't had to do this myself (yet), but I was happy to see Andy's explanation; I wasn't sure about the exact mechanics before.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Sep 15, 2006 - 04:01am PT
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(back on topic)
Yes, hammerless is not for everyone on every route that has gone clean. In Yosemite, I figure hammerless is standard for Lurking Fear, Salathe', Nose, South Face of the Column, Prow (probably) and Half Dome Regular NW Face. But of course those routes don't have many fixed heads or fragile rivets/dowels. And they are pretty much beginner clean aid routes, so people on them would likely not know how to replace heads or drill bolts even if there were many.
Most of the remaining routes don't (normally) go clean (except if you are Steve Grossman on the Muir or something), so people will have the hammer and expect to use it.
Maybe I'm off base with these route lists, but I would like to see an example or two of a Yosemite route that is often done clean, but has some fixed gear that might need replacement. Any ideas? Lurking Fear? Tangerine Trip? Prow? Ten Years After? South Face of Watkins? Having an actual route or two in mind would help keep a "hammerless" discussion more realistic, I think.
As for Zion, I can't really judge, because I haven't done much aid on sandstone. I can definitely see from trip reports like Disco Inferno, how a bolt kit to replace blown out holes would help on some routes:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=166280&f=30&b=0
I don't know to what extent there are fixed heads in Zion - probably not many, right? More bolts and fixed pins for the fixed gear?
In the past at least, usually the main decision on aid/wall ethics was whether to bring a bolt kit or not. Hammerless was more for the real experts or for the easy clean routes.
I did many ("trade route" = easy) walls with no bolt kit. On the Dawn Wall I had a "joke" bolt kit which was a drill bit with no holder and a Leeper pointed hook. My theory was to retreat if I couldn't do a move, instead of adding a hole/bolt, but use the drill if a rivet was broken/unusable. Up high in the Dihedrals (Dawn Wall) there was a very rusty cabled rivet hanger which was pretty much fixed to one of Harding's rivets. I didn't think I could remove it for sure, so I figured I'd better just try weighting it instead of trying to remove it destructively. Fortunately I only weigh 135 and it didn't blow. After that my partner discussed it and we agreed it was kinda dumb to not have a good way to replace blown fixed gear, as Ammon suggested. So on the P.O. Wall we had a real drill holder and sure enough, a dowell snapped (on my partner), and he drilled a replacement on the spot before bailing to attend to his cut hand. So the bolt kit can be good to have, although it can easily be abused if you don't have enough self-control or willingness to take a given risk. There are also judgement calls like Ricardo's on South Seas / P.O. Wall where a head placment was too blown out to be usable. At least the bolt kits are not used so much anymore to add excessive 1/4" belay bolts, given the ASCA work to mostly cut those down to just 2 good ones.
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hardman
Trad climber
love the eastern sierras
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Sep 15, 2006 - 08:55am PT
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apples oranges
retreating, climbing clean
Ammon sorry dude but very weak!
Werner Ammon started this thread open for full critiscm.
anyway Werner have you seen a couple of gunkies either on Salathe wall or the nose? one guy has a bunch of tattoos. how are they doing? tell em John O said word.
radical being resuced is the ultimate humilation. imo better to be rescued alive than not being here at all.
anyone that chips holds deserves a right cross.
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Ultrabiker
Ice climber
Eastside
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Sep 15, 2006 - 08:57am PT
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Werner...be safe! Once again, thanks for stick'n your ass out on a limb for a fellow human, regardless of their situation!
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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Sep 15, 2006 - 09:35am PT
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Wait a second... the dude sacked up enough to get ten pitches up, but he can't rappel?? Are these like hideous raps or what? Something don't add up here...
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Euroford
Trad climber
Chicago, IL
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Sep 15, 2006 - 09:43am PT
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but if he's soloing hasn't he basicly rapped each pitch once already?
much love goes out to the sar guys, risking life and limb so we can play on our vacations.
(or stop playing when its not fun anymore)
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Sep 15, 2006 - 10:17am PT
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Dang...there's a buttload of righteous indignation in these posts about a situation whose details haven't even emerged yet. A guy is 10 pitches up, believes he needs a rescue for whatever reason, and the judges, juries, and executioners have already done their work. Man, I wish I was that crystal clear on everything! And Werner (along with several others), the guy who's gonna put his butt on the line for this guy, is one of the few who's being incredibly judicious in his assessment of the whole situation. I suggest heeding his earlier advice: "Go easily on ourselves, folks, we're only human."
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Sep 15, 2006 - 10:39am PT
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Someone get this snail-eyed soloist to start his own thread, this is Steve's House Of Smoke damnit!
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Euroford
Trad climber
Chicago, IL
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Sep 15, 2006 - 11:25am PT
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" Dang...there's a buttload of righteous indignation in these posts"
i love it how there is always somebody on these forums that sees a thread as an opportunity to say "you guys are jerks, but I'M not! becouse i'm able to simply point out thay YOU are jerks".
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Sep 15, 2006 - 11:40am PT
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Euroford: Sorry you got the impression I've called anyone a jerk. I have not. Nor have I implied that I am not fully capable of being a jerk. I am. I am merely saying that a good percentage of 50+ posts have been passing judgment on some unnamed guy who no one seems to know by name, or by circumstance. If anything, I'm saying, "Let's not assume HE'S a jerk just because he doesn't want to/believe he can go up or down without assistance."
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Euroford
Trad climber
Chicago, IL
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Sep 15, 2006 - 12:05pm PT
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i'm just being facetious and a smartass. not myself trying to be a jerk, at least not seriously.
yeah maybe the guy dropped his rack, or dropped his water, or something and can't deal with it and needs a rescue, and i wish the fella no harm and hope he makes landfall safely.
i just like the commitment factor, the requirment of being self sufficiant and responsable for yourself. what appears on the surface here is a guy gets himself in over his head and can readily pull the plug on his adventure courtesy of the braves souls from yosar.
knowing this, it will be hard to stare up at elcap next summer (as i am at this point intending to do) and have the same feeling of commitment.
some may call having a hammer and a boltkit on you as "carrying courage in your rucksack", but this ability for readily available rescue goes far beyond that.
i wonder if this guy would have decieded against starting up if no such thing as yosar existed?
i believe such a thing as yosay should exist, but i also believe its something that should only come into action during the most dire cases, like last years storm that claimed some lives and could have claimed more if not for the rescue fellas.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Sep 15, 2006 - 12:16pm PT
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Tim,
that was my point with the 25 years in Zion comment.
There WAS no rescue so people HAD to be self-sufficient.
If everyone had to pay for their own rescue I suspect you would see safer more conservative climbing endeavors.
While we may exalt adventurous behavior we should not fail to recognize the cost.
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yo
climber
The Eye of the Snail
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Sep 15, 2006 - 12:26pm PT
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haha, yes, I'm looking forward to the Soloist's House of Snails thread.
My E! True Yosemite Story:
Hopped on the ZM solo way back when. I was barely staying afloat but managed a fair bit of climbing. Anyway, got to pitch 7 or 8 (which meant fixing plus a full day and night and another day, I think) and realized I really didn't want to be up there at all. Wanted my mommy bad. Things can happen way up there to blow your doors off. In my case a combination of pulling a steep roof (exposure + commitment), taking a ginormous fall, and spending a windy night bouncing around on the ledge melted my head bones. I knew I couldn't rap off. I also didn't have the guts to call for a rescue straight out (which does take guts.) Spent an hour or two planning an accidental "dropping" of the rack in order to get rescued, but didn't have the guts to do that either. Werner would've looked in my eyes and known anyway. Eventually I chose the most chicken of all choices and went up.
PS: Talked to some guys this summer that bailed from the 9 O' Clock. Whoa!
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Kartch
climber
Mutahna
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Sep 15, 2006 - 12:32pm PT
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Yo - I didn't know you woke up this early.
BTW only sissy little boys bail, what's my count hmmm; p-sun, t-stone, s-shot, organasm, L Angel, and some other crap N of Zion.
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