The Flames.

Jul 8, 2016 - 12:22am PT
It's late. I'm tired. I'm angry.
Right now, bad things are going down. Cops have been murdered in Dallas. People are saying this is in response to the unnecessary killing to two armed black men elsewhere. I watched one video, which was sad. Watched a man die there. Couldn't see his hand. Couldn't tell whether he was fighting the cops, reaching for his gun, or what. Bad camera angle. The other? Sounds like the cop overreacted, needlessly. Saw the cop get gunned down behind a pillar too. (MOVE goddam it!

Lots of people blame the guns. The mere fact that they are here. That they are available.

In the wake of tragedy, confronted by horrible acts and unintentional nightmares resulting from carelessness and stupidity, it's easy to see why people get so emotional, so desperate to take action, to DO SOMETHING!, even if it's wrong. Although, in their mind, it's not wrong. It's right. If they could save one life, stop one three year old from accidentally taking a bullet to the brain, it would be worth all the trouble, even if it meant repealing one of the constitutional rights granted us by our founding fathers.

No, you say? It isn't a right? You have to be in a militia? Sorry, the court ruled. It's an individual right. Get over it.

Now mind you - and here is where the old hypocritical bullsh#t-o-meter kicks in - a lot of these same people take unnecessary risks themselves and put other people's lives at danger. We're climbers, right? People die climbing on a regular basis. People who rail and scream at the supposed injustice of the proliferation of firearms also staunchly defend their position on free-soloing to simply be an expression of their individual freedom. They openly accept that risk, knowing well it could kill them. Do they consider the people they leave behind? Is it not always a tragic event for the survivors? Ah yes, but they're not really hurting anyone else. Not really. Just a little emotional pain and suffering, really. Unless, well... unless you teach/encourage/allow your kids to follow in your footsteps, sans rope. But wait, you say... you're in control. Yeah, so was Bachar, right? If anyone had it dialed...

So I haven't really addressed you putting others at risk. Ok. You drive too fast. 5mph over? Nah, that never hurt anyone. Look, I used to move cars for NHP from time to time at the "death yard", as in, vehicles that were involved in fatalities. Speed kills. So do cell phones, kids, make-up, alcohol, poor judgement, fatigue, medication, maintenance (or rather lack of it), aggression, tail-gating, distraction, inattention, and sucking down quarter pounders with cheese. Accidents.

F*#king preventable accidents!

And I guarantee just about every one of you as#@&%es has participated in at least one of those things, probably on a regular basis, and probably more than one at the same time, either recently, repeatedly, or simply as a daily matter of course.

Lecture me about the dangers of guns! F*#k you.

You might have rolled out of bed, chuffed a cigarette half-way to the kitchen where you fried up half a pound of bacon with some cheesy eggs and a bloody mary as a hair-of-the-dog fix for last night's triple torpedo IPA kegger, then stepped outside and smoked a bowl of your favorite hawaiian red, so you could focus, then overstrained your sphincter on the toilet to pinch out last week's blue cheese encrusted 10 lb porter house with onion rings. And you want to talk predictable gun violence? Ok. While you're at it just remember... your clogged arteries are predictable too. And they'll probably stop your heart on the shitter long before a gun of any sort ever actually pokes its inherently sinister nose in your general direction. But hey, you've got control over your diet. Thank god for miracle drugs, eh?!

And that's another thing... drugs. Smoke a bowl? Celebrate 420 at 4:20 on 4/20 with a blunt you scored for $20? Congratulations!!! You just made my d#@&%ebag idiot of the year list. If you bitch about guns, but partake in ANY illicit/semi-illicit drug use whatsoever then YOU ARE PART OF THE F*#KING GUN PROBLEM YOU'RE BITCHING ABOUT. Wait, how's that work again? It's like this: the money goes to a dealer, then a cartel. They use big nasty illegal weapons to commit heinous crimes here and abroad to maintain control of their markets and operations, in the name of profit. They will not abide our gun laws. They will obtain new weapons regardless of our gun laws. They will continue to use those weapons to commit atrocities, and YOU ARE DIRECTLY FUNDING THOSE ACTIONS.

So if you smoke anything you didn't grow in your own back yard, and you fell like saying anything at all about firearms just keep your f*#king mouth shut. Mm-k?

No no, you say. Too many legal owners go f*#king nuts. They improperly store their weapons and their kids get access to them, causing unthinkable tragedies.

Ok, kids and guns first. Agreed. Believe it or not, this is where you and I agree that something should be done. You say, get rid of the guns. Require safe storage (define that: empty, disassembled in a combo safe that takes an hour to access?). See, we disagree on the finer points. So how about stiff penalties? Say, if you leave your gun out and your kid (or someone else's kid) shoots himself or someone else, you go to jail. You get fined. You lose your gun rights forever (how about some due process appeal process?). Seems simple enough. Although now I've certainly pissed on the pro-gun movement's parade. F*#k off. Come up with something you can live with, or go down in flames when they ban you to 4 round non-detachable mags and mandatory insurance.

Gun owners need to get smacked upside the head if they think:
a) little Johnny knows better than to touch my glock
b) it can't happen to me. My kids would never...

Legal owners going nuts. That's kind of a different nutshell. Or is that nut-case? Sh#t happens. People DO go nuts. They get divorced. They get married. They have kids. Their kids die. Their gets do drugs. Their kids deal drugs. Their kids decide they're gay. Their spouses decide they're gay. Their grandparents reveal they've always been conservative gay muslim nazis. Sh#t happens. What we lack here is treatment and reporting. See, people with mental health issues aren't really supposed to be buying guns. And that kind of crap falls through the loopholes. Now, you'll probably tell me that I'm barking up the wrong tree here, that this is not a feasible method of curbing gun violence. Well hey, I'm looking at it as a double-edged sword. Reduce some of the issues that contribute to gun violence by providing treatment and reporting, and deal with some nasty social ills as a byproduct. Or vis a vis.

Remember now, you weren't really looking for a full-on ban of all weapons, no, your argument was for a reduction. So don't tell me it wouldn't be enough; because I keep hearing this "if it only saved one life" argument from the anti-gun side. Spare me.

So what about your right to be safe from gun violence? Well, what about it? You're pissing in the wind. I want to be safe from reckless drivers, idiots at work (workplace deaths... jesus, a whole 'nother category of preventable deaths), drug dealers/cartels, gangs, toxic chemicals, poor construction, terrorism, and my own bad habits. Some of those I can influence, some not so much.

In the land of higher education, they're to prescient as to require staff to watch an "active shooter" video. The premise is that the risk of someone coming on campus with a firearm, intent to kill, is great enough that they must provide this training to all employees on what to do if this occurs. You know how you're allowed to protect yourself? Not with a gun. So homie brings a prohibited firearm on campus, opens fire at anywhere from point-blank to, oh, maybe a couple hundred yards, and I'm supposed to defend myself (quoting from the video) by any means necessary. F*#king seriously? Stop making me watch that f*#king video if you don't believe in my right to self-defense. I could quit, and someday I may; but for now I just don't think it's really going to happen.

I don't much think I'm going to get in an accident while driving either. Indeed, 30 years of driving and I've only been in three. The only one in which I was driving, I got rear-ended. By a kid on a cell phone. Accident? Nope, 100 f*#king % preventable. Dude, that's how people die. So I wear a seat belt.

I do other safety-conscious things, like keep a fire extinguisher around. Keep medications out of reach of my kids. Bolt the dressers to the walls. Have an emergency gas shut-off tool on my gas meter at home. You know, totally boring sh#t that I'll probably never use. Like the gun I have for self-defense. Probably never need it.

But, you never really know.

Carson City, near my home, dude walks into a restaurant and kills people. I wasn't there. What if? F*#k if I know. Square up and take him out like John Wayne? Not likely. See, I'm no Donini. I have no doubt that man would come flying out of the faux leather diner booth like a mix between a nuclear spider monkey and Iron Man on crank and simply vaporize the dude with his laser vision and a snide comment; but I have different priorities. Like, don't draw attention, take cover, get my family OUT. I'm sure this fits in with his general disdainful view of most armed rednecks; and I'm OK with that. Maybe, just maybe, if I'm trapped and can't get out or get my family out, I might get a lucky shot off and stop/deflect the attack long enough to save my family. Maybe I'll die anyway; but if that happens then I'm probably dead anyway. Last-ditch, like bailing out of a truck with no brakes before it plummets over the Grand Canyon.

Guy with a gun in the Wallyworld parking lot looking to score some dope money? Dude, here's my wallet. You're doing me a favor by stealing my credit. Who knows, every situation is different, and what-ifs don't mean much. Although, I gota say I'm pretty confident that a guy with a CCW could take out a pair of armed terrorists with explosives half-way into their assault and some dumb son of a bitch would question whether he was justified in pulling the trigger.

Either way, the hypocrisy just kills me. You take risks, I take risks, we pass that on to our kids, we bitch about it. We try to eliminate other people's rights and abilities in the name of our own perceived safety without giving it due thought or due process, and the world just gets to be a shittier place as a result.

You're losing your freedoms. Not just guns, there are others as well. While you're bitching about getting tooled at the latest local cop-op for your own poor judgement in going 10mph over (risking other people's lives dipshit), you're sort of also welcoming police state type of controls over firearm ownership, communications, the perceived threat of terrorism, etc.

Why not try education instead? It works for pregnancy. Right? Teach teens about birth control and STD's and they become more responsible. (Yeah, that's a big FU to the christian right, btw.) Healthcare? Not really the answer, you say, although you were probably ecstatic over the passage of obamacare. Or not, depending which side of the fence you're on. Go after things like No-fly-list/No guns (AND INSTITUTE DUE PROCESS for those of you who overlooked the reference the first time around).

Basically, if you want to trod on my (federal supreme court verified) individual rights to keep and bear arms, then f*#king suck it up and try giving up some of your rights in the name of doing something truly effective.

Seriously. Semi-auto rifle ban? Mag capacity ban? Background checks for ammo? I got a friend with all that sh#t in California. All. Legally. Owned. Well, up until now. Tell me how you're going to remove it from him, short of a legal warrant and/or forced entry?

You're not. Not for him, not for millions of people like him. Especially not for the people MOST likely to commit the type of atrocities you fear/hate/abhor. And he's got at least another 30 years of life left in him, give or take a pound of bacon and his aggressive (typical) California driving style.

Australia, Canada, Japan, China, various parts of Europe... go. They've got the healthcare, they lack the firearms. Whatever the f*#k it is that keeps you here is a god damn mystery. If you're going to stay, just please stop being a hypocritical d#@&%ebag. Now, f*#k off of this gun thread, climb something, and post a worthwhile picture.

Or, you know... f*#k it. Let's just keep right on rehashing the same, boring, dried up sh#t over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

"guns are evil"
"mine aren't"
"you're evil"
"look at my glock"
"you're an as#@&%e"
"you started it"
"if it prevented just one death"
"that's a logical fallacy"
"statistics"
"bullsh#t. my statistics"
"bullsh#t. and anecdotal"
"f*#k you"
"too many guns"
"look, i bought a new glock"


healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon

Jul 8, 2016 - 12:30am PT
Couldn't see his hand.. . . . . ., that is all I read.

Sh#t oldman river, thanks! Wow we might be able to turn this sh#t show into a fundraiser for one of our favorite nonprofit organization's !!! $150.00 so far you punters!
Yes that was stellar!


A n example of what happens.....
Major jump to a totally different location,
but if someone wants a good go fund me
Here ( I wish it was just my own life still, because this could be funded )

now I don't understand, is the rock so chossy that it won't hold gear ?

Here it is laid out for you if you need an outline, just ask.

The way this place now works is to send the people who need to climb here, ?,
to a ledge way off the ground , (4th pitch? ).It Is a disaster in the making,



Submitted By: Nick Sweeney on May 31, 2016, closed, well okay,
3/4 of the wall, the heavily bolted bottom, is closed ! 17 days later!


By Kevin Driscoll. Jun 16, 2016

The first pitch if off limits for access until further notice at the landowners request. You can still climb the upper buttress via access from the parking lot and the climbers trail. There are several excellent routes on the ledge just left of the 4th 10b pitch start for Orion. Makes it worth the hike up to climb these routes.

Five pitch atrocity?http://www.mountainproject.com/images/38/96/111893896_large_aa3ae2.jpg

Spokanehttp://www.mountainproject.com/v/111893896

Yahy? Orion, Highway Rockhttp://www.mountainproject.com/v/orion/111892460

But this is what is now expected?!!!? Not just excepted???

this should be the goal; a go fun'd me chopping trip to a Washington State,
price it out : costs for food , gas (choke) gear
You may need to bring going out to dinner money to help calm the land owners
And I'll bring the Perfect work cord; a 47 year old 45 m (150ft ) 9ml, because I did not
pick up the sweet red & yellow 50 year old pair.






What is going on so close to heaven? ( just across the border if you ski Whistler/Black Comb BC)
I would ask for explanations but I've thought up a snarky comment to place somewhere else.
Why does all this rock fall victim to the biggest non-climbers the gyms ever produced?
It has to be due to the for-ever n0ob, factor & the over protective treatment they receive?o

In my time very few so remote to me & my life - have had an influence so big in my life.

To you and your family in the memory of the 'light', of the young son Ascended.
...( when We, the four or five people that grasped IT, " We're Climbers" in the grasp )
....( 0F some thing beyond any other religion or experience , those few, when we herd about the kid from the mags, it was the 1st time We questioned EVERY THING.
No way,
Not Him? He was so much "More Good"
& still now as the more I've seen, ?? Really?. I can not imagine your parents dropped locked jaws, send them my heathen prayers as if I'm even worthy. I cannot say more. . .
( it would not sit well with Tobin to know how his death,)
(in the fashion of a zipper, Led to many more than one atheist /agnostic/addict)

Climbing Has Been my religion, my God of choice, then, might be gravity?

I don't know I'm to busy learning how to keep climbing up rocks.
to spend any time to think deeply
about much else.

A life wasted, a wasted life ~ see rock, find rock, climb up rock, climb down rock, Feel G-dz presence? Rejoice ~ repeat.
Achieve insight in search of enlighten ment.... ( shoot me);)
the simple repetition is what becomes meditation and takes
on more or a deeper meaning, at a healing personal level. it is more than religion
given the physical component it is Drugs,

Climbing has been my main drug, all the others were self medicating to cure me of the thing I've got, I'm sick, that's what's wrong with me.

What's wrong with me ?I'm sick, it's contagious,
It infects the young, with random severity it can be fatal
Or a life long malady, kept in check by overhanging rock
Gravity and time are the cure -what have I got?
A Climbing Bug.and climbing is dangerous.

How many boys of a certain age were there? 10 thousand seems to many but across the globe? Say it was half of that five thousand of us, all pacing, waiting till we could get free & go
Climbing like him.

We only guessed. At his great spirit.
We only had black & white photographs. If you had not been in the
California sun light in the 70s then you did not get it .
& could not be told, it was a feeling.

& there was a kid just like you & me out there we didn't know of brothers or sheepbuggerers,
( maybe, but they were the older crew) we only knew that some other seventeen year old was sending desperate climbs .
not building skateboarding into a thing, a waste of time, Childs play,
in comparison to one of the three or four great things to do.
( nod to Cap't Hemingway )
If we couldn't have girls or cool cars to gat 'em,
we would be men & Climb.

We made lists of all the things we would do,
it seems now it was a lot like Harrison's basement.

On the lists each of us made we included things like surf, drive fast, scuba dive, parachute. . .
I put climb 1st, for others it was money, or drive fast. Both of those two friends did what they wanted, then came back to me to go climbing before going on with life.

Why I drifted .?? Why Nottingham might be ? if its my swan song to?

When the machine warms up it throws those typos in & I leave them

All together say Ahmen

SMU basketball coach Larry Brown is not a despicable, disgraceful cheater. The headlines will tell you that he is, with most columnists screaming that he’s left every school on his college basketball resume saddled with NCAA sanctions due to major rules infractions.

All of the articles calling for his firing that have surfaced over the last few days have been predictable. They all point out that after leading UCLA to the 1980 national championship game, in his first year as a major college coach by the way, Brown bolted a year later to take the head job with the NBA’s New Jersey Nets.

Shortly thereafter, it was announced that UCLA’s Final Four and title game appearances would be vacated due to major NCAA infractions.

"
I would like to hear from the community what they think are the responsibilities of those who bolt routes.
A recent trip to a local crag with mostly easy sport routes got me thinking about this.

( We were doing fine with out your input , so find another outdoor pursuit to wreck )

climbing at a very popular crag that has a half dozen or so 5.8s, several 5.9s, some 5.10s and two 5.11s.
All are fully bolted with the exception of one trad route (with one bolt high on the route).
Most people who go to this crag do not bring gear, and the crag attracts new climbers.
Most of the routes are listed in the newest guidebook; two new routes were added after the guidebook was published.
One of the routes is fully bolted and listed on MP.
The other route has no information (route setter did not submit it to MP).
I was with a small group and ran into a friend who was with some other people.
He leads around 5.9.
The crag was busy, and we saw this route that was not on MP,
and the party on it was about to pull the rope.
We asked them how hard the climb was and they told us it was around a 5.9.
My friend hops on it and starts up.
The route starts out low angle and then gets steeper at the top.
The anchor is not visible from the ground (unless you saw the rope hanging off it).
We had a 70m rope, so no problems there.
The issue was that it was somewhat run out on the lower angle area,
but had some gear placement opportunities that could not be seen from the ground.
What was worse was that on the steeper part at the top, there was ledge fall potential
to get to the next bolt,
but a cam would mitigate that - if you knew that there was a placement for it - and
had brought the right sized gear.
My partner did not want to risk an injury from a ledge fall and lowered.
Luckily, he had brought a rack, and I was able to place some gear and finish the route.

I understand that route setters use their own money to develop routes,
and I know a few that have gotten sick of the shitstorm that follows when they
submitted their route to MP, so they have stopped adding them to the database.

So what duty does the route setter have to the climbing community?

1. Caveat Emptor. If a beginner climber has to bail because they didn't know anything about the route, tough luck..

2. Route setter makes the route fully bolted and safe for a climber at the grade if gear placements can't be assessed from the ground (especially at a crag where all but one of the routes is fully bolted).

3. Submit the route on MP with the grade, length of rope needed, number of bolts, and gear sizes (optional or necessary), and make it a trad/sport route.

4. ??? What do you think?"