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mawk
Big Wall climber
Hugo, MN
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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“People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument”.
Will Rogers
Observe the snoozing puppy...
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Bubba Ho-Tep
climber
Evergreen, CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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There you go!
Puppies beat ethics arguments every time.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom
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Jul 12, 2011 - 02:22pm PT
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I can't resist observing that the story of Jenson's rattle in academia is pretty telling regarding the personality of the FAionistas.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 03:30pm PT
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I can't resist observing that the story of Jenson's rattle in academia is pretty telling regarding the personality of the FAionistas.
Yup, but perhaps revealing lack of compromise and diplomacy rather than lack of integrity
Failure to please those who feel their authority needed to be surrendered to.
peace
Karl
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Bubba Ho-Tep
climber
Evergreen, CO
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Jul 12, 2011 - 03:37pm PT
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Failure to please those who feel their authority needed to be surrendered to.
Same theme, two stories?
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Jul 12, 2011 - 09:21pm PT
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"And I hope they can avoid the pitfalls of Mimiism."
Karl - as the developer of our McTopo term "Loisification," I was wondering if you might be willing to take a stab at defining "Mimiism"?
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Jul 12, 2011 - 09:51pm PT
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There's a fine route at Mt Lemmon called Pitfalls of Hesitation. I was hoping it'd be a Grossman route...alas, Steiger and Ringle. That woulda been funny...
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 12, 2011 - 11:42pm PT
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Karl - as the developer of our McTopo term "Loisification," I was wondering if you might be willing to take a stab at defining "Mimiism"?
Nah, let Mimi be. It's hard to consider new information or even contemplate a change of heart when everybody is in your face.
Let's just address the issues raised by history and by the climb and if anybody's mind changes, it's to their credit.
Peace
Karl
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#1SuperMama
Social climber
Oakdale, Ca
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Jul 13, 2011 - 12:03am PT
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Here it is for the day...
"Done with SLAB!!!
Biveeing under Overseer then on to 10 tomorrow."
Slow and steady go my turtles! Hey, maybe that should be their stuffed animals for the wall?
Pete - Glad you had time with your son fishing out in your canoe.
"Cuz when it comes down to it - that's what life is all about - FAMILY.
Have a good ranting night,
Mama Annie
P.S. I think everyone is about done with this thread for awhile! lol
It's seems like it has been dying a slow death these past few days!
(And have you ever looked up the two words dye and die and which one to use when you
want to add -ed or -ing to the end. CRAZY maan, crazy! When I teach, I always tell my
kids what a crazy f*#ked up language our native tongue is! Well, maybe, not in exactly
those words!) hahaha
And Ammon and Kait are not forthcoming with a lot of info right now, they want to be able to
explain it??? Don't know if that is significant or not!?
Wiped out! Night.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jul 13, 2011 - 12:24am PT
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I think everyone is about done with this thread for awhile! lol
It's seems like it has been dying a slow death these past few days!
We're just waiting for the TR from Ammon and Kait at this point...
Going to have to figure when and where to meet up to deliver the cash and Oregon microbrew.
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#1SuperMama
Social climber
Oakdale, Ca
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Jul 13, 2011 - 12:57am PT
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All I can say is - 2 more to 900! Oh and I like that quote.
Woot Woot!
I'm gonna do everything to be the 1000th. : )
That's my climbing goal! ahahahah
I just hope I don't have to write the next 102. Oh god!
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Jul 13, 2011 - 01:24am PT
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Gunkie
Trad climber
East Coast US
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 13, 2011 - 08:47am PT
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Done with SLAB!!!
Nice work!
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Jul 13, 2011 - 11:25am PT
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Only a hundred head placements and four pitches to Aquarian Wall! Ammon told me he brought rivets to replace the batheads on the final traverse left to Aquarian.
I and everyone else are sure looking forward to hearing all about Ammon's and Kait's historic second ascent! I'm especially interested in hearing about what apparently stopped everyone else, but knott them.
There is nothing wrong with being a Big Wall Turtle. I have employed this strategy with great success.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Jul 13, 2011 - 11:51am PT
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Going like a turtle can be a lot of fun. It's considerate of Kait and Ammon to climb at this time of year, so as not to be creating a roadblock in front of all the faster parties.
:-)
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Jul 13, 2011 - 11:53am PT
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It sure does seem to me that there is a lot of egg heading towards the faces of a prominent duo on this forum!
Go Ammon! Go Kait!
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Jul 13, 2011 - 01:23pm PT
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hmm...I wonder....
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Jul 13, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
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Hey Annie,
That's great that they've knocked off the Slab, so now only a hundred head placements and four pitches to Aquarian Wall!
The nature of the climbing will now change from “hooking” to “heading”, and we haven’t really talked about heading here at all. So here goes.
CAVEAT: If you have placed hundreds of heads and know everything there is to know about heads, you might want to skip this next bit. But if you don’t know your head from a hole in the ground, read on. If you plan on reading the post in its entirety, you may wish to grab a coffee or beer, depending on whether it is before or after Changeover Time.
I hope these heading pitches don't slow Ammon down too much. In the appendix to Wings of Steel, where Richard gives his bolt, rivet, hole and hook count, he also says here that they made 205 head placements:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/516588/Wings-of-Steel-XXVII-the-Downward-Spiral
205 head placements is a helluva lot of head placements! By Ammon's account there haven't been very many heads on the slab, so I am assuming that most of the heading comes in the next few pitches before Wings of Steel joins Aquarian Wall and then ends. [Note to dumbass First Ascensionists: Wings of Steel does not end and then join Aquarian Wall. Sheesh.]
How quickly and easily these next four pitches, which I'm assuming required a lot of head placements, can be climbed will depend on four things:
 the existence or not of Mark and Richard's original heads
whether these heads can still be used
the difficulty in replacing deadheads or else bypassing them
the shape of the cracks, and whether modern gear could instead be used
For those of you unfamiliar with exactly what a "head" is, it's a tiny blob of soft aluminum or soft copper swaged onto the end of a cable which has a clip-in loop where you can attach your aiders. You place it like a stopper in a placement that is not quite good enough to accept a stopper. Basically you pre-shape the metal blob with your hammer so that it approximates the shape of your placement, and then using either the tip of your hammer for big heads, or a blunted chisel or punch for small heads, you smash the thing into place. The objective is to hit the metal so aggressively you deform it and "paste" the thing into place until "it's welder, dude." Back in the day, heads were sometimes called “bashies” or “mashies”.
Selection of rivet hangers and assorted heads [both copper and aluminum] used by me and Kate on our ascent of Born Under A Bad Sign - RURP and Big Wall Crab for scale
Heads can be placed in very marginal placements, allowing you to progress upwards where cams, pitons or stoppers won't fit, and where there are no hook placements. Mark and Richard said they placed mostly #2, #1 and #0 heads - see link above. The strength of the head placement depends on the shape of the placement [how well it approximates a good stopper placement, or has parallel sides, or is just a marginal divot], the size of the head, and the diameter of the cable. A #2 is pretty strong, and will hold short falls. A #1 is pretty marginal, and a #0 is certainly pretty much body-weight only. You tend to use aluminum, which is softer but more "sticky", in larger placements from say #2 on up. You tend to use copper, which is harder and stronger but less "sticky", in the small placements. A long section of heading is usually considered to be hard and potentially scary, usually more so than say nailing or camming.
Accordingly, the use of heads allows you to climb incipient cracks or “seams” not big enough or deep enough or featured enough to accept any other type of climbing gear. Heads also allow you to use a more tenuous form of climbing gear rather than drilling a hole and placing a rivet.
A long string of small heads in a crack where no other gear like pins, stoppers or cams can be placed is generally reckoned to be about A4. Sometimes you can get in a #3 head which is pretty strong, or even a #4 "cow head" which is quite solid, which could bring the rating down. If you had a whole bunch of heads in a row, and were then faced with a section of crack not featured enough to accept even a head, you would either have to place a rivet, or “enhance” the head placement – see below.
Sometimes a head placement can be cleaned by the "second" [aka the "cleaner"] who jugs the rope and takes out the gear placed by the leader. Cleaning a head usually requires that you attach one end of your Funkness Device [a swaged steel cable] to the cable of the head, and the other end to the hole in your hammer, and you apply an outward and upward jerk to hopefully remove the head cleanly.
The problem with cleaning heads is that it may not be possible. If the head placement put in by the leader is small or marginal, [or the leader was really scared!] he would have been more likely to have really pasted-the-livin'-bejeepers out of the thing, meaning that it may be impossible to remove. If the cleaner tries to "funk it out", he is most likely to break the cable, leaving a "dead head" in the placement. A dead head is a busted-off blob of aluminum or copper, with no cable to clip. Not only it is unsightly, but it has rendered that placement in the crack useless because it occupies the space.
For the record, I tend to place heads extremely well and solidly, and I generally don't attempt to clean them. If the route doesn't see much traffic, and the head is protected from the elements and the head uses a stainless steel cable, a fixed head can still be useable ten or even twenty years down the road. This may be preferable to placing and removing the head, which hurts the rock.
On Trade Routes that see a lot of traffic, you tend to find "fixed heads", meaning they are left behind by previous ascensionists. Sometimes you find long strings of these things fixed - is this pitch A4, or is it A0? The problem with fixed heads is that the cables become frayed, the freeze-thaw action of repeated winters loosens the metal, and eventually they fail, either with the head popping out of the rock, or the cable breaking. It is therefore very important to bounce-test any fixed head you plan on using to climb. The trick here is to bounce-test it GENTLY - hard enough so that you figure it will hold your weight, but not so hard as to rip the thing out of the rock or break the cable.
Climbing fixed heads on routes like Mescalito or Zodiac, that get climbed dozens of times every season, may not be so scary, because for the most part someone just tested the thing not long before you, and used it. Other times it can be really scary, because the cables are abraded from overuse, with only a few strands left, and you wonder if you will be the lucky guy who finally breaks the thing once and for all.
You could climb a dozen or more popular El Cap routes, and never have to place a head, because all of the heads required are fixed. Even on a seldom repeated hard route like Atlantic Ocean Wall, I don't think I placed more than about six or eight heads. Generally speaking, placing your own heads is more time-consuming than placing a cam or pin, but once you get the hang of it - and the only way you can do this is to climb hard/obscure/less popular routes - it's not too bad. I've placed hundreds of heads, and almost none of the heads I've placed myself has failed. But I sure can't say the same for all the fixed heads I've clipped!
Nobody has reached the headwall before, and we haven't talked about Mark and Richard's heading practices. We don't know if they cleaned their heads, or not. Most parties don't clean fixed heads, leaving them for subsequent ascents as described above.
If there are fixed heads on Wings of Steel, their useability depends on how weathered they are. Probably they will not be trustworthy, and if they are in any way useable, they will be scary! How would you like to clip a tiny strand of probably-not-stainless steel that has been swinging around in the rain, wind and snow for nearly thirty years? You could climb up your aiders, be staring at the next piece, and then – PLINK! Off into space you go, only to fall on the next fixed head below you, which wasn’t any good to being with, and so on….
Presumably there are few deadheads. Deadheads are formed either by an old fixed head breaking through repeated use by subsequent ascent parties, or by a cleaner trying too hard to clean a head his leader placed, usually because the team is running out of heads and they need to be removed and reused. [You can re-use a head once or twice if you're lucky, but they're not expensive and they lose malleability and "bite" with each re-use, and are hence pretty crappy and scary.] Richard and Mark's gear list says they had plenty of heads, so they wouldn't have had to clean them to reuse them. Since this part has not been climbed, deadheads are unlikely.
So Ammon and Kait could be faced with long strings of old/marginal/oxidized/crappy/scary fixed heads. These will have to be either climbed on, or removed and replaced, or new heads will need to be added. Ammon would know this, and would presumably have brought a bunch of heads.
Cleaning old heads is very difficult and time-consuming, especially if the rock is steep or overhanging. In fact, it is often far harder to remove an old head [or especially a deadhead] than it is to place a brand new head. And sometimes this is the only way to continue, because an existing dead head or head with a marginal cable occupies the only placement. Other times, the crack is nice and wiggly, and you can bypass the existing rotten placement with a new placement nearby. But sometimes old heads can be cleaned very easily with a gentle jerk of your funkness – the metal blob on the head of the head is so weakened that it pops right out.
As mentioned, deadheads are extremely difficult to remove. If you are on a route that requires significant amounts of heading, it is a really good idea to bring a “butterknife” which is a sharpened chisel specifically designed for loosening and prying out fixed deadheads.
Butterknife being used to remove deadheads on Wyoming Sheep Ranch, El Cap. There are actually two deadheads in this placement – a partially removed aluminum head on the bottom, and what looks to be a smaller double-height copperhead above.
If you don’t have a butterknife, removing deadheads so you can reuse the placement with a new head is very difficult, if not impossible.
It is also possible that “modern” climbing gear can eliminate some of the head placements. Tiny cams not available to Richard and Mark could work, and also the new big Pecker pitons in the #2 and #3 sizes.
If you want to know more about heads and how to place them, and get an idea what Ammon may have to do to climb the next few pitches of Wings of Steel, you can click here:
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/dr-pitons-heading-tips/106076091
Note: Big wall climbers - who want to learn how to place heads properly - will also benefit from reading the above link.
There is one ethical dilemma when placing heads, which may or may not have faced the first ascensionists. Sometimes head placements are so marginal, they need to be enhanced with a chisel. This practice is known as “trenching a head” and it is COMMONPLACE, even on first ascents.
Imagine you are climbing a head seam, and you are faced with a section of crack that has no natural head placement that you can make work. You need to have “something” to place a head in – and while it doesn’t need to be much, the head placement has to exist – a bit of parallel-sided crack, a divot, something. In this situation where nothing at all exists, you have two choices – either drill a rivet, or enhance the head placement. If the head seam has petered out, and you expect to be drilling a rivet ladder across blank rock, then you would probably reach for the drill. But what if the heading crack continues above this blank section, and it looks as though you will be able to continue heading? In this situation, most Yosemite first ascensionists would choose to “trench a head” – in other words, use their chisel to artificially enhance a not-quite-good-enough placement to create a head placement that is barely good enough to accept a head. Yes, this is cheating. But so is drilling a rivet. Which is the lesser of two evils?
It really depends on the choice of the first ascensionist. If you have a legit and cool head seam, you would probably choose to keep it going, albeit artificially, by trenching a head instead of drilling a rivet. Drilling a rivet in the middle of a head seam would suddenly reduce the rating of the pitch by as many as two letter grades, turning an A4 into an A2 for instance. Many first ascensionists prefer to keep the “sporty” nature of their pitch going.
Erik Kohl, one of Yosemite’s most prolific and bad-ass first ascensionists [aka Klaus here on McTopo] has written that in many instances he would prefer to trench a head rather than drill a rivet. I agree with this practice, for what it’s worth, and would not fault Klaus in the least. And most wall climbers agree it’s a better alternative.
Now for nebulous reasons, the practice of enhancing head placements is a LOT less contentious than the practice of enhancing hook placements! Is there some sort of double-standard happening with enhancing heads vs. enhancing hooks? There could be. Certainly the enhancement of heads is more accepted than that of enhancing hooks.
A final thing that is certain to slow Ammon down is when he reaches the ladder of bat-heads where Wings of Steel joins Aquarian Wall. At this point, the first ascensionists had [stupidly and carelessly] dropped either their drill or their sharpening stone or their bag of rivets [can’t remember which] and were unable to place a proper rivet ladder. [Can anyone provide link please?] Instead they drilled shallow holes, and pasted heads into these holes, which is a viable but temporary emergency solution. The problem with this practice is that the cable heads have a very finite lifespan due to oxidation, and are almost certainly going to break when Ammon tries to use them. The practice of placing bat-heads is considered extremely bad form, basically a botch-job.
That these bat-heads exist and are bad form is agreed upon by all. Mark and Richard acknowledge their mistake in dropping critical gear and that drilling the bat-heads was not good. They should have “racked for redundancy” meaning that you don’t put all your climbing gear eggs in one basket. They should have had two separate and independent rivet kits, so that if one got dropped by accident [it happens, people drop stuff off big walls] they would have backups to what they needed. Certainly the guys were getting pretty tired and thirsty by this point, and were down to very meagre rations. This is not an excuse, but an observation. About the only thing not agreed upon here is the count – either twelve or thirteen bat-heads.
Ammon told me he brought rivets to replace the batheads on this final traverse left to Aquarian. I hope he does this, even if the bat-head wires are still useable.
I and everyone else are sure looking forward to hearing all about Ammon's and Kait's historic second ascent! I'm especially interested in hearing about what apparently stopped everyone else, but knott them.
Cheers and beers,
“Pass the Pitons” Pete aka Dr. Piton
Below you’ll find a few odds and ends of “aid trinkets” in an old photo of mine from back in the day
At the top are some small copperheads with a “toonie” and a Merrican dime for scale. There is one new double, two used doubles and a used single. You could call these either the #1 or #0 size. The used ones were cleaned from the A5 corner on Jolly Roger during its eighth ascent.
Below my old Canadian passport – where you see my photo with Wee-Wee the Big Wall Crab – is a #1 pecker piton, sort of shaped like the number 7. The new #2 and #3 peckers are much bigger than this. It is similar to the A5 Birdbeak at the bottom, a similar piton which is no longer manufactured.
You’ll also see a thoroughly over-used Kong adjustable fifi hook – great for fine-tuning your top-stepping – as well as a short-thick knifeblade or Bugaboo piton, and a straightened-out Grappling hook after I took a daisy-chain fall onto it [not recommended]
Which just goes to show you - everyone loves a little head from time to time.
Edit: ANNIE - please check your email, eh?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 13, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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supa ma wrote
Slow and steady go my turtles! Hey, maybe that should be their stuffed animals for the wall?
Yeah, when's that Ammon going to learn to speed things up a bit?
He's a regular PTPP!
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