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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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We rapped the southern end of the Bixby Cr. Br. in 1969, landing in the iceplant. Cool first free rappel!
California here I come! Right back where I started from...
Rincon, thanks for including the downstream shot of the S. Fk. Bridge.
And can't say and Sqwishy each have a two-in-one photo! Cool...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the bridge across Temple Creek, near its confluence with the Alexandra River, in 1993...
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Hey Mouse From Merced,
How long of a rope did you need to rap off the Bixby Creek Bridge? I'm curious because of that guy who B.A.S.E. jumped off of it.
My first "free" ( read "overhanging" ) rappel was also off a bridge - an abandoned bridge in the San Bernardino mountains ( used to be a bridge on Hwy 330, but later bypassed ). Ropes were only 150' then, and a rap off that bridge was exactly that. We just rapped right off the end of the rope. Good thing we didn't know enough to tie a knot in the end of it, that would have really complicated things.
We were still in our "let's test the system, to see if it works" phase.
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azm
Trad climber
Ossau
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Starting at 2:30, the Golgen Gate, free soloed :
[Click to View YouTube Video]
I also find the Millau Viaduct awesome. What the picture doesn't convey is the height of this bridge (it's huge !):
CL
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Mosquito Road Bridge, South Fork of the American River:
Torres del Paine NP, Chile:
Great thread thanks DMT
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Chaz, what's this knot in the end business?
2 150s is what we hat. Edelrids, if you are into that sort of thing.
When I think back, we must have had a few feet left over. We were in the iceplant overlooking the creek--I can't remember how much further down. We walked back up to the hwy. So what I mean to say is I don't know if two 165s would make it to the creek. Probably not. There's no reason to go down there. Unsafe or not.
Base jumping?! Fou-u-u-ughck...
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Sep 13, 2012 - 12:29pm PT
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One of the highlights of a drive up the coast is a walk back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't drive across the bridge without stopping on the Marin side, and walking it.
Awesome structure, you can feel it move under the stresses it's bearing. Beautiful views. You're up in the weather. The dog digs the smells of a million people blowing past her nose.
Then you see this...
... and you're reminded it isn't a happy place for everyone. Every week or two on average someone hops off this bridge.
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otisdog
Big Wall climber
Sierra Madre & McGee Creek, Ca.
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Sep 13, 2012 - 01:25pm PT
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Yup, somebody jumped yesterday afternoon...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 13, 2012 - 08:28pm PT
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The High Sierra Trail bridge just past Bearpaw
The old bridge
The western terminus of the old bridge above Hamilton Lk that got taken
out by an avalanche. The eastern terminus was just right of Ruth's hat.
What a structure that must have been. Musta taken a fair-sized avalanche too.
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Leggs
Sport climber
A true CA girl, who landed in the desert...
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Sep 20, 2012 - 03:26am PT
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DMT, stop with the temptation...
~LM
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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The Marlow Bridge, Marlow
The Szechenyi Bridge, Budapest
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Bridal Veil Creek Bridge Pohono Trail
About half-way between Taft and Dewey Points
aka Lizzie's Bridge
9/26/12
Plenty of water flowing still.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Mouse
Thanks for the picture. The Kintai bridge in Iwakuni is remarkable.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
This is the Wikipedia history
"After Iwakuni Castle was completed in 1608 by Kikkawa Hiroie, who was the first lord of Iwakuni Domain, a series of wooden bridges were built. However, most of them were destroyed by floods several times before the construction of the iconic Kintai Bridge. After that, Kintai Bridge was built by the third lord, Kikkawa Hiroyoshi in 1673. The new stone piers replaced the old wooden ones and it was thought to be flood-proof; however, the bridge was destroyed by a flood the next year. As a result, they redesigned the stone piers for greater strength, and a special tax was created to maintain the bridge. This maintenance consisted of being rebuilt periodically: every 20 years for 3 spans in the middle, every 40 years for 2 spans connecting to the riverside. In this way, the bridge had not been destroyed for 276 years. However, it was washed away again by flooding from typhoon "Kijia" in 1950. It had been in a weakened state at the time, both because the Japanese had stopped maintaining the bridge during World War II and the year before the typhoon, to expand the US Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, a large amount of gravel was taken by the US Military Force from the river around the bridge, strengthening the flow of the river. In 1953, the bridge was once again reconstructed using very similar techniques to the original; however, they used metal nails (made from the same tatara iron as the Katana) to increase its durability. Between 2001 and 2004, all five bridge girders were restored for the first time in 50 years.
Architecture
The bridge is composed by five sequential wooden arch bridges on four stone piers as well as two of wooden piers on the dry riverbed where the bridge begins and ends. Each of the three middle spans is 35.1 meters long, while the two end spans are 34.8 meters for a total length of about 175 meters with a width of 5 meters.
Original Construction
For nearly three hundred years, the many versions of the bridge stood without the use of metal nails. This was achieved by the careful fitting of the wooden parts and by the construction of the thick girders by clamping and binding them together with metal belts. The main wooden parts of the bridge were covered by sheets of copper for additional durability.
Flood protection
The shape and weight of the bridge made it extremely strong at the top, but incredibly weak from underneath. To address concern that flood waters rushing along the river would destroy the bridge in its entirety, the bridge was designed so that the wooden pathway merely "floats" on top of its frame using mortise and tenon joints. This allowed rising flood waters to lift out the wooden pathway and carry it off down stream while sparing the main structure."
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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The history of construction in the West and the use of calculation (Source: Wikipedia)
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (ca. 600 AD)
Greek mathematics was technically advanced and we know for certain that they employed and understood the principles of pulleys, which would have enabled them to build gibs and cranes to lift heavy stonework to the upper parts of buildings. Their surveying skills were exceptional, enabling them to set out the incredibly exact optical corrections of buildings like the Parthenon, although the methods used remain a mystery. Simpler decoration, such as fluting on columns, was simply left until the drums of the columns were cut in place.
The ancient Greeks never developed the strong mortars which became an important feature of Roman construction.
Romans
Vitruvius gives details of many Roman machines. The Romans developed sophisticated timber cranes allowing them to lift considerable weights to great heights. The upper limit of lifting appears to have been about 100 tonnes. Trajan's column in Rome contains some of the largest stones ever lifted in a Roman building, and engineers are still uncertain exactly how it was achieved.
A list of the longest, highest and deepest Roman structures can be found in the List of ancient architectural records. Roman building ingenuity extended over bridges, aqueducts, and covered amphitheatres. Their sewerage and water-supply works were remarkable and some systems are still in operation today. The only aspect of Roman construction for which very little evidence survives is the form of timber roof structures, none of which seem to have survived intact. Possibly, triangulated roof trusses were built, this being the only conceivable way of constructing the immense spans achieved, the longest exceeding 30 metres.
Middle ages
In the Middle Ages of Europe fortifications, castles and cathedrals were the greatest construction projects. The Roman building techniques were lost. (But Roman techniques, including the use of iron ring-beams, would appear to have been used in the Palatine Chapel at Aachen, c. 800 AD, where it is believed builders from the Langobard Kingdom in northern Italy contributed to the work.
There were no standard textbooks on building in the Middle Ages. Master craftsmen transferred their knowledge through apprenticeships and from father to son. Trade secrets were closely guarded, as they were the source of a craftsman's livelihood. Drawings only survive from the later period. Parchment was too expensive to be commonly used and paper did not appear until the end of the period. Models were used for designing structures and could be built to large scales. Details were mostly designed at full size on tracing floors, some of which survive.
Romanesque buildings of the period 600–1100 AD were entirely roofed in timber or had stone barrel vaults covered by timber roofs. The Gothic style of architecture with its vaults, flying buttresses and pointed gothic arches developed in the twelfth century and in the centuries that followed ever more incredible feats of constructional daring were achieved in stone. Thin stone vaults and towering buildings were constructed using rules derived by trial and error. Failures were frequent, particularly in difficult areas such as crossing towers.
The pile driver was invented around 1500.
Renaissance
The Renaissance in Italy, the invention of moveable type and the Reformation changed the character of building. The rediscovery of Vitruvius had a strong influence. During the Middle Ages buildings were designed by the people that built them. The master mason and master carpenters learnt their trades by word of mouth and relied on experience, models and rules of thumb to determine the sizes of building elements. Vitruvius however describes in detail the education of the perfect architect who, he said, must be skilled in all the arts and sciences.Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the first of the new style of architects. He started life as a goldsmith and educated himself in Roman architecture by studying ruins. He went on to engineer the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
The rebirth of the idea of an architect in the Renaissance radically changed the nature of building design. The Renaissance reintroduced the classical style of architecture. Leon Battista Alberti's treatise on architecture raised the subject to a new level, defining architecture as something worthy of study by the aristocracy. Previously it was viewed merely as a technical art, suited only to the artisan. The resulting change in status of architecture and more importantly the architect is key to understanding the changes in the process of design. The Renaissance architect was often an artist (a painter or sculptor) who had little knowledge of building technology but a keen grasp of the rules of classical design. The architect thus had to provide detailed drawings for the craftsmen setting out the disposition of the various parts. This was what we call the process of design, from the Italian word for drawing. Occasionally the architect would get involved in particularly difficult technical problems but the technical side of architecture was mainly left up to the craftsmen. This change in the way buildings were designed had a fundamental difference on the way problems were approached. Where the Medieval craftsmen tended to approach a problem with a technical solution in mind, the Renaissance architect started with an idea of the what the end product needed to look like and then searched around for a way of making it work. This led to extraordinary leaps forward in engineering.
Construction in the seventeenth century
The seventeenth century saw the birth of modern science which would have profound effects on building construction in the centuries to come. The major breakthroughs were towards the end of the century when architect-engineers began to use experimental science to inform the form of their buildings. However it was not until the eighteenth century that engineering theory developed sufficiently to allow sizes of members to be calculated. Seventeenth-century structures relied strongly on experience, rules of thumb and the use of scale models.
Construction in the eighteenth century
The eighteenth century saw the development of many the ideas that had been born in the late seventeenth century. The architects and engineers became increasingly professionalised. Experimental science and mathematical methods became increasingly sophisticated and employed in buildings. At the same time the birth of the industrial revolution saw an increase in the size of cities and increase in the pace and quantity of construction.
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