Behold, Willard Island. So chossy the vertical faces are literally unclimbable. You'd be dead in minutes under a pile of jagged rubble.. that is if the primordial choss-monsters roaming the scree field don't get you first.
1000 foot elevation gain off the Sea of Cortez. You walk the spine and pray the entire time it doesn't disintegrate beneath your feet.
Sweet! I win! What do I get? hahaha...seriously though, some of the pix posted as choss look like dreamy stone.
I stared to bolt a line at Echo above what we dubbed "the Fire Swamp". Got 4 bolts in (willy stick style) and called it after hitting shite stone/dirt. I don't know whats worse, the train going by or the Highway noise. Echo just plain sucks IMO.
That piece of crap called Ship Rock at Smith Rock has a few routes on it. I wouldn't waste my time on it though unless you have a death wish and don't care about the welfare of others. The main hiking trail is at the bottom of it and I am sure that if anything came off it would take out a hiker or two. That thing is beyond choss.
@ Backclip.. that picture is Echo Cliffs in Malibu. No highway or noise pollution anywhere in sight.
@ Plaidman.. er.. yeah.. Shiprock.. I don't have a death wish and wanted to get home in my car.. not in a body bag, so we never actually did the "route". Just thought the guide description was hilarious.
Edit to add: Choss really does need it's own grading system.
Do we grade on the hardest move on the pitch, or on the feeling you are going to pitch, and that the pro is crap and you have not a chance in hell of making it out alive?
Extra points for spiceyness and how bad it looks. Although I have had some say that's choss, and I respond. It's really not that bad.
Grading is all in your mind. And I don't mind choss in the right place.
I just got my TR of the St. Peter's Dome climb published in the new Mazama Annual.
Chances of killing your belayer with loose rock must be incorporated into the grade, devalued if there is an overhang/cave that said victim can huddle in.
We had a good cave on St. Peter's Dome. Totally protected the belayer. I really did think about how not to kill my best friend on that endeavor.
My partner did how ever pulled off a rock bigger than a softball when he started jugging the rope without making sure that he was directly below the anchor. So when he finally weighted the rope it was dragged across the rock and pulled off a chunk. The damn thing whacked him in the thigh.
That was on him though... literally. He won't do that again.
I tried to tell him..... sometimes they just got to hose it up for themselves to learn.
Off White, that is some serious choss. The last one reminds me of a quarry where all the rock is shattered by dynamite but still holding together somehow.
Let us know!