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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Who sets the rules for a fast growing bacterial culture in a petri dish? You might imagine it would collectively self-regulate so as to not use the medium up quite so fast - but you'd be wrong - it's all about unbridled consumption. So now, exactly what rules are you are proposing that might separate climbing today from such a bacteria culture?
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Dr. Rock
Ice climber
Castle Rock
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Finally!
"Mine are:
1. Climb it from the bottom
2. Place no bolts
3. Pound no pins
4. Chip no holds
5. Leave no trace, no trash
6. If you can't climb it in style..leave it for someone else"
Thats the Bunny.
No need for 1000.
Thats it.
Game over.
Who's that old timer?
Look at the stress crack along his right eyelid, theres a three finger hold underneath that pup.
Talk about the unroyal arches!
Did they name the Royal Arches for Royal Robbins?
I'm on crack.
I could mantle up the Eiger Sanction with that right brow overhang.
Imagine his schlong!
Yuka!
I thought Harding was....never mind.
Sly ol dog, you!
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Doug Buchanan
Trad climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Total human hours discussing human-made rules that have never limited humans, and never will, and cannot, by design, could have been used to therefore have reached unclimbed mountains on other planets.
Total human hours chasing and punishing those who violated the rules without harming anyone could have been used to build another Himalayan Range.
Pitiable power-damaged minds in governments, and their self-frightened minions are nothing more than occasional amusement for actual climbers and other independent thinkers who contradict the existing institutional rules, by design.
Human minds which are not damaged by acquisition of institutional power conform to reasoning and logic. Learn how to utilize them to vastly more enjoy life. Do not worry. You will not violate your principles. You will define them.
DougBuchanan.com
AlaskanAlpineClub
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Dr. Rock
Ice climber
Castle Rock
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Jus curious Doug, how old are you?
not getting personal, just want to know the peak age for climbers, you sound like a hard core fanatic...
I want to splash my brains on granite, where can I do this safely?
I'm on DMT.
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Doug Buchanan
Trad climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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With Fred in the game, peak age is Fred's age, and increasing each day he climbs.
Somebody who knows how to contact Fred please ask Fred if he would be so kind as to send any piece of his old or new climbing gear to the Alaskan Alpine Club so we can put it in our newly forming museum.
Anyone else can do that too. Put your name on it.
Doug
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Hey Doug,
Remember Buggs from Fairbanks?? He mentioned you the other day.
We have climbed mucho stone together. We were in the service together back in the day.
Ed, nice postings. I like your style brutha. But dig this: You mentioned JB as one of the icons of bold and clean and most of the time he has been. But I recall one day being quite bummed as he showed his new bosch power drill to some folks in a Tuolumne parking lot.....
TIG, The community discussion albeit unofficial, has a huge impact. It's exactly how the clean, low impact styles became as ingrained as they are. No, I don't want an "official" body making mandatory rules for us. That's why it's so important that we attempt to police ourselves through discussion, admiration, condemnation and legend....
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 8, 2008 - 10:30am PT
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oakie, did you do the FA of Arrow? ....
Because according to William's Guide Book it was bolted on rappel by Crowther.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Crowther
which says that Will Crowther rap bolted some routes at the Gunks.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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surv - I think that the issue is complex, I've never power drilled on a route, but one day I was working in my yard and I needed to put some anchors into concrete. I used a drill and the appropriate bit, man was that nice! great looking hole and quick... buzzz, buzzz, buzzz, buzzz one stanchion, then four more buzzes for the other. Quickest set of holes I ever drilled in rock, rock that I mixed. I can see how power drilling would be attractive, and it does make more consistently good holes...
The drill-from-hooks method JB used on Bachar-Yarian has been questioned in this Forum as being less-than-best-style, and it is, but the route that was produced is a stellar route, a true test piece. I will not likely ever attempt it, but it stands the test of time. I don't have any problems with it because of the style that was used on the FA.
FA's are a complex to understand, the understanding and interpretation is usually much more difficult than actually doing them. In the "heat of battle" lots of decisions are made almost instinctively... and then there you have it. Sometimes.
The point is that it's easy to be an armchair climber, we should all be out there doing it as much as we can... like JB and all the others, and we acquire an understanding of how to confront the many different aspects of climbing in that experience. Then things might look a bit more nuanced.
It is true, too, that "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now"
I appreciate the passion of youth, I miss it sometimes, but then I feel much better about things now, it is a richer picture, more accepting of difference.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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RE: arrow - They may have been placed on rappel....but I believe the FA was done sans bolts. I could be remembering incorrectly, but it seems I heard that somewhere.
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jstan
climber
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Willie wasted a summer's worth of his time teaching me how to climb. We never spoke about the climb, nor would I speak of it to him now. Three observations:
1. Guidebooks and their authors are full of errors. Take my word for it.
2. That old center pin bolt is not inserted all the way into the rock.
3. Perfection is granted to only the very special few. Those who are
perfect need to allow for this.
Humility is a virtue taught us by life. Many have commented it is a shame youth has to be wasted on the young. Perhaps we have the opportunity for a trade?
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 8, 2008 - 01:17pm PT
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oakie, No problem.
The Gunks are decidedly different though. Bolts are very rare, for the most part protecting some equally rare slabby climbs.
There are a few very accessible Gunks 10s that almost never see leads, because they are unprotected. Blow it on one of them, and the party is over for quite a while, at least. But they do see a fair share of top-rope climbing since they are single pitch and the top is easily accessible. I surmise that the local ethic is happy to just leave them as TR routes - identified as such in the guide even.
Plenty of other multi-pitch stuff and even single pitch stuff that is protectable.
Occasionally, though not recently, bolts have been placed for anchors, to eliminate sling salads on trees, mainly where it it felt that the trees need the protection.
Kind of special in the scheme of things, I think, since it is privately owned, with a tradition of respecting private property from the outset.
There are a few aid routes there as well. You do not see that often. In fact, the only time I have observed it was a buddy soloing some routes last year, practicing for a trip up The Nose.
Boston 5.4 is an interesting example of a Gunks climb. Rated G, nice little climb with an off-width. Maybe it should be G*, since you can easily die on it if you do not have a 5 or 6 inch cam - almost nobody there does. I tried leading it one day. Found 1 spot that I could get all 4 lobes of a 4 inch cam to just touch wide-open. Backed off. There was some blood on a rock on the ground. Two days later I found out a guy had died the day before I backed off. So in reality, today that climb essentially remains a 5.4 TR or solo. One could bolt it from a stance ground up, but it isn't bolted.
Local thing. Who knows where it would and wouldn't be bolted, and certainly time-dependent.
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randomtask
climber
North fork, CA
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I only live by one climbing rule and it easily applies to ANYWHERE you are climbing and ANY STYLE of climbing you are engaged in:
1. Wear no lycra.
-JR
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jstan
climber
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Sorry to hear about the accident on Boston. The clubs used to run training programs to help people make good choices while climbing. I just don't remember Boston though badly unprotected moves in the Gunks are very rare.
Before sport climbing even got a name groups of people in the Gunks had already taken up top roping interesting problems. The idea of putting in artificial protection and then claiming it was a lead never really occurred to anyone.The fact you could generally move over six feet and find whatever protection you needed made the idea pretty absurd.
I was, again very fortunate, in that I got to know Dan Smiley. He had welcomed Fritz Weissner and Hans Kraus to the cliff in the thirties and the forties because the Smiley family views the land as a resource to be protected and to be used to elevate the lives of the people around it. If I had had any undisciplined desires when I first came to the cliff, I lost them the moment I realized the nature of the world and of the people I had fallen into.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Ed,
I'm into nuance, having practiced some of it for myself over the years. I'm just saying even guys like JB have a couple skeletons bouncin' around in the closet.
I'm active, but not in an area that's so interesting for hunting around for FA's. (DC)
I'll be moving to NM soon though and I'll be dragging my kids around the mountains and desert looking for obscure little crags that I can put up something in my own "best" style...
I actually did a 350 footer a few years ago with my wife at an "undisclosed" location in TX. Just she and I, the raptors and the lizards. 5.9+, not a single fixed piece or slings left on it. We walked off at sunset. Sweet
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Doug Buchanan
Trad climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Yoooo Survival and all....
I do remember Buggs, an unusual event since I normally do not remember names. I do better with complex concepts.
In the normal storms and calm of all things, the most active era of Fairbanks climbing (Alaska Range) was back in the 70's and 80's. Since convenient road-side ice climbing got popular, fewer climbers skied into the real hills.
Since John Reeves started building his ice towers by Fairbanks, I have not driven down to the Range for even road side ice climbing. With 176 feet of ice next to town, and a carpeted, wifi warm up shack next to it, we sit in soft chairs and put our crampons on, on carpet, while discussing how toilsome this climbing thing has become. We actually have to carry our own ice tools and screws over to the ice. Tough times.
Check out the AlaskanAlpineClub.org Ice Tower pages. Fine wine in stemmed crystal up on the ice.
But the storm of railing against the rules made by armed government thugs who perceive their illusionary power to force more perceptive minds to do as idiots and their minions decree is always quality entertainment in the US Police State.
The problem with Alaska climbing is too many options. The Siren song of sea kayaking next to virgin vertical granite somehow wafts from the computer screen.
Barbecue by the Ice Tower this Saturday after climbing. Tough times.
DougBuchanan
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Somewhat OT, I'm reminded of the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they come back to the ranch, and find that a big gorilla is trying to take over the Hole in the Wall Gang. The gorilla challenges Butch (Paul Newman) to a knife fight, and Butch says "first we have to decide the rules".
The gorilla, somewhat perplexed, says "There are no rules in a knife fight", at which Newman kicks him between the legs.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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I appreciate the passion of youth, I miss it sometimes ...
I always said "You know the wisdom that comes with age?
Well, it ain't worth it."
As for purity in climbing, I'm all for it. However, if there were no bolts or pins to clip, I sure would miss a lot of the routes they've enabled me to do.
Back in my youth, I imagined a really powerful suction-bolt thingy. Not unsimilar to the suction cups that I've seem for windows, but they'd be powerful enough to stick to rock. However, I think we're a long way off from that type of technology.
Until somebody comes up with a radical invention, we're kinda stuck using bolts, pins, cams, and wedges. And has long as there are pins and bolts, there will be controversy on how to use them.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Before there are rules there is usually a tradition. A "rule" in this case is simply following tradition, at least in the broad strokes. In places where the tradition is strong, like the Gunks or on British Gritstone, one would be totally out of bounds to start rap bolting. Perhaps Yosemite falls somewhere in the middle (between a sport area and a trad sanctuary) so the issue of tradition is equivocal.
None of this is simple, and it's more than just fobbing this topic off as "your" rules encroaching on "our" freedom.
JL
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Well said, John.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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bump
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