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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 9, 2009 - 06:02pm PT
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The Sugar Daddy
I’d been driving past this rock, near Hanksville, for years. It’s just begging to be climbed. I’ve even walked around the thing a couple of times, but dismissed it as impossible without drilling huge numbers of large holes for spikes (rebar? footing stakes?) of some kind. The “rock” appeared to be too soft and flaky to nail, too crumbly to bolt. There were a few traces of seams, but crumbly and vague, leading into blank shields of peeling pastry. A untidy frustration, at the back of my mind; that damn thing is right by the highway, flaunting itself.
Last year, yet another token reconnaissance, to laugh at this ridiculous tower, was different. It’s easy to read the hard rocks, like granite, but reading the hieroglyphics of of the more esoteric desert rocks takes more time and practice. Previously, just a few words here and there made vague sense. Last year, words became sentences, then whole paragraphs jumped into a kind of structure. Of course, once you learn to read, you have to work out what it’s saying, all the way to the end. So in May last year, Chip and I returned with huge piles of gear, and started up a prominent crack on the south side.
Here’s the formation, back right:
It’s not changed much in 50 years:
This is what we found close up:
I started off the ground, and this is Chip on the second pitch. I elected to belay from the ground, so as to out of the way of any falling debris, so this is taken with a telephoto lens.
A view of Chip from further out from the cliff:
Chip actually hammered in a couple of texas tacks on his pitch.
We left, and came back next weekend to finish. It was hot, 95 degrees in the shade, of which there was none. It was my lead, but up on the climb was actually better than being broiled at the reflector-oven base. The last pitch was a doozy, starting with tipped out #5 Camalots under a temporary-feeling flake roof. After a while, the crack turned to dust, twigs and dead insects, so I started nailing Toucans straight into a calcite seam in the flake, hoping that the whole thing, trembling with the hammer blows, would not fall off, with me under it. Here’s looking down from near the summit.
Here’s a neat calcite seam placement: a stacked Toucan.
At the top, there was nothing to anchor to. With about 2 hours daylight left, I spent about one hour enhancing a natural bollard, and we ended up leaving part of my lead rope as the rap anchor:
The summit pic.
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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WOW!!! Sweet TR, and cool historical shot. Was the texas tack made by UP?
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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It is the End of Days... climbers are now ascending piles of dust.
Impressive in a weird "glad I wasn't there" kind of way.
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travelin_light
Trad climber
California
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Nice TR. Looks a little loose though.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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I will no longer complain about our local choss, it appears that what we climb is solid.
Nice TR, I can appreciate climbing stuff that most folks avoid.
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FeelioBabar
climber
Sneaking up behind you...
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Best Bollard EVER!
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Whew! I'm glad you guys took that one off the unclimbed list. What a nightmare.
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bwancy1
Trad climber
Here
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RAD!
Punk...Rock.
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Rankin
climber
Bishop, CA
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Cheers for that. Wow! That is some inspiring choss climbing.
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Prod
Trad climber
A place w/o Avitars apparently
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That or you aren't right!
But I'd be proud of that.
Prod.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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holy craposis
mud meisters are humbled all over the world today.
glad no one died. :)
an entirely different mind set.
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Mimi
climber
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Boy, those Streaked Wall guys are gonna soil when they see that Toucan stack! Gnarly climbing!
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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You guys is crazy!!!!!
WOW!
I'll never go!
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MisterE
Trad climber
One Place or Another
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Awesome chossaneering bump!
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Yikes. That is some chossy choss. If you can get up that, you must have eyes on all sorts of things in central UT.
Looks like you could well have used ice gear.
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Todd Gordon
Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
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Fabulous.....(anyone can climb on deflon and diamonds.......you guys rock!)
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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oh man! You are my heros!
Zander
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Man, that looks like the closer you got to the summit, the chossier it got. Scary! My hat is off to you guys for your persistence and balls. Were those railroad spikes you were pounding?
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yo
climber
I drink your milkshake!
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Mar 10, 2009 - 12:06am PT
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hahaha
awesome
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M9iswhereitsat.
Big Wall climber
Australia
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Mar 10, 2009 - 02:47am PT
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Good one and well done guys. Thanks for sharing the experience by posting it up. The pictures indeed tell thousands of words!
What grade did you give it?
Have you done a topo/description of individual pitches?
~> would love to know more details.
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paganmonkeyboy
climber
mars...it's near nevada...
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Mar 10, 2009 - 10:59am PT
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whoa...stunned...madness, i say ;-)
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 10, 2009 - 11:41am PT
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I bet if you stood downwind in a clean white shirt on a windy day, the summit would be yours anyhow!!! Technical grade should replaced with a FLEA (Formation Life Expectancy Adjective). One Kick'll Do'er sits at the top of the scale!
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Mar 10, 2009 - 01:58pm PT
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one kick...
ROFLMAO!!!! so tru so tru heh
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Otto, NC
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Mar 10, 2009 - 02:07pm PT
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That's a FLEA-flicker, I believe. The A5 of the chossiverse.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Mar 10, 2009 - 02:07pm PT
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Geez...my palms are sweating...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Mar 10, 2009 - 02:13pm PT
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Next stop...White Cliffs of Dover?
(I know Crowley 'ice climbed' there already)
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland: what's not to love?
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Mar 10, 2009 - 03:01pm PT
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Did one rope get you to the top, or did you actually have to hang off of some kind of anchor mid way up? If you did, I'd love to see a pic of that anchor.
What about the cliffs down near Torrey and Bicknell, ever had a look at those?
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 10, 2009 - 03:29pm PT
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please post this over on the www.bigwalls.com/forum2/ trip report section, so it doesn't get lost forever.
Mega
cheers
e
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SGropp
Mountain climber
Eastsound, Wa
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Mar 10, 2009 - 03:38pm PT
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Old guys rock!!!
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 10, 2009 - 04:46pm PT
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Wow, a lot of interest in this little thing.
Okay, a few more pics:
Me getting started, note old Chouinard ice hammer, the perfect tool for this kind of terrain (even with half the pick worn off).
Here’s a bashful Camalot, embarrassed to be involved in such shenanigans...
And a Toucan half buried in the crack:
Higher up was a horizontal, where a #5 Camalot just barely stayed in a shallow horizontal slot with the cams actually working to hold some fossilized Ryvita crackers in place. When the cam came out, the flakes fell off. No pics of this.
About 100 feet up was a perfect 3.5 Friend, way deep in the crack, plus a 6-inch long bolt, in pretty good rock, to provide a belay. Still, I elected to stay on the ground, and Chip had to put up with the extra weight of the rope. He got his revenge for the third pitch, where he too stayed on the ground, while I wrestled with 150 feet of extra rope, before I even got going. his is the view from that belay station:
Here’s another calcite seam placement high on pitch 3.
And a view of the upper part of pitch 3, with Chip cleaning. Scary taking photos, slightest careless movement could set off lots of flakes.
The view from the base, with the nearby Henry Mountains:
The thing was 210 feet tall, we reckoned. The end of pitch 2 has two okay bolts and a rap anchor. Rating about A3... give or take.
Still waiting for the second ascent....
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SGropp
Mountain climber
Eastsound, Wa
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Mar 11, 2009 - 01:47am PT
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In high school and college, I used to "stress test " any prospective girlfriends by taking them rock climbing.
One girl, who really did turn out to be a winner and I climbed a sandstone pinnacle at the Peshastin Pinnacles in Eastern Washington called Trigger Finger in 1972.
This was a free climb ,about 5.7 , maybe 50' tall to a tiny summit just big enough to sit on. It was a classic little crag, perched on a high ridge with great views of the Cascades to the west and the desert to the east.
A few years later, I went back and found that the whole pinnacle had toppled over, broken clean off at ground level.
The girl had gone off to follow more sensible pursuits.
Some of my most memorable climbs were on loose, scary choss formations.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 11, 2009 - 10:25am PT
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I wish someday to drop a clod from the summit and that is what my route would have been! The ideal of the Dirtississima.
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piquaclimber
Trad climber
Durango
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Mar 11, 2009 - 11:03am PT
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Whoa, I haven't been here for a while and I come back to find this.
Nice work Crusher!
You're giving me an identity crisis though. For years I have been motivated to climb desert towers and the loose rock and mud never bothered me. I got excited and wanted to climb every choss pile that I saw written up on the Internet.
After reading your report, I had a great feeling of anxiety and trepidation. It occurred to me that I might not want to climb that thing. I tried to tell myself that I was just being weak and that it's a sweet looking formation that begs to be climbed. Still, the feeling remained. Now I can't decide if I'm nearing the end of my mud days or if you're just pushing farther into that sick realm than my little, Ohio-born noodle can handle.
I miss the good old days when climbing in Dabneyland, the Mystery Towers, or the Valley of the Gods seemed like the chossiest sh#t I would ever have to climb. :)
Again, well done!
Brad
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Mar 19, 2009 - 06:27pm PT
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"Bottom line is if people demand more climbing sh#t, they'll bump it."
bump
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Mar 19, 2009 - 06:32pm PT
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"Bottom line is if people demand more climbing sh#t, they'll bump it."
bump
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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this deserves a bump
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Neat-O!
Thanks for the TR and the bumps. I missed this before.
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MisterE
Trad climber
One Step Beyond!
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May 17, 2009 - 01:06pm PT
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Bump for the Sugar daddies!
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Dirka
Trad climber
SF
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May 17, 2009 - 01:18pm PT
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Proud!
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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May 17, 2009 - 01:33pm PT
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Day-um! Looks like a petrified ash heap. I'm thinking if one piece blows you zipper right into the deck. That bollard looked about as bomber as a sand castle.
That's gotta be the proudest choss heap ever scaled. Outstanding! Way outta my league.
And what about that house made out of those dry-stacked rocks? What the hell was someone doing out there 50 years ago? Who was he? There lies a story . . .
JL
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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May 17, 2009 - 01:47pm PT
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I bow in your general direction.......
SWEEEEET!!!!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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So glad that I'm drinking beer at home with no immediate rubble rousing planned!
What's next, Steve? You can show us a slide with minimal risk of claimjumping...LOL
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Good job you guys!!!!
Looks just like the rock on the Long Dong, that's pretty stressful aid climbing.
Heads up for the belayer (not to mention the actual leader).
Some of the "rock" is more like wood, and it ain't ebony. It's balsa layered with dirt.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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More like bark than wood even, methinks...LOL
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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As a geologist who mainly works clastic seds, I have to give an award to anyone who climbs SHALE!
Yep. You can argue whether or not it may have been a mudstone or siltstone, or the general difference in grain size in places, but that is a shale spire, dude.
If you had told Duane Raleigh about this, he would have probably bankrolled it. Dude became famously infatuated with shale. He is always telling me how bomber the rock in the Fischer's is.
Crusher...Man Of Shale.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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It's madness but a fine sort of madness...LOL
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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one of my all time fave TRs
so 'out there' for even those of us that climb less than solid rock.
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Ezra Ellis
Trad climber
WA, & NC & Idaho
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SWEEEET rock Y'all!
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go-B
climber
In God We Trust
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Sugar Daddy, More like a couple of dirty old men?
Another good one Crusher!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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They started out clean and ended up something else! Victorious!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 11, 2010 - 12:20pm PT
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Who's ya Daddy! Bump!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Sep 11, 2010 - 01:14pm PT
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Just seen this for the first time...
You guys are nuts!!!!
Cheers to you both
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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Apr 14, 2014 - 01:51pm PT
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Nice bump, you're doing a good job of keeping the choss quotient up on the front pages Cowdaddy.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Apr 14, 2014 - 11:20pm PT
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That climb is the sign of twisted minds.
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