The Devils Lake top rope cluster Fu&k thread...
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First of all put me down for a +1 on this - great words Al. al grahn wrote:Andreis, you really squeezed a pimple here, didn't you? I've been climbing at the Lake for about 35 years. So I guess I'm an "old geezer". I don't see this as a conflict between the "Geezers" and the "Young Guns". Climbing is multidimensional. If you've only climbed in the gym and at sport crags, you've only explored one dimension. There is, and should be, room in the wide world of climbing for practitioners of all the styles and dimensions of the sport we all love, from high altitude mountaineering to alpine climbing, to hard crag climbing with gear only, to aid climbing, etc. Thankfully, I meet and talk to young climbers who are interested in all of these other aspects of the sport. For many climbers learning to set top rope anchors is the first step toward exploring the wider world off climbing. It's safe to say that no one would go to an area that has been developed as a sport crag and start pulling bolts. The bolt wars were hashed out in the nineties. Likewise, not every climb and every crag needs to be safe for democracy. Many people of all ages and levels of experience crave the sense of adventure and satisfaction that comes from mastering the skills necessary to do routes that require much more than the power and gymnastic ability to pull hard moves. I think all of us who consider ourselves traditionalists respect sport climbing as a fun and valid style of climbing. So, Andreis, I think you owe the same respect to the many people of all ages who stand behind the established Devils Lake ethic. In the words of my good friend Tommy "back down chumpster!" As has been pointed out, it is moot anyway.Second here's another good one from this past weekend: Umm... |
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I dont even know what is going on in that last one. I don't even see the edge of the cliff. God forbid one of those blows. The extension on that would be scary. |
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Tom Lausch wrote:I dont even know what is going on in that last one. I don't even see the edge of the cliff. God forbid one of those blows. The extension on that would be scary.Or sole the biner that is cross-loaded over an edge fails, or any part of the cord fails. If either of those non-redundancies goes, then the whole thing fails - catastrophically. When confronted with some suggestions about how to improve the setup, the owner of all that shiny new gear insisted that my partner and I didn't know what we were talking about, and that he (in his vast experience) was certain the anchor was bomber. |
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James M Schroeder wrote: Or sole the biner that is cross-loaded over an edge fails, or any part of the cord fails. If either of those non-redundancies goes, then the whole thing fails - catastrophically. When confronted with some suggestions about how to improve the setup, the owner of all that shiny new gear insisted that my partner and I didn't know what we were talking about, and that he (in his vast experience) was certain the anchor was bomber.Just tell him you wont be carrying him down the stairs when it does blow. |
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There is some scary stuff out there! |
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Dylan, |
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Chris, |
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Dylan, you beat me too it. I took the same pics! Freeking wacky TRs out there this weekend. |
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I was at Devils Lake last year and ran into some guys climbing off an anchor that kind of shocked me. It was a climbing rope wrapped around a tree about 10 times. The tree was bomber. He told me the friction of all the wraps makes it totally safe. How do you all feel about that? He said it's a pretty common trick in some other discipline (like rappelling or canyoneering or something... I can't remember what...). I think he finished off the loose end by tying a knot into a carabiner to help prevent the loose end from coming undone. I told him if the carabiner gets weighted it would be unsafe, but he said with all the friction it should never get weighted, it's just there for piece of mind. |
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That's called a tensionless friction hitch, you can google it for lots of examples. 10 wraps is probably overkill actually, and you do need to secure the end, but yes it's bomber as long as the tree is healthy and solid and sufficiently large. |
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Dylan, thanks for bumping this, I somehow missed the exchange last October. |
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Wow, so their punishment for keeping that State Park off limits to climbing for 20-30 years is that there was no community of climbers looking out for the place when they finally reopened it. |
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I moved in the other direction from Durham to Chicago. I would hardly call DL "pristine" with the paved sidewalk that runs along the top. And while I was not much of a fan of Pilot, it's not exactly the "shitshow" you make it out to be. Go to Moores if you don't like the anchors. There's better climbing there anyway. |
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I took Dylan's original point about Pilot to be that even when people install bolted anchors in an area that has easy top access (i.e. where they use the anchors without being required to climb to them) you see numerous obviously poor anchors. |
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"That ottah werk, and if it don't, well, we'll jus' tell mom to start over with makin' a new kid." |
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Dylan B. wrote: Y'know, you're right. I should have said something instead of just fixing it. It wasn't entirely clear which party at the base was responsible for the rope, so I just fixed it instead of shouting down. It's an interesting question, though. Would you feel the same way if all I had done was lock an unlocked biner? I mean, I would never have moved a cam or re-equalized a cordalette or anything like that without talking to them. But at the moment, this seemed entirely appropriate. Where's the line?The line is in touching someone else's safety system without their consent or knowledge. |
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Dylan, |
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I agree with James & Chris. I trust *your* judgement, Dylan, but a random person walking up ... I've had random people "fix" anchors for me before (notably people who prefer a 5 point anchor to a 3 point anchor, which should already tell you something), and it is really startling to realize you have been climbing on an anchor other than the one you thought you were on. |
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I am particularly fond of this one: |
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Chris treggE wrote:I am particularly fond of this one: "If one of you morons wants to learn how not to die, come up here and I'll show you." Haha!I'm glad you approve! :-) |