Goal0 Adventure Video Contest Finalist

Angie is a finalist with Goal0's video contest "What Powers Me?" with her "Extra-Ordinary Mom" video.

Take a look:

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Enjoy the video, and please help. Thanks.

Support Ovarian Cancer Research - Climb in Wasatch

Sept 18 and 19, HERA Climb4Life fundraiser. Ovarian Cancer is an orphan cancer, with almost no money being poured into research, since unlike breast cancer, there is no profitable cut and dried series of treatments.

Angie will be climbing, Please support her in reaching her fundraising goal for this year.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

Thanks.



Above is Angie on Problem 7 at the Citizen's Comp at Teva Mountain Games, 2009 in Vail Colorado

Top Rope Solo Thoughts - Part 1

Weather in Utah has been crappy with daily rain in the eve, so I can barely mow the lawn, let alone go out climbing.

I had a great epic survival story on Liberty Ridge on Rainier last week, so I'm still in catchup mode - eating like a pig and not gaining weight (for a while anyway) and suffering as I get back into working out. Went to the chiropractor yesterday and getting a massage today - yay!

So I'm sitting around thinking about my techniques for toprope solos in the past. I normally tie off the top at the middle of the rope, with two strands hanging, and use one strand as my belay strand, and the other as my backup strand.

Experimenting in Alaska during my training program with Alaska Mountaineering School, I got to wondering if maybe I should just loop the rope through the anchor rig and tie off on my harness, so I am essentially belaying myself normally.

PRO: tied in, more rope in the system for more dynamic fall catching

CON: rope management, 2:1 disadvantage in pulling rope through the belay device, rope management

Additionally, I got to thinking about experimenting with a weight on the end of the belay side of the rope to keep it semi-tight for better BRD feeding - maybe I'll try that soon to see how I feel about that - of course, that would only work with the top tied off.

Well, more later. Maybe I'll get out sometime this week.

Tinker Toys Trad Rope Solo

A break in the rain inspired me to hike Rock Canyon as a break from work, and try a trad lead rope solo.

The pack weighed a ton with all the trad gear. Well, actually only about 45 lb. I had issues before with my Edilrid Eddy being a bit "grabby" on the rope, and I ended up accidentally fixing it twice - more in a second.

I got to Tinker Toys in a record 15 minutes and had it all to myself. I quick set up an anchor at the bottom of "Tinker Toys" 5.6 trad crack on the far right side of the crag. Only about 35', it would be a good first trad solo lead.



Above shows the whole mess, from a 3" cam at the top (finally set a top anchor to hold all the gear pointing upright), to a .25 tricam at the bottom.



Top part - in the middle is a #6 nut slotted in really good (bottom) and a .5 tricam used as a chock (top).



And that's the .25 tricam at the bottom. The first time I pulled it multi-directional it popped, so I really yanked on it to set it. With the top SLCD it shouldn't pull.

I took all of 10 minutes to unpack, flake the rope and set the bomber anchor. Good timing. One of the main differences between pro and anchor is that pro only needs to hold a fall, normally in only one primary direction. An anchor must survive through a potential of multiple angles of force, and in addition, could (in a normal belay situation) be the one main point of failure that two or more lives depend on. In a rope solo situation, the bottom anchor must hold an upward pull during a fall, but must resist downward (gravity) and outward (climbing past initially) forces as well. So it's really important to be totally bomber, as your life probably depends on it holding just about anything that happens.

I tied into the locker near the SLCD and threaded my GriGri (fix number one) with my blue rope. It's a short (30 Meter) thin (9.8MM) rope I got off GearExpress. I climbed up about 5' and drop tested myself. It held. Good. BUT when I wiggled at all, it fed rope. Wild. I repeated it. And it did the same thing. I downclimbed and tried it a bunch of different ways on the ground. Same thing.

Two fixes to one problem, that caused another problem. GriGri's are not rated for rope under 10MM. 9.8MM is too small. It catches, but releases itself with any change in tension. I could be hanging and just bump the wall to unweight just a little bit, and it would feed rope. Drat.

So I packed up and headed for the car. Ran into two guys coming up looking for Tinker Toys, so I gave them beta, and they asked about setting a top rope, so I gave them some "advice" and continued down.

SO: future concepts - when I take the GriGri I take a 10.2MM rope (like the yellow or pink) and when I take the Eddy take the 9.8MM rope (blue). That should fix the problems. And get me climbing.

(P.S. - it wasn't worth risking a fall that may not catch - rope solo is about safely belaying yourself, not being macho)

Raining in Utah

sucks!

Was going to go outside tonight to get my climb on.

Oh, well.

Swan Mountain Road - Toprope Crag

Got into Keystone about 5PM and decided to head out quick to toprope solo the crag at Swan Mountain Road. Tossed on the backpack at the trailhead and peeled out. Got to the Traverse Wall in 4 minutes (far out) and top of the little cliff at 12 minutes (with a small delay as someone with a lot of cheap beer was camping in the middle of the trail and I did a little scouting to make sure I wasn't crashing someone's hot tent session before I went down the trail. At the top I saw that the bolted anchors were in fact all gone but one. I tested the one remaining and it spun. I found a pulled-out hole from an old anchor right next to it (looked at my beta photos on Mountainproject.com to see what they used to look like).

I didn't see any suitable trustworthy anchoring options on top (that didn't require like 30' of rope to tie into and drape over the edge - for the most part it's loose microwave-size blocks up there). I went down to the bottom to check out the existing stuff and found some interesting future-worthy trad leads, but ran out of time so headed back to the condo by going down to the main campground road (closed for logging).

Wonder if I should call this blog "Thinking about rope solo while hiking" instead?

lol

Rock Canyon Hiking Scouting

Tuesday afternoon I went up Rock Canyon to scout out some possible areas to solo on.

I went up to Tinker Toys but it was swarming with people (guess school's out now) and I didn't even get close to the wall.

I crossed the raging river (guess the snow's melting now) on the logs (which were dang slippery in running shoes) and checked out The Appendage (couple people loafing around on the bottom of the South Face - bouldering?) and got some great beta on a few I'll try this season.

Then I headed up toward The Wild. The sky got darker and darker. I got there and heard some loud obnoxious annoying screaming coming from The Zoo/Project areas (dang college kids - probably still in the subarus borrowed from their parents) but started looking for the bottom anchor placements on "Call of the Wild" when it started pouring.

I booked it down the trail, running with a 35lb pack - which wasn't so bad now that I'm down to 192 lb. (from my all-time high of 235 lb in 2006).

Oh, well, drat the weather and all. Maybe later...

Colorado Keystone Montezuma Swan Mountain

whew! that's a mouthful. About the way Mountain Project lists it.

Anyway, was going to work on a toprope solo on the crag East of the Swan Mountain Traverse Wall, and found that the top anchors are all messed up - like someone chopped them or the block they were on took a dive heading for Lake Dillon.

Since I had the family with, we ended up going to the Traverse Wall and I set up some topropes and we played around. I did do a nice V0- problem topping out in a crack, and Dallin (8) followed right on my heels, and then Brennan (5) did with a bit of spotting and beta from Mom. Then finally Mom came up. Was pretty nice, and a ton of fun. More later if all goes well.

Rock Canyon - The WIld - Gazelle 5.5

Mountain Project Route Description

Thunderstorms last night made the trail a bit damp, but it wasn't too bad on the rock. Got there about 11:00 and checked out the route for a good bottom pro placement. One of the keys of a safe Lead Rope Solo route is a bomber multi-directional bottom anchor.

When I was in Alaska with the Alaska Mountaineering School Advanced Mountaineering Course (a civilian version of the Guide Course) one of the instructors shared my love of Tri-Cams and helped me work on using them as part of a bomber anchor. So of course, I did use one.



I tested it and it held multi-directionally, though a tri-cam usually looks sketchy to the uninitiated. I also used a couple of SLCD's - a 1.5 and a 2.0, and used some webbing to equalize them. In the pic it looks sloppy because it's hanging down. I rarely use a directional piece above it to hold it "up" until I climb - dunno if that's style or technique.




I tied the rope off and piled the rest of it in my backpack at the base. I hooked in my Eddy (suitable with reservations), got a couple of draws, a couple of single-length extended draws, and headed for the top. I got to the first hanger, clipped it, then downclimbed to lock the Eddy and bounce-test the anchor. Great - held nicely. So up I went.



It's only about 25' and three draws before the chains, and as you hit the top you can go around the left side of the pillar and do the anchor there. I clipped in a daisy, but didn't really need to - it's pretty solid up there. Then I threaded the anchors, hooked in my Reverso3, and dropped the rope. I rapped down, and cleaned, then brought the rope down, piled it into my pack, reorganized my stuff (getting better at that) and made my "I survived" phone call to DW. I then talked a bit with the family working "Call of the Wild" 5.6 around the arete. A mom, dad, and handful of kids. Was really fun talking to them.

When they had arrived (just before I built my bottom anchor) they first asked "what do you use to belay yourself" I said "I could tell you but then I'd have to shoot you." Later when I talked to them, their 10 yr-old asked me to explain it again. I said "I could tell you in about 3 minutes, but it's something that takes a long time to learn. And if you don't do it right and go die, I'd feel really bad" and the dad said "Hence 'shoot you' - but only indirectly."

Pretty good day overall. My first lead solo of the year.

Summer is in the Air

Rope Solo time of year is here.

Just got back from Alaska, which has been dominating my mind for the past two months. Getting ready, getting in shape, all that good stuff.

I had a ton of fun, took the Alaska Mountaineering School 12 day Advanced Mountaineering Course, which because all 6 of us averaged more on the "rock jock" side of things, ended up focused on Rock Climbing, rescue, self-rescue, anchor building in an Alpine environment, etc. In addition to a great ascent of North Troll via the South Fork of the North Couloir. Steep snow, up to 75 degrees crappy, mixed with rock. Slush pits in the late morning/afternoon. Tons of fun. While they were doing rock rescue I experimented with some self-belay and self-lowering scenarios, which the one instructor totally dug.

Anyway, I get home and the first thing I want to do is go outside and climb rock but first I have to get all my stuff together. Getting ready for Alaska I did the whole "two pile" thing - one pile for Alaska, the other one huge leaver pile. So now I have to put the Alaska stuff away, and sort the horrible mess of the leaver pile. So I found my car in the garage to make room for the in-law's car while I was gone, which is cool, no biggie, but it made the perfect "shelf" to sort my gear on the hood. So I had biners and draws and slings and pro all over on it, then nice and neat into boxes and almost into the pack.

Heading to the gym tonight for a bit of a workout, but I'll try to get outside in Utah sometime this week. I'll probably be in Colorado for the big holiday weekend, so I may get to do some toprope solo at the Swan Mountain crag like last time. There are a few routes there, but I think they're all toprope, which is cool enough solo - just simple rope management.

I'll see which one I get done first and get back to this blog with some pics and news. TTYL

Momentum Climbing - Rope Solo Discussion

The other night I was at Momentum Climbing in Sandy Utah and ran into one of Angie's friends, D who got to talking about climbing at the Draper Red Rock, and how he had free soloed some of the routes there. I mentioned to him that I had rope soloed some of the routes there, and he was very interested.

He mentioned a few different tools and techniques, and I replied back intelligently, since he had proven that he had enough basic familiarity with the whole program. We decided to go out together sometime when enough snow has melted (in Utah along the Wasatch Front we've gotten a ton of snow in the past couple weeks, and the cliffs are buried to some extent - enough to make it unpleasant).

Normally when someone inquires:

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."

lol, no seriously:

"It requires a level of rope management and technique that I'd be really nervous about sharing with anyone who hasn't demonstrated the commitment level to really make it work for themself. I'm not dissing you, I just don't want to be responsible for your death."

That's the standard response, I think.

Anyway, I'll see about posting old images and posts from my other blog, and when the weather clears up some, I'll see about going and doing a few warmup climbs, and see about getting D up. More later....