I just got
back from a climb of Forbidden Peak over the Forth of July weekend.
Conditions are about as good as they could be right now, with the
coulour still completely filled with snow, and the ridge mostly bare and
dry. We dropped our campons a couple hundred feet above the top of the
coulour and then continued in our boots from there to the summit.
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| Two Skiers in
Boston Basin. |
We
did not seem to bother the year round inhabitants of our camp.
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| Pika |
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| Marmot |
We did not get a super early start, and were at the
base of the coulour by 8.
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| Starting up the
coulour. |
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| Above the shrund.
|
 |
| Somewhere on the
ridge heading up. |
 |
| Seen somewhere on
the ridge. WTF was someone trying to accomplish with the blue cord
added to this anchor? Thanks, I can add this to my collection of crappy
anchor photos. |
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| Summit |
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| Heading down. |
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| Another party
below us on the ridge. |
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| James down
leading. |
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| Another Pika back
at camp. |
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| Skiers
with Johannesburg Mountain in the background. |
Honest question: Is the blue cordalette really that bad? If I read the pic correctly:
ReplyDeleteYellow (faded) sling is around one 'boulder'. Red sling is around a different 'boulder'. Rap ring is only into red sling, climber only into yellow. The cordalette seems to go around background boulder and the yellow sling. Admittedly would be better if not cord-on-sling, but if no extra leavers are avail, it does back up the rap ring. I understand that cordalette isn't equalized etc., but it's a rap station (correct), so a compromise, done with relatively min.length of cord. Messy and not the most efficient solution, but I can see the reasoning. ??
Impressive!!
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, no the blue cordalette is not really that bad, but why would you do this? The key to rap anchors is simplicity and being sure you are slinging something solid. In this case both of the blocks that were slung were solid. The person who used this cordalette could have just slung the block with the red sling and taken out there knife and cut off the yellow sling and put it in their pack. The poor attempt at equalization did not work at all which wasted time when they built it and continued a northwest tradition of adding unneeded webbing and other crap to anchors. I removed 10 pieces of webbing from a single anchor while I was descending this route the other day because there was so much stuff on the anchor I was not able to determine if it was good.
ReplyDeleteIn short a rap anchor is fine with one or two pieces of webbing around a single solid block. If the webbing that is there is faded, cut it off and put a new one on.