Wednesday, August 30, 2017

"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

Boat rope, tiny tree, single bowline, no stopper knot. The good news, he sold the boat.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Run your rope across the trail? Sure, why not.

Note the red one in the background. Each anchor is a runner around a tree with a carabiner connecting to 9mm. Nine mil will stretch a lot and saw on rock edges. The runners and carabiners introduce unnecessary points of failure. Each anchor had enough unused rope to tie around the tree.

A wire gate carabiner, gate facing down toward the rock that can force it open. This is what happens when your friend, who does all the rigging, doesn't make it today.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Did a local retailer sell this 8 mil to teenagers?

At first, it looked like this was the only anchor.

The second anchor is more than 90 degrees away.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Slings and biners of outrageous anchors.

The tree in the air, slung about 6 feet up, oh and by the way, 2 ropes on the same tree doesn't mean 2 anchors. Note the guy being taught to hang over the edge to rig a top rope. Good to know, but people are doing it way too often.

They knew this rock wasn't big enough, so they added the tony tree.

To prevent recurrence, one guy moved the rock.

The laundry line of everything they had.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

They're baak...

Same anchors, same mistakes, same bad attitude, never spoke to anyone.

Two people rigged 3 climbs, good thing it was quiet. Like a lot of climbers, it looks like they don't have any friends. This anchor is 9MM non-static cord.

This skinny tree is an anchor for 2 climbs.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Not just Carderock.

  From Fabi  Gutierrez "Hey John, this is at Acadia National Park. Two topropes to the left and it looks like three anchors total, with the center one being shared. Figure 8 on the top anchor, center one is clove hitched, and the bottom achor out of the pic is a slung boulder, but clove hitch on that biner. No locking biners anywhere (that I could see.)."

Sunday, August 6, 2017

They were pissed when we told them not to lead at Carderock.

They got huffy, and this is their anchor. There are two points, going to a single webbing runner.

It isn't quite side loaded, any bets on what happens when it is loaded?

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

More vandalism

Unsupervised summer camp kids start defacing the rocks. it happened last year, NPS made a camp remove the writing and threatened to pull their permit. This is the first time this year. There were 7 large vans in the parking lot Tuesday, I could identify 2 groups, but not the others. NPS is investigating, having the dumb kid write his name does make it easier.

Surprisingly, this mess of a knot is working. One of the carabiners is a locker, the other has its gate opening the same way, not reversed, opposed, or best of all reversed and opposed.

It's a big tree but give it a break, rigging high increases the force pulling it out. Running a moving rope over the cliff edge doesn't help either.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Can't blame the heat, it didn't even hit 90.

Sticking the anchor way up in the tree and running the climbing rope over edges is never a good idea.

Looks like these came from a sport climbing quickdraw. One is a bent gate made to open easier, not what you ant for a top rope anchor. Do I use non-locking carabiners? You bet, steel ovals that don't gunk up the rope and are least prone to side loading or turning over.

You can see by the slack that the two cams are holding nothing. The only active anchor is the tiny tree.