New and experienced climbers over 50, #3

As for where to use locking carabiners, I think the test should be whether the carabiner is going to move and if so whether it will collide with anything.  So in Lori's picture, I'd say the lockers on the bolts are optional, since as long as the bolts stay in there is no carabiner motion and nothing to run into.  The carabiners clipped to the  quad strands are in the opposite category. If there is more than one, they can easily collide with each other, and if one of the bolts fails, the strand carabiners will violently pile up, so they ought to be lockers.

Out of general paranoia, I'd modify these guidelines for unattended anchors like top-rope anchors, where the party can't monitor what is going on.  In that case, perhaps being overcautious, I'd put lockers everywhere.

Good enough like it is. I’m still here.  1 million ways to skin a deer. Do as you like.  That is just one way to do it, it is not unsafe.  With no knots  they are in their maximum strength configuration period.  Stronger than anything with knots involved.

Carl Schneider wrote: All this talk about bone broth makes you lot sound like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk!   
I'll grind your bones to make my bread!!

I eat pretty much a 95% plant based diet (I eat a tiny bit of seafood sometimes) and I maintain my weight at 138 pounds at about 5' 6" (62.9 kilos, 168CM) which gives me a BMI of 22.3 and normally I feel pretty strong, so no grinding bones to make my bread or pig's jowls (or other body parts) for me!

Where we've gone wrong in the US (and other parts of the world) is processed foods.

Eating whole foods (like those beans) with ethically (or naturally) raised meats is how our bodies are designed to run. A diet like that will make you strong, eating a whole plate of jowl is a different story......

It's what I eat for lunch that's trying to kill me..... ;)

Jeffrey Constine wrote:  1 million ways to skin a deer.

I believe the old adage is: "There's more than one way to skin a cat"

There's only three ways to skin a deer.....and only one "right" way at that...... ;)

John Barritt wrote:

Where we've gone wrong in the US (and other parts of the world) is processed foods.

Eating whole foods (like those beans) with ethically (or naturally) raised meats is how our bodies are designed to run. A diet like that will make you strong, eating a whole plate of jowl is a different story......

It's what I eat for lunch that's trying to kill me..... ;)

Hog jowls?  HOG JOWLS?  This must be a Red State thing.  We don't allow hog jowls in California.  Where is your organic, non GMO delicate salad greens mix?  

I had to seriously look up hog jowls, and was relieved to find it looks a lot like bacon.   And it all looks incredibly good, John!  

I agree with what you said above.  I've always eaten 'whole foods' but that term could be almost anything from vegan to carnivore--as long as it's not in a can.  The hard change for me came a few years ago when I realized I wasn't fueling my body for aging and exercise.  My doctor pointed out that I had lost a lot of muscle mass...so the dilemma was how to turn a catabolic body (slowing down, losing muscle and bone) into an anabolic body (putting real muscle and bone back on, gaining energy).  I had always eaten light, almost never beef.  But I take seriously that things have changed as the clock advances... hormones deplete, and decay and decline automatically roll in, unless measures are taken.  Man... there couldn't be better exercise than rock climbing... indoors or out!  And these days I cook thick stews, grass fed steaks, eggs... daily.  My big holdout right now is beef liver.  It would be the only food on the planet I just cannot force myself to eat, so I'm taking beef liver caps.  (But I can eat chicken livers just fine.)  John, you might have some kind of Okie recipe.  It's the Vitamin A, the copper, the B12 and other nutrients that are in such abundance... 1/4 pound of beef liver weekly would supply it in spades.  Maybe I need to fry it up with some hog jowls?  

Maybe this is all too serious and restrictive for some.  Diabetes has probably been a gift to me, in that, there's no room for error or excuses.  I just barely got my wings here... a little window of opportunity to get out there and climb my heart out... so my diet needs to be close to perfect.  (with absolute gratitude for the gift of it all.) 

rgold wrote:Out of general paranoia, I'd modify these guidelines for unattended anchors like top-rope anchors, where the party can't monitor what is going on.  In that case, perhaps being overcautious, I'd put lockers everywhere.

I build anchors on Scout trips that see a lot of traffic, are loaded and unloaded repeatedly and are largely unattended.

BSA requires lockers on everything. At first I thought it was stupid, now not so much.

I typically build 4 to 6 top rope anchors for climbs and 2 or 3 rappel set-ups on an outing at a time.

If Jeff's two bolt anchor was in play on a scout trip I'd have used 4 slings (2 per side) lockers on the bolts and two opposed lockers at the rope end with all 4 slings clipped into them. 

rgold wrote: As for where to use locking carabiners, I think the test should be whether the carabiner is going to move and if so whether it will collide with anything.  So in Lori's picture, I'd say the lockers on the bolts are optional, since as long as the bolts stay in there is no carabiner motion and nothing to run into.  The carabiners clipped to the  quad strands are in the opposite category. If there is more than one, they can easily collide with each other, and if one of the bolts fails, the strand carabiners will violently pile up, so they ought to be lockers.

Out of general paranoia, I'd modify these guidelines for unattended anchors like top-rope anchors, where the party can't monitor what is going on.  In that case, perhaps being overcautious, I'd put lockers everywhere.

Thanks, rgold, for all your clarifications on bolts and anchors... and it's been so interesting to read the conversation also between others here.  So, as I see it, as long as there are two firm bolts wherever I go, my one anchor will be useful.     If ANYTHING else is needed... I'm toast.  One down, 450 more knots and anchors to go.  (Still studying Jeffrey's picture... I can see it.  Obviously from another voice of experience.)

Fortunately, my quad anchor was just the entrance exam to see if I would actually follow through on a homework assignment.  So, I'll march my quad in, set it up for Ryan... and he just ran out of excuses.  My new journey may have just begun.

Interesting how this climbing thing unfolds.  Do you ever stop learning?  I met my new little climbing friend at the other gym in our area, Granite Arch.  It's older, the walls are much shorter, it does not have the newness and fun layout of Pipeworks.  But she wanted to see it, and I wanted to tackle the chimney there again... .in case I EVER get to climb the Flake... so we both worked the chimney to death.  An exhausting, very difficult climb... it seems never to get easier.  But then we walked back onto the main floor and I saw, as if for the first time, all the beautiful cracks and rock-type structures built into the walls... and we set to work climbing the cracks alone, trying not to use any of the footholds or jugs... what a great time!  One beautiful crack is overhung the whole way (Harumpster probably knows these well and just didn't want to give it all away   )...  so suddenly, a whole new vista has opened up.  Two climbing gyms, totally different... lots to play on.    

John Barritt wrote:

I build anchors on Scout trips that see a lot of traffic, are loaded and unloaded repeatedly and are largely unattended.

BSA requires lockers on everything. At first I thought it was stupid, now not so much.

I typically build 4 to 6 top rope anchors for climbs and 2 or 3 rappel set-ups on an outing at a time.

If Jeff's two bolt anchor was in play on a scout trip I'd have used 4 slings (2 per side) lockers on the bolts and two opposed lockers at the rope end with all 4 slings clipped into them.

The admonitions about wasting time and gear on long multipitch routes have no relevance to top-rope situations.  Use lockers and double up on everything---why not?

Lori, there's no good way to cook liver...... ;)

It's definitely an acquired taste I've never actually acquired.....

Here's my dad's recipe. It would make my mouth water walking in his house if it was cooking, every time. (until I realized what it was)

In a large deep skillet lightly brown thinly sliced liver and drain. Add two whole onions, half crushed clove of garlic or table spoon garlic powder. A table spoon of cracked black pepper and a stick of butter saute until liver is done and onion begins to carmelize.

Throw away the liver and eat the onion...... ;)

As with all recipes you can adjust to taste, more or less garlic or pepper or add a little red pepper for some punch.

rgold wrote:

The admonitions about wasting time and gear on long multipitch routes have no relevance to top-rope situations.  Use lockers and double up on everything---why not?

Because it breeds an over reliance on gear v. common sense assessment of risks and the integrity of placements. Lockers do not a safe anchor make.

Can't tell you how many newbies take their 4 lockers and quad up to create a top rope anchor but can't tell you what they clipped them to...and when you get up there are horrified that they blindly trusted crapola.

Lori Milas wrote: Interesting how this climbing thing unfolds.  Do you ever stop learning?  

I think not.  Let's say that learning opportunities never end, but some people do reach a point where they think they don't need to know any more.  Once at that stage, there is a tendency to heap scorn on new developments and practices---sometimes with justification but often not.  (At the other end of this spectrum are contemporary climbers who become helpless when they drop a piece of equipment the old folks know perfectly well how to do without.)

Thinking just about physical climbing technique, there is always the sort of micro-learning process that occurs as you decode some particular puzzle.  This may or may not involve learning something "new" in a larger sense, as you are mostly cobbling together techniques and strategies you already have, perhaps in novel ways.  The biggest spur to learning in a larger sense is encountering different types and angles of rock.

I climb in the local gym with a bunch of superannuated traddies, and it is interesting so see the division between those who are  embracing "new-fangled" (for the Medicare set) tricks of overhanging climbing: back-stepping, knee drops, flagging, and a more consistent emphasis on sideways body orientation, and those who are still facing the wall with toes pointed outward as they would for an 80 degree slab in the Gunks.  There's a one to two grade gap in achievement between the learners and the non-learners which I don't think is explained by physical differences.

John Barritt wrote: Lori, there's no good way to cook liver...... ;)

When I was a young child my mother tells me I would follow her around the grocery story BEGGING her to buy and cook liver. And I'd request it for my birthday meals. Iron deficiency, maybe? Who knows. I haven't had liver in at least 40+ years. Might have to try it again. 

Lori Milas wrote:
Interesting how this climbing thing unfolds.  Do you ever stop learning? 

I think if you stopped learning it would quickly become uninteresting. Overcoming new challenges and solving new puzzles seems like one of the major points of rock climbing. If we just wanted exercise there are better ways to get it.

One trajectory I noticed in my own trad climbing evolution was that there's a phase (and I think this is where you are entering) where you really need to throw yourself into learning a LOT of complicated systems, gear management, knots, etc. Dive right it. It's fun and good learning. Then, one day, you realize that you're buried in extraneous widgets that are getting between you and the real climbing. Then you start learning to do more with less and pare it down a bit. To use a cooking metaphor, this is when you throw the food processor out the window and just get a couple really good knives.

Harumpfster Boondoggle wrote:

Because it breeds an over reliance on gear v. common sense assessment of risks and the integrity of placements. Lockers do not a safe anchor make.

Can't tell you how many newbies take their 4 lockers and quad up to create a top rope anchor but can't tell you what they clipped them to...and when you get up there are horrified that they blindly trusted crapola.

There is a lot of truth in this.  We had a horrific accident in the Gunks a few years ago; a vibrant young woman on her first day of climbing was killed when here entire top-rope anchor came down when she leaned back on the rope.  Although no one with experience could figure out aftwerwards what had happened (none of the anchor points failed, the rigging itself came undone), it did seem that the anchor was such a complex mess that the people involved couldn't detect that it actually wasn't attached to anything.

Like HB, I've seen several situations in which inexperienced climbers have done exactly what he describes, which is to set up a top rope anchor with lots of redundant slings and lockers on absurdly inadequate anchor points.

But I'm not so sure that advocating sensible redundance  "breeds over-reliance on gear vs common-sense assessment..."  There seems to be a type of cluelessness that just can't be mitigated, with or without a lot of gear.  There really are people---and perhaps it is so that there are more and more of them as climbing gets more popular---who just plain can't be trusted to apply "common sense assessment,"  and I'm not at all sure that the way in which they use gear is the reason for their dangerous incompetence.

But I'm ambivalent about this; perhaps HB is onto a general phenomenon, which is that the proliferation of climbing technology may have separated at least some users from fundamental reality considerations of what's safe and what isn't, making safety in the broadest sense a consequence of equipment function rather than individual judgement.

There's a saying, "simple not easy," that special ops guys use to describe really obvious things that are still really difficult to get most people to do. I think climbing anchors are simple not easy. Jim Titt said it best, "Make great placements. Tie yourself to them."

That's so much more useful as a guiding principle than all the shit about SERENE and complex ideas about equalization, etc. But making great placements is not easy, or at least not easy to know the difference between great and poor just by looking at it. 

rgold wrote: I climb in the local gym with a bunch of superannuated traddies, and it is interesting so see the division between those who are  embracing "new-fangled" (for the Medicare set) tricks of overhanging climbing: back-stepping, knee drops, flagging, and a more consistent emphasis on sideways body orientation, and those who are still facing the wall with toes pointed outward as they would for an 80 degree slab in the Gunks.  There's a one to two grade gap in achievement between the learners and the non-learners which I don't think is explained by physical differences.

Strangely enough I think one physical difference plays a part in this -- height. Much as I've whined about my (literal) shortcomings, I think shorter climbers are more likely to learn these techniques by necessity. At least that's been my experience observing people in the gym.

rgold wrote:

There is a lot of truth in this.  We had a horrific accident in the Gunks a few years ago; a vibrant young woman on her first day of climbing was killed when here entire top-rope anchor came down when she leaned back on the rope.  Although no one with experience could figure out aftwerwards what had happened (none of the anchor points failed, the rigging itself came undone), it did seem that the anchor was such a complex mess that the people involved couldn't detect that it actually wasn't attached to anything.

Like HB, I've seen several situations in which inexperienced climbers have done exactly what he describes, which is to set up a top rope anchor with lots of redundant slings and lockers on absurdly inadequate anchor points.

But I'm not so sure that advocating sensible redundance  "breeds over-reliance on gear vs common-sense assessment..."  There seems to be a type of cluelessness that just can't be mitigated, with or without a lot of gear.  There really are people---and perhaps it is so that there are more and more of them as climbing gets more popular---who just plain can't be trusted to apply "common sense assessment,"  and I'm not at all sure that the way in which they use gear is the reason for their dangerous incompetence.

I guess I feel its a form of compensation/crutch that if not applied forces the individual to look longer and harder at the placements. Spending time and energy equalizing crap don't make chocolate cake.

The entire SERENE genre has been one of applying gear and rigging woofuckery to something that only comes down to "Strong" being the determining factor in nearly all cases.

No locker is safer than two carabiners with gates opposed but in defense of the Scouts et al they are going to almost always be using stout fixed anchors, in which case using lockers defeats pretty much the only thing that can go wrong.

I simply feel that when you use minimal lockers you really are forced to look at the integrity of the entire anchor more instead of dismissing it once the lockers are closed. This is just my intuition of human nature, based on nothing more.

Just like using a cordellette convinces beginners they have made a Strong anchor from crap placements. "This may be a crappy piece but I equalized it and put a locker on it...." :(

The hardest thing to teach (ie impossible without experience) is to assess the strength of the placements. Instead beginners focus on rigging which in fact is a distant concern.

Haven't read this thread but I thought I'd contribute about the people I've met.
I met a guy in the buttermilks bouldering who was in his 60s, had been climbing his whole life and was just getting into bouldering. He climbed v3-4 when I met him. I met a guy in Squamish bouldering who was also in his 60s and was projecting v7-8. Said he was still getting stronger and had only recently started bouldering. Just the other day I met a guy in his 70s who ran 100 mile ultra marathons and was out bouldering. He said he'd been climbing 35 years and had put up a few v4-5s in the local area.

rgold wrote: An anti-bowline bias has come over the climbing world in recent years, which is why I didn't even mention it in my minimal knot list for fear of stirring up the F8 mob.

True, which is why I was ducking earlier (to not get mobbed).  The anti-bowline movement got started at the same time as climbing gyms got started.  Insurance companies adopted the F8 standard because it's easier to verify than a bowline, by a gym employee who only knows one knot, because it looks like something they already know: the figure 8.

Previous to that, the bowline was standard because it IS superior in several ways.  

Harumpfster Boondoggle wrote:

Because it breeds an over reliance on gear v. common sense assessment of risks and the integrity of placements. Lockers do not a safe anchor make.

Can't tell you how many newbies take their 4 lockers and quad up to create a top rope anchor but can't tell you what they clipped them to...and when you get up there are horrified that they blindly trusted crapola.

I suspect this is where the question, "how did the bolts look?" comes into play. :)