Planning Zodiac in October but have never hammered any route

Almost like you could call the hearing aid an…… adaptive measure ;)

Seems like I hit a nerve….

Kevin, I’m over my posting limit for the day so I had to post here,. I’m sorry, I meant no harm. 

All's well that ends well.

Did we stumble upon a new thread idea? "Signs of a Less Than Advanced Team"

all in good fun of course!

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EDIT: few of mine I've been scratching my head about:

• When cleaning pitches I let a huge loop of rope dangle beneath me. In lieu of back up knots I just pulled slack through the grigri once in a while. Am I going to get burnt eventually doing this? 
• On the subject of rope management, we brought my old fat gym rope as a lower out line for the bags. It was probably longer than it needed to be too. High on the route, the wind picked up the line. It waved elegantly overhead until the wind broke and it conked me right on the noggin. That's why you wear a helmet.
• I had a tricky time getting on the first rappel over at the East Ledges. I know you're supposed to ride the bags down, but I couldn't figure out to rig such a system without tumbling over the edge. I opted to hang the bag directly off my belay loop. As a result I added bruised hips to curvy spine as injuries incurred on this grievous descent. On the plus side, I must have been looking so ragged that the tourists in El Cap meadow took pity and offered beer+brats for recovery food!
• Oh yeah, I also burnt my hand one time trying to hang onto the lower out line. A sideways swinging bag has quite a lot of potential energy it seems.

jt newgardwrote:

• but I couldn't figure out to rig such a system without tumbling over the edge.

Why do it differently than people have been doing it for hundreds of years? ;) 

Thank you Kevin !!

The big wall forum is simply the best. It's all I have since school ruined my life.

Quinn, as an engineer, I can never be wholly satisfied there isn't a better way to do things, or resist the allure of trying a different method. Sometimes that ends in trouble. Too dumb to learn, too stubborn to die.

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Haha but seriously it is interesting to note the parallels between wall climbing and engineering. Just as best practices have been honed over the years on the walls (apparently hundreds according to Quinn who appears to be some kind of immortal Highlander-type time traveling wall beast) so have building codes been developed to keep us all safe. It is very unlikely thanks to these codes that a modern bridge would collapse during an earthquake. However, the astute engineer may find a spot to tweak the code to reduce damage during an earthquake, or ensure 100% functionality (say in a hospital) rather than merely saying, yeah well at least it won't fall down! It behooves us to understand these existing systems/codes to then launch from that point and make an incremental change for the better. 

It's really AWESOME to absorb some of the systems stuff on the big wall forum! Not to mention the never-ending distraction from writing this giant dissertation, heh...

jt newgardwrote:

Quinn, as an engineer, I can never be wholly satisfied there isn't a better way to do things, or resist the allure of trying a different method. Sometimes that ends in trouble. Too dumb to learn, too stubborn to die.

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Im mostly joking about how there just seems to be no elegant way to get yourself off the top and down on to the rope on the first East ledges rappel.. tether in to the anchor, with the bag clipped to your belay loop and roll/fall off the top, to get yourself standing in front of the chains.. but then yeah- you want the GriGri on the rope, the bag clipped to the GriGri and then you just move your tethers from the anchors to the bag and ride it down.. 

The funny thing is- The first dozen times I came down it (hundreds of years ago) the first rappel was climbers left and up from the current Rap- off a bunch of webbing around a pine tree 

Nice thanks Quinn. Now I feel a little better about the controlled flop off method onto that first anchor! Overall this has been a very productive gumby confessional.

And now back to your originally scheduled programming of re-inventing wall hammers. I will say, on the topic of hammering routes: recklessly banging in lost arrows and angles at Mt Woodson is just way too much fun. (To be clear: I only mangle the boulders that are buried in poison oak) .... Yet another way that boomers shafted us millenials -- we never had the chance to bash pins in on the epic walls of Yosemite. What a rip off.

Kevin DeWeese wrote:

Well there's about 300 epic bigwall routes in the yosemite of which there's only 10-15 that one shouldn't nail on... so the boomers didn't shaft everyone thaaaat much. 

Finally! Some good news in these trying times!

I gotta ask -- what's on your list of the great hammerless routes of Yosemite?

I'd be even more curious if you'd arrange 'em in approximate order of difficulty, that is how bad do you want to reach for the hammer on each one? (maybe we could come up with an extended list where hammers are still traditionally used too, and it would be a real feather in your cap to get it done clean)

I think we all came to the agreement that Zodiac is very doable clean, or nearly so with some light beak tapping. Seems to me the responsible and skilled aid climber, with a good lead head, could do pretty well for themselves with offset cams/nuts and beaks (which do seem to have this marvelous ability to not degrade placements much).

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P.S. I think the whole clean/not clean thing is probably pretty " pas·sé " and been hashed out a million times. But it is interesting to me in-so-far as you're using skill and preparation to not degrade placements on certain routes.

I’d say Laughing at the Void is one of the harder clean routes in the valley. The Shield would definitely be an impressive one to do clean 

Andrew Schaferwrote:

I’d say Laughing at the Void is one of the harder clean routes in the valley. The Shield would definitely be an impressive one to do clean 

Bring the Hammer Glove on both those!! !! 

jt newgardwrote:

That is a picture is of my all-wood model of the A5 hammer, carved out of mahogany and painted model head.  You will not get far with a wood hammer head.  I recommend 4130 forged steel.  :)

Oh that is too funny, John! Shows what I know about hammering.

It is a good looking hammer. Perhaps A5 was on my mind since I've been perusing your excellent gear posts lately!

I'm still rocking the Choiunard Yosemite hammer I bought in 1973 for maybe $19.

Damn, a Yosemite hammer now is $120