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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (31743)	3/10/2003 8:27:48 PM
From: tuck	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 57110

>>Naz Close 1278! Wow! Tuck hit it right on! Really scaling the peaks of accuracy. So he gets another peak.<< Do I get any sherpas with that? It will really impress my climbing buddies that I now own Everest, because they know I hate alpine climbs. I climb rocks, not peaks. There's a difference. alpinistas.org All pictures by yours truly, and the last one is of my partner Spencer, leading a 5.10a crack climb. There's some jargon in this. It doesn't matter terribly, but . . . trad = short for traditional; a climb in which the climber places his own gear for protecting a fall (free climbing), not to advance his progress. If he uses gear to advance his progress, it is an aid climb. sport = a climb protected by closely spaced bolts, which the climber need only clip the rope into. offwidth = a crack more than 5 inches wide, meaning it takes two hands to jam it. And that begs the question, how do you move your hands up without falling off? I won't go into the answer, except to say that the technique is generally ungraceful, slow, frustrating, and often causes abrasions on ankles, shoulders, and triceps. Few climbers enjoy offwidths. camalots, three cams, etc. = spring loaded pieces of trad gear that are placed in cracks. They expand when loaded, thus making them grip harder the higher the load, which hopefully means they'll hold if fallen on. Placing trad gear well is something of an art. nut = wedge shaped piece of alloy with a loop of cable suaged to it. It's a piece of trad gear with no moving parts, that is tugged into constrictions in cracks. Spencer was stuck on "Washington Bullets" because one must clip a "carabiner ("biner" for short) on the loop of cable so that the rope can be attached to the nut. He had run out of carabiners. simul = normally one climber leads while the other belays. A team is simulling if they both climb at once. Once the leader gets to the end of the rope, the follower starts climbing, too. The trick is to climb at the same speed so there is no slack. Obviously, once the leader is nearly out of gear, it is wise to resume climbing normally. 5.? = a system of rating the difficulty of climbs. 5.0 is easy technical climbing (any of you could do it), 5.14 is doable only by world class climbers. Once into the 5.10 range and above, climbs are assigned subgrades, from "a" to "d". Thus a 5.10d is noticeably harder than a 5.10a, but a tad easier than a 5.11a. Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but should you have the misfortune to run afoul of a rock climber at the next cocktail party you attend, you might be able to understand 1/3 of what he says. If you want to know about crevasses, seracs, bergshrunds, porters, and other such terms associated with climbing things with frozen water on them, ask a real alpinist. Cheers, Tuck