Fall in Her Glorious Splendor

Maybe it is because we have missed so many years of this, but I am completely enamored by the fall colors.

Old Church Sign

This sign my the Old Town Church told about it's 200th Birthday. 1793 - 1993.

Sunday Drive

Aric spent his vacation with us, so we had the pleasure of having his company for this past week. This is the most time that we have had with him since we left Clermont, so it was a real treat that he did choose to spend the time here. He went back home on Sunday so we headed out for a Sunday drive afterwards.



Arcadia ended up being our final destination and there was plenty to see along the way.

Umbilical attachment points again?

In the last umbilical thread I suggested that instead of clipping into the specifically built attachment points of a tool like the Black Diamond Cobra and Fusion that one might want to rethink that idea and add a cord loop to better keep the "attachment" biner of the various commercial Umbilicals attached.



One of the things I do on occasion is post a link to a thread in other forums where I think others might find the info interesting and more importantly where I'll get some feed back. I did that with the Umbilical "loop" post. You get all sorts of experience levels when you do such things and even more interesting how the terrain of a specific area defines the gear that gets used and is popular as well. All ofwhich I find interesting.



Look here:

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1000731/Umbilicals#Post1000731



http://www.mountainproject.com/v/climbing_gear_discussion/umbilicals/107022451



http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=443832



http://www.gravsports-ice.com/icethreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=8682#Post8682



http://neice.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=58508&page=1



http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB3/umbilicals-t57260.html



http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2453623;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;page=unread#unread



http://www.escaladequebec.com/



I've been using one form of umbilical or another virtually since day one in my own ice climbing. Just seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Chouinard alpine hammers (or big wall hammers) were likely the first commercially.



My thought, and until recently when I changed to a commercial set up, was the umbilical should be able to take "full weight loads" or something like 2000 pounds in my mind.



I've playedaround a lot with umbilicals over the years. Here is a comment I made in March of , here:



http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/947206/Re_New_Nomic



"4mm is rated to 900#. (which is what I currently use to tie my umbilicals in with) I took a full length fall onto my BD tethers this winter. My first. By full length I mean tool below chest level and that tool catching me at full extension on the other umbilical. As close as I want to get to a 6 or 7 foot, factor 1 fall. I am no fly weight so the load was pretty high I suspect.



Not a tether yet made that will hold a true factor 1 Fall let alone a 2.



But people have already been asking for them. You'll want to rely on good gear and a rated climbing rope for that with a 8 or 9' fall possible on umbilicals/tethers.



Mine you the other tool was placed higher and ripped through the slush causing the fall. The tool that caught me also ripped through a good 12" or more of bad ice before finally catching the fall. Ripping through the ice worked as a natural "screamer" absorbing energy and the fall did "blow" the 4mm enough to easily see it needed to be changed out. But no core showing yet



From an earlier BD email exchange this winter when I asked about the issue of the small BD biner (worried about the sharp edged proto types that I was using. The new Production stuff has much better and rounded edges) on 4 and 5mm cord laced to Nomics with a BD Spinner umbilical.



Black Diamond said:



"Just tested this to 800lbs (single leg). No damage to the 4mm cord or our steel clip (production quality with more tumbling to the part); the bungee webbing breaks first. Then pull tested our steel biner clipped to 5mm cord, this went to 1600lbs before the cord broke."



Not like I want to use 4mm! I would also make sure to use a knot like a dbl Fisherman's in drop form instead of an Over Hand which is typical and much weaker (30% less or more?) in this application. And something like half of the original tensile strength of the rope! Easy bet the cord broke at the knot no matter what knot he was using. But worth hedging your bets here for several reasons. But 4mm seems a good compromise for size (getting it under the pommel or in your hand) and strength. Hanging on a tool is not a dynamic load. Fall far enough and require static cord and webbing to take the dynamic impact load and you'll blow through 5mm or the webbing easily.



More on the dbl fisherman's knot and knot strength.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_fisherman's_knot



http://www.caves.org/section/vertical/nh/50/knotrope.html



More on fall factors

http://www.southeastclimbing.com/faq/faq_fall_factor.htm#add



If you filter through the posts it seems pretty clear what is available currently on a commercial basis could easily be improved upon. Many have done just that already. It doesn't really matter how the companies think the umbilicals should be used...climbers are going to use the umbilicalhow they see fit or make their own. But we all need to be careful. Getting smacked in the head/face/handwith a biner on the end of a sling shotted umbilical is going to be a serious injury. And it has happened already.



My point? Know your ownsystem. Know how strong it is and what your intended use is. I want my umbilicals to be strong enough with some reserveto catch a slip soloing if required...andretain my tools 110% of the time. YMMV

Mt. Stuart, West Ridge

We finally climbed the West Ridge of Mt. Stuart. It ended up being our last big climb of the year. Mark and Doug were the only two climbers. Since it was going to be a one day climb, we got up early and left Yakima at 3:00am and hit the trail at 5:00am. Our plan was to go light and fast. To accomplish this we decided to climb it without a rope. The forecast was good, so we were able to go light on clothing too. We made good time up to Ingalls Pass and then on to Ingalls Lake. After the lake we walked up a ridge and across a rockslide to get to the base of the climb.


We started climbing at 8:00am. The going was real easy and fun. My daughters would have had a ball climbing this lower section.








Glacier Peak in the background.













The West Ridge.














It turned out that we would not have used a rope if we had one. Most of the climbing was real easy. There were only two short sections that required any rock climbing skill and these were in safe areas.
We made it to the top at 11:00am in perfect weather. After spending about an hour there, we started the long descent, followed by the ascent up to Longs Pass and the descent to the parking lot. We got back to the car at 3:30pm and home in time for dinner. Thanks Mark, for leading the funnest rock climb I have ever done. I especially enjoyed the freedom of going light and only carrying items that we knew we would use. It was a great day exploring a special part of God's creation. Chalk up another one for Foursquare Mountaineering!

Clermont FL to Summerton SC

Today was Aric's first official travel day. I think I was more excited than he was about that. We drove from Clermont to Summerton, South Carolina. We are staying at a very nice ROD park. Since we had a somewhat long driving day, we ate dinner at Cracker Barrel.

It is so nice to be back on the road again!

A Year Gone By :: in Review

Well, the year .. is almost history. It's been a great year for me for research, though not so much for blogging. With only 112 posts published, it's been the "worst" year since I started blogging. In fact, this is my first post for December! No excuses, really, but what I've "discovered" is that when I get involved with a project (be it actual research, transcribing documents, or simply standardizing my database) I tend to get really involved - to the point of doing little else until "that project" is completed. I must admit, I have missed the blogging...



January found me traveling westward from Louisiana where I had spent the holidays with extended family. Highlights for the month were a short stop at White Sands National Monument, a meetup with a blog reader who turned out to be a distant cousin, a two-week stay at Lake Havasu City where there was a hot-air balloon festival and where I developed a naming scheme for organizing my digital files.






An Arizona Sunset. January 12th.


February was spent in Salt Lake City where RootsTech was on the agenda. I must admit, I was a little disappointed with the conference but enjoyed seeing old friends again. Of course, there was The Library that was calling my name for the entire month! Among other things while there, I began writing the series on the Hoffman-Huffman family of Ohio and Pennsylvania.



After a few days in Death Valley I made one final stop before heading back to Indiana in March. May came all too quickly along with the NGS Conference in Cincinnati, which was absolutely fantastic. The sessions were (for the most part) outstanding, and being with like-minded friends was priceless.






The Grand Canyon looking north from Desert View. March 15th.


A short sojourn into Kentucky looking for the land of my Bray ancestors, then it was back to Indiana for a few more weeks. In early July I was notified that a seat had opened up in Thomas Jones' class at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh - I had been put on the waiting list in February when I was unsuccessful in registering - and was asked if I was still interested in attending. Of course, my response was a definite "Yes!" and I was shortly on my way to G.R.I.P. and what a "trip" it was - one of the most challenging yet exhilarating experiences of my genealogy journey!



I had thought that I might spend a week in Pennsylvania doing on-site research but after a week at G.R.I.P. my brain was fried. Instead, I returned to Indiana for a few weeks to assimilate what I had learned and to prepare a bit more to research those Pennsylvania Ancestors.



In August I spent about 10 days in Huntsville, Alabama helping a cousin who was recovering from surgery. While there, plans were made with another cousin for spending a few weeks in Maine. A couple days of research in Pennsylvania on the way there, a few more days afterward, a visit with my aunt and cousin in Maryland, then a few more days in Pennsylvania and I made it back to Indiana just in time for the Midwest Geneabloggers .. Fall Meetup (link to Tina Lyons' post) on October 13th.






Northern Maine. September 25th.


Since then I've been looking for more Hoffman and Switzer and Rupert descendants, and found quite a few of them too! But most of the last month has been spent on "cleaning up" and standardizing my genealogy database in preparation for uploading it to ancestry.com or some other online tree site. It's been somewhat tedious and very time consuming. Sources still require a great deal of work and I'm beginning to think that this "clean-up" work could go on for ever!



It has been an interesting and rather satisfying year. A mixture of travel and research and a little of both combined. What could be better?