Minnesota's Maple Mountains

Photo taken just before sunset this evening. The colors are starting to get really nice out there!

Gunks Routes: Minty (5.3) & Mr. P's Wurst (5.8)

(Photo: Coming up the 5.8 pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst.)



So nice to be back home in the Gunks.



After nearly two months away, I longed for the old familiar climbing surroundings.



The overhangs.



The pitons.



The long reaches.



The horizontals.



I was climbing with Margaret on an October Sunday. She wanted some easy leading and our first target was Three Pines. Unfortunately Three Pines at 9 a.m. already had a party of three on the first pitch and another pair at the base waiting to start. This was hardly a surprise on a Sunday during peak season.



My general policy is not to wait for climbs in the Trapps. In my experience, you always find something else open if you keep looking. Sure enough, we went a little further down the cliff and found Minty (5.3) available so we were in business.



Margaret led pitch one. I think this pitch is a great introductory Gunks lead because it has an early move that seems several grades harder than the rest of the climb. This might not seem like an ideal situation for a new leader to deal with, but it happens all the time on climbs of every grade in the Gunks. You have to confront it eventually, so you might as well start to get used to it when you're leading 5.3!



On Minty, the move can catch you by surprise. You start up this little corner. A big shelf is right there for you to grab, just one step up. But the feet are these tiny, polished little half-pebbles. You have to trust your feet just long enough to step up to grab that ledge.



The move should be no big deal.



But it seems totally possible you could fall here.



So you stand there thinking "This is supposed to be 5.3! How can I be such a failure that I am worried about this little move on a 5.3??"



And you psyche yourself out.



And you try this, and you try that, desperate to avoid this tenuous little step.



Finally you just do the stupid move and feel like an idiot.



Welcome to the Gunks.





(Photo: Past the crux on pitch one of Minty (5.3).)



The other hazard on Minty is that you might go up the wrong corner. The climb keeps moving left, and all the corner systems look alike. The first time I did the route, with Liz, she went up too soon, when she should have continued moving left. But if you make this mistake, you'll likely end up on Tipsy Trees, which is another nice 5.3. So no worries.



To stay on track you should look up for the distinctive Minty tree. It is a pine tree over 100 feet up that sticks out sideways from the cliff. This tree is where pitch one ends. If you keep in mind that you are heading for this tree, you should find the correct route.





(Photo: The 5.2 pitch three of Minty.)



Minty has lots to offer. The steep, juggy climbing you'll find in the second half of pitch one and all of pitch two is especially nice. Pitch three goes at a very casual 5.2 and it isn't terribly long, but it too has good moves out from a corner system and then up jugs to the top.



My personal preference for descending from climbs in the Minty/Snooky's area is to walk a short distance to the bolted rap route at the top of the Madame G buttress. Using the bolted rap route guarantees a safe descent and avoids throwing ropes over nervous leaders on very popular climbs. The problem with this method is that the Madame G rap starts from the GT Ledge and you have to follow your nose and downclimb from the top to find the bolts. If you aren't already familiar with the location it will be hard for you to find it. In the past I have spotted the distinctive tree which grows out at an angle from the cliff right next to the rap bolts, but I must have done this at a time of year in which the trees have no leaves. Last weekend with Margaret I couldn't spot the correct tree from the top and I had some trouble finding the bolts, overshooting the right path and having to work my way back. Still, I prefer these few minutes of hunting to rapping off of the manky anchors which come and go atop the cliff.



Coming down, I could see it wasn't going to be easy to get on another three-star classic. The cliff was looking very crowded. There were parties on Madame G's, on Finger Locks or Cedar Box, on Hyjek's Horror, on almost every climb in sight. Was this a nature preserve? It bore a greater resemblance to Occupy Wall Street.



I suggested to Margaret that we do an empty climb right in front of us: Mr. P's Wurst. The climb, which ascends the right side of the Madame G buttress, is almost always open, even though it sits amidst some of the most popular routes in the Trapps.



I've been wanting to get on Mr. P's for some time, in part because I like the name, which Ivan Rezucha and Rich Perch bestowed on the route in the best Hans Kraus tradition.



Hans put up Madame G's (full name: Madame Grunnebaum's Wulst) in 1943. How many climbers understand the bawdy humor in this classic route's name? I'd wager that very few get the joke. As Susan E.B. Schwartz explains in her biography Into the Unknown: the Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus, the name was not inspired by a real person. Instead, Hans looked up at the buttress and saw two bulges up high that-- to his one-track mind-- resembled a woman's bosom. The route he created begins at a pine tree and weaves between the two breast-like features. Grunnebaum is German for green tree and wulst means bulge. Thus the route's name can be translated in full as "Mrs. Greentree's Boobs."



Once you understand the humor in Madame G's name, the meaning of Mr. P's Wurst becomes obvious. The latter route snakes up right next to Ms. Greentree's bulges, and what could be better nestled in those bulges than Mr. Perch's sausage?



Apart from the name, what interested me about Mr. P's was that no one ever seems to do it. It is always open, despite the fact that Dick Williams decided to anoint it with two stars in his 2004 guidebook. Dick also did his part to make the route more accessible, describing a new start from 50 feet up the gully to the right of the buttress instead of the 5.6 R climbing previously needed to get established on the route.



I think this new start is actually one of the reasons the crowds stay away. The gully looks unappealing and from the ground it is hard to see exactly where you're supposed to jump onto the wall.



It looked to me as though the right spot was about five or ten feet below the rap bolts that are on the other side of the gully. We decided to do pitch one of Northern Pillar (5.1) instead of climbing the gully, with Margaret leading up and cutting left near the top of the pitch to set up a belay either at or near the bolts, from which point I'd decide exactly how to get over the gully and onto the wall for Mr. P's.



Margaret ended up building a belay to the right of the bolts, in order to avoid having parties constantly rapping through as she stood there waiting for me. This worked out fine, although I think it would have been okay to use the bolts so long as she set up on the left side of them. It seems to me that when people rap and pull the ropes from above they usually fall just to the right of the bolts. So if Margaret had anchored into the bolts but stood to the left she would probably have been unaffected by the rapping parties. In the final analysis, it would have been simpler just to go up the gully.





(Photo: Approaching the crux of the 5.8 pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst. From the photo you can get some idea how overhanging the final bits of the pitch are. The other climber in the photo is on Madame G's.)



From our belay at bolt level, I traversed to the gully, downclimbed a few moves, and then made the step across to the other side. These moves are easy, but if you do it this way you need to place pro as you step down, and then again at the other side of the gully, if you want to protect your second. Again, probably it would have been better just to go up the gully.



Now I was finally on Mr. P's. The pitch wasn't difficult to follow. Good holds lead up and around the corner until you find yourself on the right side of the face of the Madame G buttress. The climbing is juggy throughout the first pitch, and the rock quality is generally good. The angle gradually steepens until it becomes overhanging for the last ten to fifteen feet of the pitch. The crux move comes at three ancient pitons. I equalized the lower two and then clipped the third one as well, hoping at least one of them would hold in the event of a fall.



A big move up to a bomber horizontal, a good cam, and another move up to a tenuous stance finished the pitch beneath a roof.





(Photo: Looking down from the hanging belay at the end of pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst (5.8). My belayer Margaret is in blue. The climber in red is descending by the bolted rappel route.)



I found the hanging belay suggested by Dick to be rather unpleasant. There are two ancient pins, plus enough horizontals to place a few cams. It isn't unsafe, but it is truly a hanging stance; I couldn't let go with both hands in order to set up my anchor. Equalizing the cordalette and tying it in a knot with one hand wasn't easy.





(Photo: Approaching the hanging belay at the end of pitch one of Mr. P's Wurst (5.8).)



Pitch two is rated 5.7+. I followed Dick's instructions exactly, moving through the roof at the break and then stepping left. The move was fun and well-protected (you can get a good cam in the break in the roof), but I thought it was a big, reachy move, definitely harder than 5.7. It reminded me of the crux moves on Maria Direct and No Glow, both 5.9.



The rest of the pitch was easier, but still good. Getting past another roof on its right side requires a couple more interesting moves, and then the route joins Madame G's to the finish.





(Photo: Just over the roof on the supposedly 5.7+ pitch two of Mr. P's Wurst.)



After I pulled up the rope and put Margaret on belay, she immediately took a fall. Then she seemed to have no trouble climbing the pitch. She told me when she arrived at the top that she'd tried the roof my way, found it ridiculously hard, and then had moved four feet or so to the left, where she found 5.7 climbing up past the roof.



So maybe Margaret's way is the right way to do it, since it is 5.7. But it isn't how Dick describes the route. Personally, I enjoyed pulling the roof, and I did exactly what Dick instructed me to do, but if you do it this way the roof move is the hardest move on the whole route, and the 5.7+ pitch becomes more like a 5.9-. So you make your own call.



I would gladly climb Mr. P's again, but I would do it differently. I would just go straight up the gully rather than deal with the bolted rappel freeway and the downclimb/traverse. And I think I would bring a few extra cams and runners and do it in one pitch all the way from the ground to the finish on the GT Ledge. This would avoid the unpleasant hanging belay. And then you'd get one super long pitch of juggy steep climbing, wholly in keeping with other great climbs on the same buttress, like Columbia (5.8) and Madame G's (5.6).



If you do it this way I'm sure you too will end up a friend to Mr. P.

Frosted Wood

From a different perspective

This afternoon I noticed a hummingbird flitting through the lilies. I grabbed my camera in the hopes of capturing it enjoying the nectar but by the time I got to the window it was gone. Perhaps it will come back tomorrow and I'll be a little quicker. Since I had the camera at the window, I played around a bit with the zoom capabilities and got these shots. I like how the out-of-focus grass enhances the color of the lilies. I'm still amazed by how many blooms are on each plant and am really enjoying them. When we lived at our previous home, the flowers were in beds on the side and at the back of the house and we had to actually go outside to look at them. It's much nicer with them right outside the front window, especially with the high temperatures and high humidity we've been having lately.

So what does this have to do with family history research? Not anything, really, but seen from a different perspective, these views of the lilies are quite different from those taken two days ago. Sometimes (quite often), when I'm stuck with a research problem, it helps if I look at the problem from a different angle. Reviewing the information already found could help in rediscovering information previously overlooked. Talking with someone else and getting their input can also be helpful. Since they aren't emotionally attached to the problem they can take a step back and possibly offer new insight or recommend other areas of research. Regardless whether the problem is resolved or not, it almost always helps to take another look, from a different perspective.

New Kids on the City Block

It is always exciting when a new bicycle company appears on the market, and so it was doubly so when two new brands of city bikes were introduced at Interbike this year: the Toronto-based Simcoe and the Detroit-based Shinola.





The Shinola display greeted visitors as they entered the front hall of the show. Above the yellow French-inspired city bike were the intriguing words "built in Detroit." Walking past the display several times, I listened to attendees debate whether this claim could be true. After all, many bicycle manufacturers state that a bike is "built" locally, when what they really mean is assembled. If it were true, however, wouldn't it be wonderful and ironic to bring domestic bike production to a city known for the former glory of its automotive industry. That was the gist of the buzz.






Later I spotted a company representative and spoke to them about the bikes. Some may recognise the Shinola name as a brand of shoe polish from the early 20th century. Recently, the name was resurrected and turned into a lifestyle brand that plans to sell not only bicycles, but also watches, leather goods and notebooks - all made in the US.






In the bike industry that kind of approach does raise some eyebrows. Can a manufacturer be serious about bicycles if it is not their sole focus? Then again, there are those brands that start with bicycles, then expand into bags, clothing and other items. In that sense, the main difference in Shinola's approach is that they intend to do this from the start.





As for the bicycles themselves, yes the frames will indeed be handbuilt in Detroit. As I understand it, the initial prototypes were built by Ira Ryan and Tony Pereirain Portland, OR, but production models will be made by Waterford. Prototypes of the first bikes - the diamond and step-through Bixby - were on display at Interbike.






There are some handsome details on these steel frames, most notably the biplane fork crown.






Points of entry for the brake and shifter cables are subtly incorporated into the frame design.





The copper headbadge is embossed with the bicycle model name.







One benefit to the company being involved in the production of other products, is its ability to outfit the bikes with its own accessories - such as these Shinola leather grips.






To create the Bixby, Shinola recruited designer Sky Yaeger - who has previously worked at Bianchi and Swobo and is credited for bicycle models familiar to many. Reading that she was responsible for the Bianchi Milano design, I realised that the curves of the Bixby remind me of that aesthetic. I wonder how they will handle racks and lighting once the bicycles go into production.








While I can't speak for the ride quality, the finish and components of the Shinolo Bixby bicycles are of a higher caliber than what one will see on a typical city bike in stores today. This, combined with the Detroit-built frames, will make for a high retail price. It remains to be seen whether customers will appreciate the bicycles enough to pay it.






At the other end of the spectrum, Simcoe's focus is on classic, affordable city bikes. It is the new house brand of the Canadian bicycle distributor Forth Floor. North American retailers have been familiar with Forth Floor for years, as they've been responsible for importing a variety of European city bike brands, including the latest brand to hit North America - Bobbin. The high demand for Bobbin's looks/quality/affordability ratio is in part what inspired them to start their own project. As a distributor, Forth Floor has gained a reputation for being knowledgable, reliable and easy to work with - which makes many optimistic about the success of their manufacturing practice.






The introductory line of Simcoe bicycles is uncomplicated: traditional diamond and step-through frames made in Taiwan, equipped with swept-back handlebars, fenders, rear racks, chainguards and a choice of 3 or 8 speed gearing options.






Like the Shinolo frames, Simcoe's are welded, but the forks feature attractive double-plated crowns. It is no secret that I love these crowns; I am pleased to see them become a trend again.






The models will be available in a small range of colours, both bright and subdued.






The slate gray step-through is probably my favourite.






Complementing Simcoe's new line of bikes, Beacon is developing some basic accessories - most notably these fits-all-racks panniers.






"Through this ride, freedom..."






These are all simple, been-done-before ideas; nothing radical or new. But retailers are paying attention, because frankly there is demand for more bikes of this category without the hassles and the markups that come with importing from Europe.






Interacting with the fellows at Forth Floor is a pleasure as usual. I learned that Donny (on the left) has recently taken a framebuilding course with Mike Flanigan and made himself a nice touring frame.






Steve is working on a side project making tiny, affordable LED bike lights (Beacon Bike Lights) that can be zip tied to any part of the bike.






The guys are, first and foremost, cyclists. They love bicycles, all kinds of bicycles, and they communicate a sense of commitment to being in the industry for the long haul.






How that will translate into the quality, appeal and sustainability of the Simcoe brand remains to be seen, but retailers seem cautiously optimistic.




Both Simcoe and Shinola represent the North American market increasingly embracing transportation cycling and seeking to establish itself as independent from European culture and European bikes. These brands will be welcome additions to Linus, Public, Urbana, Handsome Cycles, Heritage Bicycles, Brooklyn Cruiser and other American-based companies with a focus on city bikes. I will share information on pricepoints once the figures are available, and will hopefully get a chance to test ride both bikes.

Harris Hill in Elmira New York

Aric and I went with Nathan to help him work today, so I was able to see more of this area. It is just beautiful here. Here is a waterfall on the side of the road:

And Aric getting close to the action:

We drove all around the area, finishing up with stopping at a park. Nathan was looking for something on the GPS, so I got out to look around at the Rails to Trails bike path there. There was a gentlemen standing there looking at the lake. He seemed so sad, with the kind of heavy grief that is normally from losing a loved one. I told Nathan I wanted to go and just hug him and when I said that, he looked over and waved like he felt our love. It was so neat.



After that, we headed to Harris Hill, in Elmira. We had a client there, so we visited him first. Then we went up the hill to the Soaring Center Museum which was closed. There was an overlook there that was really wonderful. We sat in one of the swings there and watched the sunset.

Living the life in New York!

What Do Bike Shops Want to Sell You, and Why?

In the comments section of a post from a couple of days ago, I made a remark suggesting that bike shops have financial incentive to sell bikes and accessories separately, as opposed to bikes that do not need additional accessories. I have since received emails asking to expand on that, so let me give it a try.



First, let me just clarify that my comment was intended to describe the financial reality of profit margins, and was not meant as a value judgment of bicycle shops. Bike shops need to make money, or they will go out of business - it's as simple as that. The question is, how to do that and still act in the best interest of their customer?



Consider first, that the retail mark-up on bicycles is usually less, percentage-wise, than the retail mark-up on components and accessories. The better made the bicycle, the more this is so, as production costs for that bike are high and there is a ceiling to what most customers are willing to pay.



Essentially, this means two things:



1. It is more profitable for a bike shop to stock mass-produced bicycles that allow for higher profit margins, and



2. It is more profitable for a bike shop to sell components and accessories than it is to sell bicycles



This explains why, despite the "transportation bike craze," it is still the case that relatively few bike shops stock higher-end city bicycles, especially those imported from Europe. Not only is the potential for mark-ups on those discouraging, but these bikes tend to come complete with everything, not giving the bike shop a chance to at least benefit from the sale of accessories. This provides little incentive to go through the trouble of stocking these bicycles - which is understandable from the bike shop's point of view, but unfortunate for the customer who is shopping around for a nice bike.



So, what incentive is there for bike shops to stock high quality, complete city bicycles and to be motivated to sell them to customers in leu of maximising profits by selling bikes and accessories separately? The way I see it, it is about short-term versus long-term profits - In other words, about building enduring relationships with customers. By acting in a customer's best interest - both in terms of the kind of bicycles they choose to stock in the first place, and in terms of the purchasing suggestions they make to those who walk in off the street - the bike shop is sacrificing immediate profits for the benefits of repeat business and word of mouth advertisement that could result from this customer.



I have visited many - probably most - bike shops in greater Boston at this point, and I have had all sorts of experiences. Despite there being a large number of bike shops in our area, there is only a handful that I feel comfortable in. And for the most part, that's because memories of my early bike shopping experiences remain vivid: Which shops had either ignored me, or tried to take advantage of my blatant naivitéat the time - versus which shops took me seriously and acted in my best interest, despite not knowing whether they would ever see me again, or whether I would even buy anything from them in the first place. I remember, and I remain fiercely loyal to the few that did the latter.



What have been your experiences with bicycle shops in your area - Are they oriented more toward immediate sales, or toward long-term relationships?

Photos of Issy.

Issy Morgans,you know her from Sport Climbing Australia.Here she is running through the sequence on Spoonman 28, Coolum Cave of course.Her extensive indoor training transfers to a very smooth style,concentrated and controlled.I was in position for shooting Big Al on Separation Anxiety when I took these snaps. There's some nice ones, I'm sure you'll agree.