2016.11.16. Climbing Seminar at Portland Alpine Fest

11/16, Wednesday 4:30-6. As part of the week-long Portland Alpine Fest, a free hands-on lesson at Mazamas, offered by Kaf Adventures' instructor Paul Taylor and his buddy. Both good teachers. About 10 students, all but me had climbing experience, most came with their own harness and rappel devices. Here's what I learned:

Slide and Grip knots used to slide down the rope (right to left):
Prusik, ?, Klemheist, ?

Pre-rigging rappel :
(1) appel sling.
(2) Girthhitch the sling into the tie-in points on your harness
(3) The knot creates a “shelf ” that will hold the device about 20 inches away from you.
(4) The outer loop can be clipped to belay loop, ready to clip into each rap anchor.
(5) A release and hitch knot.

Munter knot (if you lost your rappel device).

I got to try all of these, using the gears provided by Kaf for the class. Of course, the holy grail is practice, so much so, that you'd be able to do these in the dark, with frozen fingers in gloves. For more knots, I found website.

The same evening I went to Base Camp to hear about circumnavigation of Cordillera Huayhuash 7-9. It was chaotic. The event started 15 minutes late, and it started with raffle and ended with raffle. The organizer was eager to sell raffle tickets ($5). The presentation was short of 1 hour, half of which is about a little dog who accompanied them in the hike.