Preliminary report on the St Savvas (Kalymnos) anchor, which failed with lethal consequences on 27th March 2026

Suprise: it's not sulphide stress cracking mediated by sulphate reducing bacteria!

Petzl Gougon 10 mm from 2000-2005 should be treated as high risk until we have better data. It might be a bad batch. They might have been used in other crags.

https://cragchemistry.com/2026/06/08/kalymnos-catastrophic-anchor-failure/

Images are from the Rebolt Kalymnos Facebook post.

#climbing #kalymnos #bolting #escalade #rockclimbing

Moab Is Not Real Life

#Moab #MoabUtah #VisitMoab #MoabIsNotRealLife #Utah #VisitUtah #UtahIsRad #UtahLife #ArchesNationalPark #CanyonlandsNationalPark #DelicateArch #DeadHorsePoint #FieryFurnace #FisherTowers #NationalParks #NationalParksUSA #FindYourPark #MountainBiking #SlickrockTrail #WhitewaterRafting #ColoradoRiver #HikingUSA #DesertHiking #RockClimbing #AdventureTravel #OutdoorAdventure #TrailBlazing #CanyonHiking #RiverRafting #USATravel #TravelUSA…

https://aroundtheworldiod.wordpress.com/2026/05/30/moab-is-not-real-life/

Mountains are entities

Mountains are entities; you get to climb them, but you can’t conquer them. Put your arrogance aside. You can never beat a mountain into submission. If I summit it’s because I was in the right place at the right time.

slip:4a644.

Go simply

Training prepares your body and, most important, your mind for ascent through consistent, hard, disciplined practice.

Go simply, train smart, climb well.

slip:4a607.

Programming is terrible, part 2

Three years ago I posted, Programming is terrible. These days? …yeah, exactly the same, but now I find I’m staring suspiciously at, basically, everything thinking: I’m about to do something which, as soon as I completely forget the details, (in the too-near future,) I’m going to be left with something that irritates me. A mess of my own making, as it were.

I’ve been on a bender for decades—which clearly means I’ve not been succeeding, right? I’ve been on a bender to simplify things as much as I can. A lot of progress can be made in that direction simply by removing goals: If I can delete the goal of, “make this thing be successful,” then that might make it possible to simply enjoy the thing. Normal people would just call that “a hobby” and wouldn’t need a paragraph to unpack the idea.

Rock climbing falls into this “hobby” category. I’m a poor, (as in skill,) climber, but since I don’t have any goals related to climbing, it’s just, “any day at the crag.” (And the, “…is better than any other day,” is left unsaid.) That’s literally my mantra. (Somebody should find me a sticker that says that for the top of my climbing helmet.) Some days I climb a bunch of stuff. Some days I fall off a bunch of stuff. Some days it’s glorious weather. Some days it’s tics, snakes and poison ivy. I’ve climbed a bunch of stuff already. There’s a bunch more stuff to climb.

ɕ