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hairyapeman
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 8, 2011 - 11:28pm PT
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What do you take on a big wall climb to make life more enjoyable?
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squishy
Mountain climber
sacramento
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wine...
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marv
Mountain climber
Bay Area
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caffeine in the am, alcohol in the pm
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sjellison
Mountain climber
Tucson, AZ
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I love the butt bag for the hanging belays!
Water
Several handfulls of IBUs
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MBrown
Big Wall climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Beer, Green, climbing gear , Beer.
and some more beer
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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Apples and Oranges. Fresh fruit gives such a lift to the spirits.
And beer.
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sjellison
Mountain climber
Tucson, AZ
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30ft stick clip
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hairyapeman
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 9, 2011 - 12:32am PT
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HA! Simon would be awesome....and Alaskan Amber too of course!
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cragnshag
Social climber
san joser
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How many times must I be forced to post this photo?
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marv
Mountain climber
Bay Area
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that's funny as hell: the OE can has the price on the can: $1.25
worth every cent -- but not a penny more!!
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Wow, I barely have Space to write everything down.
The bottom line here, the mantra with which you should live, is "any fool can be uncomfortable." If you are on a big wall, and you are uncomfortable, you have made a mistake. You are working too hard, you made a mistake in planning, you forgot something, whatever. You are a fool, and you have no one to blame but yourself. Accordingly, make sure you are prepared. Here are a few ideas that you might find handy.
Gotta start each day with coffee. Mark Hudon of Hood River Coffee has made me my very own " 'Pass the Pitons' Pete blend" consisting of his awesome New Guinea dark beans. Mark and I still need to have our "Coffee Off" - how about this spring on the bridge, buddy? We'll brew our own brews, and offer independent tastings to the monkeys. Well, I'll brew *your* brew using *my* system.
On a big wall, bringing enough food, water and time away from home, work and girlfriend[s] allows you the luxury of taking your time, relaxing, and just plain festering. Not bringing enough of any of the above can force you to climb too fast, get up too early, keep climbing after dark, and put unnecessary time pressure on you. Climbing big walls is hard enough, so why make it harder? Being hungry is awful, being thirsty is even worse. There is certainly no need to do either.
You really have to bring the kind of food you WANT to eat. What looks good at home or in the grocery store may not necessarily be that apetizing on a big wall. I don't know why this is so, but it is. So you need to choose stuff you know you're going to love, even cold. I rarely bother to heat my supper, I'm quite content to eat it cold right out of the can. Don't skimp on luxuries - buy expensive stuff you might normally not buy at home.
Canned fruit can be extremely desirable when the weather is hot, and virtually unpalatable when the weather is cold. Such food is super-saturated, and you can cut down your water ration a bit if you take a lot of canned fruit.
Bring plenty of baby wipes, half a dozen per person per day is about right. You'll want to clean all that aluminum off your fingers so you don't end up like Ronald Reagan. Disgusting smelling partners are emphatically knott permitted on my walls.
Sharing a ledge, even with a hottie, is uncomfortable. "Sharing a ledge with another man is tantamount to homosexuality." - Chongo Having your own space makes life so much more comfortable. I really have my big wall camping systems dialled - everything in its place. I know exactly where to reach to find stuff pretty much every time. I can't do this when some lardass partner is in my way. My ass is big enough of its own, thank you.
I love to flag my ledge and enjoy luxurious belays. Once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy and not inefficient. Why hang from a butt bag, or carry a belay bench or mini ledge, when you can luxuriate on your regular ledge? Plus you don't have to take time to take it apart in the morning and set it up again at night.
Having enough gear is really key. Plenty of Yates Screamers and Scream-Aids keep you a lot less scared on harder pitches. Having enough gear so you don't have to backclean on hard pitches keeps you feeling more relaxed. Take fewer nuts and angles and arrows, take more cams and peckers, especially the new big peckers. There are two things you can't have enough of on big walls - free carabiners and slings. Bring plenty of each, and when you think you have enough, double it and you're probably about right. And don't run out of duct tape - it saved the Apollo 13 astronauts' lives and it could save yours. Use it for everything from pig repair to taping down hooks for pro [yes, this really works]. Extra hoo-hahs like a butterknife for cleaning out deadheads can make life a lot easier, and can legitimize your ascent without you having to cheat.
Big pigs make life so much easier. Trying to cram everything into a too-small pig is an exercise in futility and frustration. When it comes to hauling, the size of your pig is pretty much irrelevant. Why not bring enough piggage so that stuff isn't hanging out everywhere, and you don't have to spend extra time trying to pack the thing? If you overfill, attach your extra stuff to differently coloured Catch Lines. Don't clip stuff to the bottom of your pig - not only is it really hard to get to, and you could drop it, but the weight of the stuff pulls the bottom of your pig downward, making the pig get skinny and very much harder to pack. If you have a Catch Line on the upper suspension point, your pig will hang freely.
If you are bringing two pigs per person for long-hard walls, put your second week's food and water in the bottom pig, and hang it from a full-strength Catch Line. Make sure you don't need to get inside of it, although in theory you could store your storm gear on the top of it. This will orient your "junk show" vertically, and leave more room at the anchors.
Make a list of where you packed your stuff, and keep it handy. Example: "Storm gear - black OASIS bag - top of black piglet" "Coffee kit - large red fish bag - top of main pig" This way you won't be digging through your pigs looking for stuff. What seems straightforward on the ground can turn into a real nightmare on the wall. Buy lots of FISH bags - the things are the bomb! Get 'em in different sizes and colours - it's impossible to have too many.
Try to colour code EVERYTHING! I use Blue FISH bags for Breakfast stuff - get it? I use Red slings on stuff that goes on my Right side. Red is almost always Right. Red haul line, red adjustable daisy, etc. I also have dedicated colour-coded carabiners for each of my cams. Red Alien goes on a red crab, Gold Camalot goes on a gold crab, and so on. When you have 40 or 50 cams on your rack, a little colour coding can go a long way in de-clustering your rack.
Learn how to rack your rack. Start with your lead rack, and for cryin' out loud make sure you have tethers on it. The very first thing you want to do when you reach the belay is take that mofo off. Reach up, clip-clip your two tethers, and slither out of the thing. Sweet relief. Have a dedicated racking system that you and your partner[s] agree on ahead of time. Rack as you clean - it's already in your hand, so take the damn thing apart and put it where it belongs!
Use your front subracks on your harness. Ten years ago I wrote, "one day big wall harnesses will come with front subracks, but for now you will have to add your own." Well, that day has come. Put things like free carabiners and nuts up there out of the way. Also your hooks, in bags. Get a separate drawstring bag for each rack of hooks. Each rack of hooks is tied on its own separate colour of sling. That way if you drop one carabiner of hooks, you won't drop all of one size. Bags for your tangly stuff like hooks, heads, and peckers will save you all sorts of aggravation.
Build redundancy into every system you can, especially your racking system! Stuff gets dropped, so make sure you can't drop all of one size. NEVER rack two or more of the same pieces on the same carabiner, cuz if you drop it, you're buggered. Split up your stuff whenever possible. Always be aware of the consequences of dropping any single item, and set up your system to mitigate this. Always be thinking, "If I were to drop this, what would happen?"
Be careful how you rack stuff. Keep your metal on one side like heads and pins and wires. Keep your nylon on the other side, like cams. Put those damn tanglies in bags, already! And sharp stuff, that could put holes in your body in the event of a fall.
"If it ain't clipped, it's gone!" - Chongo Put clip in loops on everything. You can make an Anything into a Big Wall Anything by simply adding a clip-in loop. Do it now on the ground, and do it right. If you have a bag you intend to hang on a Catch Line, make two independent points of suspension for redundancy. Dangle an internal daisy chain inside your pig, and clip stuff on top to it. It is easy to drop stuff out of the top of your pig, especially when it is overstuffed.
Don't leave stuff on your portaledge not clipped in. [Don't do as I do, do as I say, sheesh]
Tuneage is key. You wanna play the tunes, especially when you're scared on lead. Headphones are fine, but there's nothin' like a good old fashioned ghetto blaster to crank out a soothing AC/DC tune.
Two-way radios make life a hella lot easier. You can communicate with your partner around corners and roofs, and you can talk to the monkeys down on the bridge, or friends on other routes. Don't leave the ground without 'em. And bring plenty of batteries as the radios use more than you think. Same for your headlamps, although these days the LEDs seem to last almost forever.
You don't need a cheat stick. The route you are on has been climbed dozens, scores, hundreds of times before you. What did the last guy do? You might be short, but you're not the shortest to have climbed this pitch. Figure out how to climb your route without cheating.
A big cushy wall harness and pair of wall shoes beat the hell out of suffering through a skinny ass sport climbing pussy harness and pair of free climbing shoes. You're up here for a while, why not be comfortable? Ditto for having the proper clothing and sleeping gear - it really sucks to be cold and wet.
Have your systems dialled beforehand - leading, cleaning, jugging and especially hauling. If you are jugging any distance, especially on a free hanging rope, make damn sure you know what you are doing. It doesn't have to be hard - ask any caver. As for hauling, that doesn't have to be hard, either. Make yourself a 2:1 Chongo hauling ratchet, and learn how to use it beforehand by hauling bags of rocks. It takes some practice, but once you get it dialled the thing will positively sing for you. Don't wait til you're at the top of your first haul to figure it out, because it is not particularly intuitive nor easy - it requires a lot of fine tuning and tweaking. Jugging and hauling and cleaning are the things people overlook in their quest to "climb" big walls, but the actual climbing is only a small part of the game.
Hmmm, still not running out of Space.
Do you like schlepping pigs? Do you like walking uphill under crushing loads? I thought knott. Bring some extra $ and hire some dirtbag monkeys from Camp 4 or the bridge. They will appreciate your patronage, and you can get on with the task at hand. Hiring sherpas to schlep your pigs can save you a day or two in your wall. How much money are those two days off work costing you?
Find yourself a Wall Doctor and write him ahead of time, bouncing ideas and concepts and questions off of him. You can figure stuff out ahead of time, saving yourself huge amounts of time and effort on the wall, and drastically improving your odds of success. Even Master Climbers like Mark Hudon can benefit from the help of their Wall Doctor. Remember that Wall Doctors, for the most part, are motivated by beers. Particularily crafty Wall Doctors have a dedicated Beer Dropoff Location in Yosemite, even when they're not there. A Good Wall Doctor is a very speedy typist, and will return your emails promptly. Note that Wall Doctors do knott necessarily have Fingers Of Steel - this is something reserved for free climbers, gym climbers, and sport climbers. It is not a necessity for wall climbing.
What is a necessity for wall climbing is the proper attitude. You have to arrive at the base of the big wall determined to do everything required to climb the damn thing. Think of the investment in time and energy and cost at home [work, girlfriend[s], etc] that you have made just to get here. It would be insane to bail after so much work! Yet why is it that only 50% of the people who come to the base of a big wall actually succeed in climbing it? I think the main reason is that they don't have their minds "steeled" to what it will take. Climbing big walls is a ton of hard work, and it is not for the faint of heart. You have to give 'er, and you have to give 'er your all. This is no place for wankers, pussies, wannabes, or Big Wall Theorists. You've put a ton of work into just getting here, now SHUT UP AND CLIMB. YES, it's hard work. YES, this is stupid and crazy and pointless. But the climb being pointless IS the point! Either you get it, or you don't. And if you don't, you have no business being here. So quit your damn complaining, this was your idea after all, now get out on the sharp end, haul the damn pig, and take it one move at a time, one pitch at a time.
Always remember the first days are hardest, but you are like the space shuttle - when you leave the earth you are only moving an inch or two per second, but as you climb higher and burn off your fuel, your speed increases, and eventually you will reach Escape Velocity.
Did someone mention beer? YARRRRR! Definitely a big wall necessity. Choose a beer you don't mind drinking warm. I really like Murphy's stout from Ireland that you can get at Trader Joe's. Cybele put me onto this on NA Wall. Olde English is of course the perennial favourite, unless you are more of a fan of King Cobra. Personally, I find beer to be "water neutral" - it neither hydrates nor dehydrates me, and does not affect my water calculations.
Other necessary items include a selection of fine wines and cheeses, plus crackers to serve with the above. It's really important to have both white wine and red wine. When I was on Octopussy with Kate, we had a storm day when snow was sloughing off the slabs above. I only had a bottle of red wine left, and it was chilled to near the freezing point. I had to put it inside my sleeping bag all afternoon to try to warm it up to drinking temperature. Pretty darn cold on my legs. For whites I favour oaky and buttery chardonnay, and for reds pretty much exclusively cabs and shirazes, or syrah as some Californians call that varietal. If you can get your hands on an Amador County barbera, you will be very pleased. I would like to get a hold of some lexan wine glasses, however. It is hard keeping your crystal stemware intact on the wall.
Note that wine, cheese and crackers are quite anhydrous, meaning you need to compensate with extra water.
Next we should talk about liquor, with the following caveat:
The use of alcohol on big walls - except in the case of emergency - is strongly discouraged. However emergencies can occur from time to time, so you had best be prepared.
The nice thing about climbing on big walls is that in the Emergency Rations department, a little can go a long way. When you're dehydrated and exhausted, and you first set up your ledge and reach for your Emergency Rations, a shot of whisky or a Gatorita will have you feeling pretty happy pretty quickly. Hard liquor is most assuredly anhydrous, so you will need to compensate with extra water.
There are Other Things you can bring, and although I don't use them, I can understand why you might.
Looks like I had Space after all.
Anyway, a few ideas.
Cheers and beers on the ledge,
PTP Pete
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j-tree
Big Wall climber
bay area, ca
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Have people made ascents of yosemite walls with a dog in tow? I'd imagine someone would no matter how ill advised such an endeavor might be.
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland, CA
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Mandarin oranges in light syrup. Copious amounts of that. Jolly ranchers.
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sjellison
Mountain climber
Tucson, AZ
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didnt know such a comprehensive set of bigwall info could be crammed into a single post. AWESOME Pete, Thank you!!!
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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A true heart.
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mucci
Trad climber
The pitch of Bagalaar above you
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Copious amount of ass whipes.
Full finger gloves.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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After more than a couple days and a laxative might be helpful.
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