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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Oct 12, 2009 - 04:07pm PT
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Impatiently awaiting the next installment!
And while I sit and fidget (and do some real work) I'd like to compliment you on your trousers in the pic above ^^^. They appear to have a leather patch which would make chimneying an absolute breeze!
GO
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 12, 2009 - 04:13pm PT
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That fashion-forward fellow is Tom Kaufman, not me!
Dig the purple balaclava. Joe had an orange one and I had a green.
We coulda been a singing act in town.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 12, 2009 - 05:02pm PT
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So this question of who Beulah was came up last Thursday because I thought I
should climb Beulah's Book.
Joe thought that sounded like a swell idea for him too, although he mentioned
having climbed "exactly never" since last October -- when we met for a weekend
to write the Alpinist 28 story.
Joe Herbst hiking towards Oak Creek in 1975.
The main formations were unnamed and unclimbed.
By 2009, things had changed.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 14, 2009 - 02:07pm PT
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More hints, and teasing photos, please!
And it's nice to know that Beulah is unrelated to Ralph.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Oct 14, 2009 - 02:17pm PT
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Beulah come back, don't judge a book by it's cover, we can turn the page.
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cowpoke
climber
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Oct 14, 2009 - 03:00pm PT
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A Larry & Joe TR?!? Yay!!!
Beulah was the name of a likable neighbor, across Joe Herbst's backyard fence.
Ok, but something still feels missing. With all of his FA's, maybe resorting to neighbor names was inevitable?
"one of the coolest 5.9 leads in RR" = a nice way to celebrate the b-day.
Edit: love the 75 and 09 shots of Joe hiking in front of you! poignant.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2009 - 03:22pm PT
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love the 75 and 09 shots of Joe hiking in front of you! poignant.
That pair of photos really hit me, after I posted. Can't look at them without getting lost.
Ok, but something still feels missing.
With all of his FA's, maybe resorting to neighbor names was inevitable?
Yeah, there were several bits missing as we hiked into the canyon last week. I thought
I knew who Beulah was now. But how did she become the namesake of Randy and Dave's
route? And who really did the first ascent?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2009 - 03:28pm PT
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Joe could recall climbing the route, and thinking there had been a guidebook mixup, much
later, when it came out as Randy and Dave's first ascent.
But there was some quality to that recollection that left Joe uncertain. He wondered, as
a mental health professional, whether it might be "a false memory." Climbing the route
(again?) ought to settle that, I thought.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Oct 14, 2009 - 04:04pm PT
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I doth thinketh that Spartacus teaseth us most relentlessly.
Come man spillith more gems amongst us.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2009 - 04:55pm PT
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I could see where that's vexatious, someone telling a story that unwraps as piecemeal as
it did in real time. Even the teller forgets where he was.
Anyway, we started out towards Oak Creek with more deja vu than usual, plus the
excitement of a new route for me and an old mystery for Joe.
Some other climbers at the trailhead, bound for Byrd's Pinnacle (named after my college
roommate John Byrd, but that's another story), asked what we were climbing. When I
replied Beulah's Book, one said Oh, you're doing the bolted arete variation? No, of course,
the chimney! I answered. For gym climbers there's now a generic-looking bolted 5.8
variation that avoids the route's signature chimney. We might be old but we got pride.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2009 - 05:04pm PT
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Pride or no, our team was happy enough to let me hog the leads. Especially the big
chimney, which looks way scarier than it is.
Following, Joe inched steadily up the chimney and into a steep elegant corner above.
When he reached a stance there, I called down the question on my mind.
"So, have you ever been here before?"
He called back emphatically, "No!"
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 14, 2009 - 05:08pm PT
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NICE!
VERY good stuff!
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Oct 14, 2009 - 05:14pm PT
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love the 75 and 09 shots of Joe hiking in front of you! poignant.
That pair of photos really hit me, after I posted. Can't look at them without getting lost.
It's a very cool pair of bookends! Can't help but notice that the old guys are kinda getting a later start in the morning than the young ones, though!
Anyway, so far so good. Fun reading! Looking forward to the next installment.
GO
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2009 - 05:20pm PT
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Later we talked it over, the false memory and the route name. Here's my own reconstruction
of what happened:
Back in the day, Joe knew these canyons intimately. As he scrambled and climbed everywhere,
he picked out future routes. Often he studied lines in close detail, even gave them a name,
long before recruiting a partner who could climb them. Frigid Air Buttress, the Rainbow Wall,
Centerfold and many others all had these names, in Joe's mind, well before their first ascents.
He climbed them in his dreams.
I'm guessing that Beulah's Book was like that, a line picked out and named by Joe -- named
because like his neighbor the real Beulah, it was "out back" with respect to somewhere else he
was focused. It would be typical for him to have figured out each pitch and vividly imagined
climbing them; I think that could account for his vague memories of having done the first ascent.
When we climbed up there last week, he realized that he hadn't.
Randy Grandstaff was Joe's protégé and close friend. If Joe had pointed out the line "Beulah's
Book" to him, already calling it by that name, I could imagine Randy honoring the name
(though he barely knew Beulah) when he and Dave Anderson made the actual first ascent.
Is that history true? It's the best I can do with the puzzle pieces at hand. Perhaps someone
else can add more.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Oct 14, 2009 - 05:29pm PT
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Love that picture Larry. You and Joe sure cast some gigantic shadows across the landscape.
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cowpoke
climber
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Oct 14, 2009 - 06:10pm PT
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He climbed them in his dreams.
I'm guessing that Beulah's Book was like that, a line picked out and named by Joe -- named because like his neighbor the real Beulah, it was "out back" with respect to somewhere else he was focused. It would be typical for him to have figured out each pitch and vividly imagined climbing them; I think that could account for his vague memories of having done the first ascent.
I like the hypothesis, Larry. Cognitive psychologists interested in memory would call Joe's confusion a source monitoring error, meaning his "memory" was attributed to the incorrect source. For example, people can "remember" events that they, in fact, did not have happen to them, but instead were events that were told to them in a story, they watched in a movie, or they dreamt about.
Discovering these memory errors can often be embarrassing, but this one is just a fun story!
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2009 - 09:14am PT
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a source monitoring error
So there's a name for it! Thanks, I'll share that explanation with Joe.
In the Tarbuster tradition that TRs ought to end in a bar, I need to wrap up the loose ends.
There was a Tale of Two Ropes.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2009 - 09:19am PT
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A Tale of Two Ropes:
We'd brought along a well-behaved 9.4mm X 70m Sterling Ion, which has been my favorite
adventure-climb cord this year. Cowpoke might recall its key role on Children's Crusade
Direct. On Beulah's Book, the Sterling was our lead rope.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2009 - 09:23am PT
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But we also had this rope, about 30 years older. 12mm X 50m, it was stiff as a cable and
brittle as hemp. When weighted, it made creaking noises. It fit no belay device, becoming
an object of much discussion as we climbed.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2009 - 10:15am PT
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The old rope's handling characteristics made it a two-person activity to belay.
But, you gotta work with what you have.
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