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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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I dropped the RP's, and my sleeping bag on the P.O. Wall, I didn't have a rainfly that worked and my bag got soaked, so when it cleared up I put my bag out on my ledge to dry out. Just a little of the end was hanging off the side. I turned away for a second before I could clip it in. The end of the bag was so water logged, it just slid off like a Slinky! When I turned around I felt like Curly of The Three Stooges..."Where'd it go"!
Needless to say I had a few cold nights! I did find it at the base after!
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Steve,
Glad you're not finished having fun on the Captain yet. It's my favourite campground.
FWIW, I have been told by scores of people [if not a hundred or more over the years] that I have taught them more about big wall climbing - by them reading my various "Dr. Piton how-to" posts - than they have learned in any book or magazine or anyplace else. There is not a week that goes by in Yosemite where somebody doesn't come by and thank me for something I've written that they used to help them in some way.
Even more importantly, people tell me that I have inspired them to climb big walls, especially solo. A lot of people have told me that the stuff they've learned from my writing has helped them reach the summit, and nothing pleases me more than to hear that.
And as for you aspiring Big Wall Theorists, who have yet to reach the summit of a big wall by legit means, don't give up - if a middle-aged overweight weiner-armed part-time wanker-climber like me can get to the top, then so can you.
Anders - you're on! Your first requirement will be to bring us a really nice bottle of cab or shiraz, and none o' that BC crap! We might have to go on a Field Trip to source it out ourselves in Napa or Sonoma first.
[Actually, I did enjoy one really fine bottle of BC wine this year, which came as a very pleasant surprise. It was a bottle of old vine zin, can't remember the winery, though]
Oh yeah, I dropped my sleeping bag once off of Aurora. I was not too concerned, because I had a bivi sack that I could sleep in. Except that the next night, I dropped that too! For the rest of the wall, I wrapped myself up in my rain fly - sheesh. Dropped a jug off of Excalibur, but had a spare on my 2:1. Dropped a shoe off of Never Never Land - that *really* sucked because I had to wear a borrowed free climbing shoe that was way too small, so tight I had to soak it with water every morning before I put it on. Dropped my raincoat off of NA Wall, but Ricardo recovered it for me. I've dropped one hammer, and one helmet + headlamp. I don't believe I have ever dropped a beer, but have spilled a couple. I really need Russ to come up with some clever idea for a beer holder on my ledge, but I'm not sure how.
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426
climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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Heh, almost lends credence to Skinner's motto "aid climbing ain't climbing".
You ever hear from Jon Fox?
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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I never claimed to be a climber! I am merely a big wall camper. The climbing is just a necessary encumbrance to reach the bitchin'est campsites. Besides, it's aid climbing, which is inherently cheating, anyway.
Nope, I have never have heard from Jon. No idea what became of him, unfortunately. Isn't there are "where's Jon Fox?" post on here somewhere we ought to bump?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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THAT explains everything...............
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C. Small wall climber.
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OK, I may need a little guidance with regard to wine selection, and logistical matters, and we'll have to talk about route selection. One that goes right to the tippy top, so we can wave at the gang on the bridge. I may be in Sonoma in February, and could look around for wine then.
ps We may need to discuss the sheep thing.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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I've been lucky here. . .
I've dropped a piece or two, but never the full rack!!!!!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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It isn't about luck...usually! LOL
Anders- when was your last El cap route?
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Ricky;
Man, I have bubbled some sh#t over the years. But never the whole rack, Ever! The worst I ever did I think, was cut the water loose by accident. But the next day it rained like a bad smell so it worked out! Thank God for that.
Dogtown.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C. Small wall climber.
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Steve raises a good point, which is that I've never gotten more than about a third of the way up El Cap. That was some time ago. I've done some reasonably large things elsewhere in the meantime, and would still like to finally get up the Captain. Hopefully improved knowledge, techniques and equipment would more or less balance out other factors. Pete is only a few years younger, and Ottawa Doug almost the same age. Maybe the three of us could team up...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Anders- I wasn't trying to out you since I recall seeing shots of you on El Cap from BITD. Tom Frost is living proof that age is no barrier. If you are willing to bust your ass, wall climbing has never been easier. Pete is living proof of that.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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I witnessed the entire haul bag fall down from Uncle Bens........lucky fer me I was on the ground. Ghost ?
Dang. I was happy to stay out of this thread, cuz I've never dropped a rack. In thirty-five years of bumbling my way up things I've dropped a biner or stopper here and there, I think a cam one time, and one lens.
But Tami's outed me so I should fess up. In fact it's a good time, given the Bill Price thread that's running concurrent with this one. When Bill came up to Squamish in the late 70s he brought his friend Mike Boris (aka Big Wally). Daryl Hatton introduced them to me (which was an interesting event in its own right: see http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=668163&msg=671589#msg671589);. Bill was keen to do some hard free climbing and Wally said he wasn't interested in that and would I go up on one of the Squamish wall routes with him?
So we headed up Uncle Bens. Not a biggie, but we planned to spend one night on it. It starts with two pitches of moderate but very sparsely protected face climbing, and I found out that what Wally meant when he said he wasn't much interested in free climbing was actually "I don't free climb." He made it clear that there was no way he was leading anything that didn't involve aiders. So I got us up those two pitches, which I think he jugged rather than followed even though they were relatively low-angle and mostly 5.7/5.8.
He then quickly nailed across the traversing third pitch, tied in, and got ready to haul. Since the pitch was so short and the pig relatively light, we decided to retie it in the middle of the rope so I could guide it from behind as he hauled, instead of just cutting it loose and have it crashing into who-knows-what.
Great. I tied a new figure-8 in the middle or the rope, clipped it to the pig with a locking biner, and then started untying to old knot.
Whoops! instead of clipping the new knot to the bag, I'd somehow clipped it to the old knot, and as I got near the end of the untie the last turn of the knot ripped out and the bag zoomed off into space.
But I've never dropped a rack!
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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Superf*#kinglame is an understatement.
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skychild
Trad climber
Birmingham, Alabama
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My nuts dropped when I was about twelve. When its cold out I seem much younger. Don
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Prezwoodz
Big Wall climber
Anchorage
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I put the stopper in the crack and gave it a bit of a tug. Then I looked down to see that it was raining nuts all over the bottom of the route, The only one left on the biner was the one still in the crack.
I also took a big 40ft fall or so hitting ledges as I went and doing backwards somersaults off of those ledges. When I finally stopped my feet were hanging in the air and I felt happy to be alive. I climbed to my belay partner and he asked me if the ascenders he was holding were mine. I thought it was odd and then noticed that I had actually busted open my belay loop dumbing locking biners, a gri-gri and other items 200+ ft down the mountain. We finished the climb and after finally downc limbing back to our bags my gri-gri and several locking caribiners were sitting 5ft from my back pack I had left at the base...
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guest
climber
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Great thread, so funny to read these stories. That said, Mal gives Josh and I a bit too much credit for our 2004 Great Trango bumbling – it wasn’t *that* bad. We only lost about a quarter of our cams in the rack incident on the second pitch – five cams, I think. I felt them hitting my leg mid-pitch and looked down to see that the right side of our double gear sling had come undone (which was Josh’s fault, I swear…), but I reached down and caught a handful, which seemed to make it not so bad. Indeed, the weather was good so we kept going. You can do things like that when climbing with someone as good as Josh, I figured.
I don’t remember the 30’ up and down thing – rather, on some cruxy leads Josh just ran it out. Day four, 7,000’ up the route, his block and he dead-ends on the ridge and launches out left onto the big-wall face, tensions into a corner that holds a thin streak of verglas and puts his half-sized ice tool in his left hand, straps an aluminum crampon to his left rock shoe, and works his way up the pitch – at 20k feet, tapping into thin ice with his left side and crimping 5.11 face holds with his right, running it out 40 feet to what became our bivy ledge. Unreal. Never seen anything like it, and it unlocked the route for us. The next morning, I took over and we hit the summit and rapped down the other side (to where we could hit a hanging glacier to down-climb) too soon, the wall blanking out and leading us into a descent that still gives me chills (another story, but one rappel anchor was an RP…).
True, though, that we brought only one fuel canister. Can’t explain our thinking there – guess we’d convinced ourselves we’d find water running down the rock everywhere and not need to melt for water. On the first night, it worked. On the second night we killed our canister melting snow. On the third and fourth nights, and days, we went thirsty.
We did bring sleeping bags – summer down bags, no shelter. Was reasonably comfy, actually, with only minor shivering as we got dehydrated. Funny thing was, when we attempted Shingu Charpa in ’06, as a result of not shivering too badly on GT we didn’t bring sleeping bags. Those three nights sucked.
In our traveling junk show on GT, we carried all our trash off with us but it seems we keep dropping other things. I remember at the 2nd or 3rd bivy Josh had one of those Petzl headlamps with the retractable elastic that’s like a slingshot, and indeed it acted exactly like a slingshot when it shot off his head and into space.
On day four I dropped my belay device. Somehow remembered how to use a carabiner brake for the raps.
Given our ineptness in planning and inability to keep hold of things, it’s amazing we pulled it off – then again, guess you can go pretty light after you’ve dropped what little you brought to begin with.
Sh#t, now I’m remembering the time I dropped my ice tool in ground fall runout zone in Hyalite Canyon back in the Sketchy Kelly days (as opposed to GT in ’04), but that’s another story…
--KC
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Oh geez, I almost forgot - I did drop a pig once. This is well documented elsewhere. Basically, I had two identical lockers in the system, the power point locker to which the pig was tethered, and the suspension point locker on the top of the pig. I was a bit flustered about something or other - I think it was this expanding anchor on Scorched Earth that had swallowed up my vintage #4 Friend - and confused the two lockers. I put the haul line into the suspension point locker instead of the pig locker - d'oh!
I remember undocking the pig, and as the docking tether FLEW through the carabiner, I wondered why it was going so fast! We had just enough food and water left in the pig I didn't drop, so suddenly our leisurely pitch-a-day big wall camping pace was shattered, and we started leading in blocks.
I remember people telling me later, "we looked up on the wall, and you were gone, so we figured you bailed. Then we looked up higher than we expected, and there you were - we couldn't believe it!"
We later retrieved the pig and all the gear, which had fallen into the trees near the Trip. There were huge Valley Giant cams lying all over the place, but nobody pinched anything. Neither did anyone tidy up for us.
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fosburg
climber
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I sort of dropped a good amount of the rack once. A few winters ago, Tim Wagner and I made the long drive out to Yosemite to do the Widow's Tears since we had good info it was in. Typically, it was melted out by the time we got there. We decided to do Astroman as somewhat of a consolation since the weather was so dreamy. While I was following/grinding up the endurance corner Tim's makeshift gear sling,which was a long "rabbit runner" clipped to make a loop, came unclipped and a bunch of cams cut loose and went to the deck. At the ledge we assessed the remaining rack and I voted for bailing. Tim volunteered to lead us out of there with a very pinner rack indeed, pretty heroic.
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