Iconic soloing shots

We've all heard this one but in the spirit of the JT reunion I'll recount it again....

One day after an early morning bouldering session, me and Yabo were beat. We decided to call it quits and take a rest day. We sparked a doobious cigarette and started yapping. Yabo told me he wanted to solo Spiderline (which at the time had only been top roped, never lead).

I told him he should wait until he got it "really wired". Then he told me he was meditating on the ledge below Spiderline the night before and all of a sudden there was a spider dangling in front of him. It had lowered from the crack above. He then said it was an omen letting him know he could solo Spiderline.

I tried to keep a poker face. I really thought he was getting too lost in this "omen" stuff but I couldn't tell him. I tried talking him into waiting again and he seemed OK with that. I split for camp and told my friend Buck Norden (sp?) about what just happened. He thought Yabo was losing it too.

Our conversation was interrupted by a whooping high pitched, "yay yay yay yay".
What the fuk was that? We looked up and there he was, a third the way up Spiderline.

I grabbed my camera and we ran up to the base to take a picture. Before we got going, Yabo's feet popped out of the crack and his body took a wicked swing outwards. Amazingly enough, he hung on!

I thought, "Cool, he can still downclimb from there". That's not what happened - he kept going.

John Yablonski on the first free solo (and lead) of Spiderline, 11c/d.

The he got near the last move - a funky roll over onto a dicey slab move. It was hot out and Yabo was sweating and shaking fiercely. So he takes his shirt off for the last move!

He was shaking like a leaf in a hundred mile per hour wind and he rolled into the slab move and climbed away. Norden was facing in the other direction - he couldn't watch.

Me and Norden went over to the Scatterbrain boulder and were talking about what we just saw. We both thought we should tell Yabo to cool it or he was going to get killed. Just then Yabo popped up on a boulder above us and said,"Who are you guys to tell me anything. I just soloed Spiderline!". Then he spirited away. He obviously overheard our conversation

When I ran into him later he had cooled off a bit. I did notice the largest hand jam gobie I have ever seen - on the back of Yabo's right hand. It was as round and almost as thick as a half dollar...the dude hung on hard.