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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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apropos of the retro-bolting thread, God's Creation was retro-bolted between the first time I tried it and the second time... many more bolts now, than shown in the topos.
I couldn't find The Gardener Did It either, maybe I could now, but some of those routes never get done and go wild again...
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leinosaur
Trad climber
burns flat, ok
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"Here is question for climbers who are more current: Has run-out slab climbing continued?"
(Roger)
Yes, it has.
We still love it here in Oklahoma. Several of the longest (i.e. 250') routes in the state are of the spicy slab variety, and see frequent ascents with their original 1970's bolt count. The granite gods favored us with quality over quantity, so we climb it all, as is.
Many if not most of the FA-artists from the last three decades are still hard at it, and we youngsters get a good schooling in style, ethics and tequila early on. It soon becomes clear that one bolt does not a sport route make, nor yet two or three over a hundred feet.
A handful of Duane Raleigh's solo lines of 10a and below were retro'd down to R-ishness, with FA permission, though not without some gnashing of teeth. The idea was to give the younger generation more faith in our footwork before launching us onto the mandatory 30+' runouts on most every section 5.9 or cheaper.
No bolts, though, have been added to anything that already had one, to my knowledge. Even Snow White (10b RX), whose bolts could be seen as cruelly botched, with the first of two on a 90' pitch coming AFTER the crux, a couple dozen feet over the sloping quartzite ledge she starts from . . . still attracts dwarves up to risk the poison apple. Something about seeing her frequently free-solo'd by a grey-haired dude with a hand-and-a-half to his name, just makes her seem more doable, somehow.
"S-Wall" remains a rite of passage, 5.9/220' with its original two bolts for pro: one per pitch. Granted most of it's 5.8 and under but the first bolt's about 80 ft. up. I'll never forget spotting it on my first lead of that pitch, about 10' left and 5' below my feet. As it only got steeper from where I was at, I opted for the clip. The bolt on the second pitch is about 15 feet off the belay, and then it's up, up and away for another good 60 before it gets much below 5.8.
One reason for paucity of bolts that nobody's said much about would be flow-maintenance for leaders (not just FA parties); if there's not a good stance, it's probably time to keep on paddling, anyway.
We just lost one of our finest to a failed free-solo of the Scariest Ride in the Park, at Potrero. That super-strong and steelheaded Texan was not only an active ambassador for meeting the home stone on its own terms, but an exhaustive chronicler of every runout and rap-bolt detail he could find. In Jimmy Ray's absence many are drinking deeply of his spirit, through their memories and his writings, and swearing to go bigger and bolder for all the right reasons. God knows he did.
The home stone's own terms are often bolts or nothing. Our pioneers went with a very few bolts and a whole lot of nothing. There are many of us busy finding out why.
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tenesmus
Trad climber
slc
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This has been really fun to read. I've spent a few years working slab routes and I really love it. Well, I love it when the 1/4-inchers have been replaced anyway. Hearing Jello's story about the Dorsal Fin and S-Direct is really cool for a wannabe Little Cottonwood slab climber like me.
It occurs to me that sticky rubber and bigger bolts have really changed this game. I seem to be unfortunately good at overweighting holds and pulling them off alltogether. It makes me wonder how those routes on the Apron have changed over the years as the little flakes of granite have worn off and as holds have crumbled. Have you stuck to the same grades when they are much "cleaner" than they were before? I mean, can you remember how much more featured it used to be 20 years ago? Has the sticky rubber accomodated for that in general?
How has modern belay devices vs the hip belay changed things?
Finally, as the grade progression increased (and sometimes the bolt count increased) on these routes did the terrain often approach vertical? We have a lot of Drew Bedford testpieces around here that echo this trend. Sure, they aren't low angle and they often aren't overhung, but you gotta be able to climb slabs to do them...
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Jorge
climber
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So in the interest of promoting more of this sort of climbing, here are a couple helicopter shots of the wall above the Powell ledges. I climbed something with someone and then we rapped down this line to the left of the DNB (call it a Paradise Found) and left some food and water to come back to. I guess you could call it previewing, but then, I never went back. I will say that the climbing looked splendid. First couple pitches off the Powell Reed ledges super clean, difficult but very do-able. Above, it steepens and has a few loose blocks, but otherwise remains clean and featured. Certainly not mungy.
Heck, maybe this has been done; I have no clue. Likewise the other obvious line that would certainly go at a good standard is the DDNB, the line that follows the prow to the rigth of the DNB, by way of the Turret and that other tower up there. Long, clean, steep, featured, spectactular. What more can one want?
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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jello and tenesmus,
this seems to be a valley boy thread, I doubt they really want to acknowledge a route ahead of their time in LCC in 1965 by G. Lowe. (just playfully jabbin at you guys) Tenesmus are those Bedford testpieces the ones he did in the 80's or new ones?
leinosaur, you do have some fine runouts and hard slab climbs out there at Quartz Mountain. I think my first visit was in 1991. I grew up climbing in LCC so I was familiar wth runout slabs but there were some hefty runs there thats for sure. Tony Mayse showed me around and became a good friend, tell him hi.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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In the early eighties the word was spreading like wildfire about the new rubber. I scraped together enough cash to buy a pair of Fires and promptly headed for the Apron to see if the claims could possibly be true. I had been working on The Calf over on the far left side and it seemed to be a good testcase. At 5.11c, in old rubber, the crux was greasy and technical.
As I laced up the magic shoes, my partner John Steiger was excited and full of anticipation. I moved easily up the first line of bolts and worked left into the crux area. I stepped onto the crux holds and stayed on the crux holds! In fact, I was so solid that I let go with one hand and began raving away at John far below. Barely able to contain himself, John was pacing back and forth relishing the prospects of the New World. Once I reached the belay, I took off the magic slippers and tossed them down to my now frothing partner.
John slipped into the future and started climbing. He moved upwards in wonder and began to step out onto the glassiest, smoothest glacial polished areas just to see where the breakaway point might be. He too was dumbfounded at the crux and looked up at me wide eyed and raving. He started to experimentally wander off onto the blankness again to see if he could acually fall when suddenly out came an "oh shit!" as he abruptly stepped onto the nearest bolt hanger. In his excitement, John had failed to finish tying his knot!
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leinosaur
Trad climber
burns flat, ok
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Hey golsen,
Whenever I see Tony at Quartz he's usually running up those slabs so fast, we rarely get a word. But if I get a chance, I'll holler your hello as he blazes by.
From what little he writes on our local message board, sounds like he had a good trip out to Yosemite last summer: the Nose in a day with fellow guidebook author Clay Frisbee from over Arkansas way. The ticklist from one of the linkups TM did in the Refuge out here, as a warmup, just blew me away. That guy's a machine. Of course it was Jimmy Ray the historian that dragged it out of him.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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I think there are several things at play here.
First, slab climbing is just out of fashion and fashion is more important than we'd care to admit. Pretty darn run-out climbs get done if they have some kind of classic retro-fashion appeal, like BY and Naked Edge. Real death routes rarely, if ever, qualify.
Randy wrote
"But, in honing the physical aspect of climbing, often mental prowess is neglected. The resulting atrophy of the mental aspects of climbing have resulted in a dramatic change in the mental outlook and expectations of many of today's climbers.
This is not to say that ego was not involved to some degree in establishing bolted routes. We often pushed each other, creating a tension between taking away the mental challenge and spirituality of movement and keeping the climb sane. Sometimes the line was crossed; most of the time a balance was struck. "
That's also a part of fashion. There is an incentive to put up a really, really dangerous run-out routes like some on Daff Dome and the right side of Fairview if there is virgin territory easily at hand to go fire on a given day and all your friends in camp are part of the scene to regard this as a coup.
There's little incentive to risk death (and no matter how good you are anyone can fall, have a cramp or have a hold break on a slab climb), when it's not a first ascent and the crowd isn't waiting in anticipation of a second ascent. Those climbs just become relics of the past.
Steve talks about stainless pin-bolts. That's interesting and we should flesh this idea out some more. Some dangerous routes from back in the day have become considerably more so as the fixed pins, or pin pro placements that never got fixed, fell out or were forgotten, and nobody uses pins for pro anymore.
Perhaps some old dads should look up old guidebooks and see what fixed pin placements are listed versus what pin placements were used (if you guys have notes or better memories than me) Post em up.
A typical example would be the fixed knifeblade below the crux of the second pitch of Stoners. For me, it's the trickiest move of the whole climb and is now only protected if you have the right alien or tiny nut, and who knows if it would hold. The next pro is considerably further down. I might anticipate a howling if that, now missing, pin were replaced by a bolt because the community hasn't admitted to that being a valid way of maintaining fixed pin pro (except at belays)
The one and only pro on the 5th pitch of Goodrich is a rusty 2 pin stack followed by a 100 foot 5.7 but continuous run-out. The Galactic Hitchhiker folks, not wanting to have such a bad runout on their route but not willing to retrobolt such an established climb did a variation that traversed right on a weakness, climbed up another weakness and traversed back left. They used 5 or 6 bolts for this and it takes an extra pitch to it this way. I haven't gone that way cause I have the run-out wired. Ironically, at least 6 of the fixed pins on the Galactic hitchhiker route have already fallen out (cause I pulled em out with one finger) including a few angles at a belay.
Still, we should be clear to our friends that it ain't cool to steal fixed pins from climbs. The 3 fixed pins on the crux of Bircheff Williams were taken awhile back, probably by somebody who figured that RP work there. Tom McMillan replaced on of the Lost Arrows sometime thereafter, making that already insecure stem a tad more reasonable to flail away at.
peace
karl
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Latitute 33
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Many great long slab routes have fallen into disrepair. I applaud the efforts of ASCA and others who have undertaken to replace old rusty time bombs with newer hardware. Fairview Dome still has a lot of great routes that sport manky old 1/4" bolts.
On Middle, when we did Space Babble way back when, the "fixed" pins and most of the bolts on the upper pitches were total crap (the FA did a very poor job). It would be great if all this hardware were upgraded. Maybe it might get done more if a leader fall didn't likely mean ripping the anchor and death for the entire party.
But, talk about replacing fixed pins with newer stainless pins is only a short term fix as some of the placements are either not ideal or the pins will eventually come loose over time -- with little means of testing them. At some areas (eg: Tahquitz), many old fixed pins have been replaced by bolts -- though I'm not sure that is the always the answer either -- and does this fundamentally change the character of the route?.
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tenesmus
Trad climber
slc
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"Tenesmus are those Bedford testpieces the ones he did in the 80's or new ones? "
80's stuff at the East Gate like Bloodline and Speed of Life. Then routes like Closing the Gap variation to Generation Gap in BCC, and Meat Puppets in lcc... stuff like that.
Also, John Storm with Koyaanisquaatsi, Les and Brian with routes like Butcher Knife or Cymbals in the Sun.
They just seem so far out of reach and get very few ascents these days.
Definitely not valley stuff, but its cool hearing Steve's post about his first day with the new rubber.
My friend Leslie said when she did a route on the Apron in the early 80's she felt hip belays were safer she could yard in way more slack at once
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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"Dear Baby" (5.10d) should read "Dead Baby" and has been uprated to as high as 5.11b.
"Movin' Like a Spud" should read "Movin' Like a Stud" (5.10d). Great route - should be 3/8th retroed. Located in some kind of forbidden zone.
Scott Burke's "Skunk Weed" (5.11c) was obliterated by a huge rock fall.
"Brass Knuckles" (5.11d) was chopped by 'persons unknown'. Remember it was actually pretty good - maybe a candidate for a retro-bolt fix? Think there was a fixed pin on it too.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dead Baby is a great route! (don't know if the big rockfall affected it, don't think so.
Is that a typo or something politically correct that it was called "dear baby"
Otherwise we can expect to see "Very Diverse Alternative Lifestyle Practicioners from the Central Valley" listed over by El Cap
Peace
karl
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 2, 2006 - 04:20pm PT
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golsen writes, "jello and tenesmus, this seems to be a valley boy thread, I doubt they really want to acknowledge a route ahead of their time in LCC in 1965 by G. Lowe."
Gary, Jeff knows as well as everyone else that nothing happens until it happens in the Valley. That's why everyone came there to climb. Heehe.
Anyway, even in the Valley there are examples of run-out slab climbing by Sacherer, Beck, Gerughty, Robbins, Chouinard, Boche, Higgins and Kamps, to name a few, well before the 70s kids did their tricks on Middle and the Apron. I do think that at least in Yosemite, it was not until 1972-73 that so many climbers participated in run-out slab climbing.
Oh, and Gary, that's "Ego driven valley-boys."
More generally, how about them apples of a proud colony of BROS climbers in Oklahoma? Thanks for the post leinosaur.
And Karl submits a proposed title to the new Yosemite BROS guide, "The Road to Pure Death." Has a nice topical ring to it, don't you think?
And George has a proposed name for the new route to the right of the DNB, Ego Driven. Nice pictures, George. You should give permission to the first ascent party to use the supplies that you left. It's not dog food is it?
Buzz
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jorge: About that the mysterious "belayer fall"? Enquiring minds are ... well, they're snoopy, actually. A possible step up from the "Don't fall or we'll both go." line of Kor's. We've all had marginal belays, but a belayer fall...
For the slab guide title, how about "Blue Sky and Dreams"?
A select guide to the slab climbs of North America may have potential, too. Once we figure out what is a slab, that is.
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leinosaur
Trad climber
burns flat, ok
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"More generally, how about them apples of a proud colony of BROS climbers in Oklahoma? Thanks for the post leinosaur."
My pleasure, Roger.
While I'm at it, let's get some more pics in this here thread-
One I took of my buddy Sean on Jet Stream (.10b RX):
(note the sit-down belay for that extra touch of spice)
(edited to a smaller but grainier detail: sorry for the hugeness of the first one. Mr. Adams there has a ways to go before he hits the second bolt!)
and a nice shot of about half the crag ( Quartz Mt. AKA Baldy Point)
by Marion Hutchinson:
Less than an hour S of I-40 if you BROS bros are ever passing through. First weekend in April and November are always a good party.
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Greg Barnes
climber
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"Likewise the other obvious line that would certainly go at a good standard is the DDNB, the line that follows the prow to the rigth of the DNB, by way of the Turret and that other tower up there. Long, clean, steep, featured, spectactular."
Isn't that the Ho Chi Minh Trail? It's in the current Reid guide, done by Clint & Joel in late '80s, went at 10c. They went back a few years ago to beef up a couple sketchy belays with a bolt or two (Clint will chime in with details I'm sure).
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I've only done a little bit of slap climbing. It was at White Horse in the mid-'80s and I got schooled pretty hard. I'll admit that, coming from a steep / roof background, there where many times I wasn't even sure if it was 'climbing' and / or what the point was. I'm not sure I would have been interested at all had if there had been a bolt every twenty feet. I'm not saying there aren't technical slab skills - man, there definitely are - but nothing exposes the pointlessness of 'safe-climbing' more than removing the runout factor from slab climbing.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Bruce the Dear Baby was a typo in the Yellow Meyers' Guide, it is Dead Baby else where in that guide.
Movin' Like a Spud is called that everywhere in the Yellow Guide. That must have been a typo too (eh, Jorge?)
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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The next door neighbor route to "Move Like a Stud" is also fantastic: "Benzoin and Edges" by the same Canadian team. Those climbs are fundamentally different than GP Apron slab/friction routes. They represent a separate genre of friable pie crust edging where you're never sure whether a whole thin sheet of granite is going to rip off the slab under body weight. Sure enough, the edges are there, but will they break? "Friday the 13th" is like that too . . . It had chalk on it, so somebody else out there must have repeated it? Dunno.
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