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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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I guess I'll mention my experience along these lines.
When I made the tenth ascent of the Nose in June 1967,
in that horrid heat, I was moving up the dihedrals above
the Great Roof. We had only about two sips of water left and
a thousand feet to go, in temperatures around the high 90s.
If I went fast I would get too tired. To save energy, I put
all the big pitons, everything bigger than a regular angle,
on one sling and clipped it to the haul bag. I wouldn't have
to carry it while leading. We heard nothing, but when I
pulled up the bag, that sling was gone and everything, a zillion
carabiners and almost all our pitons, with it.
There was no SAR, no rescue possibility, so we didn't even
consider that, nor did I hesitate. I went upward, with what
I had. Above that triangular ledge (Camp 6?) is what I
think now is called the Changing Corners pitch. The crack
got wide here, and I basically free climbed it all the way
to the belay (not changing corners but staying in the hand-
crack to the left). There was an old Harding bolt at one
point, sticking about 2/3rds the way out of its hole, and
I was glad to clip that. I used it at one point to lower down
and clean an angle far below, to use above. Otherwise, I did
that crack free. I had done a lot of hand cracks, so I felt
confident. Bridwell later told me he thought that must have
been 5.11. I had no memory of anything being that hard, but
I was set on getting up. Fortunately above that, we needed no
wide gear. At the bottom, our big rack hung conveniently
from a tree limb in the forest below, saving us from having
to carry it all the way down. It's hard to imagine it could fall
so far, almost three thousand feet, and hardly a scratch
on it.
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FinnMaCoul
Trad climber
Green Mountains, Vermont
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Bump. Great thread.
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JC5123
Big Wall climber
Casper, WY
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Haven't dropped a full rack. Dropped a #1 camalot on Devils tower last year.
The most memorable drops was on Mt Hooker in the Winds. We gained our first bivy site 4 pitches up. I was sitting on my portaledge digging out my sleeping bag when I turned to grab a biner so I could clip it off. As I turned I heard the sound of nylon sliding across itself. I turned back to see a purple parachute dropping to the ground. Fortunately we had enough rope, and daylight I was able to rap down and retrieve it. Although jugging 4 pitches really sucked. My partner of course is laughing at me the whole time.
After I get back into my ledge and clip off the damn bag I turn to get out my bivy sack. As I turn to grab a biner to clip it off.....Yep, back down to the ground to retrieve the $%^&ing bivy sack now.
Lessons learned, and fun stories to tell. I can say this though, I don't think I've ever slept better on a wall than I did that night.
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Keith Leaman
Trad climber
Seattle
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Once I intentionally dropped all my gear and almost ruined a great day. Pretty sure it was '71 that I decided to solo a route on the East Buttress of Whitney. After finishing a full day of work at Alpenlite, in Claremont, I had a late night dinner with my girlfriend, packed my gear and headed across the Mojave. Despite some extended wrong turns in the desert, I finally got a late start up the trail at sunrise. Part way up the route (where the pic was taken) I chose a clean 2"-3" splitter line, slightly right of the buttress instead of the "Fresh Air" route.
To get to the variation, I had to traverse across an ever narrowing ledge, now several hundred feet up. My pack was pushing me away from the steepening wall above, so I decided to carefully lower/drop it to a larger ledge just a few feet below. At first the pack seemed to land solidly, but then ever-so-slowly it began to roll toward the edge. Out of desperation I yelled out "STOP!!" and, luckily, oddly enough it did.
After finishing the variation pitches (5.8?), in a way, I was later "given" a piece by the mountain near the summit where the blocky steps were covered with mounds of hard snow and ice. I did a hammer-less ascent, and soon became tired of scraping ice with my fingers to expose an inch or so of granite on the lips of the wet ledges. I kept thinking: "If only I had a small sharp stone" when suddenly I noticed a cylindrical piece of metal about 6" long protruding from the snow. I don't know what it was but it really helped with the last 100 feet
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YoungGun
Trad climber
North
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Bump for f*#kups.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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When Bonatti soloed the North Face of the Matterhorn in winter,
he was up there in miserable conditions, extremely cold (he
once measure 20 below), and suddenly dropped his hammer. He watched
it sail into oblivion. Without the ability to place a piton, he
would have been in a very very serious situation. By some wonderful
stroke of good thinking, he had brought a spare. I'm not sure they
had the little string (cord), in those days, to tie a hammer to one.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Topic Author's Reply - May 29, 2014 - 09:02am PT
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Bump for "whoops"!
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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May 29, 2014 - 11:12am PT
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Never
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