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Inner City
Trad climber
East Bay
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this thread is great and the drifting part is truly wonderful to read. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts Tom and Peter etc..a cyber campfire can be so much fun!
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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ST campfire tales. Rowdy Yates.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Peter, did you attempt, or climb, any long routes after the Salathe? Just curious.
I did a bit of aid soloing, usually with jumars as a belay, backed up by a knot. Probably OK for relatively low fall-factor falls. I wonder what system Robbins used on the Muir, and Porter and Dunn when they did solo new routes on El Cap in the early 1970s?
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Geno
Trad climber
Reston, VA
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This is the best ST thread I have read. Thanks all.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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I know what you mean, Tom, about the mental tricks of having a 'belay' in name only. I could often climb calmly high above my last protection on hard ground with full confidence, especially on first ascents. But I could not climb comfortably unroped even on moderate 5th class.
On my aborted West Face of El Cap solo, I travelled to the Bay Area and purchased sailing rope to use as a prussic. It was kernmantel construction but very supple and about 1/2 inch thick. This was on the advice of Charlie Porter, who said that it could be kept loose enough to move easily with one hand, but would catch with out risk of overheating if weighted. My back up was to short the rope with a figure eight knot and double biners on my swami. At every two-hands rest on free I would recalculate the short rope length. I sometimes had a second short rope loop to account for the uncertainty of the next two-hands rest, hoping that I could drop the first loop. I seem to remember a special knot that was supposed to reduce the failure due to the double pull against sharp bends, but I don’t recall if it was real or only a question mark.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Mighty Anders,
I went to do the second ascent (by solo) of Tis-sa-ack three weeks later, as driven as a sheep stampede. Got up to the Zebra, realized I had only one hammer (BITD August 1971) and had to descend. Plus I hated the process so much by this point---actually sick of it--- all that nonsense with the self-belay devices, the endless endless toil, the absurd loneliness. And it was about 95-100 degrees in the Valley so it was similarly hideous up there. That was the last aid solo climbing I ever did. I had finally gotten the memo! I was finally cured!! lol.
About a week later I did the fourth ascent of the West Face of El Cap with CJ Jackson, a great young climber from Connecticut, one bivy. And although there of course were issues between us, of which I write in one of my stories, I was nonetheless thrilled to have a friend with me finally.
I did plenty of unroped free climbing however for another 10 years. Some of it hard, some of it onsight. I still loved moving over stone with no impediments. And today although I still fantasize about some soloing I am mostly thinking about being on rock with friends.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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All,
Greg, thanks for opening my eyes. which apparently are so poor I can't see the rope in the Schiller pic. But of course, now, I see his clipping posture, or else he's making a mighty strange move. Perhaps no one has free soloed the BY yet, but it's probably coming and plenty of equally hard stuff has been free soloed and so my points there still stand, or wobble here and there, as Peter reminds us. A bit kooky he rightly observes ...
Peter, so glad to hear you too had the dreaded jumar, but of course only as back up to the big sane prussic, and that you rationally "tested" the system, which I never did. Good too you moved on to devices actually designed for the rope solo logistical nightmare -- exactly the way I came to feel about it in time (did this stuff across 2-3 years), with all the necessary manipulations and need to climb things twice. To your other point, why use a system where the "reality" is it won't work, when the system is so onerous anyhow, well, as you can see from my self talk, I was in full denial, was madly in love with Tuolumne rock, partner or not, and of course still contend some of my denial is part of the whole leading game, all of which is not to justify my kind of denial going onto the BY. As I said in the telling, it was beyond stupidity.
Maybe, though, I should add that I did have the modicum of sense Mighty Hiker and Roger Breedlove describe by using a back up knot they discuss. I got pretty good doing the "recalculation" of rope length Roger discusses, though I had a couple of more funny than terrifying incidents miscalculating along the way, one on an old route I thought I knew well since I had done the FA, i.e. the Vision, though nothing ridiculous happened except some scary down climbing to regroup and rearrange the macramé Peter calls it perfectly. Of course, the problem with employing back up knots on the BY, as you can imagine, is I could get two hands free on the first pitch here and there, but had much trouble with it on the second and ... well, you saw the tale.
Sidebar: suggested new thread topics someday:
 the mentality, self talk, "vision-thing" of free soloing (but not sure any free soloists would weigh in)
memorable retreats and failures, and lessons learned, and I don’t mean logistical lessons but soul lessons (maybe too confessional for some)
and a big one: motivation for doing the newest and hardest and maybe most dangerous when young and dumb. As Peter suggests, maybe its quest for love and respect in the climbing community, competitive instinct for place and standing in the same community, a march against the giants gone before, a journey toward self formation generally (Scherer and I argued this one at length), or some combined tangle not unlike the self belay system.
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Double D
climber
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I've got sewing-machine legs and I need to chalk up after reading that.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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He did have a sack on him, that's for sure.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno
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John and I had talked a fair amount about the BY. He was psyched to get on the thing soon. I was super, super psyched about shooting images of him on it, but more than anything of seeing him do this and experiencing it with him, especially after what he'd been through physically with the accident. Such sad, sad news. John was such an inspiration.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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I think my suggested new thread topics about motive in climbing, solo mentality and working the most dangerous edges should rest for quite some time. I have no words for the death of John, only immense sadness and, now, concern for his son especially and hope there will be a fund or other mechanism so we who stood in awe can take some small positive action in line with our admiration for John, though any such action will hardly stand against the dismay and grief.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
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hooblie
climber
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understood, tom. and that's an indication of the size of the man.
john had a way of stilling the cluckers who had doubts ready at hand about the propriety of such outlandish acts by incontrovertably establishing his bona fides at the helm of his own fate.
the grace and application at the center of a force field of confidence was contagious enough to turn our hearts into believers. he made it seem reasonable. there martha, that's what it's sposed to look like.
it was art, you knew that when you saw it, and we watched the emulation of it spread
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shipoopoi
Big Wall climber
oakland
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Dec 29, 2009 - 03:26am PT
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i was so blonde i missed this thread until clint tuned me into it. it answers some of my questions about chronology, and scared the crap out of me...a second time. man, what was i thinking, going up to send that thing in 83. shipoopoi
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Dec 29, 2009 - 03:37am PT
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Dave Yerian...I love you brother, please contact me at:(541) 961-7970 Michael Paul...
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ron gomez
Trad climber
fallbrook,ca
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Dec 29, 2009 - 09:18am PT
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Hey Mike, don't know if Daves on this site much, but I'll call him and send the messege along!
Peace
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Kalimon
Trad climber
Ridgway, CO
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Platinum Rob bump!
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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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I came across this old poster in Mammoth this past weekend and thought I'd share. I had the same image hanging in my high school locker and it still gets me amped.
Hopefully John's really "one with the knob" on the other side.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Isn't that 30th anniversary ascent set for right about now?
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