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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Kept walking by this Thread each time thinking your name a bit familiar. Pics reminded me introduced at the Nose Reunion. Welcome on Board this wonderfully eclectic, crazy, fun Campfire consisting of some incredible people. Cheers to Yo Bro. lynne
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Rick........are you out there?
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Rick Sylvester
Trad climber
Squaw Valley, California
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Thanks, everyone, for the surprising and nice welcome. I'm kinda late to the game. To state that I'm a low tech guy would be an overstatement. The word "tech" and any reference to myself should never appear in the same sentence. Anyway, yes, for decades I've been filled to the gills -- apologies to John Gill -- with stories, tales and anecdotes. Maybe I can start disgorging a few.
One omission I noticed on the beta about the Five and Dime cliff was that there was no mention of "Whack and Dangle", an 11a - or is it 11b? -- if memory serves me correctly. The name says it all. Considering my level of strength, skill and flexibility that route due to its nature was right at my limits. I kept at it until I finally led it...once. One day I asked Werner if he'd ever free soloed it as, and as I wrote previously, he used to regularly free solo "Five and Dime". I believe he replied he'd never even done it. A smart man indeed.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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And now werner is your bitch....
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Rick Sylvester
Trad climber
Squaw Valley, California
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Thanks, Allen and Doug and everyone else. Wow, this electronic/computer age is something else. I must be the reincarnation of Rip Van Winkle or something...or someone. Doug, I sure wish you had been alone with us, the ol' "misery loves company" and all. At least that way I could have split the weight of the community gear -- stove, pot and tent -- and maybe derived some enjoyment from the endeavor...or at least not tortured my aged body so badly. But of course you were always way more organized than I. Just before embarking on the trip I dusted off my copy of your book, "A Night on the Ground, a Day in the Open" for the first time in years. What an amazing writer you are. Of course when I, and many people, think of your writing it's "The Climber as Visionary" that comes to mind. But that doesn't do you justice. It's all of your writing. You just state things, capture things, so perfectly. I'm filled with envy. You're surely one of the most skilled and gifted of anyone who 's ever penned on the subject of climbing and outdoors activities.
The reason I reopened your book after so long was that I wanted to reread the section about Peanuts McCoy and your ski traverse of the John Muir Trail. Yes, I was "moonwalking" as you phrased it on my '69 16 days' solo ski attempt on the Muir Trail the year before your successful one. By the way, it was an unintended solo. Everyone who'd expressed interest in joining me dropped out, the ol' "After everything is said and done more is usually said than done". The only reason I didn't do the wise thing and stay at home was because I'd recently been reading about Snowshoe Thompson and figured if he could do what he did in the 1800s on his relatively primitive gear and not to mention with no chance of a chopper search/rescue in the event he failed to reach his mail carry destinations, Genoa or Placerville, then I had no excuses. It was "moonwalking" as you phrased it because I was clad in all I had, the original Lange downhill boots which, with Rosemonts, were essentially the first two brands of plastic downhill ski boots to enter the market. Besides their weight unlike future iterations they were very poorly padded which led to my feet getting sort of decimated. But that wasn't the main reason I quit. It was due to a combination of factors. Primary was that I'd begun running out of food. With attendant feelings of guilt I'd "broken" --but doing no real damage -- into a couple of structures, but probably due to the guilt not taken enough so that I too soon found myself very hungry again. Besides the boot issue was the one of my skis and bindings and the layout of the Muir Trail. No, I wasn't in Rossignols. I had a pair of heavy wooden 210cm "Stein Ericksen" Northland skis which a fellow ski instructor who rep-ed for the company had laid on me. Come to think of it, I probably didn't have all that much advantage, at least weight-wise, over Snowshoe. And a roommate had volunteered a horribly inefficient not to mention heavy alpine touring binding that afforded a maximum of something like all of half an inch of heel lift. Consequently, on most of the uphills it was easier to just walk on the firm spring snowpack with the skis on my pack (a frame Kelty, by the way -- not exactly the ideal low center of gravity pack for pursuits like climbing and skiing). The final coup de grace was the location of the Muir Trail. My understanding is that when the route of the Muir Trail was laid out there was some controversy about not keeping it closer to the Sierra Crest. Near the headwaters of the San Joaquin it dips down to something like 7000' if memory serves me correctly. I began postholing in soft snow. The effort was too much for my stubbornness and ambition, especially in my increasing state of hunger. I had to bail...and to the west, not the east. It's too lengthy to go into here but the outcome could have turned out very badly for me but for a fortuitous circumstance.
One other mini-correction, Doug. You wrote that I was attempting to make, and that Peanuts and you succeeded at, the second ski traverse of the Muir Trail. That's very generous of you, especially concerning your exploit, but no, my goal was not to be second but the first. I was well aware of Orland Bartholomew's 1928/9 100 days' sojourn. But wasn't this before the Muir Trail was "created"? In all the time he spent that winter in the Sierras surely he covered every bit of the Muir but he wasn't following its course per se, n'est pas? I lack the energy to peruse my copy of "High Odyssey". By the way, that winter was a very low one... in great contrast to this 2010/11 season. Supposedly he never encountered a snow depth of more than 4'. "Nuff said...at least for now.
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dipper
climber
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What a treat to read all this....
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steveA
Trad climber
bedford,massachusetts
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Hey Rick,
Welcome aboard! In case you don't remember, we did the West Face of Sentinel
some 40 years ago. Steve
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Rick Sylvester
Trad climber
Squaw Valley, California
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Super great to read all the postings. "Dingus", no one gets in enough backcountry ski touring...or climbing or for that matter resort skiing, something I once heard referred to as "the uphill transportation business". Due to a case of self-diagnosed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Diisorder) my shoveling to skiing ratio is horribly skewed in the unfortunate direction of the former. But good luck. You still have opportunities. But don't procrastinate! Due to this year's way above average snowpack you may have until only September (but of course it's the nature and quality of the surface that matters).
Steve, of course I remember; you're unforgettable. What I don't understand since it now goes aidless is why we didn't think of free climbing all of Sentinel's West face. I know, all free for only the small elite. Yeah, why didn't Steck and Salathe just climb the chimneys on the upper part of their eponymous route rather than taking forever to put in bolt ladders on the outside face? For those of you who may not know, Steve Arsenault was one of New England's top climbers and did the first solo of "The Prow" which had a decent reputation at the time. Several years would elapse before I'd meet your buddy and fellow New Englander (and founder with this then wife Titione, who originated from Chamonix, of the excellent Wild Things company), one of the best alpinists to emerge from this country, John Bouchard. I got to be his partner on the Eiger Nordwand in '78 the first of the two times he did that route. Despite a decent weather forecast we got hit by a major storm that dropped a meter of new snow. John was hit -- but not badly -- by lightning pretty high up, the third time in his career that he was struck. Without his presence odds were that my body would have ended up hanging and frozen up there as did poor Stefano Longhi's -- just another tourist attraction as viewed through the telescopes of Kleine Scheidigg.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
or some such
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HiYa, Rick. Oh, yeah, I've heard of YOU.
Oh, yes.
An honor & a privilege. Cheers!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Rick,
Thank you so much for your lengthy and facinating personal historical posting on a variety of threads! Just the kind of real world experiences that make this forum rich and unique...high adventure tales form the days when that was the kind of experiences we were all after.
Drawing these stories and connections out of climbers like yourself is why I spend time posting historical material on this site. Climbing and climbers were far more indelible BITD!
So glad that you are here!
Cheers- Steve
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MH2
climber
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Nice to see Steve Arsenault's name come up, among much else. Looking forward.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Rick, I can't believe I'm hearing more of your story, alone on the Muir Trail. And you may not believe it, but I was telling part of your tale to Peter Mayfield just a few days ago. For me it has an epic quality, a sense of crazy go-for-it, launch yourself youthful energy that is indomitable.
Write it down for us, please? All of it!
Here's the scene I laid down for Peter. As you probably know he's the cutting edge lately, doing the longest in-a-push blitz tours over the Sierra. Like circumnavigating the Evolution Group within the space of daylight. Like a 30-hour push that starts in the desert, romps 6000 feet up Taboose Pass, then streaks over Mather Pass on the JMT, then bumps over several more 12,000 foot cols behind the Palisades before exiting over Bishop Pass. And all of it on skating skis. So this is the guy I'm bragging to about you. And this is your story as I remember it from you:
So Rick has bailed from the Muir Trail, lonely, hungry and with shredded feet. He makes it down to Fresno, finally, to an onramp of Highway 99, trying to get home to Squaw Valley. Only now his feet are way worse. It's blistering hot. But he's still wearing the Lange Boots there, hitchhiking by the onramp, because it's the only way to contain the stench of all those oozing blisters...
I know you can tell it better.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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I like Rick's pragmatic and adventurous spirit...being rousted by a highway patrolman in his tent next to an interstate...
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Conrad
climber
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Nice Rick.
Are you the only denizen in Tacoville that has doubled for James Bond?
Super worthy.....
See you about.
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can't say
Social climber
Pasadena CA
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if requests are being taken, I'd love to hear the tale behind your namesake chute at Squaw
edit:On a slighty different note, did you ever take part in the Chinese Downhill they use to hold at Squaw in the early 70s, I think?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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May 14, 2011 - 03:13pm PT
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Right-O Bump!
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GibO
Trad climber
Breckenridge
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May 14, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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Hey Rick--I'm wondering if you remember me. I was there for Thanksgiving weekend in about 1971 and we were staying in Camp 4 (still Camp 4, not Sunnyside). I think it was my first trip to the Valley. Not many climbers there, end of season and the weather was a bit ugly. We wound up doing a climb--Pass or Fail first ascent. Seems like it was my first valley climb and it was hard getting drug up a 5.9 in Robbins boots.
That night, or the next day, you showed me some Spademan bindings fitted with a cable release. Along with that, came the description of the "ski off El Cap idea". That all seemed a bit strange, but somehow it looked like it would probably work.
A few weeks later, I was AMAZED to read about the event in the LA Times, and see the great photo they published.
Thanks for the great Yosemite introduction. The Yosemite thing went on for many seasons for me (mainly summer).
Gib
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