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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Dec 13, 2007 - 06:00pm PT
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This is how I learned to rock climb.
Sat - lead first trad route at JT - Final Act 5.6
Sun - lead every pitch of Right On at JT 5.6.
Wed - lead every pitch of Fools Rush on Taqhuitz. Took 12 hours.
So in my first week of climbing I did real good.
Juan
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Dec 13, 2007 - 06:14pm PT
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I'm with Werner on the "helicopters are more dangerous than climbing" thing. Working on a wierd commercial in the BC Coast Mountains, climb up a peak, stand on top of it and wave at the camera as the helicopter hovers above us, then start down. About half an hour later with us still way up near the summit, the helicopter comes back and hovers with one skid on the slope and the director is yelling at me to jump in the back cuz they need me to look at some film back in Vancouver.
The rear door was off for the filming, so I jumped in (not quite as scary as Werner's death leap). But then, just as I realized there was no seat back there (they'd pulled it out at the same time they removed the door to set the machine up for filming) my five amigos throw their packs through the door hole shouting "Woo Hoo! We don't have to carry down!"
At this point the chopper takes off and the pilot, forgetting (I hope) the whole no seat/no seatbelt/no door thing pulls off the mountainside and immediately banks steeply. Which has me falling toward the door hole which is now pointing downward over about four thousand feet of nothing. I got hands and feet planted against the doorframe and with me plugging up the door hole, the packs stayed inside -- although they were flying around pretty good behind me.
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2007 - 06:31pm PT
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HAHAHA!! Ferret,
What a great story, see you're more like Tom Patey than you knew!
More old school than I am!
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Wheatus
Social climber
CA
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Dec 13, 2007 - 06:33pm PT
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One of my first roped lead climb was somewhere in JTree. There was this 5.7 layback crack to a very large ledge. I lead the climb with hexs and stoppers. The only anchor I can get in at the ledge is a single #5 hex. My partner follows and gets stuck on the moves to the ledge 70 feet of the ground. I extend the anchor tie-in about 15 feet to the right edge of the large ledge and anchor crack to see my partner and help him with the moves. Just as I look over the edge he falls and pendulums left pulling me over the edge of the ledge.
There we were both hanging seventy feet off the ground hanging from the lone #5 Hexentric. After some minor gymnastics I got back on the ledge and kissed that #5 hex.
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hashbro
Trad climber
Mental Physics........
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Dec 13, 2007 - 09:13pm PT
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In 1973 (or 74') I caught a ride to the Valley with Mike Graham for my first Yosemite trip. After a week or so, several of us had gotten scared shitless leading our first 5.10 cracks and watched a comrade (Matt Cox) take a 40 or so foot lead fall.
One one of our last days, someone had set up a TR on Catchy. After climbing the thing, I found myself belaying my brother Al from the top of the route. Somehow, the rope jammed at the crack's finish. Stupidly, I unroped to step across a giant car-sized bock and clear the jammed cord, which I did. As I stepped back to the stance the huge block detached in my hands.
I still remember, as I began to fall unroped, that nauseating sensation that I was about to die. I yelled ROCKKKKKK and suddenly stopped sliding as my thighs caught into the rounded top of the crack. I was sure I was gonna die and now was still alive.
Luckily, the boys below scattered as the VW sized slam crashed into the road amongst them. We were incredibly lucky that guys like Dave Evans, my brother Al and Matt Cox (and myself) lived to see our 4th and 5th decades.
Give thanks and stay roped (when you're a beginner)!
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Dec 13, 2007 - 09:58pm PT
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I was probably blissfully unaware of whatever constituted my nearest-to-death beginner experience.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 13, 2007 - 10:13pm PT
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Climbing the Cow or Calf or some 5.easy slab on the left side of the apron - I can't recall the name. My 3rd or 4th lead. My partner's first climb ever. I hand him the coils of rope so we could rap. He yells "Rope" and smacks me full force with 150 ft of twine which knocked me off my feet. Luckily I was very securely attached to the anchors - the double and triple clipped and flipped biners and slings of a n00b. Otherwise I might have skinned my knees until I slid to a stop.
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lars johansen
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Dec 13, 2007 - 10:33pm PT
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My first brush with catastrophe was in the spring of 1961. I was 12 years old. A friend and I dismantled my mother's clothesline in the back yard and headed for a near by cliff to try "mountain climbing".
At the top of a dirt cliff, about 60 feet high, I tied the clothes line around my waist with a square knot [probably a granny knot]. I then had my buddy lower me over the side to a "ledge' about 20 feet down. Upon reaching the ledge I untied so my pal could haul the rope up and have himself lowered by yet another confederate. The "ledge" I was standing on turned out to be only some fragile brush which collapsed under my weight sending me skating another 40 feet to the base of the cliff. I was fortunate enough to escape with a fractured left ankle and was carted out by neighbors nearby to be escorted by my not to pleased father to the doctor.
To top it off I contracted chicken pox shortly thereafter which itched like hell under my cast. I tried to relieve the itch with a bent coat hanger, without success.
Amazingly I continued this foolhardy behavior almost immediately after getting out of plaster!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 13, 2007 - 10:42pm PT
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I'm in high school and I don't know squat.
A friend who knew just as little and I found a cliff near town and put up a 140 foot 5.7 face climb up some pocketed soft rock next to a corner.
Now we had been practicing aid on top rope on a 30 foot bolder quite a bit but this was a different sort of animal of a climb. I think I on-sight led this climb before I had actually ever followed a real lead by anyone else anywhere.
I should also note that to make the boulder aid climbing more interesting, sometimes we even climbed this 5.10 crack aiding off pebbles tied off in the crack.
Anyway, the climb ended on this bench-like ledge. It comes time to rappel and, since it was an Fa, there's no anchor or walk-off. I was a no-money high school student and was horrified to think of leaning gear to rappel, particularly since the only crack was too wide for anything by my expensive #11 hex that I had laboriously drilled out lighter with my dads power drill.
So I figure, I'll just wedge this fist sized rock in the crack, tie it off and call it good and cheap.
I'm getting ready to rappel but figure I should test the anchor. I give it a good hefty pull and the chockstone I was going to rappel off of BREAKS IN HALF!
I had to re-prioritize my anchoring strategy, and wound up rapping off one #11 hex instead.
Peace
Karl
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2007 - 11:03pm PT
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"Amazingly, I continued this foolhardy behavior almost immediately after getting out of plaster." Lars
Amazingly, I continued bits and pieces of this foolhardy behavior for the next 32 years!!!!
Man, I can't even fully comment on all the excellent sphincter tightening moments listed here. I knew I'd end up grinning like this.
This is way more fun than reading about Honedy McRipped doing his latest 5.14, worked on it for a month project!
I think Ferret has us beat for overall epic points so far.
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2007 - 09:37am PT
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Hashbro,
I'm glad that block wasn't there when I first did Catchy!
In "77" a friend and I were about 5-6 pitches up Barad Dur on Wolf Rock in the central Cascades, and had a similar experience.
Wolf Rock is a very impressive place and back then was pretty remote for Oregon. Dirt road miles long, big trees, no people, huge black rock (The Dark Tower), all in all intimidating for a couple youngsters.
I had just led a steep face pitch and arrived on a sloping ledge with a refridgerator sized block on it. I was fiddling with the anchors and such, bumped this block and it started a slow motion slide. My whole body went cold and I screamed at my partner, but the block stopped! He was pretty much plumb-bob beneath me so there was nothing we could do until he got to me. We gathered up all our stuff, got the ropes out of the way and gave this bad dog a nudge. Barad Dur is quite steep so it fell almost all the way down the face before it exploded against the wall. The noise was huge and the shrapnel blocks shook huge trees.
Trundelling with a safety purpose, yeah!!
After climbing some big roofs on aid, there are easy pitches that lead to an impressive summit. The problem was that it was getting dark and we had only a rough idea of how to get down the descent. We ended up in the pitch black, in a black gulley with little moon and no lights fighting the bush whack of our young lives! You start thrashing the brush so hard that you can almost be "false floored" into missing the big drop offs! I don't know exactly how long it took. (seemed like forever) I was so glad to hit that sleeping bag. My mom was quite impressed with the shredded clothes and the scratched up bodies. I think she said something like "climbing sure does look like fun. Want me to buy you some golf clubs?"
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mingus
Trad climber
Grand Junction, Colorado
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Dec 14, 2007 - 11:37am PT
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Let me say first that I am glad all you 'posters' are still in the land of the living. It is amazing to read in these accounts what a common thread of experience we have had with the 'near miss's.'
But I have to cast in with Werner and Ghost -- mountain helicopter flights are the freakiest. You have enough time to think/know you are going to die to be terrified. It is like jumping on or under a giant lawn mower...a mere shift of wind...UGG!! You all understand that sensation of your stomach dropping and the ensuing adrenaline blast.
Time line:
I worked as a rescue "Pine Swine" ranger in Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park for some years and the helicopter work was done between 10,000 and 14,000 ft. They always contracted helicopter services from the Front Range that routinely did Life-Flights from easy elevations around 6000 ft. The last time I got in a helicopter was when I had to devise a landing zone that the pilot could manage in a talus field and fly to the top of Longs Peak. It was not as harrowing as Werner's experience, but it sure seemed grim at the time.
When I got in the helicopter below Hallet's Peak I could tell it was the first time this guy had flown at altitude. The helicopter was inadequate for these elevations, and the pilot was white-knuckled and very pale. He was savvy enough to know to follow the updraft of alpine ridges, but when we got to the top of Long's Peak (14.000 + ft.) things went wrong -- the ship started to shudder. It was bad turbulence and we were loosing all our lift and we were only 100 ft from the landing zone. So in the midst of my hoping we would crash on the top of the Diamond instead of down 2000 ft., this guy turns the rig and plummets toward Chasm Lake to try and salvage everyone's lives and his job. It was shear survival and I almost puked in my helmet. Then he managed to wend his way up the ridge again and landed us at 14,000 feet, I ran as hard as I could, vowing never to get in a helicopter again. Ohh-Laaa!!
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FinnMaCoul
Trad climber
Green Mountains, Vermont
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Dec 14, 2007 - 12:46pm PT
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This has been some of the finest at-work-Friday-afternoon-dragging-toward-the-weekend-procrastination-reading I've done on supertopo.
My earliest climbing epic predated any actual climbing. I was a pre-teen and had attended boy scout summer camp where they had this super cool ropes course. Of course when me and my buddies got back home we just had to recreate the experience.
My parents place backed up to some great woods. We found two of the tallest white pines we could and using oil stained twisted hemp rope from the garage and a block and tackle hauled a 20 foot log forty feet into the air to create a "cat walk" between the pines.
We knew what we were doing, cause we'd seen it at summer camp. We needed a safety line. So after securing the log we strung a line of the hemp at waist height parallel above the log. We tied a bowline around our waist (we were scouts... we did know our knots) and tied a hitch to the safety line. Voila!
We had crossed and re-crossed the log 20 times before my little brother (all of 8 years old) wanted a go. I give him credit that he trusted us enough to even climb that high (it was literally 40 feet up). When he slipped off the log and fell backwards, of course the hemp line snapped and he must have bounced 4 feet in the air when he hit the ground. He didn't have a bruise on him!
When one of the dads in our scout troop heard what we'd been up to he took us out the very next week and started teaching us how to TR. My little brother still followed me up crags just a few short months later when I was sure I could build an anchor just by watching what the guy was doing (equalize, redundant, what??).
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LB4USC
Trad climber
Long Beach
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Dec 14, 2007 - 01:07pm PT
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After a day on the Pile we went to market at the Lodge. I scored a couple of cans of that stuff that Bill Russell drinks ... Old English.
I thought I was going to die and afraid I wasn't.
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2007 - 01:17pm PT
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LB4USC,
Oh no....don't get the "almost died" drinking thread going! That's a whole nother smoke there!
Focus people Focus!
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jewedlaw
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Dec 14, 2007 - 02:53pm PT
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Not really near-death, more like a mini-epic fond memory.
I've been leading trad for about 9 months at this point. Still a noob in comparison with the lot of you, but cautious about passing my limit.
Last season I decided to do Cathedral Peak. It would be my first "alpine" route, and longer than anything else I'd ever led. The only partner I could get for the weekend was this nice girl who I knew could lead belay, but didn't know much else about her climbing ability.
The approach is really pretty, we take our time, enjoying the views, snapping pictures. It's only 8 pitches or so right? No problem, we've got time.
We get to the base of the climb, and are the last party on the day to get on the rock. Drop my pack at the base, start up. One pitch up of fantastic climbing and as I'm belaying my partner up I realize she is slow. Not like oh this piece is kinda stuck good, but oh man this is bad. Don't give it much though, I just have to lead faster. So I'm going up up, get a good beat going. On like the third pitch, in an attempt to pass a party who was taking a break at a belay ledge (wtf?), I moved left into what I *thought* would be easy climbing. 10 feet above my last placement I get into this pretty easy lieback, using some cool knobs for feet. But the knobs disappear. No problem, just schooch my legs in towards my hands, power lieback, just power through it and get to a stance. Keep going up this lieback section, now about 20 feet over my last pro, and then the edge my hands are on starts to curve in and then disappears. So now I'm 25 feet runout, on a tenuous sloper-lieback that is quickly turning into an offwidth. The party next to me keeps looking at me as I grunt through, inching up. I know they are waiting for me to take this 50-foot whipper (incidentally would be my first trad fall). I am grunting like a bastard. I get into the offwidth, get sketched, and then come out to the lieback and rest somehow. This 10 foot section seems to be taking forever. About 2 weeks later I bought big gear #5 and #6? yes please.
I look down at my belayer, she's on her back just enjoying being in Tuolumne. I yell at her "watch me!" which doesn't really have an effect on her. My regular partner would know that means I'm sketched out and he should get ready to hold a fall or be a little less generous with the slack. This girl doesn't really do anything. I think she means watch me so you have beta for when you come up it. I eventually grow a pair and decide to f*#k it, it I'm going to deck, it might as well be on this mountain. Get right into the offwidth and inch my way up it. I'm actually making some progress! Fantastic! This is the hardest mother f'in climbing ever. I get to the top, the crack thins and I plug in a piece and primal scream/sigh really loudly (probably a considerable amount of swear words at this point, sorry Muir).
My problems haven't ended there. The offwidth thinned. Then it just disappeared. I'm about 12 feet to the left of where I should be, and there are only tiny knobs for a friction no-hand traverse. Great. Whatever, no choice, just do it. I make it across without incident (probably with the confidence of having that cam next to me, and knowing that if I fell I'd penji into the offwidth and have to get up it again). Build and anchor, take a deep breath, belay my partner up, who I can hear grunting and swearing and asking herself how on earth I climbed that part. She complained at me telling me that section was really hard. She didn't have to remind me! I told her to try it runout on lead next time and see how she feels.
Ok now it's pretty late and I'm worried. Luckily there is a lot of 3rd and 4th class climbing above, I'm running it out, 40-50 feet between placements. I'm comfortable on this ground, no problem. No word from my belayer about it. She can tell I'm trying to hurry up because it's late. 4th class it to the summit, a few celebratory pictures, and head down. I am happy to see we are not the only party up there. There's a group just finishing Eichorn (which I wanted to climb also, but no time!).
The four of us head down together. I didn't realize the descent for this goes down the opposite side of the mountain from the start. My pack is the other way! Oh well. Deal with it later. The other group is far more experienced than us, and really know this mountain. They are cruising, but wait for us every now and then (thanks!). My partner, to my dismay is also really slow on the descent. Downclimbing easy 5th class slabs is not her cup of tea. I get tired of waiting for her and rig some rappels so we can bomb down these slabs. Rap after rap and the sun is coming down.
Eventually the other guys get fed up with waiting. They tell us they are going to hump it out fast, but ask if we have any headlamps. Right then it occurs to me mine is in my pack at the base, on the other side of the mountain. I say we've only got one. And one of the guys lends me his lamp, telling me to drop it off at the Backpacker's building tomorrow. Sweet. Except the lamp has almost no life in it. I have to hold it in my hand close to the ground to see anything. I've got a good topo, and know roughly where I need to go, but by the time we hit horizontal ground, it's only moonlight and headlamps for light. Although I know the direction I've got to go, I don't know how far. So we keep going, waiting to hit a trail. Keep going, going, bushwacking a hopefully straight line for what seems forever. I tell my partner (who is visibly stressed from being caught out in the wilderness) that coming down at night is no problem, I've done it numerous times at Lover's Leap (this ain't the Leap!). However, we have to keep talking or singing or banging gear because there is a danger of bears. Lucky for me she is giving me the silent treatment or something. So we keep going, and I'm banging my nalgene on my nuts (pun intended? who knows?!?!), we FINALLY hit the trail. Now it's how far to the road? Oh, just 6 or 7 miles. Great. Walking speed of my partner.. that's like forever and a day.
In my head I'm thinking if need be we can camp out along the trail, but I really don't want to. I take the rope she was carrying and now have all the gear, and just muscle a fast pace. I know she's tired, but we don't have a choice, just put one foot in front of the other. My body aches pretty bad, and I'm thirsty. About a mile on the trail and I'm out of water. I don't ask my partner for any because I know we've got stuff in the car and I don't want to worry her anymore than she already is.
At probably 11PM we make it back to the car. We see a note from our buddies on the windshield saying that they are worried and headed up the approach trail looking for us. This was like 30 minutes before we got to the car. I'm not about to go chasing them up the trail, I'm pooped, so we head to camp and just wait. I realize they are probably expecting to bump into us on the trail, coming in the opposite direction, and don't know that we descended the other side. I hope they decide to come back soon.
Soon was more like 2AM. They were PISSED. They did the entire approach and I got death stares when they saw me sitting next to the fire. They told me later they went to the base and expected to see my mangled body lying there. I told them to have a little more faith in my outdoors skills and next time wait till morning.
My reward the next day was having to do the approach AGAIN to retrieve my pack.
About a week later I realized how awesome this trip was and I would do it again (save for my friends hating me the next day) and that lieback offwidth section was very character building if not incredibly fun and challenging.
Here's some pictures to make the read worth it.
Not yet on the summit - that shadow is pretty long. This is my worry face.
Summit shot! Now lets get the hell off this rock!
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 14, 2007 - 03:21pm PT
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Jewedlaw,
Thanks for the post and the pics. Hey man, don't worry, a good ol' epic is a good ol' epic no matter what era you are from!
Just because some of us started with heavy wool clothes and no cams doesn't really make us much different.
Some folks actually think that having the sparkly new gear will keep them from getting in over their head! WRONG!!
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TheDullEnd
Trad climber
Davis, CA
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Dec 14, 2007 - 03:32pm PT
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Nice Tommy, very nice.
Glad you made it okay.
Some of the guidebooks for Joshua Tree aren't that great. Last year I went up Poodle in Shining Armor- a prominence on Hemingway Buttress. I got to the top and brought up my seconds only to realize that there's no way off the damn thing. Maybe I'm an idiot and missed them, but I saw no rap chains, no fixed anchors- no nothing, and it's a "spire" about 15 feet higher than anything around it with a rounded top that goes quickly to nearly vertical. I lowered my seconds off the belay anchor and went to rap off a rattly nut myself only to have it move and lift when I tried to move over and weight it (it's a pretty strange crack at the top). In the end I tied a huge monkey fist in a long piece of webbing I had fortunately brought, wedged it in this odd crack (great construction, but actually too severe to take a great nut if I remember), and rapped off the tail I left in the fist.
Not epic and maybe not a god-awful move, but definitely sketch for someone who's relatively new. Are there chains on the route that I missed?
Also, I had the strangest time getting back from Sugarloaf yesterday.
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TradIsGood
Recently unshackled climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Dec 14, 2007 - 03:46pm PT
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At this point the chopper takes off and the pilot, forgetting (I hope) the whole no seat/no seatbelt/no door thing pulls off the mountainside and immediately banks steeply. Which has me falling toward the door hole which is now pointing downward over about four thousand feet of nothing. I got hands and feet planted against the doorframe and with me plugging up the door hole, the packs stayed inside -- although they were flying around pretty good behind me.
Nice story. I don't doubt your hands and feet thing and the view. But if you were actually sliding then the helicopter was not in "coordinated flight" - unlikely on take-off.
You see normally when a plane or helicopter banks, it does so in a way that would not spill water out of a nearly full glass.
:-)
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Dec 14, 2007 - 04:17pm PT
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Some guy shows up with his 14 year old son to do the easiest sport route at the Circus Wall with a rope, three carabiners and a figure 8 descender.
Since he doesn't think the boy could catch him (good guess) he does what any safety conscious father does;
he makes the boy LEAD his very first pitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really! No bull. He just keeps talking the kid (who is obviously terrified) up the moves. He uses one (non-locking) biner and the figure 8 to belay, and after the boy clips his second bolt, and each one thereafter, he lowers him to scavenge his "other" biner to continue.
And of course he doesn't say anything to the poor kid when the rope is running behind his calf to the bolt threatening to flip him and crack the poor kid's head open.
And get this, the father is so absorbed in barking out orders that he doesn't notice that while lowering the kid he gets 5' from the end of the rope with no knot in it.
That's when I laid into the guy about how stupid and reckless he was and all the foolish stuff he was doing.
OUTCOME:
The ranger later warned me not to say anything in the way of telling a parent how to raise his kid.
Sheesh.
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