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splitter
Trad climber
SoCal Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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Oct 31, 2013 - 10:15pm PT
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it could have been a lot worse duh
edit: yep, he cudda broken both legs. or, he cudda broken both wrist along with his leg (in which case "duct tape" wudda been essential, eh?)!
why? cuz he would've had to first patch one wrist, with the duct tape, so he could then use it to apply the tourniquet that he, wisely, placed!
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dfinnecy
Social climber
'stralia
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Say hey Ammon, never met you but I've always enjoyed reading about your exploits so I've been following this thread with interest. The stoicism and level-headedness in your video is real inspiring. And hey, lookit this, your on the front page down-under
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MisterE
climber
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I sincerely hope that the present and future BASErs/climbers of the world watch Ammon and his presence in that video.
And decide that the steel resolve that he shows is the way of the future.
Thank you Ammon - for showing the higher path.
Rock on Brother.
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Kindredlion
Big Wall climber
4hrs too far from YNP
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ouch!
ARrrrghh!!
Brada ! you'll be sailing the seas with yer peg for a leg whether the wind blows up or down..
soon enough .. soon enough..
sending all the healing vibes and thoughts out to you brother!!
as you were..
OOH!
adam
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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It's fully Viral now... jeez in a few days CNN and stuff will be showing up. Deservedly so. I guess the world has found out about "our" Pirate.
Keep on healing up strong K!
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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I knew it would go viral the minute he posted it.
Just reading the "Injured Reserve" thread.. I had totally forgotten that Ammon got another broken leg jumping just a year ago and was already back at it. We really should just send him an Evel Knieval outfit.
Again, well wishes. It will be a tough road ahead for a while with surgery and rehab.
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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It's a good news story. The camera work could have been a little better showing the wall strike, and the kiwis chickened out by blurring the gore shot, but still pretty gut-wrenching.
Used to be a TV show in Mexico called La Ciudad Desnuda. (the naked city) They would race to the scene of every violent murder and get a close up of the dead body, pool of blood, ask the crying family how did they feel. It was totally gripping. Medellin has a tabloid newspaper like this, called Q'hubo. It's kind of like pornography. I guess different people would draw the line in different places.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Ammon, damn good thing you didn't hit that wall with your brass balls, you'd have brought the whole f*#kin' thing down on your crown.
You've given us a glimpse of the steel reserve that's gotten you to where you are in the climbing game. A5, how hard or scary can it be? Well, now I kinda know what it takes to high-step as ur camhook crumbles the flake. A calm look that says, "Wow, check that out."
Thanks Largo for the update, and thanks Ammon for having the peace of mind to hang through the ordeal and get your ass fixed up.
Go easy on those pain meds, and keep that spirit Alive. Hoist!
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Gunkie
Trad climber
East Coast US
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Hang tough, Ammon. My son, Elias, and I are sending good vibes your way.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Holy Floppy Disc Batman!!
GUH-NARLY!!!
Heal up well Ammon, lots of folks here cheering for you.
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Rosamond
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Ammon, if you do lose that leg, talk to Pete Chausey (sp?) from Reno. He lost a lower leg a couple years back in an industrial accident, & before he was out of the hospital, he was designing his climbing foot to go on his metal leg. He's pulling damn hard still; did an astroman lap recently. Not bad for a guy without a foot.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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After Hugh Herr lost both of his feet to frostbite, he was climbing as hard as the best climbers in the country using his self designed prosthetic climbing feet. I remember one day in Eldo when we were trying something over our heads, and he pulled out feet for dime edges, thin cracks, smearing, you name it. Now, of course, he is a famous doctor who is a pioneer in this field.
He could outclimb all of us with his prosthetic feet. Sure, he was super gifted, but it didn't slow his top level free climbing skill down too much.
Next post: Fear
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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There are many types of fear, and back in the day, your ability to control fear could really set you apart from the others in Camp 4. Some guys could do A5 day after day after day, and the rest of us would always have trouble controlling that fear. On a wall, it goes on for days, and if you finish one pitch, there are usually others that you are worried about as you fall asleep. Doubt can creep in and any plausible reason to bail starts crossing your mind, or at least mine, because I didn't do very many.
I call that a chronic type of fear. I suppose war is similar to that. The old saw about long periods of boredom interspersed in a background of boredom. On all of the really hard nailing routes, many people would just wither and come down, and we see it all of the time. That long term fear allows doubt to seep in, and many bails are just an inability to control that fear. Why else would anyone bail from the Nose, where I can attest to aiding every inch one year when I hadn't done a pitch in seven years.
We all know the guys who can handle this type of stress.
BASE has a different type of stress. When you do your first BASE jump, it is not uncommon to be so wrapped up in fear that you feel like vomiting, or your head is spinning and not really focused.
The MICROSECOND that your foot leaves the edge, all fear vanishes and your senses become incredibly alive. It is a feeling that I have tried to describe, but it is difficult. Time dilates wildly, and the sensation is pure and distilled.
It takes different minds to do both the chronic fear and the acute fear. Many first jump students land and remember nothing of their first jump. Their senses were overloaded and they just shut down. Some people do the opposite: they come totally alive doing what is essentially similar to a jump to your death suicide type situation. If you get sucked in by those moments of absolute clarity, then you get eaten alive by your inner monkey wanting more and more of it. Some types of jumps even get boring.
You eventually get where you just don't feel right unless you are either jumping or planning your next trip. The sensation is so utterly blissful and beautiful that you want it again, kind of like a drug.
We used to do a lot of hallucinogens back in the day, even those of us who didn't even smoke weed. The game was how much can your mind take, and at that level when I had the 9th highest number of jumps in the world (a whopping 100), I wasn't hanging much with anyone other than these mutants.
The transition from climbing to BASE was inevitable. We would meet on the summit of El Cap, watch them jump, or we would watch them in freefall from directly beneath, even hollering whoops back and forth from the climbers to the jumpers.
A lot of climbers got into it early, but only made 4 or 5 BASE jumps. Doing one of all 4 objects and getting your chronological number was the goal for many and then they quit. I was one of the first to pretty much totally quit climbing and get totally sucked into BASE. My only claim to fame. There were always better climbers and jumpers than me, but I had the type of mind to handle both types of stress and fear.
Now, later on, we see Dean Potter and Ammon and Steph Davis and others who also had minds that could handle the stress and fall in love with it, because we felt no stress. I do admit to nearly puking from fear on my first BASE jump, from El Cap. However, I sucked it up and launched. What I did not expect was for the fear and doubt to vanish in a microsecond, morphing into a hyper-aware and fully sensing being. The feeling is incredible, and it isn't a "rush" or "adrenaline junkie" or whatever non jumpers like to call it. It is turning your awareness up to 11.
El Cap is pretty damn safe. If the NPS would let us, there are hundreds of jumpers all over the world for whom it would be a super safe and beautiful jump. It has never been regulated, and even when it was legal, the skydivers broke all of the rules. Back then skydivers were like the bikers of the sky, and there was a lot of partying and an outlaw atmosphere. BASE jumpers don't like the outlaw atmosphere. They just want to do their thing and not get thrown in jail. Time doesn't allow me to tell the stories of how badly jumpers have been treated after being caught in the valley.
So back to THE RIGHT KIND OF MIND.
Ammon has both types of mind, and excels. Very few BASE jumpers could handle El Cap A5. Very few El Cap a5 people can handle BASE. Those who can do both are unusual.
Ammon and Hankster's accomplishments are far away from any of mine, but they are both very odd ducks. Maybe one in 10,000 can be comfortable in both realms without fear creeping in and shutting down that full blast awareness which is so addictive.
Hank jumps things that we would have never considered back in the day. Our canopies landed much harder, and he does super tight and unfriendly landing areas. A lot of the jumps are short, so he has fractions of a second to react if anything gets weird. I forgot to mention that he does the big jumps with long delays as well, but I've seen some video of him and Pumpkin jumping objects that we looked at in the 80'w and early 90's and wouldn't even consider. So he excels at it.
BASE is unreal if you can handle it. All I originally planned on was doing El Cap once and back to climbing, but after that first experience on my 8th jump off of student status, I could think of nothing but doing it again. The smartest thing that I ever did was skydive every weekend and pillage our 1600-1900 foot antennas every night with the correct wind direction to eliminate the possibility of object strikes.
Most of the Moab cliffs aren't super overhung, so even a really good jumper can have a strike if they get a 180, much less a spinning malfunction caused by a broken brake line.
Jumping is the best, and the long delays really burn your head more than a one second delay on a short object, even though the short object is actually more difficult from a technical standpoint. Certainly more dangerous. You have almost no time to deal with a problem like Ammon had.
People like Ammon and Hankster and Dean and Steph have unusually strong minds. I used to solo right up to my limit, and that involves pure thought and action as well. It is still a little lite compared to the BASE experience. I know of nothing to compare it with, and the wingsuit flyers have created an utterly new experience that I've never felt.
Anyway, it isn't for everyone, and I know climbers who tried to get into it but it felt bad. That is the fear creeping in. It isn't that these people are quote "brave," it is that they somehow come alive in high stress situations. So alive that it is nigh impossible to communicate to an Earth person.
I have NEVER seen anyone keep so calm when their foot is facing them with snapped off bones keep that calm. Ammon is a freaking mutant among mutants.
Imagine how many Ammon's took a wrong turn and spend unhappy lives as accountants making money they don't want to buy sh#t they don't need, and they call that a rich life?
I lean toward's Ammon and Hankster and Punkin and Dean and Steph and I'm sure others. Incredible minds. In the past who knows what they would have been?
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splitter
Trad climber
SoCal Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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couchmaster - And jokes from people who don't know how to tell them and will never be confused with being a comedian too. Um, I hope yer not referring to me and my duct tape suggestions. Because they were in no way meant to be jokes, period. Its a serious matter.
For instance, duct tape was brought on the first trip to the moon. And, in fact, saved the mission. Patched a wheel on the landing craft (or something). Otherwise, there wouldn't have been any walking on the moon. Furthermore, MJ wouldn't have come up with the "moon walk" dance. And, thousands of kids probably woulda ended up joining gangs instead of becoming break dancers, etc! ... and on and on!
OK, so perhaps I got a little carried away with the, "patching a hole thats opening up in the canopy on the way down with duct tape on the end of a cheat stick" thing (i did think it was a rather ingenious idea at the time, though). And I dunno, but i wouldn't say that it would be entirely impossible. Worth a try anyway, what other choices would you have in that sort of predicament?
And I detect that you probably know about as much about base jumping as I do...nada! So, wrap yer head around this scenario, perhaps. Say yer flying in one of them wingsuits, and it starts to come apart on ya. Would ya rather have a roll of duct tape in yer front pocket, or not? I thought so, so would I! ...nuff said!!
Oh yeah, the "fixed that puppy right up" (sticking his leg back together with duct tape). Well, obviously, it would've been beneficial to have a couple sticks, branches, or whatever handy on that ledge for additional splinting support, then wrapped it with the duct tape (thats a no brainer). So, now it doesn't sound like just some lame joke, eh?
edit: Hey, cut me some slack. I'm making an honest effort to make a positive contribution to an otherwise negative situation. Sometimes the most obvious and simply solutions are overlooked. Regardless, there's no way I would jump off my garage, let alone a cliff, bridge, skyscraper, or whatever (should i ever feel so inclined) without duct tape! ...just sayin!!!
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weezy
climber
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we spread ammon's rig out on my deck today before it departed to GJ, since he probably won't be able to inspect it himself. i know next to nothing about chutes but only one of the lines were severed and there's a smallish tear at the nose of the canopy. there was some blood on the container, which my dog tried to lick off, haha. new brake lines, which ammon said probably contributed to his 180 since he wasn't used to them, his theory anyway. hope i'm not embarassing myself by using the wrong terminology but i figured someone might be interested in this info, even though it wasn't a completely thorough inspection.
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Vegasclimber
Trad climber
Las Vegas, NV.
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Hey all -
Ammon got ahold of me a few days back but he's been in surgery and offline since. Could someone PM me with what hospital he is in? Wanted to go say hi. Thanks.
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Gunkie
Trad climber
East Coast US
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Maybe it's deeper in this thread, but if Ammon needs help paying medical, is there a link to to help?
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Relic
Social climber
Vancouver, BC
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Ammon, you are one calm and bad ass mofo. I wish you a speedy recovery getting back on your own feet.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Money? they should monetize that video on youtube.
Just keep healing , we all want to see you up and blowing our minds again asap.
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