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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Forget the "nice guy" stuff. I want the recipe to those cookie cams!
John
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couchmaster
climber
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Philo, (mostly) great stuff upthread. You should consider starting new threads for several of your topics. Like "Food Made To Look Like Climbing Gear", and put yer fantastically creative gingerbread cams in there to start the ball rolling.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Reposted from - Dec 11, 2008 - 01:49am PT
Many Black Canyon adventures and even more mis-adventures happened well before or well after ventures below the rim. Years ago the North Rim campground was the site of more than a few odd experiences and chance encounters for me. Back then I had a red hot but oh so high maintenance girl friend who didn't much care for climbing or, other than me, climbers. Did I mention she had a real nice car? I used to, on occasion, borrow her car. Sometimes with her even knowing about it. Well this was one of those occasions she didn't know about. Jim and I borrowed her car as neither of our klunkers would have survived the rigors of our intended mad dash there and back. Living in Gunnison meant it wasn't too big of a deal to just drive there before dawn and head down early. Not wanting to disturb the slumbering campers we parked in the outer loop turn around and went directly down under. Returning triumphantly topside with just enough time to have the car back before my lady's flight landed I was instantly hurled back into the abyss when I realized I had locked the keys to my sugar bear's car inside. Oh crap, oh crap! Can you say OH CRAP! Pacing frantically around the she wolf's inert Honda burbling about blue balls and black lists I was of no use in this dire circumstance. Jim was his characteristically stoic self quietly surveying the situation, analyzing, planning. As the sun sped towards setting my heart raced towards regretting the rest of my days. It was only when my rising anxiety had me looking for suitable glass smashing rocks that Jim could no longer tolerate the distraction. He was in the process of sending me away when seemingly out of no where up walked two young climbers likely drawn by the animated sounds of a love lorn man acting out the scene of being eaten alive by the dragon lady. Into this amusing scene came these young bucks who asked if either of us knew anything about the Diagonal Will route. Well the route had only been done a small handful of times and as I was the only person ever dumb enough to do it twice it fell to me to give the lads the beta. Good thing too as I had just found a rock with the correct heft. In the time it took me to describe in detail the intricacies of the route, raisins and all, Jim had enacted his plan and solved the problem. He oh so deftly removed the seals of the back passenger seat rear quarter panel window and popped it out. By the time I came scurrying back prepared to be berserk he calmly handed me the keys having already perfectly replaced the window. We got back in the nick of time and my sweet honey bunny was none the wiser.
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thebravecowboy
climber
liberated libertine
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I'd tell you to post a new thread about each of these on-topic shares, Philo, but I just don't think that they would stick around, given the fact that threads like this are all the rage around here.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Tom Pulaski is a name that should be familiar to Black Canyon afficianados and aspirants alike. Tall, immensely powerfull, doggedly focused and frightfully fearless Tom was at one time and for a long time the only person to have done all five routes on the Painted Wall including one of his own. That might not sound like such a big deal these days what with the Hallucinogen being climbed in under eight hours and the mind boggling link ups being done but believe me in the seventies it was way tubular.
I consider myself more than fortunate to have had a mentor like Tom Pulaski in those early days and nights. It would be virtually impossible for me to explain all that I gained under his tutilege. And seeing as he and I are both Pollocks no one would believe either of us ever learned anything anyway. But one lesson I will always retain is the value of raisins. Yeah that's right raisins. You know those wrinkled grapes everyone takes for granted.
When Tom and I headed up what was to become known as the Diagonal Will it turned out to be the third ascent of the wall, second free ascent of the route and first unplanned bivy for me. I learned alot that long cold night. We had planned for a one day ascent of the route and seemed certain to make it until a major route decision was needed high on the wall. At the point where the Digonal Will diverges from the original Swallow Wall route a monumental decision needs to be addressed. After so much hard and dangerous climbing Tom was vexed and undecided about which way to go. I was fairly overwhelmed having just realized that the rock that hit me in the arm pit a few pitches earlier had in fact gashed me open pretty good and broken a rib or two. To me both directions looked too terrifying to be burdened with the choice and I was more than glad to let Superman make that decision. So with plenty of daylight left we just sat down on the only available dollop of horizontal terrain and contemplated our future. In the end we waited through the long night unable to choose.
That night I learned that if I had only had knee pads they pretty neatly seal up the cuffs of your Carharts from those nasty cold canyon air blasts up your legs. I learned that cuddling didn't have to be too personal. But I also learned about raisins. Not planning to bivy we had nothing with us. Nothing but the gear we started with which included one quart of water and a box of raisins. Yoy know one of those little packs you might have gotten in your lunch box as a kid. That was it. By the time we were settling in we had only a mouthfull each of water left but we had those raisins.
Tom told me some amazing but oddly believable stories about the incredible raisin.
At the early part of the 20th century when automobile travel was in it's infancy driving from Salida Colorado to Gunnison over what would become Monarch Pass was considered very extreme and chic. The ancient XGames in a way. Well while we sat there all night with Tom carefully feeding me one raisin at a time he told me about an early group of intrepid auto enthusiasts who got stranded in a storm and avalance for a week with nothing but raisins to survive on. These young men and women were eventually rescued but survived terrible conditions and credited raisins for their well being. Allright so I was a little dubious at first but I had to admit that in the early part of the night every raisin did take away thirst and give a enough of a sence of warmth to allieviate the shivering. Every half hour we got another raisin and the goal became trying to savor one raisin til the next. Then as the endless hours before dawn became quite unendurable Tom kicks in another amazing raisin story. He recounts a story of a famous Polish expedition that ran a foul of Monsoon weather up high. They hunker down for ten days with with what turns out to be nine raisins a day each. Then when the storm clears the crazy dudes go up and summit. Coming down unharmed they credited raisins for their well being.
Okay so, enrapt by Tom's stories of the hard men and women of yore, I suddenly realized that I had toughed it out. Sucking my last raisin to pulp as the morning sun began to peal back the night I knew as if for the first time there would be another day. As soon as we could see enough details Tom looked up and stared ahead. Then just like Gandalf faced with the decision between three tunnels in Moria he just said It's that way and that way we went. I credit raisins for our well being.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Nature does his thing at Malcolm's big six Oh birthday party and fund raiser for Nepal.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 17, 2008 - 11:41am PT
There we were the usual gang of dirtbaggers sitting around a picknick table in the North Rim campground. It was a rainy rest day so the usual thrumming sense of doom that the Gunnison river elicits wasn't even vaguely apparent. We had no place to go and no better place to be. In our altered states fueled by lazy overindulgence we were passing the rim time by discussing and debating our preferred methods of dispatching ticks. Of course all methods had to be tested with that days crop. The methods employed were many and all were diabolical. We decided to subcatogorize above rim, below rim and wall time methods of execution. My personal rim time favorite was a hot cast iron skillet. Like popcorn but too small to eat. As a huge Tolkien fan I always muse about poor ol Bilbo having to listen to the trolls debate the best way to eat dwarves and burrahobbit whenever I reminisce about the great tick debate and decimation of 87.
We were huge, grim and malicious creatures lording over a make shift torture chamber for ticks. Fortunately Gandalf and the Sun never arrived and we gleefully carried on with our tick-lish experimentation till all the fodder was gone. Ah ah ah! Don't ask about my wall time favorite.
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TradEddie
Trad climber
Philadelphia, PA
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Every public "mass shooting" resulting in three or more dead has occurred in a "gun free zone."
Only because you selectively use the filter "public" to ignore the hundreds of mass shootings that occur each year in non gun free zones, mostly of innocent children and spouses in private homes where guns were kept for the purpose of "protecting" the occupants.
Also conveniently omits mass shootings in military bases, which wouldn't fit your hypothesis too well either.
How many of the beltway sniper's seventeen victims were in gun free zones?
TE
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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+1 for TradEddie ^^^
I'm considering making this the only thread I post to.
A place where my anonymous coward friends can gather and be noticed.
Maybe I can load it with enough climbing content and up beat messaging that people would be insenced if it got frozen or pitched. Thus preserving the vile and abusive attacks of others for posterity. Maybe there will be a rush of back deleting and the forum can be left with a pretty good climbing thread.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Mmmm climbing and cookies what's not to like?
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Capt.
climber
some eastside hovel
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PHILOTOPO???
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Reposted from - Jan 9, 2009 - 11:16am PT
LOST IN SPACE.
When Jim and I returned from our storm cancelled first attempt to finally complete our early repeat of the Forrest/Walker route on the Painted Wall so few hands had pawed over that rock that it still acted like a virgin on prom night eve. We travelled perilously light. One small pack with just enough stuff to survive if all went well. If it didn't, well then...??? We travelled so Spartanly because our aim was to free everything we could and only aid when no other free climbing alternative was possible. To that end we managed to whittle the aid moves of this major wall down to well less than fifty. Free climbing moves up to 10+ & 11- and pulling aid moves, impossible given the nature of the rock to rate the difficulty of.
Two thirds of the way up the wall in the relentless and debilitating blaze of the noon day sun we pulled out our secret weapons. Two cotton shirts soaked in the frigid Gunnison River earlier were pulled out of their stashed stuff sack. I remember they were still dripping wet so we wrung them out. The greedy stone accepted our gift one rapidly evaporating drip after another. We pulled them on, flinching and chirping with every new square inch of hot skin touched by cold cloth. Once the shock of transition had passed it was tremendously luxurious. Like a portable air conditioner. Life returned we continued on.
It fell to me to lead the terrifying pitch through the Dragons jaws. Standing atop successive fins of pegmatite like wobbly boogie boards on end. Wishing with all my might that there would be some real pro before reaching the good rock in the roof still forty feet above. Finding nothing but the strong urge to survive. Actually hearing friends, observing with spotting scopes on the Southern Rim, hoot and holler up a storm when I stretched one of my monster splits stemming to the good rock of the roof over my shoulder and placed pro. I was a dancer in those days and had tremendous flexibility so I guess from afar it looked cool. But up close I was sweating urea and just relieved to step on anything that didn't move.
We continued to progress apprehensively further up through Death Valley which was rapidly becoming a one way avenue.
The 21st pitch of the route, where Stratosfear escapes stage right, was my onus as well. While not hard at all by todays technical standards this second to last pitch took all I could muster and everything I knew. Stratosfear came into being because this pitch was not free-able. It is also not entirely aid-able either. It is a devious and dangerous mixed experience that menaces you at every opportunity particularly when in transition between free and aid moves. As everything up to bus sized bits moved when touched no gear evoked confidence, no hold provided assurance. Security was a fallacy of the mind created to engender a momentary sense of calm and normalcy to an otherwise lunatic endeavor. Sure that piece is good. Yeah I can high step up on it. What ever it takes, right!
I was destined to lead this nightmare. It had been graphically described to me repeatedly by Tom and John who had done the coveted second ascent. I was supposed to do the 3rd ascent of this test piece route with my regular partner Scotty. And this was always to be my pitch. But Scotty perished tragically in a Canadian avalanche before we could rope up. Now here with Jim, the strongest most compatible partner I have had, I prayed to Scotty's spirit that I had what it would take. One of the chilling delights I was told to expect in the midst of those enormous roofs was a block of particular kinetic potential. The consequences of which were so "grave" that I was implored with the mantra of, what ever you do "DON'T TOUCH IT"!
There I was mixing it up. Sparing with the choss of entropy. Peering into the seemingly endless black maw of the crack in the back of the roof, I suddenly became small and insignificant and felt thoroughly vulnerable. I looked and looked searching for the "death block". I was too timid and fearful to look too deep into that overhanging abyss for fear I would have to travel that way. I didn't see the warned of and dreaded "death block" boulder any where. I led myself to believe, as would be reasonable to assume, that it had just fallen off, like so much other mass now scattered about the base of this steep and imposing fortress of a wall. I didn't recognize the warned of and dreaded"death block" boulder...till it was almost too late. I thought the big bad boulder was supposed to be "in" the roof not on the face beneath it. I led myself tenuously across the edge of infinite gravitational force towards an inviting looking piece of bright white webbing fixed around a monster flake.
Three things happened, almost simultaneously, as I reached the sling and started to use it to balance up on. The first was Jim yelling "TEN FEET" from out of sight below. Hmmm, looks like I still need twenty. The second was the sling disintegrated in my hand teetering me backwards. I saw bits of my life flitter away chasing after the liberated tatters of someone else's security. Portions of the terminally distressed sling from behind the behemoth flake were still bright red. The rest nothing more than a crunchy grey powder. Thirdly, my sphincter cinched up, as Jim was fond of saying, tight enough to cut washers off of. From the time I instinctively lunged for the corners at the base of the flake to steady myself I remember the disconcerting sound of rock grinding and not much else. At least until saying "OFF belay" at the anchor. I honestly cannot clearly recall that last stretch of deviously blank stone perched so high above the roaring Gunnison river. I was spent, wasted and out of it! The delirium of survival, no matter how fleeting and temporary, allows you to cool the mind enough to carry on. I must have made it as I doubt I am simply imagining myself now writing this on this mortal plane. I just don't know exactly how I made it. Neither did Jim. When he arrived at our anchor perch he looked dazed and baffled.
Lauhingly called a "semi-hanging" belay because there are some 5.9 footholds there somewhere. Most of the belayer's time was spent in a futile attempt to increase adhesion by uncomfortably crushing one hip or the other into the smooth slab. A smoothness in space that seemed more akin to a slide towards oblivion over more than 2000 feet of atmosphere than a secure stance. The belay was an odd assortment of somewhat questionable gear comprising a shallow knife blade, a grumbly bugaboo, a buried rurp and a bashie or two. All cobbled and spider webbed together to give a passable sense of "yeah that'll work".
Jim got the next and final pitch. While technically harder it at least had substantially better rock and occasionally real pro. In fact this final challenge sprouts the routes only bolt. A peculiarly placed beefer complete with date stamped washer from when the MadMan convinced Newberry to descend and retrieve Forrest's abandoned haul sac. A story to it's self, it left behind an incongruous but gladly, if not awkwardly, clipped memento. Where as before I had been seemingly entombed in the cool shadows of enormous corners and horrendous roofs. Now I was splayed in the full swelter of the arcing Sun's last efforts at desiccating my very soul. Jim was somewhere above methodically facing the unknowns of the future. I was belaying robotic-ally. Dying by the sweat drop.
I couldn't remember how long ago we had run out of water. Judging from the thickly swollen nature of my tongue, that I tried so hard to not notice, it had been a very long time. From the edge of the universe came the long anticipated call of "OFF belay". Now the Jumars that I had so vehemently cursed earlier for being sticky and annoying, owing to the layers of hastily applied duct tape I had foolishly wrapped on the grips, became my best and only friends. Melted by the scorching Sun and reflected heat the tape had become a nearly inescapable goo without which I seriously doubt I would have had the guns to hold on. Spinning helplessly in the relentless blistering heat above the angry froth of erosion occurring a world away and a life time ago I heard disembodied words drift to me from above and behind. It was surreal and other worldly. I was sure I was hallucinating. Either that or I didn't really make it to the previous belay station and this was my own personal Purgatory.
As the unwinding of the rope brought me around to gaze languidly and unfocused outward across to the canyon's other rim I heard the ghosts of my simple naked humanity call to me once again. Expecting angel wings and the divine, the sounds eventually directed me to the incongruous sight of grime and exhaustion. Jim was calling to me from eighty feet behind and a hundred feet above. There he was standing on the lip of the giant prow that juts out over the empty space below. Greedily slurping down the last sniff of one of the gallons of water we had earlier stashed. I am not sure but I think he downed it in one desperate draw. What I do know for sure, because my visual acuity had snapped back to focus at the first sight of water, is that he didn't spill a drop.
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Hey Philo,
Why don't you take a few more hits off the duck and tell us the story of old Tom Pulaski, one more time just for the giggles.
Albert
Edit: My post made more sense before Philo deleted the same story he had posted twice in a period of 20 minutes.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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I C that this thread has legs . . .all of stupor Topric's are on board I better alert your friend and mine it will pain him thoe. . .
the Quality lurkers of the finest caliber too!
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 16, 2009 - 11:56am PT
Newberry is a trifle miffed at me for spilling the beans about the bolt on the FW. Up until my essay only about 8 people knew. Now he is afraid the whole world will know. So SHHHH don't tell anybody OK.
To clarify Jimmy was opposed to the bolt as Forrest didn't place any bolts on the route.
But MadMan is not easy to say no to.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Only because you selectively use the filter "public" to ignore the hundreds of mass shootings that occur each year in non gun free zones, mostly of innocent children and spouses in private homes where guns were kept for the purpose of "protecting" the occupants.
I'm not "ignoring" anything. I'm responding directly to a particular line of ridiculousness from "philo". And the fact is that even one armed and competent CCW citizen in any of those "gun-free zone" mass shootings would have reduced or even eliminated the death-toll.
If you want to talk about "every misuse of a gun," we're into a totally different argument. This isn't "the gun thread," and we've gone around that debate before.
Notice that "philo" has "responded" by kicking back into his typical "mass shooting" form.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or a tr
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Are some posters really going to complain about quality climbing content and cute pics of kids just because it's me posting them? Really?
In 1976 when (Tom) Pulaski, (Jimmy) Newberry, (John) Rosholt and (John) Pearson set off for the First ascent of Journey through Mirkwood of the Painted Wall they were some of the first souls to ever set hand and foot on the big psychedelic stone. Day one had them do the early morning approach with full wall gear down the virtually untrod SOB gully. Then awkward climbing and brutal hauling of their otherworldly load up to the first scree field took the rest of the day. They decided to bivy there at the upper edge of the ledge system.
While re-racking and pulling out gear for the night a rogue gust of wind caught Tom's new ensolite pad and kited it all around the sloping field of chossness. Tom, having already lost a few other pads was apoplectic at the thought of losing another one at the start of a multiday adventure. Off he went running after it like a kid chasing a butterfly. It took the other three laughing ropemates a while before they realized that the mischievous pads current flight path was going to lead Pulaski right off the edge and into the Gunnison River far below. TOM, TOM, TOM! they screamed in panicked unison. Pulaski was, like a Lab retriever chasing after a tossed stick, totally focused. It was only at the last moment when Tom either finally realized his peril or finally heard the desperately barked commands to SIT, STAY! BAD DOG,NO FETCH! He skidded to a stop and watched his precious ensolite pad flutter down to the river and away. Glumly trudging back to their camp 1 he knew it was gonna be a butt cold night but at least he would be there to suffer through it in proud Polish style.
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