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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Feb 18, 2012 - 08:39pm PT
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Steve, I will be posting a different version of the story. One point that I need to make clear now is that the idea that I introduced on that roadtrip was NOT a rolling ball, it was a sliding ball in a grooved wedge. The significance of this will be more clear, for those readers who are interested, when I post scans of my drawings from prior to my sharing the idea with you, as well as the explanation of the logic behind the inspiration.
I am trying to figure out how to present my thoughts in a like manner. I appreciate your frankness, and many of your recollections are quite flattering. And I see that a different version of your recollection might have replaced what actually happened. In the beginning of this thread, I was not surprised when you said the memories were good, as you were the one who walked away with the Lowe royalties and sole credit for the idea among the climbing community. It wasn't the same for me. But it wasn't the money, nor the lack of credit for the idea, that has been grievous. Instead, it was something else (two things, actually--our friendship of course being one), which I will elaborate on further when I present my thoughts.
I will probably wait so as not to distract from your very much appreciated history (which goes way beyond our inventors drama) of what for many, especially in the Flagstaff community, was a seminal time of our lives.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2012 - 01:34am PT
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Corrected prior post to read "sliding ball in groove". I believe we talked of both sliding and rolling, in any case, the notion of a ball was John's and my part was to cut the sliding ball in half. I do want to get this right.
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jack herer
Big Wall climber
Veneta, Oregon
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Feb 19, 2012 - 01:43am PT
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Hi Steve,
Great posts, being a only a young child during that time it is fun to read about the local good old days. I live part time in Camp Sherman, a couple houses away from Dougs. One minor correction, it's actually Kent & Craig Benesch. Kent is still cranking 5.12...
Cheers
Tyler Adams
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2012 - 01:46am PT
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correcting...
Wanna light a bag of poop on Doug's porch for me?
Thanks!
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jack herer
Big Wall climber
Veneta, Oregon
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Feb 19, 2012 - 01:53am PT
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Not at all friends with Doug, never been over there. Sorry things played out as they did.
Just a friend of Kent's, whom I owe much gratitude too for helping a young climber out.
Cheers.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2012 - 06:58am PT
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Okay Jack, you can stay.
I'll pay you $50 each time you do it, and $100 if I get a picture. No limit. I'll pay you somehow.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2012 - 07:50am PT
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The Flag locals were almost all into climbing big walls and many great stories were shared over pizza and beer over at Alpine. Rick Dierckson had been very explicit to me about not pulling on protection, EVER. "Protection should only be weighted in the act of your life being saved". Then on aid climbing: "There's no point in aid climbing." "You may as well just jug a rope, or climb a ladder, or drive there."
Is Rick still out there? The last time I saw him, he and Skip Guerrin were leaving Hueco Tanks to go exchange the rental car they had just trashed because it was making bad ticking noises. They had gone 4-wheeling in the night and came back to the quonset hut where everyone hung out at maybe 2:00 am. When I saw the car, maybe a Grand Am or something in dark metallic red, it had loose fenders and a mangled rabbit coming off of the front bumper, like the bowspit of a ship. Memorable... Skip always hated me, just for being short, I think. What a pair.
I had been focussed on free climbing, but all of my friends did walls and now Deucie coming to town would finally be the tipping point. We talked about it alot. I would go think and then come back and ask questions. Then when I thought I understood the process we talked about failing. How to fail if I would need to and why it happens. Big wall failures seemed to be pretty common and I wanted to understand why.
Occasionally there were undeniable events, such as injuries or gear failures and dropped equipment, but here were also a lot of cases where the team was unbalanced and patience was lost, or motivation was lost some other way. A "F*#k this." decision is made, and the effort is abandoned. After analyzing the possible social dynamics related to me doing my first wall, I decided it might be best to do a solo. I was going to be slow and didn't want to impose on anyone. Another issue was patience. Belaying for aid would seem to me to be exceptionally boring. Then there's the issue of hauling. If you solo, you can "body haul", meaning that you ride the end of the haul line down as your bag goes up. When body hauling works well, it is truly a wonderful thing. The sequence of soloing appealed to me. I would always be busy and I wouldn't slow anyone down. If I failed it was all me.
The next question was when to do it. These discussions were taking place during the fall of 1987. One aspect of wall climbing is managing water. I believe "(1) two liter bottle of water per day per person in winter and about double that in the summer" was a general rule of thumb. John had suggested "Mescalito" and estimated it ought to take me at least 8 days. My thinking was pretty logical. Going in winter would save 30 lb off of the weight of my haul bag, I would stay warm by being very busy and I wouldn't be able get bored or piss anyone off. I actually thought my odds were best this way. The biggest motivator of all was John saying that it would be very "bad-assed". I also wanted an adventure.
That Fall we had gone on a few trips, soloed quite a bit at the overlook and hung out a lot. John had bought a house near downtown, that had a nice warehouse in the back. It was very nice and had a big flat wall that became a climbing wall. I was a bit jealous and wanted to be equally equipped at the Wired Bliss shop. We built a small wall for Wired Bliss. Face climbing was always my weakness and I generally blamed being short (5'5"). Later, Scotty Franklin would prove that being short could actually be an advantage. Scotty also had a pair of enormous guns, and was one-arming back in his teens.
I had made a "crack-machine", inspired by Tony Yaniro, for the Wired bliss shop. It was the "denim lined thin hand crack" mentioned earlier. In those days, the best way to get my attention was to whisper "handcrack" into my ear. "Free pizza" worked as well. I had small hands that made a lot of hard climbs feel several grades easier than they were rated. This helped my ego, which was rarely sated. Tales of Power is the ultimate example. It was rated 5.12b, because the crack is 1 1/4", most peoples' rattly fingers bad size. I could hang upside down from 1 1/4", but 1" was a different matter. My test was a bulging slippery basalt crack at the Forks called "Sail Away"... I didn't want to tape up to use the machine and wood wss too slippery, first we tried kitten fur (jk), but it was too soft and so I lined it with denim. Unfortunately, it would give blisters as quickly as it gave a pump.
In any case, the Wired Bliss face climbing wall had 3 holds on it when I fell off and landed on my wrist. I thought I had sprained it and laid of it for a couple of weeks. Getting X-rays was too much $$$ for the minimal pain I was facing. We went to J tree on one of our outings and something happened doing a little handcrack roof on toprope. Apparently my cracked "Scaphoid" bone separated at that time and has never since completely healed. I didn't realize it was broken until a year later and treated it as a sprain and continued climbing. It didn't hurt to pull on things, but I couldn't mantle on my left side anymore. It wouldn't be a factor on El Cap.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2012 - 11:28pm PT
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An El Capitan big wall climb has got to be one of the most unique experiences in the world. The entire trip, you're never more than a mile from the car. You're so completely on your own, but you can see car headlights. In my case I knew I was going to get checked on, but how much can they tell from the ground? Do they wait until you haven't moved for two days and then what?... get out the telescope and look again? If something bad went down, you can't just expect a chopper to magically appear. That El Cap rescues happen that way at all, seems unreal. Especially solo, and on the steep part of the wall, any kind of rescue was putting a lot more people at risk than you ever want to be responsible for... probably just to scrape off a body. Will the rescue guys split up my gear? A lot of thoughts were going through my head on that drive out there.
The biggest unknown for me was how would I deal with being on the side of a cliff for days at a time? Do some guys freak out after a week and unrope and jump? It's got to have happened. How tempted will I be? No partner to stabilize thoughts, have I ever been alone that long? What about at the top? Base jumping had fascinated me. Especially the story of Bret Mauer, who jumped El Cap as his first parachute jump. Randy Leavitt had coached him in a vertical wind tunnel and that was it. I knew that the jump spot was at the top of the New Dawn wall at a spot the called "The Diving Board". If I was successful I'd be dumping my haul bag from there. Would I freak then?
I kept my speed down. It was hard to. I went for three years with a suspended drivers license, because I couldn't stop getting pulled over. The speed limit was still 55 mph back then, which was unsafe for everyone because of the threat of falling asleep and wrecking from the boredom. The Audi would go about 100 if you let it run, but was happiest at about 80. Going well below this and solo, seemed epic. In those days everything was precarious, money, the car, drivers license, and now this improbable trip.
I hadn't told my folks I was going. I figured they were better off not knowing what was happening. I doubt they could imagine the nature of this kind of climbing. That it would mostly be just hard work and a kind of repetitive routine. But so far up that if you drop something, it just disappears... No clanking down the rock or echoing from the base. Just poof, gone. No noise at all.
I had been told to expect problems. Deucie couldn't tell me what my problems were going to be. Only that it's a big part of what makes doing walls interesting. Almost all of the problems would be mechanical puzzles. Pulley problems. Physics... I was confident, but not to a point where style was actually ever a thought. Just getting up would be enough on this one. I had made a shock corded, 8 foot longer cheater stick. This would be my ace in the hole if anything was out of reach. It folded into a little 12 inch bundle and had a short length of very malleable aluminum connecting a hook to the stick. The hook had a short sling with a biner on it. When weighted, all of the load would go onto the hook. The soft aluminum section allowed the hook to be positioned as desired to most easily hook things, probably fixed pieces or slings.
Werner nodded approvingly when I showed him the stick... "You'll make it"... "Looks like you got it all." He'd hardly said anything else as he checked out my gear layed out behind my car, parked at El Cap Meadow. It was a real trip for me. The only time he'd spoken to me before that was back at Stone Groove 2 1/2 years ago. Now he's checking me out, sizing me up and probably thinking "This will be interesting". I had left a note for him on the Camp IV bulletin board that morning, but he'd been in touch with Deucie and knew the score. He would check on me daily and phone in the update. There wasn't much going on in the valley at that time, which was mid January. It seemed like there was alway a patch of clear weather for a week or two in January so this was hopefully my best window. Werner left, I assume back to Camp IV, and I commenced humping loads to the base of Mescalito.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Feb 19, 2012 - 11:50pm PT
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Now we're getting to the good stuff. Keep it coming!
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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Feb 20, 2012 - 12:13am PT
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We used to hit Alpine Pizza all the time in the early 90's.
This is the back of a t-shirt I picked up sometime back then.
Haven't been there in years... just sort of moved on to other places.
Anyone know how the pizza is these days?
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2012 - 12:37am PT
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One thing I should say about myself on this climb, is that I didn't hurry. It made much more sense to me to conserve and rest and enjoy. That's how I rationalized what is actually laziness. If you can imagine actually doing a wall and being lazy about it, and a novice, that was me.
It took five trips to get all my gear to the base, maybe 3/8 of a mile and a couple of hundred feet vertical. By 2:00 I'd be ready to start climbing.
About half of the gear was mine and the rest was borrowed. Deucie had set me up with everything I'd need. There were some items he made me buy, like the haul bag itself, but most of it was on loan with just a few rules about what was or wasn't ok to drop off the top. The key custom gear was from Fish Products (Russ Walling) and included the bag, a big "Fish Hook", port-a-ledge and several smaller sewn stash bags with loops.
It wasn't what you might expect for January. Clear, sunny and calm, and about 50 degrees. There was no trouble staying warm while humping the loads, that was certain. Then the rock had it's own warmth. Facing south makes it a wonderful solar heat collector, aimed perfectly to catch the sun in winter.
Mescalito starts out with five pitches that are less than vertical, ending on a big lumpy ledge. There are some pendulums to the right from there, and then you're committed to the main part of the wall. It surprised me when I found the bottom of the route. It's not like free climbs where you just look for the chalk. You have to pick out the slings from the first belay and kind of work your way down. It looked pretty blank until I was right up to it. Then I could start to see a few rivets and features. At the bottom it started looking reasonable... wires, a couple of rivets and into some cracks. I was looking forward to this.
The first two pitches went down without much incident, except for the hauling. I'm guessing that the haulbag weighed 150 pounds and I only weighed 130 (back then), so I had to pull myself down to it. My plan had been to body haul as much as possible. This is a method of hauling where you clip yourself into the haul line, and with a pulley, lower down as the bag is pulled up. Unfortunately, when the bag outweighs you you still have to work for it. On the first pitch I learned how fun this was going to be. It was apparent right away that the only way to get the bag up was a combination of body hauling and jumarring down the haul line, pulling myself down and the bag up at the same time. When I reached the bag I jugged back up to the anchors and did it again. Eventually I would have the bag at the anchors and then rap down to clean the pitches from the bottom up.
It must look a little funny to see someone bivy 200 feet up, but I never saw any point in trying to fix ropes. That would mean energy wasted jugging and then sleeping on the ground. It had been a good first day. Loads got humped, 2 pitches down and no major difficulties setting up the ledge and getting comfortable. I slipped into my double sleeping bags, pressed play on my tape player and opened a can of cold Beefaroni. I was exhausted. Half way through the can I fell fast asleep, not to wake until it was day again.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Feb 20, 2012 - 12:37am PT
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Enjoyable all. Thanks.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2012 - 01:23am PT
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The second day wouldn't be quite as smooth as the first. The next pitch would teach me a good lesson.
I had the lead routine down pretty well. It's enjoyable aid climbing when it's less than vertical. You can get into a stable rested position for making placements and it's a lot easier to jug with your toes stabilized against the rock. Most of my placements were made from the second step of my aiders. There seemed to be designated placements that everyone had used that were maybe 3 feet apart. Occasionally there'd be something longer or shorter or there'd be options, but mostly it was specific spots where you had to place something.
About 30 feet up the third pitch I had placed a couple of small nuts and found myself staring up at a flared 1/4" pin scar aimed upward into the crack. I'm guessing it was a thin Lost Arrow scar and I was thinking about what to put in it when I remembered the Ball prototype. The placement was a long reach and when I got the piece into the scar I didn't like the look of it. It was hideously flared and the direction of pull on the piece was straight out. I tried to pop it back out, but I had set it slightly and couldn't quite get high enough up to yank up on it. I thought if I pulled hard it would just pop out so I hooked on an aider and carefully shifted my weight onto it. It was holding! I could not believe it was holding! Carefully, I climbed up a step and hooked in my fifi. It was a miracle, I was giggling. The next placement was a bombproof stopper, which I casually placed and removed from my biner of medium stoppers, replaced my biner of stoppers on my rack and selected a "free" biner. I then clipped the free biner to the good stopper and started reaching for my free aider.
Pop! ting! pop! and suddenly, I'm just dropping... During the fall, I got turned sideways, and then I hit the haulbag... Whumph! When I finally stopped, I was upside down, about ten feet below the bag and feeling really stupid. I was physically ok, but it scared the hell out of me. There were some scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious. I was surprised the rack was so heavy and getting flipped over was a big wake up call. I collected myself and jugged back up to my last good piece, did one more move and without hestation, whipped out the cheater stick and reached to hook the stopper I had all but clipped into before falling. I felt humbled. It had been a mistake that wasn't necessary and it could have ended my climb right there. I had to be more careful. The rest of the pitch passed without creating any memories.
The fall had shaken me. It was about 40 feet, and my second longest of all time. It also distracted me, and I forgot to check the topo before starting up the next pitch. I never carried all the rack with me at once. It was more like racking up for a free climb at the start of each pitch... looking up and guessing on sizes. What wasn't used was kept at the top of the haul bag. I thought size-wise, the next pitch looked similar enough, so I went with what I had. I didn't realize this was a mistake until two moves from the anchors... Hook moves!
I only had a single bathook on my rack, but I was faced with two moves to get to the anchors. I thought about cheating, but it was horizontal and it would have been a process to get my weight over there. The hook placements were bomber, an inch deep with a quarter inch lip and a deep depression behind that for the point of the hook. I considered going down to my bag for another hook, but really didn't want to waste that much energy. I decided to try something different and proceeded onto the first placement with my single hook. I knew the move would be critical so I gave myself plenty of slack to reach the belay. Carefully, I placed the point of my fifi hook into the depression next to the skyhook that was holding me. I was going to "match hooks" and try to make the move off of my fifi. My eyes were glued to the wobbling little hook. I held it straight with one hand while I carefully reached right with the good hook and found it's new placement. At the point where I was ready to transfer my weight onto it the fifi turned sideways, popped from its hold and sent me flying. I must have had alot of slack or pulled something, because I had gone about 25 feet. After recovering, I jugged up a little and pendulumed into range for another "stick move" to finish the pitch. This fall wasn't as far, and was cleaner, but it gave me the sick feeling that I was in over my head.
The fifth pitch up to the ledge was easier. Even the hauling didn't seem as bad. There were anchors on the wall for the portaledge and it was nice to have some rocky earth under me. The climbing itself wasn't scaring me, but I was scaring myself. Two days and I'd already fallen 65 feet from stupid mistakes... How good would I be when the climbing actually got hard?
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2012 - 06:52pm PT
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The next pitch included a couple of pendulums to the right. I felt more committed, since I wasn't sure how to undo them if I had to retreat. I still wasn't worried too much, and had a very positive mindset. I had settled into a routine. Each morning I waited for the sun to reach me and warm things up. This is probably the best time on a wall and I feel sad for all the teams that get up at dawn and start climbing cold. The higher up I climbed, the earlier the sun would hit. One of my greatest pleasures was seeing the line of the sun come down the wall to me, anticipating and then feeling the it finally hit me. After a half hour or so I would get up and go to work.
The solo method of that day consisted of tying one end of the lead rope to the belay anchors, tying yourself into the rope with a clove hitch and feeding yourself slack by advancing rope through the knot. Is you climbed and left pieces behind the lead rope was clipped into them. When belay anchors were reached the lead rope would be transferred to the new anchors and tied in, then the slack in the haul line was taken in and the line was clipped into a hauling pulley or similar setup. I had a hauling pulley made by Doug Phillips bitd. With the slack removed, the climber ties into the haul line and starts down the wall, as if rappelling, but supported by the haul line and the bag on the end of it. Body hauling was sarting to work for me and on my best days, I did 4 pitches.
I did take some more short falls, and finally tallied about 100 feet of falls taken. When you're aid climbing and come to a fixed piece you have some options. Obviously, if it's good you just clip it and go, but when it's questionable, different people do different things. Some people yank on things pretty hard and try to break them, others might try to avoid it somehow altogether. I was lazy and small so would try to be very gentle and pretend the fragile pieces were asleep as I clipped into them and climbed up. I remember advancing once on a medium copperhead with a single strand of the 7 strand cable left. Other things would fail. It would have been easy enough to do the route without any falls, but I think it would have been slower.
At times things were pretty fun. There's a thing called the "Molar Traverse" where from the anchors you go straight right a ways and then straight up a crack in a corner to the belay bolts up under the roof. The body hauling had become easier as I consumed food and water. On this pitch the haul was effortless. I was able to coast into position and clean the entire traverse from the anchors over to the crack in one big pendulum swing. It made me smile and giggle as I plucked the gear. Back at the bivy and it had started snowing lightly, but the snow was blowing up the wall, not down.
It was a different world... Vertical pack camping. Some things were really wonderful. In real life I'm an insomniac. It's very rare for me to sleep through an entire night. On the wall I slept perfectly, every single night. It's pretty ironic when non-climbers say there's no way they could sleep on the side of a cliff, when it's the best sleep I've ever had. There was also the weight loss and ab workout. Absolutely the best program in the world. I started out pudgy and stumbled off "cut". The first few days, my abs were pretty sore. Moreso than any other part of me, but that had passed. As had a sore throat from the first days of the climb. I was way behind on my eating and would have plenty of food, but water was going away at the expected rate. If I didn't find or collect some, I'd need to ration it.
I don't remember if it was a single pitch from there or more to the base of pitch 13. At first I was psyched when I got to the belay, which feature a decent ledge, but the weather was finally getting crappy. Inside the rain fly I was starting to get drips of condensation and I just didn't warm up like the other nights. I had a couple of little shaky pouch hand warmers and a can of beef stew that I thought would be much better warm, so I combined them and put it in my big stash bad with my extra clothes and hat. That would be my breakfast tomorrow.
One of my main staples was Cheeze-its and cream cheese. It was another recommendation of Deucie's, highlighted by a near starvation story, stranded by a freak storm on the South Face of Half Dome with only a single tub of cream cheese for several days of extreme cold. My problem was that as soon as I ate some food and my stomach stopped complaining, I would fall asleep. I had cans of fruit, the aforemention Cheeze-its and cream cheese, some snacky stuff and a bunch of Chef-Boy-R-Dee products. Mostly, I just ate the Beefaroni, a half can at night and then the rest for breakfast. Tomorrow would be a special treat.
It kept getting wetter and the insulation in my bag wasn't working very well. I could stay warm if I didn't move around. Any parts of the sleeping bags not against my body would be cold. I still slept ok, but I was achey and sore from not moving when I woke up. As I looked outside it was full on raining and the next pitch looked ugly. I didn't feel like climbing and decided to take the day off. Above me the rains were melting snow on top and on all the ledges. Even a seemingly vertical face like El Cap has ledges and channels that seem to direct water this way and that. After a while the drips started combining into trickles and then worse.
Inside my rain fly, I decided to have breakfast and maybe move my bivy over a little if the most offending rivulets failed to abate. I looked around for my big stash bag, but couldn't find it. There weren't many places to look, it was just gone. So much for a warm breakfast. I had a bad feeling. I looked outside again and the drips were worse. I had to move and it wouldn't be to anywhere nearby. The whole ledge was being showered with rain plus a line of drip streams a foot or two from the wall. Back inside it was apparent that I had to DO something. The condensation was dripping from multiple sources. I was being evicted and had the ugliest pitch of my life between me and my next home.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Feb 20, 2012 - 09:47pm PT
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Mmmm, wall wetness.
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Feb 21, 2012 - 03:12am PT
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Wallflower wanting more.
please continue.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 21, 2012 - 06:58am PT
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I'd decided to climb a single pitch and get my bivy to a drier spot. I wasn't hoping that the next belay would be drier. It simply couldn't not be. The spot where my portaledge had hung was now directly under several thin, dancing streams of water. The next belay would be drier for sure.
After climbing up a few moves, I was drawn into a flared squeeze slot with a thinner crack way in the back. These sort of pitches are no fun for anyone, whether free climbing or aiding. The problem is you can't reach up very far, so each move was less than a foot. The other problems are untangling aiders and forcing up the slot with all that rack on. The pitch was miserable purely by virtue of the climbing, but there's also a very cold running water drip hitting dead center on my head.
I hate water and especially cold water splashing me in the face. I did kayak for a while and had great fun on river trips, but my face kept getting splashed. Sometime the water was really cold and would go up my nose. I remember sitting in eddies dreaming of doing dry things. I had a cheap plastic rain suit on, but I was still getting soaked. I was getting really frustrated, Water was getting in through my neck and running up my sleeves when I reached up. I tried just forcing through it, but there was no use. I was just thrashing worse and getting more frustrated. Finally I broke down crying. I didn't care about climbing up anymore I just wanted off. I decided to bail.
I started thinking about the sequence to get down and how long it was going to take... If I kept my bag with me it was going to take a few days. If I dropped my bag there was still no way I was getting down in a day. And then there was the pendulums... How do I undo those with my haul bag... or even without it? I just sat there for a while... Thinking, sobbing, and realizing how committed I really was. If I wanted off, I may as well go up. At least I had a procedure for that. And then there was the irrelevant aspect of finishing what I came for. I didn't care.
Committment is what makes adventure what it is, and I don't think it can be pleasant. How do we handle the difficulty? Without the commitment you can back off. I've had lessor adventures, where the tasks were not too bad and bailing was never a thought. I barely remember them. I remember this day. It was 25 years ago, and I remember it better than my last meal.
I'd go up after all, and I would eventually get off this thing and be done. I became numb after that and just worked through the pitch. My spirit had been broken. I don't remember the rest of it, just that godawful slot. I actually don't remember any more at all from that day. I know I got up it and set up a new bivy and that it eventually stopped raining and I had shelter again, but I don't remember any of it. A complete blank.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 21, 2012 - 07:57am PT
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I remember the next morning pretty well though. I had broken through. The sun was out and it was getting nice and warm. The only way it get's that warm in the winter is after a wet storm. The storm had kept the overnight temperature up a bit and the combination of that and the angle of the wall to the sun made my spot the warmest in the valley. I hung everything wet out to dry and basked in it. Gradually, I became more comfortable and happier. Then I got motivated again.
I was getting pretty efficient with the climbing and my bag had become lighter than I was. Body hauling was working perfectly and I had some good days, including another 4-pitcher. I took one more fall on an expanding crack/flake pitch that scared me, but the rest was just mechanical work. The weather was good and I climbed a lot in just a tee shirt and sweats.
There was still one more pitch that I was concerned about technically, and that was "The Bismarck", a big, right facing corner with a crack that grew from gear size to off width at the top. I think most people lay back up the top part... I'm not sure. Deucie said I'd figure it out, but I didn't know how. My free climbing on this climb was kept to about 5.5 with my boots on and all that gear. As I reached the belay below it and looked up, I was delighted to see a short length of fixed roped dangling out of the crack. Assuming it was good (and it was), I would have no problem.
I bivied at the base of it. I had been light on water at that point and made use of some drips at the back of the ledge to eventually collect 6 more liters. Foodwise, I was in good shape as I was only eating about half of what I had planned.
At the top of The Bismarck is a big ledge. The biggest on the whole climb. I unroped there to change clothes and briefly imagined running off the edge, into space... I quickly tied back in and stayed tied in. I just had a few pitches to go, maybe two more days, I was thinking. I'd get there... No hurry.
It's interesting how stressful events seem to suck the memory away from events leading up to or following them. Like a mental black hole. The section between here and the base of the final pitch is another blank to me, just like the top of pitch 13. I don't remember any of it... Was there a roof with pins out to the right or is that deja-vu from another climb somewhere? The mental files spill into each other and become confused. I sure do remember that last pitch though. It is still my most vividly memorable part of the climb, or for that matter, my entire life.
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 21, 2012 - 08:18am PT
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I had arrived at the base of the last pitch thinking I would bivy there if it was a good spot. It was late enough that I knew I'd have to be finishing and descending the next day. As it turned out, the belay was running with water in a bad way. I decided to go ahead and lead the last pitch, haul my bag and sleep on top. At this point I think it was just cloudy and maybe 40 degrees or so. The last pitch is cool, what I can remember of it. There's crack stuff up a bit then a mix of bolts and placements up and right, diagonalling and overhanging a bit. there were a couple of rivets over a bulge at the end and then you can crawl onto the final ledge with a little tree. When I reached the tree, it was pretty dark. I could tell I was on top, but I couldn't see how to get off the ledge. It didn't matter. That tree was exactly what I was looking for.
It was maybe six inches in diameter and arched toward the edge, creating a strong elevated hauling point. I'd just sit, stand, sit, stand. I could haul my bag up, hang my ledge from the tree and I was done. I'd rappel and clean the last pitch in the morning. At this point, I was tired, but upbeat... I was actually on top! As I started hauling I could feel the bag come off the hook and all was good for another ten feet or so. The bag then became stuck somehow and I began the usual efforts. Lowering, raising, pulling very, very hard and bouncing, but nothing was working.
The way I had been climbing, I would lead by tying off my lead rope to the belay anchors and advancing a clove hitch on a biner at my waist, I dragged a haul line clipped behind me. The haul bag was hanging by a hook on a biner at the anchors and had line #3 hanging from it (or stacked if on a ledge) and tied in to the belay. It would become my rappell rope if I couldn't just body haul to the belay. I had a 4th rope tied onto the haul bag. It had been that way since the pendulums way, way down and had largely been forgotten. In any case I was in a situation. My rappel line was at the bag and my haul line was under tension. A weird, misty fog had developed and everything was dripping wet and starting to freeze. Namely my lead rope. I needed my bag.
I was wearing polypro under a wool shirt and polypro under sweat pants. Over this, I wore that cheap vinyl rainsuit. I also wore a thin polypro hat, made from the legs from my extra long johns. My headlamp had expired, but the light wasn't too bad from the moon and clouds. I just really needed my bag.
I decided I would have to jumar down my haul line to the bag and either free it and jug back up, or somehow back it up and sleep right there. The haul line itself was a very used and fuzzy old purple 9mm and It felt very strange jugging back down over the lip at the top. Once I was over the edge and hanging free, I still couldn't see anything (the bag) so I proceeded down a few more feet. Suddenly, one of my jumars was just sliding up and down the rope! No friction at all. I realized it had iced and that the only thing holding me, at the very top of El Cap, was an equally iced jumar.
I thought if that went, I would slide to the bag and hit it at about 100 mph. Hopefully it would knock me out, before the feeble rope stretched to failure and I fell another rope length, before rope #3 saved the haul bag but left me with my icy jumars pointed the wrong way down the icy rope that had just snapped. Something might have tangled by then, but I suspect I'm dead either way. Oh God! How is mom going to find out? This is very, very, very, very bad. I'm about to go... from the top. No! Oh God No! These thoughts probably cycled through my mind in about 5 seconds. I didn't know what to do... but then I did! Moments like these bring a kind of clarity that can only be experienced. I think the flood of adrenaline must affect the brain, or maybe pre-death endorphins are being released.
I immediately removed the iced Klog ascender, plastered my tongue onto the icy cam and started licking! In a few moments I started to feel the little teeth and I knew it was working. When I put it back on the rope and it was functional again, I could see some light. I repeated the process with the other ascender, jugged up two moves and cleared them both again, two more, then again and I was back onto the ledge. I was never, ever going to try that again. I tried hauling again and just pulled as hard as I could until the haul rope's sheath ripped at my jumar and I knew it was hopeless. I was going to have to "sleep" on top with no gear.
That poor, dear little tree. There was about three feet of snow on top of El Cap. The ledge I was on had its own little snowdrift, settled and locked into place. The obvious spot to hide was between the little tree and the wall behind it. It wasn't sheltered of course, but it was level and there was the tree, an actual living thing. I climbed up it a few feet and ripped off some branches to make my little nest in the snow. I sat down on the pile of branches and started waiting for the next day.
After a while my feet started getting really cold... I sat there cross legged on my little nest, holding onto my feet and thinking of Hugh Herr. Alternating sides, I would take off a shoe and tuck my toes into the warmth behind the opposite knee while I tried to warm the rest of my foot with my hands. I kept thinking, "Sh#t like this is when people lose their feet." I was determined not to lose my feet. I never dozed, it was just too cold. I kept watching Orion not move very far after what seemed like a very long time. It wasn't foggy anymore, it was just plain cold and I was starting to feel stiff. The wind had picked and I was started to seriously worry about freezing to death. I really, really needed my bag!
Sometime around 2 am, I decided I had to try rappelling the lead rope. By then it had iced to about double size and looked like something out of a mountaineering tragedy film. I was able to free up short sections by shaking, pounding and flexing the rope. Then I'd, rap a bit, clip a piece, step in my aider and advance down past it, then clip the rope back in, take a minute to thaw my hands out and repeat the process. I had left my gloves at the haul bag and really regretted it. I'm sure it took longer than the lead, but as I made progress, I had hope again. Finally, I reached the belay and reeled in rope #3 to see my prize come wafting around a corner above. Oh, what a sight! I jugged straight to it, pulled over to the lead rope, tied into it, set up my bivy and slept right there.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Feb 21, 2012 - 09:43am PT
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Steve said: "My free climbing on this climb was kept to about 5.5 with my boots on and all that gear."
For reference, Zion seam that Steve references doing the FA on earlier in the thread, went at 5.12....before there was a 5.13. I was climbing strong and could get up it on toprope no hangs or falls - and in fact was TRing it when my belayer shocked the hell out of me by casually saying: "Steve Byrne led this"...!!!!! there was little to no pro for lead climbing. Maybe 5.12X then, but I don't think X had been invented. Probably another instance of Byrne's amazing little TCU's he'd invented helping to work a miracle coupled with skillful and strong climbing. Today, there is a whole bunch of big 3/8" bolts that were not there when Steve led it.
...anyway, for reference as it relates to his 5.5 free climbing comment.
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