The Sheep Buggerers of JT...BITD

With EE on the Salathe

Although it was thirty five years ago it's time I paid homage and recounted the story from my first El Cap route with a dude who's still livin' the dream on the big stone.

Erik Erikson was one of my first climbing partners and mentors at Tahquitz and Suicide rocks in the early and mid '70s. He took me on and witnessed most of my folly on the sharp end and at the edge of my ability or beyond. That was probably one of the easier albeit deadlier tortures that Erik was to endure during the course of my tutelage. His encouragement coupled with sardonic wit served to temper and quell my exuberant zeal for climbing myself into situations for which I had no obvious solution. Over the course of a couple years I narrowly survived several dangerous leader falls before Erik's chagrin and admonishments began to curb me of my wanton flirtations with mortality.

A few years and many routes later found us both in the Valley looking for a partner and teaming up for our first El Cap route. It was February 1981, five months after Tobin died soloing in Canada and I had come to Yosemite adrift and confused, but intent on trying to reconnect through climbing with some of what I had lost.

I remember talking with Erik about how I often thought about doing El Cap but never had the courage to attempt to do so until then. Tobin's death was the catalyst. I had been thinking a lot about how Tobin had done so many hard climbs, first ascents, and big alpine routes all over the world in his short life and yet here I was, barely getting up a few easier walls in California in relatively the same amount of time. It felt like I hadn't even started seriously climbing yet, so I felt honored and committed to doing the Salathe route at Erik's suggestion, and of course in the back of my mind I was still scared shitless at the prospect of launching off into the unknown on that long route.

Skip ahead a few days and we had been cruising all the aid and some 5.9 or 5.10, we'd gone through a cold dripping bivy in the alcove below El Cap Spire and we were starting on day three. Above the slimy block pitch, the next lead was mine and I was supposed to tension or swing to Sous Le Tout ledge and fix before our next bivy on the Block's sloping ledge. Erik had insisted much to my dismay that I was off route and was wasting precious hours or the possibility of our not summiting the next day. This weighed on my mind during the bivy as I slid down and scooched up all night long on the sloping ledge with the drip drip of the mini waterfall wetting my feet through my bag by dawn.

So Erik jugs up to my high point and sure enough I was off route and I'm starting to stress but he finds the left crack and Sous Le Toit and gets us back on route. After a thorough drubbing I started up some A2 about 30 feet above Erik when I levered out on a #3 cam and wanged it straight into my forehead, and commenced to cry out like a little girl as I felt the blood hot on my face and hand. I lowered down to Erik and whined plaintively, "How bad is it, Am I going to need stitches, man?" "Dibbs, it's just a scratch, man!" he says disgustedly. Without missing a beat he reaches up and slaps a patch of duct tape on my forehead and tells me, "Now get back up there!" I think we topped out that day or the following morning.

Too many years have gone by to remember much else, but I know how Erik looked up to and respected my big bro. For the way he kept it together for our first voyage up the Captain, I think Tobin would have been grateful to him for that.

-Tim