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AKDOG
Mountain climber
Anchorage, AK
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May 25, 2016 - 09:24am PT
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Movin' to the country I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches
Movin' to the country I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches
I'm movin to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches
Movin' to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches
I took a little nap where the roots all twist
Squished a rotten peach in my fist
And dreamed about you woman
I poked my finger down inside makin' a little room for a ant to hide
Nature's candy in my hand or can or a pie
Millions of peaches peaches for me
Millions of peaches peaches for free
Millions of peaches peaches for me
Millions of peaches peaches for free
(Presidents of the USA)
Fresh Peach pie and the east side of the Sierras, nice……, Good luck with your transition Dave.
Driver and I also went in over Dragon pass, thought we were doing a FA on Fin Dome, we did run into some old slings up high may have been your route. We had done Clarence King a couple weeks before, Sierras are truly awesome.
Keep the photos coming everyone….
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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May 25, 2016 - 10:40am PT
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Hang in there Dave, better days await.
Edit
Notice there is no chain link fence around the stamp mill. People actually came and enjoyed things without f*cking them up.
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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May 25, 2016 - 11:48am PT
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Lost Horse Mine - Before it was closed to bikes ;-)
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Lassitude 33
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May 25, 2016 - 04:22pm PT
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The glory days of Mt. Biking...before it was banned most places. Bikes and equipment was, as the photos show, primitive.
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Russ Walling
Social climber
from Poofters Froth, Wyoming
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May 25, 2016 - 04:43pm PT
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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May 25, 2016 - 04:48pm PT
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One of the reasons I like this thread is because it's reminding me of all the small details that, added together, made climbing at Josh and Idyllwild in the 70's so vividly exotic and adventuresome. It just occurred to me that for us down in San Diego the drive from Escondido all the way to Suicide and Tahquitz was on two-lane blacktop roads. This was before I-15 was put in and the drive was all on old Highway 395, then through Hemet and up to Idyllwild. Temecula was a gas station and a burger joint; there was nothing between Temecula and Hemet except cows and a couple of fruit stands. If you were headed to Josh, it was 395 to Hemet to Banning before you were on an Interstate. Everything was new and different. The first time I drove through Yucca Valley it was a couple of gas stations and burger stands. I don't remember the particulars but for some reason it was just me and Alan Nelson's mom. Those were different times. Our group was, well, a different kinda bunch:
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StahlBro
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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May 25, 2016 - 05:06pm PT
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Great pic Bob!
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dee ee
Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
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May 25, 2016 - 05:30pm PT
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Really Bob! I only recognize 2 peeps in the shot. Who is that character in the hat back Center?
edit: No, make that 3 peeps.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 25, 2016 - 07:18pm PT
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Nice words there from you BVB!
In the end, it was all just millions of peaches for free ...
Thanks everyone, for a terrific thread!
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Russ Walling
Social climber
from Poofters Froth, Wyoming
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May 25, 2016 - 07:25pm PT
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I'm thinking that Alan Nelson wore that same hat and glasses until his last days... Great pic BVB
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dee ee
Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
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May 25, 2016 - 07:45pm PT
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Russell, you got that right.
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fosburg
climber
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May 25, 2016 - 08:32pm PT
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Damn
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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May 25, 2016 - 11:55pm PT
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Really Bob! I only recognize 2 peeps in the shot. Who is that character in the hat back Center?
The guy in the back with the hat is Pete Nelson, Alan's dad. To his left is Off White, Alan is easy enough to spot, and I'm the archetypal geek off to the right. Other great trivia from this photo: the women in the photo poached some of our (the guys) virginity; I climbed a bunch of peaks including a new route on Junction Peak with Alan's dad; and the guy who is standing to Pete Nelson's right is Mike Weegie, who died of a heart attack while attempting the Sierra Club RCS's crazy belay test. A lot of stuff happened on that seven-day trip. It's most enduring legacy is the Thanksgiving-In-Josh tradition that our little group -- which expands and contracts in phases -- has kept alive for the last 43 years. Some years we've been 35+ strong, other years it's been maybe ten or fifteen die-hards who always show up, come hell or high water.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
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May 26, 2016 - 07:42pm PT
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That is so cool.
You and Al and off-white were the only ones I recognized.
I was a little iffy on Al because he almost looks like a girl in that photo.
And I was a little iffy on off-white just because
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Topic Author's Reply - May 29, 2016 - 09:57am PT
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Bump for an early Tobin Story...
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Topic Author's Reply - May 29, 2016 - 09:57am PT
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Tobin and his Acapulco Sunset on Intersection Rock
Of recollections dulled by living, and memories roughed by the drugged abuses of my youth, there are still some that work their way through the fog of time with near clarity, albeit a few minor inaccuracies, to recall once more here. Growing up with Tobin Sorenson was rarely dull and for most climbers and those afflicted by the adventure gene, there are many firsts along the way. Experimentation with disaster and mortality are the common thread of our experience. Though some considered Tobin as somewhat chaste and unworldly, this was not completely the case. He always had a gamblers heart and did partake of the herb, only once that I recall, at the behest of his friends before the bible and its work almost completely took hold of his life.
To my mind, Tobin never had a top rope from God, as this would bear out later on with his tragic accident on Mount Alberta. But his conviction, whether for climbing or for his faith in Christ, though he never made it his business to preach to me, was illustrated by his well known talent for commitment both on and off the rope, which was culminated by a short and momentously spectacular alpine climbing career. But this story is of a more innocent time, when the Stonemasters were in their formative beginnings, and soloing 5.11s and 5.12s at Joshua Tree was not yet de rigueur for the day.
It was circa early 1970s and there I was tagging along with my big brother, Tobin, and the Stonemasters again. We were eating and hanging at the site beneath the big boulder under the Blob, on the northwest end of the Hidden Valley loop at sunset. The usual communal meal had been donated to, and/or bummed and scarfed by the usual peanut butter and air-bread crowd, Tobin and I, Bullwinkle, et al. Pipe loads were being passed and new among the imbibers, the normally abstinent Tobin consented to a long and choking lung full of the Mexican bud du jour.
"I see green spots!" Tobin exclaimed after catching his breath. "Whoa, you better take it easy there, son," a seasoned member of the group cautioned. But Tobin announced to their chagrin that he was going to solo the North Overhang on Intersection rock and off he was like Dorothy exiting up the yellow brick road as if to find a wizard. I stepped out into the road and looked south towards the brooding slot at the top right corner of the formation already mostly in shadow, it's cap still bathed gold and red by the sunset as Tobin ran down the road towards it with just his sneakers and a chalk bag.
Worried friends started after him, one or two followed quick on his heels in the hope of dissuading him. "Let's solo Mike's Books and throw him a top rope!" someone yelled from the group. Free soloing easier routes were by then a common practice among the Stonemasters crowd, but in Tobin's altered state it was of some concern to me as well others in that instant and I followed along knowing that I could be of little help with my scant experience having only climbed roped on easier fifth class routes during that juncture.
5.9s were still out of my league and I had no idea that Tobin had probably soloed the North Overhang countless times at the end of many a hard day's climbing. By the time I got halfway to Intersection, Tobin was already up under the big overhang above the ledge at nearly a hundred feet above the ground, and reaching out left to the crack. I had only followed the easier traverse out right on a top rope before and I could not imagine that what he was doing was sound in his condition. I had never seen Tobin intoxicated except for the time when we were boys out to test a theory we had heard, and we got drunk by rapidly chugging large quantities of plain water. The intoxicating effect was minimal, but the after effect was not.
Up on Intersection, two or three other climbers were still working their way up to the ledge, and as I stood with a group from a distance staring up in silence, Tobin hung off the first jams moving his feet up the face on smears, and there he paused long enough for someone near me to say in a hushed voice, "C'mon Tobin." And then Tobin proceeded to smoothly climb up and left, he swiftly scrambled to the top, and he turned and faced the sunset in the fading light. As Tobin ran off east to descend Mike's Books, a climber with rope in tow was just making his way up from that direction, obviously too late to give Tobin any assistance. The climber continued over to the top of North Overhang, if for nothing but to offer a rope to the stragglers below. Back at where we were, Tobin ran up to us in the dwindling light and between deep breaths asked, "What's next?" and not waiting for an answer, he headed off towards another formation.
If this tale is off by more than a few characters or sentences, it might serve to bring some of Tobin's friends out of the woodwork and I would happily rewrite it again. For what is writing if not crossed eyes at midnight and a headache at four am, if it serves to bring to light a small truth, or a chuckle to the writer at the very least.
-Tim Sorenson
05/29/2016
Edit; Afterword;
It was several years since that day in Joshua Tree and a year or more after Tobin died before I climbed out under that overhang, and contemplated doing what he and so many others had done before. My climbing years were at their peak in the early '80s and I found myself soloing every so often, but only on crack climbs with good jams and face climbs with solid holds. On this particular day I had been soloing with a group of regulars in the afternoon around the campground. After soloing the Eye, Geronimo, and Double Cross, we headed over to Overhang Bypass on Intersection. It was at that point a few of us decided to take the North Overhang option. I had led it several times by then and the crux had become comfortable and easy to me with a rope. But here I was at dusk, on a day not unlike that day I first saw Tobin solo it.
As my friends disappeared above me, I looked forebodingly at the crux moves around that corner onto the open face and longed for the easy option out to the right again. But my ego got the best of me and I took the jam and pulled around left with my feet on friction. As I held myself in with one good jam, I trusted my feet long enough to reach for the next good jam, and I knew for certain in that moment that I would never climb like my brother. I felt safer again higher up, but would never solo the route again after that, nor any other where I felt so insecure or in such a predicament.
I never mentioned it to anyone that day, how I felt vulnerable, exposed, mortal, and I wasn't likely to. On other solos I did during those years of equal or more danger, I can only say, I must have just put the relative danger out of my mind. I may have only been soloing easy routes by the standards of the day, but hard 5.10 was almost my limit while climbing with a rope. I really had no business soloing some of the things I did.
I don't know how Tobin had the courage to pull off the things he did during his climbing career except to say, it was in his nature and his outlook. He put everything he had into climbing, as if it was expected. That was the major difference between him and me. I was only infatuated with climbing, but he was completely enraptured.
-TSS
05/29/2016
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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May 29, 2016 - 02:27pm PT
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Thanks Tim. Your piece is another example of the value of this forum.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 29, 2016 - 08:15pm PT
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Thanks much Tim, for this last story and for starting and hosting the thread!
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Topic Author's Reply - May 29, 2016 - 09:38pm PT
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Baaaaaaaaaaaack at you Roy, you're welcome, and thank you for all your great stories and contributions. To yourself, Craig, Dee, Russ, Vicky, and to so many others who have really kept this thread alive. I will try to dredge up a few more distant memories to post from time to time, whatever I can shake out of the old brain pan and such as time from work will allow. The thread will be here for the Buggerers or any others who care to post, troll, or enthrall.
I really would have liked that honorary Sheep Buggerer membership though, but on second thought, I'm afraid to find out what that initiation process actually might be.
Cheers for now,
-bushman
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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May 30, 2016 - 11:34pm PT
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just look'in in here to try and fill some void..
Thanks Bushy!
JT is taking on some changes lately.
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