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JesseM
Social climber
Yosemite
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 1, 2010 - 08:53pm PT
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It’s been a real busy summer for me, and I apologize for not having more of a presence on this crucial forum of ideas, dialogue, and newsworthy moments.
This thread falls under the newsworthy category.
On Tuesday, August 24th, Yosemite Park dispatch received a report of climbers around Camp IV on the Nose calling for help. The reporting party also said that there was rockfall observed previous to the incident. It was already late in the day, but we decided to fly 8 rescuers to the top of El Cap to rig and prepare for rescuing the injured climber in the morning.
Although there are several uncertainties about what really happened (lost in translation…), this is basically what had happened. It was a party of 4 Korean climbers, and the leader of the team had pulled a huge block off in the Grey Bands. He was climbing a variation marked as “5.10a not recommended” in Supertopo Big Walls on the pitch before Camp IV. The block landed on his legs and rope, basically crushed his Femur (he had multiple fractures), and did this to his rope:
After completing our rigging on Wednesday morning we lowered Ranger-medics Jack H. and Lober down to the injured climber with a litter, they packaged him up, and gave him some pain meds. A little side note: when Jack and Keith arrived on scene the climber was not wearing his harness, and was clipped in only to his wall style double gear-sling. Because of the severity of his injury (we did not know the extent of his injury before Jack and Keith got down to him) we elected to short haul him off the wall using the park helicopter. Check out the photo below of Lober’s “E-ticket” ride.
The rest of the climbing team was not capable of finishing the route or descending on their own, and we spent the rest of the day lowering them off the wall. More stories about that later...
I had been planning to do a combined SAR training and Camp 6 clean up (Nose Wiping as we like to call it) this week. However, given that we had 12 SAR siters from Tuolumne and the Valley, all of the gear we needed, and a whole bunch of psyche to pull it off, we bivied on top of the Capitan one more night. The next morning we lowered Sam Piper and myself down to Camp 6 with 2 empty Grade VI haul bags, a sh-t hook, hazmat suits, trash bags, face masks, and thick gloves. We pulled out about 100 pounds of crap, ropes, trash, and mysterious other substances never before seen (or smelled) by mankind.
Here are some more photos of that trip.
More later...up-loader not working on gov. computer.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Thank you, Jesse and team! Very good work - although the news about Camp VI is a bit disappointing. Is there more/less/unchanged from what was there the last time you did a nosewipe? Also, is there any need to return during the FaceLift, either to the Nose or any other route (Salathe?), to clean up? I'd be happy to help.
this crucial forum of ideas, dialogue, and newsworthy moments. You may be thinking of someone else. :-)
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Thanks for the report Jesse. Wow.
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Captain...or Skully
Big Wall climber
Transporter Room 2
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Camp VI makes me sad.
It shouldn't need repeated wipes, but I'm glad you got it done(this time, eh?).
Loved the pics.
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JesseM
Social climber
Yosemite
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 1, 2010 - 09:06pm PT
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MH/Anders,
There is less and less every year we get up there. We are now down 6 feet at least, and into historic trash from the '80s.
I'll try to post some more photos later.
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jfs
Trad climber
Upper Leftish
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Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!
Way to go Jesse and others! You guys are RAD!!!
C VI was NASTY!!!
I hope climbers respect it more from now on.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Crazy. Thanks for the cleanup guys!
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Fish Finder
Social climber
THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART
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Great work Jesse.
Say, can we use the helicopter at facelift?
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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to ranger jesse:
it'd be hard to believe that the NPS hasn't noticed the interest on supertopo over the ammon mcneely tasering incident. i personally believe the public is owed a statement on its behavior. tasering has gotten to be one of the ugliest things that police do.
i'm assuming yosemite rangers have been following the discussion here. rangers are known to do that with just about every blog page involving the activities they deal with, but they rarely involve themselves in discussions they cannot control.
tasering is a disturbing and violent response to anything except violent crime itself. i'm not a particular fan of BASE, but there's much climber-BASE crossover, and there seem to be many examples where jumpers' interests and enthusiasms can be accommodated--the new river gorge jump day an example.
jesse, i'm afraid i see you playing good cop to some bad cops. it would be refreshing to see some engagement of the BASE community by the NPS, discussion of behavior, park concerns, and some working towards resolution of an issue which probably won't be going away. without some forthright handling of this matter, we'll be looking forward to the escalation of a keystone cops comedy--except that more tasering could well make it a tragedy.
TB
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Good work. Thanks!
And post more photos please.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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What a report.
Thanks Jesse. Would love to see a lot more from you around here.
It's so good, and so crucial to keep the lines open to "The Man", ya know what I mean?
Thanks again!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jesse, nice work! On the rescues and the cleanup.
It's got to be disgusting work....good on ya!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Well done Jesse on the rescue and the clean up
You've gone down through 6feet of s(*T at C6?
And still more?
That's almost unbelievable.
+1 on what Tony Bird just said.
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james Colborn
Trad climber
Truckee, Ca
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Camp VI made me hate climbers.
Piss, sh#t, and trash. I got dry heaves when I got on the ledge, I would have puked for real had I not run out of water earlier in the day. There were at least 4 gatorade bottles shoved in the crack all filled with piss. That was just what was on top and visible. I couldn't sleep that night because my nose was filled with the odor of the ledge and I just could not shake it. We took as much garbage that would fit into our bag. F*#kers!
Who is doing this?
Thanks Jesse for taking the time and making the effort to clean that mess up. I owe you a beer or six.
James
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jstan
climber
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I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the job Jesse and the National Park Service is doing. It would be very easy for NPS people, personally, to wish they saw fewer of us, and we would detect it immediately. Indeed many of us would prefer there were not quite so many.
It is very hard to be a gracious host when guests, occasionally unappreciative, keep coming without a break.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Good work Jesse -- both on the rescue and the clean-up.
And sympathy to the guy you pulled out. Can't have been much fun spending half a day, then a night, then part of a morning on a wall with a badly crushed femur. He may have been begging his partners to cut off his harness, but man, I'd have been begging them to untie me and throw me off.
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BeeHay
Trad climber
San Diego CA
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This is Public Service at it's best. I lodged at VI in the '80s, I can assure that none of that "history" is mine!
I wish the base thing could stay outta here, there are 2 threads on the topic already...
Brad
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MisterE
Social climber
Bouncy Tiggerville
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Thanks for joining the fray again here, Jesse. Looks like quite a pull off the nose, but you look fresh in the hazmat suit and cheater stick...I mean sh-thook.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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We are now down 6 feet at least, and into historic trash from the '80s.
Historic Trash. Ha ha ha.
Better dredge it out before it gets designated an historic site.
Thanks for a job well done.
+2 for what Tony said.
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Delhi Dog
climber
Good Question...
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Having never made it that far, I still want to share my appreciation to you and the others...excellent work all around!
Many climbers (like fishermen-er, anglers) are just f*king slobs.
oh ya more pictures!
Cheers,
DD
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