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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2009 - 11:15am PT
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Warning
Get earplugs when riding the rails or you'll be riding a splitting headache in your head.
Even with my shitty ears it's LOUD!
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Nov 14, 2009 - 11:26am PT
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Nice, Dick and Eric.
After Royal brought me with him to Yosemite in the
fall of 1964, I rode the freights from Fresno to Denver
with Rick Horn. That was a wonderful adventure for a young
lad. I've written about that stuff in a couple different
books... the various hoboes
and people I met, the snowstorm as we lay freezing on a
flatcar... and the brilliant red sunrise as we came into
Eldorado Canyon, with the Yellow Spur a black silhouette against
that red sky...
Then I made that same trip again a few times and reversed
it. I got to Yosemite, Denver to Sacramento several times.
Went to see Mort Hempel and my then girlfriend in the late 1960's...
arrived at Mort's door with a black face from the train soot,
nearly scared him out of a year's growth... Rode the freights
to see Higgins more than once, then connected with Royal and
Liz who drove me to the freight yards for the return trip...
A few times I simply needed to go, be free, and got on a train. Had
some great sleep and great dreams and restful thought, some
good writing. Took at least three women with me on freight
train adventures (not all at once). A great place for love...
Most every train trip I took, my mother made me several loaves
of banana bread, my favorite train food. I would simply sit there
and gnaw at the delicious bread for days.
Fell off a freight coming into the Sacramento train yard, hurt my
elbow, and the doctor's letter got me out of the draft.
Once a professor asked me to teach him how to ride the freights and
sent me a plane ticket to his city, from where we caught the freights
back to Denver... One interesting moment. He stood up and watched
the sleeping bag he was sitting on fly away into oblivion. We
could only smile...
Yes, Dick, I always spoke with the yardsmen, with engineers, and
never had any trouble. They would fill my water bottles... Certain
yards, such as Ogden, were known to be places where they trained
the bulls, or where there were a lot of them. You'd get off just
outside the yard and back on just beyond. Of
course there were rules of the road, such as don't break a boxcar
seal, don't make yourself to visible... I once made the mistake
of letting half a dozen young climber friends of mine go with me
to Yosemite. They started climbing around on the car, and the engineer
saw it and radioed ahead. The police were waiting for us in Grand
Junction. When they determined we weren't runaways they took us to
the bus depot. Everyone got on a bus west, and I snuck back down
to the yards and continued on the freights...
I once rode across the deserts of Nevada and Utah with a hobo
who simple stooped down and staied that way, as best I could tell,
the whole trip. He smoked cigarettes nonstopped, "To stay warm."
I nearly froze in my sleeping bag, and all he had was some kind of
tweed jacket. "Got kind of cold over the mountains," he said.
Pat
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Nov 14, 2009 - 11:52am PT
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My climbing buddy and I had planned on riding the rails in order to get to the Wind River Range for about 6 weeks of climbing. Had it all planned out, and then I met the woman who would become my wife. No regrets!!
Fantastic stories, all!
John Cameron - those polaroids are really amazing. Thanks for posting the link!
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Nov 14, 2009 - 11:52am PT
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Someone mentioned riding the rails past Index, WA. Be forewarned that the train going eastbound over Stevens Pass goes thru a 8 mile train tunnel, and when my roommate in college did this, he said he almost suffocated and his face was black when he came out the other side and he couldn't hear. other then that he said it was just great.
My friend Jesse Burkhardt has written several books on riding the rails. They are super funny and well written. The first is "Travelogue From a Unruly Youth" and the second one is "The Crowbar Hotel: By Freight Train across Canada" Chck them out at:
http://www.rollingdreamspress.com/
If they catch you riding the rails nowadays, they will kick your ass and then arrest you.
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2009 - 11:54am PT
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One semester at Cal a couple of my profs moved the dates of the final exam to an earlier date for reasons of their own. I remember my excitement on that last day of linguistics realizing I would have two weeks of free time, and my mind was abuzz dreaming up things I could do. A January trip to Banff seemed most intriguing, and riding freights across BC in the winter particularly so. I hitch hiked to Seattle and got on a Greyhound bus to Vancouver. At the border the passengers filed one by one past the border guard. Finally it was me and he says, "Where are you going?"
"Banff"
"How much money do you have with you?"
"Forty dollars"
These were the wrong answers. He said that he would not let me into Canada.
So I reversed the loop I had planned and hopped on the Great Northern headed for Montana. I had always wanted to ride that railroad after hearing it was the best for bums. I didn't know yet how good it was as I was riding up into the Cascades in the dark. It was a gray snowy dawn as I was walking through the yard in Wenatchee and heard an engineer in a locomotive call to me, "Hey kid where are you going?" "Montana" "Do you know how cold it is there this morning? Thirty below. Come on up here." He probably thought anybody riding a freight to Montana in the middle of winter would have to be desperate. I climbed up the ladder and into the cab. He looks at me and asks, "Have you had breakfast yet?" "Well uh.." "Here take this." He hands me a brown paper bag and I look in seeing two sandwiches and a banana. I look up surprised and he says, "Eat it" He was unable to dissuade me from my journey and tells me which track had the train to Spokane, saying that I better get moving, it's leaving soon. I start walking along the string of cars looking for a good one, when with a big lurch resounding car to car it starts pulling out of the yard. I grab onto a ladder at the corner of a car and pull on it as the ground leaves my feet. I climb up on top and make my way car to car eventually getting to a piggyback. I scrunch down under the semi trailer and lean against the big rubber tire. With the hood of my cagoule pulled up over my head I look out at the falling snow as the train comes to a stop right on the main line. I hear footsteps squishing through the wet snow, and a guy stops and asks, "Were you riding on the draw bar coming out of the yard?" "Yes" "You could get killed doing that. Follow me." We walked up to the locomotives and climbed into the rear one of about 4 or 5. He made a radio call and we were on our way; a nice warm dry ride all the way to Spokane.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2009 - 11:55am PT
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Yes
The long tunnels are scary. I thought the same.
I thought I was going to suffocate.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Nov 14, 2009 - 12:53pm PT
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Never got to hop on a train (yet)--great stories up above make me want try it...
The only rails that I've ridden:
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C. Small wall climber.
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Nov 14, 2009 - 12:57pm PT
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One of the cliffs at Squamish, the Malamute, is immediately beside railway tracks. As close as two metres. Much of the cliff is officially closed, in that it's within the railway right of way, and some climbers have behaved irresponsibly there - usually group fusterclucks, but also things like idiots tying to the tracks for belays. Anyway, long ago, when p'terodactyls still nested on the Chief, we used to walk along the tracks to the cliff - no one cared, and indeed sometimes the railway guys on their speeder would stop to chat. It's a five or ten minute walk, and we would naturally enliven it with things like trying to walk the distance on one rail, or hopping back and forth from one to the other without touching the ground, or 'jousting' - sort of dry land burling. All in good fun.
It is rather overwhelming when a loaded 100+ car freight goes by only five or ten metres away.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Nov 14, 2009 - 01:40pm PT
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How many is a metre? ;-)
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C. Small wall climber.
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Nov 14, 2009 - 02:24pm PT
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The metre or meter[1] is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Historically, the metre was defined by the French Academy of Sciences as the length between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar, which was designed to represent one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole through Paris. In 1983, the metre was redefined as the distance travelled by light in free space in 1⁄299,792,458 of a second.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre
Something like seventeen freedom fries laid end to end equal one metre. One metre is 1/93 of the height of the Statue of Liberty, one of many gifts from France to the United States.
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Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
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Nov 14, 2009 - 05:07pm PT
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Is this mode of transport still employed?
I'd think that security has been made at least a slight bit more stringent in the last 30 years or so.
The idea of jumping on a train/boxcar has always intrigued me, but I've never indulged. When I start thinking of all the things that might be needed in order to protect myself, the easier it was to talk myself out of taking the leap.
I guess there is just a certain nostalgia about riding a train.
That was a really cool story Dick.
Thank you
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Nov 14, 2009 - 07:02pm PT
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Of course the Moffat Tunnel is a long one and even longer
on a slow freight in winter. My first trip through it, in
1964, my partner Rick Horn was aware of it and its upcoming
location and had me fill my sleeping bag with as much air
as possible(I don't mean THAT kind of air). We held our bags
out so the wind would fill them, and then just before we
entered we crawled into our bags, breathed slowly and deeply
for several minutes, and relaxed, until at west portal we
put our heads inside and with our hands held closed the ends
of the bags. We wanted to be relaxed so as not to breathe too
much or too hard. It was great, but slowly all the air in their
ran out and was replaced by diesel smoke. Yet at least we got
through about half or slightly more of the tunnel on good air.
Strange to realize how many have successfully gone through by
breathing the smoke all the way, with no problem. On the other
hand there are cases where people suffocated.
I could give you
a list of dangers of which any freight rider should be aware,
such as how to block a boxcar door so it doesn't slam shut and
chop off your head while you look out and enjoy the view.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Nov 14, 2009 - 07:25pm PT
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You could be sitting around Ropers house in Berserkely, after dinner, sipping some of his nice personal stash of "Incubus Hills", when all of a sudden he would jump up and say "oh sh#t oh God", we're late.
In a flash, out the door, we were headed to the car for a rendezvous at the old Santa Fe station for the nightly train. Like clockwork.
Both his driving and his hiking were at a rapid pace.
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 14, 2009 - 07:59pm PT
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For some reason I naively looked forward to going through the longest railroad tunnels in the country and was actually disappointed when I found that I had slept through the entire 7.8 miles of the cascade tunnel. A while later I got another chance in the Moffat Tunnel in Colorado. My eagerness disappeared right away in the stinky diesel smoke and it was a relief to come out the other side and in a while get my first glimpse of El Dorado.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 15, 2009 - 02:03am PT
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for Pate:
Climbing 180 November 1, 1998
page 98
"Rock 'n Rail" by Kevin Swift, photos by Corey Rich
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Nov 15, 2009 - 02:09am PT
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I never got to ride the rails but loved hearing about it from Beck and Erb when I lived in Berkeley. The nearest I've come is riding third class trains in India when they were still pulled by steam locomotives and specks of cinders came flying through the open windows. The best sleep in the world is on a gently rocking train listening to the rhymic clackety clack.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 15, 2009 - 03:11am PT
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Chai-ee, chai-ee... What an exotic time warp those Indian trains can induce with just your mention of them. I only ventured from Dehli to Udaipur.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Nov 15, 2009 - 04:24am PT
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The only times I managed to be more exotic than the Indians was when I pulled my big puffy down bag out of its small stuff sack and spread it out on my sleeping shelf on an overnight Indian train. This often provoked wagers among the other passengers as to whether I would ever get it back into the small stuff bag again.
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hooblie
climber
sounding out stuff as in the manner of crickets
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Nov 15, 2009 - 05:38am PT
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sensory overload is how i've described the rides i've taken. after rolling thru the redwoods, we branched off along the middle fork of the eel river, headed south on top of a load of lumber. the speeds were quite modest. in an out of the sun in perfect weather, cool in the shade, warm in the sun. stopped in fort seward and got some berry picking in. the greatest thing was peering down into the river, pools clear enough to see fish, otter, and the continuity of riverine sculpture, where rock and sand were shaped to fit
the fluid passage of pure cool liquid.
it was many miles between bridges or any sign of human disturbance. if we had been on the river, one side would have screamed about the scar of the roadbed, but we were spared that with only a view below and across. plunging ridgelines separated alternating worlds. each south facing slope had the golden grass, smelled of oakey california toast, and each contrasting slope breathed cool pine and fir. the flight of every bird could be traced in its entirety from our domeless vista.
our perch was the upper two bunks of lumber, set on three below, so we had a notch fore and aft to settle into facing either way and not a care in the world at sixteen. that line has since been closed, some eco burning of a timber supported tunnel spelled the end as i understand it.
then down through the wine country, things were pastoral and moved along a little quicker. we stopped in schellville, ambled over to a road crossing and hitched with a sign reading s.f.
across the street were three retirees, sitting in the shade of a big porch, we could hear their murmur. finally one of them walked over and with his thumbs in his suspenders, suggested that if we were going to san fransisco, we should cross the road and aim the other way. my folks lived on the penninsula where our ten thousand mile summer would be celebrated.
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my next freight ride was from fresno to bakersfield, and this is where the sensory overload really kicks in. after describing such ambiance atop the last load, my friend took the bait and agreed the lumber thing sounded good.
small detail, three bunks on three, no notch.
things got wicked quick as we outran the traffic on 99 burying it in blue smoke long before the dreary days of fifty five. banging up and down on our sitbones, trying not to travel around we resorted to suspending ourselves from feet and reversed palms in a flexing arch position only youthful indescretion could necessitate.
our hats promptly blew away. flaping long hair tore our scalps by the roots. eyelids long since tarped down over gritty eyeballs,
we were mouth breathing now, nostrils clogged with dirt. only dreamed about freeing a couple fingers for aching ears.
variety allowed for pounding on our knees till we invented downward bouncing dog. we had shanghaied ourselves for the duration,
in full view of station wagon america, sipping bottled coca cola on the freeway.
as we approached bakersfeild, each increment of slowing brought a new level of relief. when the train slowed to where bailing seemed even barely survivable we were off, not daring to let it carry us away again.
soon we found a blue collar breakfast, which also went clumsily. there was an honest miscue regarding the whoabouts of payage. it was my buddies turn to pay and i thought he had done so while i was in the can. our "escape" was going trudgingly under heavy loads.
so pleased to see a car pull over next to us, unsolicted, i was grinning and stuffing my pack into the back door when the driver in a waitress outfit went bananas on my buddy. i barely retrieved my sack as the car screeched away. no arrangements had been made about the return of a good bit of change. moving on now, toward the eastbound tracks, feeling we had just been rolled by a lady in white polyester.
but all was right with the world again as we chugged up over the tehachapies, round the big loop where the train crosses over itself.
all abloom with poppies and lupine in abundance
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=849357&msg=849734#msg849734
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tradchick
Trad climber
White Mountains
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Nov 15, 2009 - 09:44am PT
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There's a huge revival of riding the rails going on in this country. My son has been doing this for the last 18 months and has a book with all the yards in the states. It's amazing, has schedules, which yards are safe and not, what sort of security is in place etc. etc.
He has been to every state in the country except Alaska and last winter went down through Mexico, Central American and on to Colombia. He said he's "having the time of his life" and is seeing things from the rails that he'd never be able to see otherwise.
Certainly I worry about him as he's out of touch for weeks at a time. Occasionally he travels alone, but usually in a group. He has amazing pictures and stories, and is keeping a journal with the thoughts of writing a book. He's been arrested twice, once in Austin TX and once in VA. The cops in Austin let them go, they thought it was "cool" that Kevin and his friends were seeing the country that way. VA wasn't so nice about it.
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