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FTOR
Sport climber
CA
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Mar 17, 2010 - 03:29pm PT
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also the end moves were much easier. used to be buckets that finished by grabbing a vine at the top. on the other hand, in its original form there was a row of boulders below the length of the traverse that you really didn't want to fall on to.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Apr 20, 2010 - 01:52am PT
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BBA-that is so cool. What a resource and to see those photos of a young Bruce and the history! Worth gold.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Apr 21, 2010 - 02:48am PT
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Thanks Joe (oldguy), I find your version of the story much more believable than any rumor that Royal fell off it while drunk.
Tom
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Apr 21, 2010 - 09:55am PT
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This BBA post/link is a major development, isn't it. Wow. God I miss that wonderful man. Bruce lives on surely.
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Maysho
climber
Soda Springs, CA
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Apr 21, 2010 - 10:26am PT
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Wow, that 10th Mt. link is incredible. I had no idea he had that history. I used to enjoy talking with him at the rock, a wonderful man.
Peter
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scuffy b
climber
Where only the cracks are dry
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Apr 21, 2010 - 11:13am PT
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Tom, did you ever take any big falls at Indian Rock?
I had heard a story from Ben Borson in the 70s of a climber who was also
a parachutist (thus good at landing) who fell off something like I-12 and
just went right back up and did it.
My memory plays tricks on me at times, but some things stick like glue.
I thought for sure he had named you.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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Apr 21, 2010 - 09:13pm PT
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scruffy b,
Yes, fell off easy part of watercourse on day or two after rain when IR rock was a bit slippery. I was over hard lower section on damp upper easy part. Very dumb to boulder there after a rain. Broke a heel in the process. Did the other heel in a more dramatic accident - trying a new route off the coast of Scotland, near Aberdeen. Roaring ocean was out when I hit, revealing rocks for my "landing." Great partner hauled me in without drowning me. That's a fine trick, turns out...
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scuffy b
climber
Where only the cracks are dry
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Apr 22, 2010 - 12:34pm PT
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Thanks, Tom.
I actually meant Tom Cochrane, though, regarding the story I had heard
from Ben back then.
One of my first times at Indian Rock, still a fairly new climber, I was
up on the "nose", to the right of Watercourse.
I had already learned the Indian Rock mindset, that is, if something feels
too reasonable, start off-routing holds.
So there I was, way up there, trying to figure out some moves that would
be appropriately challenging, when my feet popped.
A group of Real Climbers was for some reason talking at the base, right
under me. Me, someone they didn't know, climbing in bright blue new-
looking Robbins boots...
An indelible memory, looking down to see five hardmen, including Peter
and Dale, running away from my landing zone in panic.
Best landing I ever made, too. Hands never hit the ground, butt never
hit the ground, knees didn't hit my chin.
Peter actually started talking to me a week or so later.
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wildone
climber
GHOST TOWN
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Apr 22, 2010 - 12:41pm PT
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This thread is so AWESOME! I think I'm gonna go over there right now.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Apr 23, 2010 - 11:26am PT
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Scuffy b, I have climbed at Indian Rock a fair bit over the years, but don't recall taking any notable falls; or seeing any for that matter. It would be a good place to know the Jeff Schoolfield landing technique!
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Apr 23, 2010 - 11:37am PT
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That's all true, Scuff. I remember your first words.
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scuffy b
climber
Where only the cracks are dry
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Apr 23, 2010 - 11:48am PT
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I don't, Peter, but your first words to me were
"You're going to Kill Yourself!!"
right?
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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May 20, 2010 - 01:55pm PT
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How Much for an Hour?
Dreaming of doing a few easy slab climbs in the old kingdom of Yosemite, taking in the big space and distance and jutting rocks, these days I’m working every moderate slab route at IR I can find to get prepared. Last Sunday while on the little apron above the stairs, I noticed from the corner of my eye a family standing at the bottom of the stairs watching me and the pit boys and girls working on watercourse routes. There were both parents and daughter looking foreign by dress and manner, just as we Americans are recognizable in our travels. As I finished the slab and came back down the stairs, the daughter of the family, a very lovely woman maybe in her thirties wearing a revealing tank top and tights, came bounding up the steps smiling. She said, in broken English, "How much for an hour?"
Now there's a question I've never had in my 60+ years! Of course, I was wearing my most fetching, tattered pajama pants and thirty year old turtle neck, all speckled with white chalk. That must have been the attraction. But of course what she wanted was to learn to climb. I gathered she thought she was seeing a class with me the old instructor on the slab and pupils in the pit. I was so dumbstruck by her beauty I couldn’t think what to do. Deep tan, so wrong we now know, but o so right to me this second. Even deeper dark eyes. Black, black hair. I checked her shoes: fashionable little boots with thin, worn, slick rubber soles. I had no belay rope. Her English was poor. My Portuguese was non-existent (yes, Portuguese). Even in my bedazzled state, I began to see she could not safely climb much in those shoes and I could convey, and she absorb, very little, even if we went across the street to the smallest boulders where I could show her footwork basics and, heaven of heavens, spot her.
I pointed up the slab and said "need rope" "good shoes" and mentioned something about classes at gyms (groping for "gym" in Spanish) struggling on with half Spanish garble she barely got, no wonder. She admired my shoes, said she loved San Francisco (gesturing across the bay) and people she met and was here on a trip with her family, who waved from below. I recommended some places they had not yet seen, including Yosemite if they had a few days. She kept up, haltingly, then smiled a little disappointed after the talk petered out. She pointed up the slab and asked, "Not safe?" "Not safe," I said and looked to her and her family, my palms up, sorry. They gave a forgiving wave and went off.
Within the next hour as I kept climbing, I grew sad I hadn't been more accommodating, of course for the charge of her energy, youth and beauty, but more because I let down such a fresh spirit from far away, out for a walk with her parents and open to spontaneous adventure. Maybe another day.
Indian Rock: small rocks, forever moments.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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May 20, 2010 - 02:44pm PT
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Tom,
It looks like I picked the wrong day to not join you at IR! I would have been a little bit more creative in handling the 'situation'; including the fact that I always have a spare harness, shoes, and a rope in my car!
On the other hand the chemistry was obviously aimed at you... She admired my shoes, said she loved San Francisco (gesturing across the bay) and people she met
...didn't you ever learn to read between the lines???
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 20, 2010 - 02:46pm PT
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I love this thread, because it brings back my favorite moments from my four years at Berkeley. Thanks especially to BBA for linking that post by the Cooke family. I think Bruce must have been a favorite of everyone who knew him.
John
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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May 20, 2010 - 04:29pm PT
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Tom, I used to carry a half rope in the car for quick belays at IR, but stopped because, well, did mostly traverses and easy high things, so didn't use it. But, yes, I'm looking for that half rope again right now!
Lovely how even old brains still can fantasize, though fantasy it shall stay.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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May 20, 2010 - 10:40pm PT
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"bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven." -- wordsworth, i think.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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Tony,
Thank you. I don't know very many climbers who quote Wordsworth straight away. Well, there was Bruce Cooke, friend in my day. I found Wordsworth wrote your quote in 1805, enamored by the French Revolution, it seems. Excerpt:
OH! Pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Poem goes on from there, but there's the gist. As a fogy, I get to say climbing once was something of revolt from "the meagre, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law and statute." But of course it is what we make of it ourselves, no matter how mainstream and commercial it has become.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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Agreed. A superb thread bump...
Peter, I do recall you and Chris using that resin. You pofster, you! One of you had a sticky little block of it that didn't seem to help much, when I tried it.
I'd always wondered how, or when, that flake came down on Watercourse. It seemed like such a fortuitous event to have such a positive edge there. It never occurred to me that what was there before would have been better.
I remember seeing Royal visiting the Watercourse area several Saturday mornings during 1969-70. Rumor was that he was driving in from Modesto just to work on Left Watercourse... He was that frustrated with it! Seemed silly to me, but I did notice that he almost never spoke to anyone. :-)
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