Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
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Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 3, 2010 - 06:15pm PT
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One day in the dark ages, Daryl, Joe, Craig and myself were walking around at the top of the Squamish Chief's 2nd summit. We came upon a refrigerator sized block sitting on a slab, aimed at the incredible overhanging notch separating 2nd from 3rd summit.
Hey man, lets push this thing off! says Daryl. Midweek, no one around, so we try. Damned if the thing is too big for all of us to push so every one except Daryl loses interest. 5 minutes later Hatten exclaims, I GOT IT MOVING ! We crawled to the edge as this INCREDIBLE chunk slides off.
It free falls silently for 5 full seconds........then..........
KA - BOOM ! ! !
Contact with the 2000' rubble gulley causing a torrent of trees,rocks and dirt. The noise was deafening. What now ? Craig, the voice of reason says, "we should go".
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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good one Jim. I was hoping that Anders might be also implicated. You know Mighty Anders, always in a pickle. How cool you were friends with Daryl!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Also Dark Ages atop a lesser frequented peak in Olympic Mts we
ejected a Frigidaire over a face of only about 1000' but it did
produce impressive results. The most impressive result was the
verbal response from far below! After our initial shock we realized
they were unseen hikers who were in no danger. We couldn't determine if
they were shouts of admiration or admonition. We knew there couldn't
have been anybody on the chossy face as nobody was doing anything
like that in the Olympics back then, or since, for the most part.
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Tami
Social climber
Canada
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Top of Rexford, summer of 1980 or whenever it was David ( Ghost ) got us mixed up in doing that tellyvision commercial for Canadian unity.
Took six of us to get the Volkswagen going but finally it shifted and then.........actually teetered on the edge of the abyss. Like Jim's above, it free fell.
Someone suggested we yell rock.
Rock.
The boulder shattered into beer fridges & television sets & microwave ovens and poured down the gully on the S side of the mtn. The peppery stench of blown granite assaulted our snouts. The debris fanned out on the old summer snow below.
We said WOO a lot .
ANDERS IMPLICATED???? Oh, Peter, you got the wrong Ourom. That would be his bubba Peder.
Who was the prime mover for that stone on Rexford.
BIG GRIN. The Canadians will get the double-entendre there........
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Not sure if the mid-80s counts as the dark ages, but around then six of us (Tami, Peder, Peter, John, Ryan and I) found a Volkswagen-size block sitting right near the edge of a ledge on Mt. Rexford, with over a thousand feet of air just waiting. It didn't have any give at all when we tried to push it, but there was a wall behind, so we all scrunched in and gave it a six-person leg press. That budged it, so we really dug in and gave everything we had.
The block then achieved maximum entropy in minimum time.
Edit: I see Tami was busy writing at the same time...
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Tami
Social climber
Canada
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SICK !!!! IT REALLY IS TRUE THAT GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE !!!!
OR wuz that FOOLS SELDOM DIFFER???
David ?!?! You should be HERE ! We could DRINK !
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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David ?!?! You should be HERE ! We could DRINK !
If we did that, the block would soon grow to truck size, then house size. And we'd be posting about how the other four were to scared to get near it, while you and I simply sat cross-legged on either side of it and willed it to move.
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Tami
Social climber
Canada
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It was the size of a BLOCK OF FLATS. After trundling the chthonian monstrosity the mtn was 20' shorter then previously. Peter was lobbed over the edge as the stone vaccilated then dropped but he was able to crimp on a pair of dimes and , feet totally free, clung for all the mercy of his very soul, swung left, returned with a heel hook right and mantled to the ledge to receive a congratchyoolatory reefer.
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drljefe
climber
Old Pueblo, AZ
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Granite Mountain Wilderness. BFE.
In attempting to let loose a big TV sized block at the staging area, we started a chain reaction.
We watched in disbelief as a Smart Car sized block
took off down the steep apprach gulley, mowing down pinyons and thowin' sparks.
Looked slow~mo and sounded like a dinosaur snapping trees and kicking stones.
We got to inspect the damage all the way down, too.
That day F.O.E. was born...
Friends Of Erosion.
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WBraun
climber
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Me and Shipley trundled Dolt hole to the base ....
Then there was that huge trundle at the base of Half Dome, with Russ da Fish doing the color commentator on it's journey down the Half Dome slabs.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Tammi & Ghost: I am always impressed, when 30 year old memories are similar.
Tami: Took six of us to get the Volkswagen going but finally it shifted and then
Ghost: six of us (Tami, Peder, Peter, John, Ryan and I) found a Volkswagen-size block sitting right near the edge of a ledge on Mt. Rexford,
Impressive----but then I never trundled something that big on purpose. There was the Cadillac-size chunk of what we thought was bedrock on 3-4 Couloir on Mt. Fay: that rolled out from under me and cleaned the couilor---but that was really an accident.
I am glad to see boulder-trundling mentioned. I Thought it was one of those "taboo subjects."
It is really "rock stabilizing."
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Back home Papa would entertain us by trundling 200 pounders into the Snake River Canyon near Lewiston. They'd bounce real sweet on the steep dirt hillsides.
Years on us kids learned to surf the basalt talus fields.
Mt Baldy here in SoCal get's a little smaller when I descend the bowl in summer. Surfing rock slides is a major kick in the butt. However as I am older the guilty feeling keeps me from doing as much as I'd like.
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Tami
Social climber
Canada
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Fritz - 30 yr old memories - Me & Dave we did all the same drugs. Well, mostly. He's not here tonight :-D hahahahahah
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Some notable examples of boulder trundling and its exalted history:
1. Whymper and party, from the top of the Matterhorn in July 1865, to let the world know they'd made it. (OK, didn't work out so well in the end.)
2. Amunden's base party in 1911, trundling from a nunatak they got to on the east coast of the Ross Ice Shelf, the first land they'd seen for 18 months. "The mere sight of the naked rock was, however, only an anticipatory pleasure. It is possible that we behaved rather like children on first reaching bare land. One of us, in any case [possibly Kristian Prestrud], found immense enjoyment in rolling one big block after another down the steep slopes of the nunatak."
3. Apollo astronauts, who gleefully adopted the boulder-trundling habits of their geologist teachers.
I confess to a really good one off the southwest peak of Mount Hozomeen, in 1977. And maybe others, some accomplished by pushing with legs. My piece de resistance, however, was to combine boulder trundling with route cleaning - if you can get above a climb you're tidying up, and drop rocks, with a little care you can do a good job of taking out stumps and other annoyances, plus clean potentially hazardous rocks from the ledges. We did that with the stump on Seasoned in the Sun, in about 1983.
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R.B.
climber
..
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I dropped a microwave oven off the last A4 pitch of Never Never Land, El Cap. in June 1987 ... glad my belay partner was about 20 feet to the right of the bombing run!
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Who has not been tempted here? Many possibilities.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom
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No one trundles at the Gunks. I did.
It wasn't mega - more like kilo - but it left a nice divot and more than a few people were bamboozled by it.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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So------what is the odor from a freshly trundled boulder after impact???
We always thought it was ozone???
Fresh, sharp, and stimulating------and it is not sulphur.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Minerals newly exposed to the air, oxidization, and the friction/energy of the fall? Minerals? Tricouni?
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