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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Dec 11, 2013 - 02:41pm PT
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Dingus, did mr peabody's coal mine take
It away?
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
From Panorama City, CA
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Dec 11, 2013 - 02:51pm PT
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Well, I mostly 'free-soloed' with a friend as a 15 year old in the extreme west end of the San Fernando Valley - out toward the Thousand Oaks end - not the Stoney area. Then my mother helped me find out about the RCS of the Sierra Club. My RCS card is dated 3/31/68. Before I had a chance to hook up with the RCS though, she dropped me off at Stoney Point one afternoon ( my first time there ) and left me to have fun (maybe her too!). There was nobody around, except I noticed somebody climbing up the left crack and gulley of the main face of Stoney. I immmediately went up there and climbed that unroped. The climber was gone by the time I got up there. I did not get to meet whoever it was. All of the climbing I had done up to that point consisted of climbing faces and cliffs and hooking a rope at the top over horns and edges of rock and rappelling down. I even used to hook a rope on the edge of rock on top of Rock 1 at Stoney for rappelling!
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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Dec 11, 2013 - 03:08pm PT
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My first day of climbing after taking some lessons.
I was with a small group which included Stunewberry.
We climbed Gibraltar Rock (Santa Barbara) and were messing around on a top
rope, trying to climb a crack to the right of the bolt ladder next to the road.
Just as we were getting ready to leave, Gunk came driving up wanting to
climb, so I borrowed a hammer and stayed. Gunk led up this corner to the
right of the bolts and the crack. When I got up to him he told me to go to
the top, so I did.
I don't have any idea how hard any of the climb was, his lead or mine.
I assume it had been climbed previously, but no guarantee.
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Bababata
Mountain climber
Utopia
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Dec 11, 2013 - 03:14pm PT
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Mine was the last pitch of the north face of Aiguilles du Midi (Frendo Spur). Did not place any ice screws (didn't really know how to, plus the ice was crappy) and belayed off of my two ice-tools at the top... Gulp.
I was a complete noob at the time (had only followed a few pitches of rock and ice). My buddy was an experienced rock climber but a noob ice climber as well. He led all the rock pitches and we simulclimbed on the ice except for the last 3-4 pitches where my buddy found some good rock pro again... by then his calves were completely shot (he was climbing in leather boots). I was faring better in my plastics, so I got the line honors.
I was certain we were gonna die that day. I'm still amazed that we didn't!
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fresh pow
Gym climber
Plastic Paradise
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Dec 11, 2013 - 03:27pm PT
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Mt Woodson, Bozo no no, East face of Uncertainty Principle boulder. Couldn't do the 10.d move past the fist bolt. Some guy with long frizzy hair, jeans and no shirt was sitting down by the painted boulder, watching us with binoculars. After a while he came up and told us that we should just clip the first bolt and yard up on it. Then it would 5.4 to the top. My first lead was also my first ethics lesson!
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goatboy smellz
climber
लघिमा
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Dec 11, 2013 - 04:11pm PT
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Arrow in the Gunks.
I hitchhiked up from NYC and since this was my second time out climbing I was hoping to meet up with someone with more experience and climb with them which was SOP for those suckers looking for partners on the weekend.
The day started off slow with no partners available, save for the usual TR's set up around the Uberfall, eventually disillusioned in prospects I ended up bouldering around until eventually meeting up with an able body that was greener than me.
We decided on Arrow because it was on the cover of the Swain Guide and I knew where to find it. Once there, gear upped, harness on, rope flaked out, we both forgot how to tie in. Seriously, we're standing there for 15 minutes trying to remember how to tie a fvcking figure eight with no luck.
After a half dozen of attempts with "that doesn't look right" and "I don't think that will hold" I yell over to a couple greybeards 20 feet away who just arrived. "Hey, you guys know how to tie a figure eight?"
Their eyes get real wide and ask if we are joking, I say "well not really" so the older one says "yeah sure..." then proceeds to give us a quick lesson on how to tie a figure eight in a sing song voice.
Once done he looks up and asked if we got it. I said "sure, thanks for the help" then up I went like an Arrow.
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Dec 11, 2013 - 05:33pm PT
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I am pretty sure it was 2nd pitch of knapsack at Lovers Leap. I was pretty nervous.
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Truthdweller
Trad climber
San Diego, CA
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Dec 11, 2013 - 05:55pm PT
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Couldn't do the 10.d move past the fist bolt.
Hope I don't burst your bubble, but that move is 10b...fun lead either way!
Edit: Munginella, Yosemite, 1982 @ 19 y.o., with Roger Barnes (45 y.o. then) of Poway...got to lead every pitch!
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labrat
Trad climber
Auburn, CA
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Dec 11, 2013 - 07:14pm PT
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Knapsack at Lovers Leap for me as well. I totally went past the 2nd belay and ran out of rope.....
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whitemeat
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Dec 11, 2013 - 08:35pm PT
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5.8 50 sport foot climb!!!!!
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Dec 11, 2013 - 11:35pm PT
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Sunnyside Bench about 1970. On a day trip to the valley with my dad and my neighbor buddy, we set up and I lead upward, off route. Called "tension" and took a small swinging fall. Probably helps explain why I usually don't lead. On another foolhardy ascent of Sunnyside Bench earlier, same buddy and I rappelled to a ledge with no protection that was festooned with dried moss on decomposing and flaking granite. He had to lunge for an oak tree where we could tie off and continue our decent. Stupid kids.
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Rudder
Trad climber
Costa Mesa, CA
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Dec 12, 2013 - 12:06am PT
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It was either Hanging Teeth, or Switchbacks, or Falling Star... I really have no idea... who remembers that stuff? lol
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Dec 12, 2013 - 12:15am PT
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Portent 5.5 Pinnacles National Monument (in those days). Fired it.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Dec 12, 2013 - 03:22am PT
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Sh#t, I can't remember! How embarrassing. Pop Bottle at the Leap? Surrealistic Pillar? After 6? Hmm, I must be getting old.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Dec 12, 2013 - 11:49am PT
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It's hard for me to say, but not because I started climbing in 1957 and can't remember. The problem is that I progressed at a very leisurely pace through mostly roped but barely protected third and fourth-class mountain scrambling before really doing much in the way of fifth-class leading, almost the polar opposite of the way people get into climbing today. I had already been at this scrambling for four years when I went to college and started climbing at Devil's Lake, Wisconsin---no scrambling there!
During those first four years I probably did do a fifth-class lead or two. I recall a dihedral on the East Ridge of Teewinot which, in retrospect, was probably 5.3 or so. My first few climbs in the Tetons were guided, so I had followed up to 5.7 (SW Ridge of Symmetry Spire) on occasion. Then, in 1961 I think, I climbed Three Pines in the Gunks on a totally deserted weekday at the end of the summer. This was a fantastic experience at the time, no guidebook or any idea where to go or how hard the climbing was going to be and no one else at the Trapps. We just walked along the cliffs and started up in a promising place. (An experience I repeated a few years later on a much harder Gunks route with Al Rubin.) Our total lack of local knowledge and the fact that no other climbers where at the cliff gave the undertaking the air of a back-country adventure for us.
Anyway, my first self-consciously fifth-class lead was at Devil's Lake and was what we were calling 5.4 at the time (which probably means it was 5.6 or so). I had already top-roped it so knew what to expect, and the protection was via severely overdriven pitons. It would be five or six years before nuts would appear, and more than ten years until the first cams showed up.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Dec 19, 2013 - 11:30pm PT
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How cool that so many first leads were at Mission Gorge.
And Nutjob: With Galwas Crack your first lead, your avatar name is appropriate. I am impressed. That crack's slipperiness makes it a major 5.9 sandbag.
I don't remember my first lead or even where it was, but I spent many a day at the Gorge and met some good partners there. I used to get to lunch rock before sunrise with my dog and a buddy, lead The Ramp's crack, top rope it out on the face, then downclimb it with lots of rope slack... up and down until the crowds came. Was usually out of there before 9:00AM.
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Lis
Sport climber
Twain Harte, CA
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Dec 20, 2013 - 12:58am PT
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Sidesaddle 5.9 on the Ort wall in the Grotto at Table mountain. Short and sweet!
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thebravecowboy
Social climber
Colorado Plateau
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Dec 20, 2013 - 01:03am PT
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In echo of the OP, it was something like 5.7 and has one bolt in about 70 feet
Elephant Head in Lower Monument Canyon. It was wickedly hot and I picked a south facing slab. Definitely some groundfall potential 'tween the two rusty hanger'd mystery bolts 'fore the juniper up top.
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mark miller
Social climber
Reno
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Dec 20, 2013 - 01:42am PT
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Somewhere around 74' or so with a 2" piece of webbing from a construction site as the lead rope. On the back side of C-hill in Carson City.There are still some interesting problems to encounter back there,Adventure was what it was all about, knot the grading #.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Dec 20, 2013 - 01:52am PT
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Probably Empress at Chapel Pond Slabs in 1972 pounding iron and nuts with the hammer. There's still a small steel bong that fell behind the big ledge near the top...
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