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Guangzhou
Trad climber
Asia, Indonesia, East Java
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Sep 26, 2012 - 02:29am PT
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Wow, thanks for the Thread CPR on this one.
Eman
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Sep 26, 2012 - 09:41am PT
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ROTFLMOA! "Finn asks of Penelope, "does this count as a first date??"
HAHA!
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jstn
Trad climber
monrovia, ca
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Sep 26, 2012 - 12:35pm PT
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Thanks for the great read! Work has passed without notice.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Sep 26, 2012 - 12:50pm PT
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arrogant bastid, i.
once, actually the singularly greatest non-moment in
my life, largo threatened to plagarize me and be all famous himself...
"Norwegian wrote that and I am telling him and the world right now that I'm stealing that passage for my own use, changing just enough to where people will think I wrote it and becoming all famous and sh#t in the process."
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1206190&tn=20
so i automatically exist!
yea. that's always been my goal.
to exhist.
john long you've always been so high on my list of heroes.
two me it means to somethings to be heralded by a hero.
upon learning that i am i,
once the acid tears dried
i changed my topo stamp from
jerry to figments of
intoxicated imaginations everywhere.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Sep 26, 2012 - 01:36pm PT
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Largo.
There, I wrote it. Where's my prize?????
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MH2
climber
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Sep 26, 2012 - 05:29pm PT
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Hey, you only typed that. No good without a picture.
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mueffi 49
Trad climber
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Sep 26, 2012 - 08:37pm PT
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Just stumbled into this post line from times gone bye... the dumpster diving story opened up my memory lane of 1970 living off " bin-time" at the Montenvers Station above Chamonix... money was better spend on hauling cheap wine up from the valley..
Probably the best "Mountain Prosa" I read in a long time - thanks !!!
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Hardly Visible
Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
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A definite must read, or should I say muss read.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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The thin-finger overhang looked like a no-go.
So, I stepped up. I knew I would have to dyno to dyno to dyno from sloper to sloper to sloper, to get the fingernail crimp just beyond the roof. Below the roof, for pro, was one last fixed pin, a pin that only a pussy would clip.
Not me.
Fixed gear is a pussy game. In this game of Real Men, I knew where the chips stood on the steep table. Sure, I could clip. But, then? I would be a Pussy.
So, I heel-hooked past the fixed pin, into a bong-bong-sized divot carved by Royal Robbins' minions, and levered Levittator, with my six-pack abs groaning towards the summit, and stuck a thumb-press-to-tiny (tinier than Pencil Neck Geek) and stood proud.
But, I was only a thirteen feet off the belay. It was going to get worse, above.
Normally, a three-dyno move into an overhanging bombay chimney, polished by a thousand years of water would seem extreme. But, I had put beeswax on my hands, and feet, and face, to stick the moves.
I know that beeswax is cheating, but so is a rope.
I used my study of Asian religions, and with extraordinary breathing techniques, to allow my brain to know, to myself, if no one else, that, "I am The Man".
So, I launched out, dyno to dyno to dyno, and stuck and stuck and stuck the moves, made the ascent, and well, the rest is history.
I am THE MAN.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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yesterday i stopped in to visit
my swedish carnival family in camino.
bryce is a mentor to me in many ways:
as a father, as a man and as a builder.
we sat around his fireplace
drinking coffee with his
beautiful wife and daughter.
leo koetke played on the record player.
i was telling them about largo.
how when john picks up the pen
inspiration flows thru
with graceful strokes like
hawk feathers still connected
to the wing.
how his audience is awed
and lifted.
and how i look to john
as my pen mentor
but when i express
inspiration falls out
of me like a wood block
and the resounding echo
as it hits the nearest hard
surface only makes
my audience worried and
uncomfortable.
like i'm just looking for
somewhere to park my angst
and i find empty hearts
in this great lot
of electrical and gas vessels.
then the fire went out,
the record ended,
i emptied my cup
and exited in silence.
love was nowhere.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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"UNDER their cabin is a cellar. you descend soft plank stairs into the earth and enter thru a wood slab door with a little stain glass window.
once in, there is a single decrepid light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a noose. pull the chain and have a seat at the small and lonely table in the middle. all the wine racks are empty. the stone foundation walls bear moss and somewhere in the corner, a drip drops.
the beams overhead are hand hewn and thus tell a thousand stories of love's hardship.
my good friend sorenson pulls a tap that sticks from the face of an old frigidaire. into two copper goblets flows his home-brewed barley wine.
we sit across the table and subtly change the coarse of mankind thru small talk.
eeking out an existence, i.
-
Norwegian wrote that and I am telling him and the world right now that I'm stealing that passage for my own use, changing just enough to where people will think I wrote it and becoming all famous and sh#t in the process.
JL" Oh. . . I lov' ya' man!!
I amStill chewing white bread, V>,< V>,<V, `Old School Dental Plan?!
. . . "inspiration falls out
of me like a wood block
and the resounding echo
as it hits the nearest hard
surface only makes
my audience worried and
uncomfortable."
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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'Soloing at Harimau Rock'
Vague memories awoke me from a zen-like trance as the full moon illuminated the vitreous dew on odious appearing moss along the trail as I became conscious of a pounding hangover precipitated by boilermaker bouts with a garrulous Kiwi in the bilik bar the night before. As the trail led through the mangroves and into the highlands, sweat soaked my headband as guano dropped like heavy rain from giant bats. Soon it fell impotently onto the rubble below as I negotiated the 3rd class overhanging scree sections on the gently ascending approach to the infamous Harimau Rock, perched on the cleft of a plateau overlooking the vast Malaysian Jungle. At its base the ominous egg shaped chossy pegmatite obelisk soared at least eighty or ninety feet and had but one obvious line on its southeastern parapet. A jagged finger crack zagged the lower half up into a blank looking face with but a few bewildering depressions and some dubious crusty appurtenances on the upper half the cliff. Unshouldering my pack, I drank but a few ounces of water and sat in the lotus position with eyes narrowed to slits while contemplating the gooey seepage at the base of the starting moves, until my breathing assumed a calm rhythmic pattern and the first glimmer of dawn began creasing the eastern horizon.
To the mainstream climbing world up until this time, Harimau Rock was but a myth, and was unheard of to all except the local villagers in these parts. This was to be only a reconnaissance foray, and my goal was to boulder and work out the opening moves, and to rap and clean the best lines for a later ascent with a partner. The dangers in this area of the jungle were inherent, but I had inculcated myself to the landscape and culture, and made friends here. I knew of the deadly insects, the vipers, and the big cats, but I felt as comfy and able here as I would, with some reservation, among the Yosemite bears.
As I unfolded myself from my meditation to stretch in preparation, the morning sun warmed my back and my biceps which bulged and lengthened in rapt anticipation of making a start at the climbing. But while I was capaciously unaware of any danger, a shadow in the mangroves downslope briefly caught my eye. Dismissing it as a vulture who might be ruminating over a snack, I went about the business of hoisting my frame up the jagged crack for several moves while wiping the mungey spooge from my toe tips on the course and ample smears around the crack. At about twenty feet off the deck the crack pinched down to about 9/16" locks and my feet were solid but I decided to come down and scope the higher jams from below for perspective. I was still feeling pretty strong as I gingerly stepped on the ground when I heard it, a long low growl that stood my hair on end and before the growling had abated, I realized that I had powered back up the crack and hung about ten feet above my previous high point.
Thirty feet below me was an animal that bested my weight by at least forty pounds. My emotions ranged from dispassionate amusement to modest irritation in a heartbeat as a rather large tiger began dissecting my pack with disinterested glances up towards me. The bananas and energy bars were of no interest to the big beast and it began to walk about with an agitated demeanor as I resolutely pondered the grievous nature my situation. "Hoh Man!" I thought to myself for an instant while pondering the fact that the Malaysian Tiger weighs as much as 260 pounds and can run a man down at a hundred yards in less than eight seconds. My breathing was even but the finger crack was starting to feel greasy as the big cat lunged the base of the cliff while attempted to harry its prey.
I was moving up slowly now, regulating my breathing and trying to calm my mind, and wondered at the audacity of my hubris for assuming the there would be no big cats in the near vicinity of Harimau Rock, which of course translates in Malaysian to 'Tiger' Rock. What I was thinking must have been purely vain glory as presently a piquant delicacy was being prepared for the resident quadruped below in commemoration of my superfluous demise. A pleonastic orgy of thoughts were flooding my brain and quelling the concentration I needed to secure the single digit jams and shrinking smears as I progressed upwards. The last jams ended at a sloping mantle with at least another forty five feet of hard and sketchy face climbing. I was beginning to feel the tension in my toes like a flamenco dancer, and as I pressed the mantle my knees were knocking like castanets. I spied the first crusty knob at ten feet out from the mantle and then as I pushed higher into the death zone on smears and edges my vision swam treading in red hues, purple haze playing there on the periphery of my mind with mad blues riffs sparking in and out of my head.
A quick glance down at the tiger prowling below brought me to my senses and the crusty knob was within my reach, but like Aladdin's genie and the chimera set free, fatuous thoughts once again set upon the mind. As I began moving past the secure hold, taking my foot off it and casting off onto thin holds again was wholly unthinkable, but with several feet to the next knob, it might put me within 25 feet of survival. "Rosebud," I thought strangely, not of the dying vision of Citizen Kane, but of another Rosebud, it was her nickname. I had given it to her, my beautiful Latino flame, Rosalinda. "Rosebud," I thought of her with the soft brown eyes and my mind quieted. Rosebud, and my foot held in the depression as I reached the third crusty knob. Rosebud was the mantra she sang for me as I moved past it and into no mans land. The cacophony of the daytime jungle was lost to me as I squared my jaw and reckoned with the grim task of ropeless soloing at eighty five feet above death on the 5.11c vertical face moves. Rosebud, was the rounded edge of her lower lip at my fingertips, the soft curve in the palm of her hand under my toes, and the warm kiss of her lips on my fingertips as I caressed the final knob within eyesight of the top. As I moved onto it I noticed the tiger was nowhere to be seen. I was beyond caring at that point and the song of my lover brought me back into acute alignment with the only métier that mattered.
Only Rosebud could save me as I focused on the last hard move, invariably a requisite dyno that I had to 'stick' in order to reach the top. For Rosebud I threw for it and as my right hand slapped the large knob my feet swam dangling. Then I lunged again to throw the other hand up and hung there with both hands on solid rock, Above me in the bright blue sky and warm sunlight was a butterfly, and a tiger's paw as it clawed the air. "Rosebud," I thought.
-bushman
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Apr 23, 2016 - 01:54pm PT
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What is "Largo" - Mind
Time for another LWC.
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Apr 23, 2016 - 06:36pm PT
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Myles Moser
climber
Lone Pine, Ca
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Apr 23, 2016 - 11:14pm PT
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Livin' in the Portal
« on: December 15, 2011, 02:51:46 am »
Here I am in North Dakota for two weeks. Enjoying the company of Amy's family. Taking a much necessary rest from the adventures that have been embarked upon and those that are waiting.
For the last week I have been endlessly searching the web and wholesalers for buckles, snaps, webbing, slides, material, buttons, and clips. I've always been interested in making haul bags and other big wall paraphernalia: from screamers to chest harnesses, to bombproof 4 season portaledge rain flys. I also just finished a prototype wall bivy/tent that will be put to the test as soon we get home. Well, after I adjust Max the VW Bug-he found a rock in Alabama Hills that did not agree with his rear end.
Man! We have had one hell of season. I have learned so much from the previous adventures and can't wait for what's coming. Most of all, I have discovered a partner who will not back down in the face of danger; a partner who looks at the open jaws and dripping teeth of the Sierra Bulgarian and says "let?s fight". Amy has gone from my princess, to my wing man. What we have done in recent months has left me with a feeling that I can not express. I have gone from a rat scurrying through holes and caves in the Alabamas trying to sniff out a willing belayer, to my dream of becoming a First Acsentionist.
First Ascent... What does it mean?
I don't know.
But what I can tell you is that I crave it! I dream of it. I think of it all the time. I want more virgin ground like a high schooler wishes to loose their virginity. I stare out my window imagining little red lines with little red dots, connecting those lines on all the Sierra buttresses. I have ambitions for routes that tear and turn my insides, only because the time is not right, the weather is not in, there is not enough snow. Secrets and mystery. The unknown. The what if. The we might.
The god awful bivy for one, let alone two. I need it!
I have had the privilege of climbing with and being mentored by one of the finest men I know, Phil Bircheff. A humble man who has chosen someone much younger to call friend.
"Can you give me a spot" I asked two years ago. He quietly puts his watered-down white wine on the gravel ground.
"Come on, check this one out!"
"Don't really spot me, you know... just be there" I proclaim.
And that was the start of a friendship that has changed my life. Phil the veteran of the iron age, has taught me to drive and listen to the ring of a piton. The ring which we have sent though the Whitney Portal for all to hear.
We sit at my table behind the Portal Store, Phil filing and sharpening RURPS and I on the bench grinder making a half inch Cassin Piton, into a quarter.
He spits on his stone.
I didn't even ask him to sharpen. He just knew.
I have stared at a hidden pillar well above the Portal for months. Every morning escaping the god-awful cold of early season in the Portal, I sneak into sun light... Binoculars in hand. Two parallel running splitters; how do I get there?
Phil walks up, "check it out" I say. He's probably thinking "here we go again!"
We're at the base, we dig in a bivy. Sh!t, we forgot the chicken, we'll just ration the trail mix for three days!
We swing leads for 6 two hundred foot pitches. Spire summit, awesome! One ring-angle piton dead vertical and we are off, slung block, fix 4 more pitons, ground... Trail mix gone.
Beers by the waterfall, topo drawn... We have created Pillar Altisimo.
Living in the Whitney Portal for the last eight months has been an experience. Grinding generators that sound as if they are about to explode. Constant "Doo yu know where the trail to Alf Dome is?" The smell of morning breakfast. The pancakes which are too big for any civilized person to eat, and the morning hug from non other than Earlene.
Sneak a sausage or two on the grill, Doug's back is turned... Bacon in the mouth.
Back to the upper lot we call home.
Squealing generator!
Doug Jr. on a smoke brake knows where we're at. He picks on me for awhile as I'm packing for the next climb... Sh!t my sausage!
Grab the sausage, which Dougie has removed from the grill. He knows me all too well now.
Tickets in the window, a ticket on the wheel, a line in front of Earlene... Where the hell are the Dougs? Dougie is on smoke break hopefully picking on Amy this time. Doug Senior is off some where saving the planet or mankind as we know it.
"All right here we go! Three eggs, over easy, side of hash, wheat toast, two pancakes for some reason, extra bacon, six sausage, three scrambled, one pancake, only toast... With sausage, ("that's not only toast"), four more pancakes, one hamburger ("it's not even lunch!"), two sides of bacon, "do you have any ketchup?", extra hash browns, one more pancake, two eggs sunny side up, "is my order ready?", lights fading... Generating crapping out, pancake batter every where, the sound of a screen door sliding open, "Doug!, Dougie!, I'm going climbing... Keep it real Dougs."
Squeeze in a few hours of climbing before work...
"Amy we are going to be late!" I yell down, as she flawlessly dances up the stone.
15 minutes late to work.
Amy and I just climbed a thousand feet. Throw the packs down, cover up my B.O. with old spice, slide the kitchen screen door ?You?re an IDIOT!" Senior yells. I laugh, wipe the sweat from my brow because I know this is his way of saying "Good Job!"
Amy, still with holes in her butt from climbing, is taking orders. I behind the window stuffing every morsel in sight in my mouth. She sneaks off to get into clothes that don't have holes.
The crowd is gone, lunch is over.
Time to hit the books. I stare at The High Sierra, Secor, Cameron Burns, California Fourteeners. These books all have awful pictures, but they will do.
"Day Needle!, Day Needle!, Day Needle!" I hunt frantically for a blue pen, so eager to draw the future route into the book.
Here I am, in the kitchen with my rack of equipment, trying to convince Doug Senior to give up some of his pitons from years past.
All he can do is stare at the equipment on the floor and say ?Myles! You might show up to work on time if you left some that equipment at home... Because back in my day..." I've heard it all before, so I don't judge. He is just getting old.
Squeaking generator, gotta get away!
I sneak off to my spot under the "Eiger of the Portal" also know as Candle Light Buttress. I sit there quietly with my jaw hanging to my toes, gawking at the king of the Portal, the Whitney Portal Buttress.
Amy and I worked on this wall for half a season before being beaten by a man-eating crack full of bushes and dirt. Some fine scrubbing, digging, and trimming got us through it. I was bed ridden for a few days. Doug tells me I probably got the Hanta Virus... while laughing.
Winter rolled in, and we were out.
The start of this season had us itching to get back on it. Snow on the road and a manmade burm, to keep the crusaders out, was no match for the Volkswagen Max.
Tire chains on, first gear in, here we go!
And, we're stuck.
"Amy get in, I'll push."
First gear in, engine hot and - we?re stuck once more.
Like knights storming a castle to slay the king we persevered.... After jacking and digging the car out.
We humped well over a hundred pounds of equipment to the wall, the next day it snowed for two weeks! We were out once more. Just as the weather cleared, my best friend Paul decided to show up. He had not wall climbed in a very long time, but the weather was saying now!
A party of two turned into a party of three.
100 pounds to haul turned into 175 pounds.
We were in for it! We lived on the wall for six days, making our way slowly up the steep face.
Paul in good style reading Mutiny Aboard the Bounty, heckling from his hanging palace while Amy and I worked ourselves.
Paul?s portaledge collapses... Now we are all uncomfortable.
Three people, a ledge built for two, three nights, wish Paul was thinner.
Exploded finger, blood everywhere, nine pitches up, a thousand feet of climbing, five hundred feet to go, one gallon of water left, Paul and his mutiny, "Where is the brandy?? Paul wants tacos, we?re out of gas, my finger hurts, time to bail, we wait till morning.
Doug Senior flies past us in His white truck. We turn in to our campground and there he is. Senior, arms crossed and a smile on his face, leaning against his truck awaits our tales of epic. He of course is proud, but with tape on my finger I start to explain, then out of nowhere "You?re an IDIOT!" breaches my tale. Amy, beautiful and tired had hung there for hours of boring belays and strenuous attempts to free climb, Paul- Paul just hung out, but hey that's what Paul does.
Doug then told us to go take showers!
So we failed.
A few weeks later we moved into the Portal. The wall held our bail-out gear hostage and I wanted it back. Starring daily at the route and the dangling equipment rotting in the sun was driving me mad. It was as if the wall was taunting me. At the right time of day I could see my carabiners flicking beams of sun at me while I would sit and ponder the wall. It was time to relive the adventure all over again.
Four days and three nights is what it took Amy and I to finish. Day two began with a morning greeting from Doug Jr. (a loud horn blast from his truck as it made the serpentine bend in the road, telling us he is watching). By no means were they easy. On the third day we went for the summit push. The winds were extremely violent, pushing anywhere from sixty to eighty mph. The Buttress was trying to tell us who was boss and it was doing a good job at that. Several times we had to hang on tight, in order not to get blown off the wall.
Meanwhile, we could see Paul and Phil on another wall fighting the same winds. Phil had told me later that the winds were so strong it had stolen his beanie while climbing, and that's when he began to fear for us.
We hit the summit in a torrent of wind. Rappelling the last seventy meters to our portaledge, I heard Amy screaming. As I got closer she was telling me the winds had picked her up in the two man ledge. "She must be exaggerating" I thought.
I tied the ropes off nice and tight so they wouldn't blow away." We can't rappel in these winds with all the equipment" I shouted.
And then, we were air born. Amy and I are literally floating on air. Easily three hundred pounds just got picked up and WHAM!!! We slam down on the anchor. Not good. Wham! Oh Dear! The rest of the night was us with are legs spread wide and arms stretched out to keep the rain fly from collapsing.... It was great!
The next morning we rappel. And as soon as we hit the ground who should be there but Big Paulie. He had hiked up to carry loads.
Righteous!
"Come on Doug it has to be a grade V, twelve pitches....come on! We where up there for six days! Then four!" I yell.
Doug Jr. quietly flipping hamburgers as his father and I go at it. "Dougie come on, give me your opinion..." Silence still from Dougie. Doug Senior then tells me that a party of women was on the route and they said it wasn't bad.
He's pretty funny for an old guy, always smacking me down because he knows I?ll get back up.
And then it comes.... His son is about to through us out of the kitchen and lets me have it... Just what I?ve been waiting for, a response from Dougie.
Dougie is asking ?why aren't you climbing? Why should the grade matter? Why do you care what others think? You climbed it? It doesn't matter!"
Well, Dougie was right. I got what I wanted and most of all I got those damn annoying, sun flickering, ruin my pondering session carabiners back.
Amy, Paul, and I walked away calling the route The Never Ending Story. You could ask Dougie if he thinks it's grade V, but I would just recommend trying it, you'll find out!
Remember that blue pen I was searching for, I found it! That blue line eventually got drawn in. Day Needle was something I'll never forget. Serious, hard work.
Three days, four nights, bashed knuckles, broken drill bits, sketchy blocks, a baggy of nuts and a salami stick. Five gallons of water, one sleeping bag for two people, and a sh!t ton of gear. Those awful bivies I crave so badly, oh yeah- we got those. Run-out, sketchy climbing, got that too. Screaming barfies... check, being pummeled by chunks of hail...hell yeah we got it, fifteen pitches with on the edge climbing.... Oh baby! Sleeping on the side of a wall around 14,000 ft in one of the grandest areas around... Priceless!
We hit the summit, down the Mountaineers Route, crash one more night under the Massif, three mile hike out, and we're done. Swing into the Dougs? office, I mean kitchen, tell them how it went. Get heckled a little; pray that a Giant Sierra Pine Rat has not ripped our canvas pop-up to shreds.
Take a shower then flip some Burgers.
I stare at Amy through my serving window as she describes the route with radical gestures and movements to our bosses, and paying customers. I listen to Doug laugh as she talks of the heckling we received from Iceberg Lake.
I just wait in the kitchen for it.
I know it's coming
"Myles!"
"You?re an idiot!"
And...I got it!
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Wen
Trad climber
Bend, OR
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Apr 25, 2016 - 10:12pm PT
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I’ve been a lurker on the taco stand for years. As an intermediate climber I don’t exactly feel like I belong, but I read the taco every night before bed, and this thread is just too good to pass up. I almost named my first born Tobin after John Long’s story the Green Arch. I’m a big fan, though up until now it’s been my quiet little secret.
----------------------------------------------------
This is a John Long story of a different type. It’s not written in the John Long style because, well, I’m not a great writer like our friend the legend. I don’t have the mind or sarcastic wit, but I do have the pictures in my mind of a John Long experience that happened when I was young. In that way, this is a “bad John Long story”, not of the writing type, but about the day I met the “bad” John Long.
John Long was bad in the Michael Jackson “I’m bad, I’m baaad, you know it” way. Bad in the “I can climb and smoke a cigar while flirting with a nubile college student” bad way. Bad in the “you dirty dirty boy you hunk of love” kind of way, though in reality he might not have been that, but now that I’m a middle aged mother of two who hardly gets any pretty girl attention, that’s what he has become in my mind. Let’s just say it was a long time ago.
I had only been climbing a few months, and because I was in college in San Diego, Joshua Tree had become an obsession. I stopped playing lacrosse so I could leave school on Friday afternoons and climb until Sunday evening, months on end returning to my apartment well after Sunday dark unprepared for my classes the next day. I would climb in the heat. I would climb in the cold. It really didn’t matter what I climbed, as long as I climbed every chance I had, so that was what I did. Remember those days? Oh they feel like so long ago when you’re a working mother whose free time is spent driving kids between afterschool activities, daydreaming about your glory days.
It was the mid-90’s, and my boyfriend at the time, a skinny white guy who went on to become my partner in crime with this whole kid/middle-aged mother thing, loved to lead me around the monument. It was a monument back then, and there was a certain sense of freedom there. I wasn’t great at climbing, but I did enjoy the challenge of scraping my fingertips off each weekend. These were the years when I could spend all day in the sun tanning to a golden glow and not worrying about the damage I was doing to my young skin. We didn’t even wear sunglasses, that’s how young and stupid we were. I could climb in shorts and enjoy the tough girl look of my scraped knees when I went back to work on Monday morning, proud of my gobies and not yet embarrassed that they represented my bad style on the JTree cracks. I was young and cute, and the world was my climbing oyster.
So there we were at Echo cove on a Saturday morning. Hotter than hell, and my ghost colored boyfriend was frying to a crisp as he lead Stitcher Quits. I smeared my feet, slipping and sliding in my lousy footwork, learning through the two-steps forward, one-step back method. Eventually I made it to the top, but it was slow and torturous. Down again, and on to Stick to What. A decent name, as I repeatedly muttered it every step of the way. I was 15 feet off the ground when the legend walked up.
John Long was a solid hunk of muscle back in the day. His calves were huge, and I could hardly look at his biceps for fear that they would fire bullets at me. He wore a swami belt around his ripped midsection, the first I ever saw of that ancient piece of climbing hardware. You could hear him coming from a mile away, his voice laughing even as he was talking, projecting an energetic confidence that made you wonder who the heck he was. And I had no idea who the heck he was, being a new young climber. Did I mention I was cute?
So up walks THE Mister Long. He had a cigar in his mouth, and his booming voice was telling someone that he had put up Stitcher Quits back in the day because Stitcher had literally quit, as he was a weakling. I stood there on the next climb over, 20 feet off the ground, feeling his personality as he approached. Ignoring the growing presence behind me, I stepped up, and my foot slipped down; learning to smear was uncomfortably hard. Up he walked, and upon seeing my tan leg shaking, he shouted “Don’t you worry young lady, I’m here to help.” I looked up at my boyfriend with question marks in my eyes, relaying a “who is this blowhard?” look, though he couldn’t see it since he was 60 feet away in the blazing sun, sans sunglasses.
And the next thing you know, the legend is standing next to me, soloing alongside, cigar on lip, smiling eyes taking in the full package of my white short shorts, strong tan legs, and purple tank top. This was before we were old and worried about head injuries, so my long brown hair flowed down my back, no helmet in sight. Underneath I was a geeky straight-A student, attracted to smart boys more than the lookers, but Mister Long didn’t seem to mind that as he looked me up and down. And then he held out his hand.
I looked at him quizzically. “Who in god’s green acres are you?” I thought, my Catholic school education starting to seep out. And then he said, “Put your foot right here, I’ll help you up.” Although new to climbing, I knew enough not to cheat, so I ignored him and took a step up, muttering to myself “Stick to what? Damn right stick to what, what the heck am I supposed to stick my foot on?”
“Why this hold, this one right here!” he bellowed, as he placed his hand next to the smear, palm up, tilting his head to indicate I should stand on his hand. I smiled, put my foot on the smear, gently kicking his hand away, weighting my foot, only to slip down and fall into his palm. He grinned, successful in his entrapment as I was now fully reliant on him to hold my weight if I wanted to use the hold. I eased my next foot up, weighting his hand in the process. This cat and mouse game went on for several more moves, until the climb eased off and I could take care of myself, thank you very much. Up I went to the top, the legend getting farther and farther away, and when I clipped the anchors I asked my now sunburned boyfriend, “Who was that loud guy anyway, and what the hell kind of harness was he wearing?”
His reply? “That, that right there, that was you climbing with a movie star. That was amazing, incredible, he’s so old school he even had a swami belt on. Did you see how ripped he was? That, that was one famous dude hitting on my girl. Ho man, this is the stuff of dreams.”
And so that was the day I met the infamous, hotter than a Chippendales dancer, larger than life Mister John Long. And he was one bad, bad, bad hunk of flirty muscle.
These days, when I complain that I can’t climb worth a damn since kids took away my physique, I think back on the day I was given the look over by John Long, and I know I had it going on once, even if it was all a long, long, very long, time ago.
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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Apr 25, 2016 - 10:53pm PT
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thank you for laying bare some wistful reminiscences Wen... very nice.
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IntheFog
climber
Mostly the next place
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Apr 26, 2016 - 03:59pm PT
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well, I’m not a great writer... Maybe not, but you do tell a pretty good story.
Surely you've got a few more you are dying to share.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Apr 26, 2016 - 06:36pm PT
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Your story and its vivid description of John in the old days is excellent!
That was John in a nutshell, right there.
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Wen
Trad climber
Bend, OR
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Apr 26, 2016 - 10:00pm PT
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Thanks all, fun to put my story into words! JL has no idea what kind of legend he is to people, I'm sure there are plenty of others out there just like me...
This really is the best Supertaco thread I've ever read, I was laughing the whole time. Ok this and maybe the Every Picture Tells a Story thread...
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