share your personal climbing writings here

Discussion Topic

Return to Forum List

This thread has been locked

Messages 121 - 133 of total 133 in this topic

<< First | < Previous | Show All | Next > | Last >>

drljefe

climber

El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson

Feb 13, 2017 - 07:13pm PT

You got me cowboy

thebravecowboy

climber

The Good Places

Feb 13, 2017 - 07:16pm PT

don't clam up there, podnah, 'sokay to mix the sublime in with the web-swill. it's all a big burrita and damned if we don't need some metaphysical cilantro in this hawg.

zBrown

Ice climber

Feb 13, 2017 - 09:01pm PT

Never saw this before.

Thx tB

survival

Big Wall climber

Terrapin Station

Feb 13, 2017 - 09:18pm PT

Still one of the best threads EVAH!

Don Lauria

Trad climber

Bishop, CA

Feb 14, 2017 - 01:37pm PT

I first got to know Steve Roper on the back side of Half Dome in 1966. He and Chuck Pratt were camped beside us (me and Michael and Valerie Cohen) in preparation for a NW face climb. Both ours and their intentions were foiled and, as it worked out, Steve and I hiked back to Happy Isles together.

That evening in Camp 4 Roper asked if I had ever done Phantom Pinnacle. Nope! I hadn't, but I was anxious to do it, especially with someone who knew exactly where it was. It was agreed - we would get an early start in the morning.

With Steve rousing me at 6 AM the following day, we were off and running. With no hesitation at any point along the approach (we walked from Camp4), we arrived at the pinnacle. Roper kept asking me if I thought I could lead the final pitch which he considered the crux. Hell, I didn't know. If he thought I could I would certainly give it a try.

I remember little of the interim pitches - they went by so quickly, but I do remember the final pitch which was my assigned lead. When Steve arrived on top he immediately set up the first rappel while quizzing me on my reaction to the last lead. Three rappels later we were on the ground.

As we walked back and approached Camp 4 around 8:30 AM, Steve stopped in his tracks and said, "Come on we're going back to the Lodge for coffee!" I asked why and he replied, "S##t, if we go back this early no one will believe we did it."

rockanice

climber

new york

Mar 15, 2017 - 11:51am PT

Below is an emailed story I sent to my family who don't really know anything about climbing, or the out of doors, so a little extra detail. Yesterday I had asked my friend Vicky to send me the photo of a bear I took in 2009 so I could show it to my son Conor.

JUST THE BARE FACTS
-------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the first bear that I met in Yosemite - it was July 2009.
He was like a little teen-ager bear, really, though he looked about the size of a St. Bernard on steroids.

In all my prior experiences staying in Yosemite's Camp IV, I had never actually encountered a bear. On more than one occasion, I have woken up and and been asked by my site-mates if I'd heard or seen the bear the previous night. Someone would leave a "bear box" (a big brown metal locking food storage bin) open and the bears would get in and ravage what they could. This event would then be attended by all manner of yelling and shooing to chase the bears away. Finally, the rangers would roam through Camp IV with these clackers, the sounds of which were intended to drive these hungry beasts even further away.
Of course all that racket was nothing compared to my own formidable thundering that I would personally broadcast throughout the night within the confines of my own little tent. In short, I would snore through it all, invariably oblivious. Had I heard the bear ? Nope. To my dismay, I'd admit I hadn't heard a thing. I had missed another chance to sight a bear. Shoot!

I had seen a bear once, though, when I was 10 years old in the Adirondacks. On that hiking/camping trip we were way out in the back country of the High Peaks region camped atop a huge waterfall. I think it was on this waterfall trip or perhaps another trip that I discovered I was a sleepwalker. On one trip I was sleeping in a cabin in the mountains that had bunkbeds and I was nestled up in a top bunk sound asleep. Next thing I know, I'm slamming into the wooden floor, and I must confess, not my favorite way to wake up in the middle of the night. What the hell !!? At the time I really didn't have much in the way of an explanation for this mishap, I just got back in bed and went to sleep again. This waterfall trip was different, though. We were in tents and I had zipped myself nicely into a sleeping bag, safely ensconced in and amongst a few other kids. This time, however, it was no wooden floor that woke me up. There was no jarring event that jolted me awake. Rather, I seemed to dissolve a sort of veil to regain a normal consciousness that revealed I was walking along a muddy trail in nothing but a pair of underwear and some heavy woolen socks. It was full on middle of the night, but the moonlight apparently had been bright enough for me to negotiate some muddy trail that traced along the right side of a brook. Holy smokes, some kind of a trance ! Sleepwalking or sleephiking ? Maybe crashing awake, merging into a wooden floor didn't seem so bad by comparison as I tried to make sense of my current situation. Well there I was alone for whatever reason in the middle of the woods, and I figured the brook beside me must lead back to the waterfall. When I had finally awakened from my altered state, I had been walking downstream, so I decided that I would reverse course and hopefully make my way back to the waterfall and campsite. I walked and walked some more and still no waterfall. Could I somehow be above the waterfall and was I now walking away from camp? I don't remember being afraid, but I think it was that uncertain pivotal moment that I decided to call out to my counselors: "Sir" Bill !!` "Sir" Dave !!
Our counselors were addressed by their first names, lending a kind of intimacy to their relationship with the kids, but the "Sir" part balanced the respect and proper stations that existed between the two.
"Sir" Bill !!!- I yelled again into the night some few more times without results. At ten years old, I had by then acquired a sampling of some rougher vocabulary and when my yells went unanswered I began to yield to less reputable diction. The proper balance between stations went right out the window. I recall very well it was just after I had taxed my lungs with, "Goldammit, where the hell are you !! " that I first saw the flashlights up trail in the woods bouncing towards me. It turned out I had been walking upstream in the correct direction after all, it's just that I had sleptwalked a long, long way from camp, let me tell you.

Owing to my little impromptu hike in the middle of the night, when we moved camp the next day a strategy was devised to keep me from wandering again at the new campsite. There we slept in a big lean-to which is a wooden log shelter with one side fully open facing out into the campfire area. You could fit about six kids in a lean-to sleeping side by side like matchsticks in a box. The idea was to insert me right in the middle of the pack so I would have to step on someone to get loose. With this sleeping arrangement in place we all hunkered down for the night.

It was I among all those matchsticks that first woke up in the middle of that night. It wasn't a crash landing on a wooden floor or walking along a muddy trail that woke me, it was a noise. We had all of our food in a stuffsack that we had suspended on a cord from a tree branch. This way the chipmunks would have to work harder to access it. The noise I heard was no chipmunk, though and the big hulking shape that was just outside our open lean-to was a bear. He was making short work of our food sack. I woke the others and we all shined our flashlights on the bear as he swiped at this edible punching bag until it was beaten down onto the ground. We watched with our eyes and mouths gaping wide as the bear galloped away with the prize in his jaws. There wasn't much we were going to do but watch and it was over and done with in a matter of moments.

Everyone was up and around after that. We set out pots and pans on logs as an alarm bell of sorts in case the bear decided to come back, but he didn't. In the morning we followed a trail of food packaging remnants which led us to the ripped and torn food sack which was empty. We did recover some small food items including a carton of eggs that were unscathed. Nothing noteworthy occurred afterward in terms of any further nocturnal shenanigans on that trip.

40 plus years later, I am still sleeping in the dirt with some regularity but another bear sighting had always somehow eluded me. In the grand scheme of things, maybe that's a good thing. During my July 2009 trip to Yosemite I remedied this deficiency in good order, easily making up for my hitherto lack of bear sightings. In years past I have traveled to Yosemite by myself and have had good success at finding and vetting climbing partners amid the Camp IV scene which is the climber's campground. Entry to Camp IV is currently $6.00 per night. Before the internet, you would recruit a partner from hand written notes posted on a physical bulletin board hung on the back side of the Rangers's Kiosk. There are apps now for that, but I still resort to the hand-written method. I'm not sure how I met Vicky that trip, but she was on a cross-country climbing odyssey by herself. Her boyfriend had begun the trip with her, but he somehow couldn't stay the course and he had left for home awhile back. So she was happy to partner up and we were climbing compatible which helps a lot, as it covers a broad range of criteria.

One day after climbing, we were in her Volkswagen Westphalia bus when she called out in her French Canadian patois that a baby bear was just off in the woods to my side. Oh, shoot, I had just taken out my contact lenses to clean off the dust of the day and I couldn't see a thing. We rolled on by and I missed yet another one.

The next day we decided we would go climbing at the base of El Capitan a 3000 foot monolith of granite that towers into the sky dominating the Yosemite Valley. We could climb just short routes at the very bottom of El Cap that would go up only a rope's length and then we could come down and do another short venture on a different line. It had rained just a bit that morning, so we had hiked up and were settling in at the base of El Cap to let the stone dry out before we started the first climb. The base or bottom of the cliff is littered with a jumble of rock debris and talus that has sloughed off the huge soaring cliff above. The long term bombardment of these rocks over the years creates an open gap of rocks very close to the cliff where the trees don't generally grow. It is a median of open talus and rock debris that stretches back from the cliff a ways until the tree line begins to take hold just outside the bombardment zone away from the cliff. As it happened I was in this open talus zone facing the cliff with my back to the woods only a few yards behind me. I was up on a pedestal of rock looking up at the cliff when I had the urge to turn around. As I did so I was looking straight at a bear just a few feet below me who had designs on my pack where my sandwich lay tucked away for later. With a wave of my hands and a shout I leaned forward and the bear scrambled off back into the woods. This was the teen age bear and he was run off pretty easily. Not to be denied documentary evidence I had Vicky give me her camera as the bear moved around and started to head up the open talus slope at the base of the cliff to our left. Common sense should have prevented me from this endeavor, but when I have I ever been accused of having that? As he moved along tight in with the cliff at his right shoulder, I stalked a ways behind on his left at the inside edge of the tree line. The open space of the talus slope spread out for about 40 yards between us. I'm sure he knew I was there but suddenly the trees I had for cover were gone and there was nothing between me and the bear but open talus. I guess he didn't like having his back up against the wall because he launched into a full on charge straight at me. He was covering ground effortlessly and immediately I knew there was no sense in running because he would be on me before I could take three strides. All I had was the camera that Vicky had given me and I watched him barrel towards me at full speed. I stood there facing him yet somehow didn't register any deep fear of the charging bear. Maybe I didn't have time, too. I somehow knew he was bluffing. He ran up to within 8 yards of me and screeched to a halt stamping both feet down at once chuffing a great "harumph! noise as if to say, "and let that be a lesson to you !" At that moment I snapped the picture on the camera and that was his cue to turn around and amble away.

In case you didn't know, I've never seen a mountain lion, and I hope I never do...

Seeya,

Brian

.

chipperdarl

climber

Mar 15, 2017 - 12:08pm PT

i adore the dull-end of culturally prescribed ambition.

thus i find meself authoring new me's at nearly every boot-pivot.

though i look around and see compatriots
that vehemently pursue success and end up dumb and fat
and lazy though still yearning for acclaim like our
very own "pud"

hooblie

climber

from out where the anecdotes roam

Oct 20, 2018 - 02:22am PT

bump ... i don't know man, i guess that's all i got

mouse from merced

Trad climber

The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.

Oct 20, 2018 - 05:18am PT

^^^ Que? The anecdotes musto all been skeered off...good bump, tho!

Don's story about Roper & the coffee shop...we used to have a sayin' after a climb, like, "5.9. Let's go to the coffee shop."

We never really knew wtf that meant, but it started with the Bircheffs, most likely.

We'd use the phrase whether we sent or not.

Check with the Rev Mathis if you don't wanna believe just my word. Or Phil.

Aeriq

Social climber

Location: It's a MisterE

Oct 20, 2018 - 06:39am PT

The Tri-Camandments

1. Regarding Active Placements:
Thou shalt revere the solidity of the Tri Cam Placement (heretofore called “The Sacred Placement”), and hold superior the performance of said Holy Piece to the wobbly, walking lobed alternative. Thy faith may be tested in Devilish places Like Indian Creek and most basalt – the spew of the underworld.

2. Regarding Passive Placements:
Thou shalt hold in awe the aluminum substantiality of The Sacred Placement and its original, more biting and receptive allowance over lesser wired alternatives; in addition, thou shalt meditate and come to trust the Sacred Design of the Holy Trinity of The Father and The Son on one side and the Holy Ghost biting into the opposing rock to save thy mortal ass.

3. Thou shalt find joy and peace in the fiddling-in and setting of The Sacred Placement, for it hearkens back to simpler times, and therein lies comfort of time-tested trust and belief.

4. Thou may or may not have The Sacred Placement returned to one after a leader fall – this largely depends on if thou hast an angel following.

5. Thou shalt place The Sacred Placement not deeply, for it angers the spirits when thou cannot trust in the seemingly less secure/shallower places that are, in actuality, perfect.

6. Thou shalt be precise, amazing and creative in thy setting of The Sacred Placement – keep in mind thou art a conduit to larger understanding.

7. Thou may under-take a vision-quest with The Sacred Placement wherein thou climbeth something near thy traditional climbing limit using only The Sacred Placement.

8. Thou shalt be ridiculed by the non-believers – those who have grown complacent in a technological world ruled by gadgets. Thy faith can be severely tested here, as well – but remember: the most important lessons in life are never easy. Hold the shining innocence of The White Virgin .025 10 feet below thou solidly in thy mind, and remember: that is The Holy Spirit rushing through thy veins above The Sacred Placement.

9. Thou shalt revere the cloth of the The Sacred Placement: for it is strong yet yielding, soft yet secure.

10. Thou shalt, for all of the ways thou hast strived to show the world the True Path, be revered as “Old School”: the climber equivalent to saint-hood.

Recently, after meditating at The Shrine of The Holy Placement, I got up and promptly whacked my head on Big Yellow, aka "Krull".
I was rewarded with a divine vision of a series of clues on the Tri-Cams themselves.
When the stars and birds cleared, I discovered these clues on the printed cloth flaps of the Sacred Pieces that lead me to The Church of Tri-Cam.

Lowe and behold, therein I found an ancient sacred text that told of a rift between the factions of The Church.
Similar to the Sunni-Shia schism, this divide split the True Believers into two camps.

It started, as is often the case, with religious philosophers with way too much time on their hands and no lead head.
If they had just shut up and gotten on the sharp end with a bunch of Sacred Placements, the importance of the division would have fallen away.

But no, it was not meant to be.

The schism between the Passivists and the Activists occurred after the High Priest (Trius II) took a #9 in the head during the traditional cam-swinging ceremony.

The two priests that were the best choices to replace Trius II were bitter rivals.
They had argued for years as to whether the Sacred Pieces were active or passive placements, without resolution and with increasing venom.

The Sacred Text tells of bloody rumbles and blood-soaked Tri-cams.
After many battles, the Activists were driven from the church, and thus the schism was solidified.

Of course, the True Believers now are above this kind of divided thinking, as evidenced in the plaque above the entry of the church:

IT'S ALL GOOD

Fritz

Social climber

Choss Creek, ID

Oct 20, 2018 - 09:04am PT

Tarbuster

climber

right here, right now

Topic Author's Reply - Oct 20, 2018 - 11:37am PT

Good Gawd, Fritz!
That's what I'm talking about.

Rack 'em, stack 'em, and read 'em up!
We could be like ... well, are ... like nerdly archive pals, up to our ear lobes in shop talk, reminiscence, and coffee klatch coolness.

Delhi Dog

climber

Good Question...

May 16, 2019 - 06:01am PT

Bump for the bunch

Messages 121 - 133 of total 133 in this topic

<< First | < Previous | Show All | Next > | Last >>

Return to Forum List

Our Guidebooks

Check 'em out!
SuperTopo Guidebooks

Try a free sample topo!

SuperTopo on the Web

Recent Trip Report and Articles

The Kohala Ditch Trail: 36ish hrs on foot... to and from the headwaters. [5 of 5]
May 31, 2019; 11:57pm
A Winter Traverse of the California section of the PCT Part 8
May 31, 2019; 10:05pm
Supertopo,A trip report for posterity
May 18, 2019; 7:33am
Balch Fest 2013. Two Days in and Around and On The Flake. The Official Trip Report
Nov 18, 2013; 8:22pm
TR: My visit to the Canoe
Aug 14, 2006; 12:29am
View more trip reports >

Recent Route Beta

El Capitan, West Face
Yosemite Valley, California USA, Apr 30, 2019
Half Dome, Regular Northwest Face
Yosemite Valley, California USA, Apr 18, 2019
El Capitan, West Face
Yosemite Valley, California USA, Apr 17, 2019
El Capitan, Pacific Ocean Wall Base
Yosemite Valley, California USA, Mar 31, 2019
Mescalito South, Cat in the Hat
Red Rocks, Nevada USA, Mar 16, 2019
View more route beta >