Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 25, 2012 - 10:47am PT
Merry Christmas!
My favorite soloing shots are ones that really capture the experience, and sometimes that is in the form of a climbing partner dashing to a pack to grab a camera or a loving wife enjoying an afternoon hike with her husband.
This is the picture from the thread that inspired me to really explore mount Woodson. This problem seemed so impossible to me and the idea of a guy out for an afternoon romp on pleasant classics would be soloing this, YIKES! Of course, I know now more about who Greg is, and even though this would not be a giant peak in his mountain range of bold wide cracks I thought it was outta this world.
We've all heard this one but in the spirit of the JT reunion I'll recount it again....
One day after an early morning bouldering session, me and Yabo were beat. We decided to call it quits and take a rest day. We sparked a doobious cigarette and started yapping. Yabo told me he wanted to solo Spiderline (which at the time had only been top roped, never lead).
I told him he should wait until he got it "really wired". Then he told me he was meditating on the ledge below Spiderline the night before and all of a sudden there was a spider dangling in front of him. It had lowered from the crack above. He then said it was an omen letting him know he could solo Spiderline.
I tried to keep a poker face. I really thought he was getting too lost in this "omen" stuff but I couldn't tell him. I tried talking him into waiting again and he seemed OK with that. I split for camp and told my friend Buck Norden (sp?) about what just happened. He thought Yabo was losing it too.
Our conversation was interrupted by a whooping high pitched, "yay yay yay yay".
What the fuk was that? We looked up and there he was, a third the way up Spiderline.
I grabbed my camera and we ran up to the base to take a picture. Before we got going, Yabo's feet popped out of the crack and his body took a wicked swing outwards. Amazingly enough, he hung on!
I thought, "Cool, he can still downclimb from there". That's not what happened - he kept going.
John Yablonski on the first free solo (and lead) of Spiderline, 11c/d.
The he got near the last move - a funky roll over onto a dicey slab move. It was hot out and Yabo was sweating and shaking fiercely. So he takes his shirt off for the last move!
He was shaking like a leaf in a hundred mile per hour wind and he rolled into the slab move and climbed away. Norden was facing in the other direction - he couldn't watch.
Me and Norden went over to the Scatterbrain boulder and were talking about what we just saw. We both thought we should tell Yabo to cool it or he was going to get killed. Just then Yabo popped up on a boulder above us and said,"Who are you guys to tell me anything. I just soloed Spiderline!". Then he spirited away. He obviously overheard our conversation
When I ran into him later he had cooled off a bit. I did notice the largest hand jam gobie I have ever seen - on the back of Yabo's right hand. It was as round and almost as thick as a half dollar...the dude hung on hard.
-John Bachar
This next one isn't really a photo per say, and it definitely isn't amateur, but a moment caught on film all the same. Its from the bad ass flick Masters of Stone VI (available from http://mastersofstone.com/) and is on the video below:
There is a moment as dean cuts his feet to turn the lip move... almost anyone I know in that situation would be thinking PRECISION! CONTROL! MOVE PERFECTLY AND EXACTLY TO THE LIP AND EXECUTE THE MANTLE! But not Dean... he makes eye contact with you like a lion on top of its fresh kill, and stays there. You realize that Dean wants to be there, that he is thriving. He is in the moment, not 'doing a climb' but having an experience.
I'm not an adrenaline junkie, I can't mountain bike very well or snowboard or ski, even skateboarding scares me. The few dinky solo(ish) things I've done were never about that, and I look for that in inspiration, where I know that the climber is a samurai hopping among boulders in a roaring stream, not a gladiator in an arena.
a side note.... before biotch re-sized the Nat.Geo pic , I noticed a
rope piled on the ledge below thank god ledge...? wonder what the story
is on that?
a side note.... before biotch re-sized the Nat.Geo pic , I noticed a
rope piled on the ledge below thank god ledge...? wonder what the story
is on that?
Cool photos, the Bachar photo of Croft on the Rostrum, Bachar on OZ & the one Ron posted above are my 3 favorites & they all blow my mind as much now as they did when I first saw them.
ec
Let us know!