Your 1st, first ascent

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Texplorer

Trad climber
Sacramento
Dec 16, 2013 - 02:44pm PT
Great thread.

Had an interesting first FA experience. We went to do the standard NE Butt of Slesse up in BC. Heavy low lying clouds/fog blocked everything over a few hundred feet. We were good enough climbers to get pretty high up before we realized how screwed we where when the sky cleared. Luckily we were able to push through to the summit.

Later FA was hilariously ridiculed in the Beckey guidebook.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5S0EVRXtK6YC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=slesse+karsten&source=bl&ots=RQb2mCBWKa&sig=RhxsW3Lg35iGkb8-s0E3WbLtGnA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VEmvUqb5DNTyyAGm1IDgBA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 16, 2013 - 02:58pm PT
It might have been an aid route on Mt Erie, Washington.
Hey, you didn't say it had to be worthy, did you?
Vitaliy M.

Mountain climber
San Francisco
Sep 18, 2015 - 09:40am PT
No posts since 2013 BUMP!

eagle creek canyon,1999.

Norweeeeeeg! When I first started to top rope ice and stuff, we went to Eagle Creek canyon several times. I always thought that peak looked really cool in winter. Like a little version of Everest's N face or something. After one of those sessions we hiked to the top using the ridge on the left skyline. Views from the top are wayyyyy cool!



My FIRST First Ascent was an experience....

Daniel (LimpingCrab) invited me to climb a formation we later dubbed The Fortress back in the end of . Was first time we climbed together, and his first backcountry FA too as I remember. 1000 ft unclimbed spire was a tough task with a bitch of an approach. We went with a stronger climber named Tom who brought along his dog which made the things seem a bit less serious.
On the way in I had the pleasure of diving in a yellow jackets nest. Counted over 10 bites after a 200 ft downhill sprint. The next day we climbed the spire taking a cool route up a crack system that splits the face. It was intimidating climbing into the unknown but I loved the experience. Especially after we topped out on a summit that had no sign of previous ascents and chased a bear away from our food after descending.

Daniel's write up....even with all the yellow jackets stinging me, bushwhacking and lichen, a priceless experience.
http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Adventure-on-an-unclimbed-Sierra-tower/t11647n.html



Still climb with Daniel, when he spares a minute for me! :)




MisterE

Gym climber
Being In Sierra Happy Of Place
Sep 18, 2015 - 10:12am PT
Ego, like "style" is a slippery word - its definition runs from self esteem to conceit.

Gaining self esteem from significant climbing accomplishments is hard to criticize. Boosted self esteem feels good and it's a healthy part of human nature to seek it out. Sharing information about first ascents is a timeless tradition of travelers in the mountains, I reckon, even before climbing history began being recorded in writing. You can bet the Anasazi talked about their routes around the campfire, and likely there was some competition and pride involved which edged into the negative connotations of the word ego.

Great comment, KW - and nice bump, V!
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Sep 18, 2015 - 10:27am PT
DMT - There is a third part you are missing to a good FA, and that is the legacy. Looking back and realizing you made a contribution to the community that will be there long after you are gone.

Gotta admit I couldn't care less if anyone else ever repeats any of my FAs or even knows that they've ever been climbed. I've never climbed for the 'community' and can't even really quite fathom the concept - the 'community' can go find their own damn climbs and if they stumble onto one of mine then good for them.
Vitaliy M.

Mountain climber
San Francisco
Sep 18, 2015 - 11:03am PT
Gotta admit I couldn't care less if anyone else ever repeats any of my FAs or even knows that they've ever been climbed. I've never climbed for the 'community' and can't even really quite fathom the concept - the 'community' can go find their own damn climbs and if they stumble onto one of mine then good for them.

I feel the same way most of the time, but when I do something REALLLLY cool that I think others would enjoy A LOT, I do my best to encourage people to climb it. It is great when others go, do the climb that takes them to a cool place, challenges them and has good quality. It is like contributing a great experience to their life, which makes me feel better than giving someone a gift card or something materialistic. My primary motivation for becoming a nurse was to help people. So adding a (hopefully) positive experience for other climbers is as nice as comforting elders when they are down. Different but similar...don't know. Just get on Lower Tokopah Dome - Tokopah Reality, Bubbs Creek Wall - The Emperor, Hamilton Dome - Subliminal Verses, both routes on Charubim Dome, Krymptonite on Panther Peak, East Face of Castle Rock Spire, SE Arete of Castle Dome, Monkey in the Clouds on the Prism and the Wild West Crack on Serpent's Tooth!!! SICK ROUTES! Brutus of Wyde Memorial route on Flatiron, Turn Down For What Arete on Erickson Crag #3, Usually Its Sunny on Santa Cruz Dome and Mango Lassi Lulz Machine on Lower Tokopah are good too!
I have to add a lot of these to MP.
All of the above are in season now too....
hooblie

climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
Sep 18, 2015 - 11:50am PT
as an inveterate cross-poster, i'm hoping to dredge up a qualifying memory by the time
someone starts a thread with the title of "Off Route, Start to Finish: your Personal Best"
Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Sep 18, 2015 - 11:56am PT
My first ?.

My best worth repeat?

My best now someone else's masterpiece?

Not mine
Hooblie,
Kevin Biens,
DonC

climber
CA
Sep 18, 2015 - 01:02pm PT
a little thing at Big Rock called Let it Bleed
JEleazarian

Trad climber
Fresno CA
Sep 18, 2015 - 01:14pm PT
When this thread first came up, I went looking for my climbing notes. When I found them, I forgot why I wanted them, so I'm glad someone bumped this thread from its slumber.

My first FA was up a snow couloir and a Class-4 rock buttress near Annie's Spire in the Ritter Range in July of 1968. We ended up marching over to Mt. Davis and claiming the FA in the summit register. Probably not worth a repeat, particularly now. 1968 was a low snow year, and we had our share of rockfall, so I can only imagine what it would be like now, but it was a real mountaineering adventure.

My first all-rock FA was a buttress on a practice rock near Shaver Lake in June of 1970. I'd attempted it the year before and bailed only fifteen feet up, so I had that failure marinating in my mind for a year.

The route was mixed free and aid, including a tied-off knifeblade as the first placement (at said 15 foot mark), free climbing out of a RURP aid placement, and a very awkward mantle from a body-weight placement with a horrendous fall potential. Best of all, my climbing partner, Tim Schiller - with whom I was particularly competitive - couldn't follow it, and the pin below the mantle pulled while he was struggling with the move. I had bragging rights for over a year.

I would not care to repeat that lead, but a couple of months later Tim and I made what is possibly the first technical climb on the Fresno Dome escarpment.

John
Cragar

climber
MSLA - MT
Sep 18, 2015 - 01:23pm PT
1993 or 94 - Burst Rock

One day at the Columbia library I run into Grant and we get to talking about local cool zones. He told me to go check this cool granitic zone up high in Emigrant wldns that has a short approach and good bouldering along the top with a couple cool faces. I figure that be a good place to explore with my buddy Rob; we had a luigi roll, a stick of salami and a 6'r of Pale to accompany us on our stroll.
DDDaaaaaayyymm were we stoked, bitchin faces on the N. and S. sides of Burst! WE found the routes he mentioned he did awhile back and saw many more 'unclimbed' zones. We took some pics, made some notes and bouldered our way back along the ridge then strolled back to the car.

A week or two later I am hanging with the pb and we were both going through some tough times and needed a break from the lower Tuolumne environs....So, I tell Phil about this zone that Grant told me to check out and I think he already knew about it but maybe not the specifics. We grabbed his Bosch and went for a atroll to a little dihedral, short face up to and over a micro roof. We did a little TRing and figured out where to put the 3 or 4 bolts and anchors. We got the bolts in and I red-pointed first go(of course it was after a little TR-ing) and it was hella fun and I was happy as a clam. The name we came up with that day is not what they called it in the guide book(by the time it came out I was long gone and maybe Phil didn't remember it or??) and I can understand why they didn't know it. Anyway, we called it 'Baby Steps'. For someone shorter than Phil you had to baby step your feet up high to reach over the roof and we both knew that to get through the stuff we was dealing with would take baby steps... I don't have a pic
looking sketchy there...

Social climber
Lassitude 33
Sep 18, 2015 - 01:30pm PT

Dave and I were talking about this route last night... my first FA and 40 years ago! Eek.

We have to repeat it this year.

http://www.mountainproject.com/v/full-frontal-nudity/105721993
BillO

Trad climber
Yachats, OR
Sep 18, 2015 - 02:17pm PT
First accent with Rob Mulligan on Psoriasis on Escape Rock Joshua Tree 1985.
First bolt I ever hand drilled is about ten feet below Rob in this photo, runout about twenty feet from the first bolt with a potential grounder fall.
Went back about twenty years later and re-climbed with some other partners and realized the crux is actually the last move to get to the clip of the bolt I drilled.
Fun stuff!
rick sumner

Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
Sep 18, 2015 - 03:02pm PT
At 15 and 16 years of age, unaware of the sparse climbing community in the Tahoe area, and totally ignorant; all of the routes Bill Todd and I did for the first six months or so were FA's to us. It wasn't till I got a loose leaf guide from Gene Drake that we could figure out what we had done. What was the real first? Hell,my memories of climbs 45 years ago are dull, but I hope to do another with Bob Pinckney next week.
guyman

Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
Sep 18, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
The Story of Energy Crisis. If you can recall a odd-even ration plan was devised. So my plan was this: I took Moms car on Wednesday, a 69 Chrysler Imperial, and filled it up. I took my AMC Javelin ( highly- modified, headers, holly, intake manifold…it was built. It was a 13 second car and got about 11 MPG on the open road. ) on Thursday I waited in line and filled it to the brim. So now I had two tanks full of gas. I needed 10 extra gallons to make it round trip, so with two 5 gallon gas cans in the back of the Javelin Mike Pope, Dean Fedelman and myself took off for Josh.

The freeways were deserted, but I was able to keep the speed down … to get the best MPG… by using discipline. When we arrived in Josh the whole place was deserted, more so then usual.

Saturday morning I convinced the boys to go out to a good looking crack I had found while wandering around a few weeks earlier. The base of the crack was protected by thick brush, so we crawled in on hands and knees. Pope took the first try, he cranked the boulder problem mantle, got hold of the bottom of the crack and took off on a powerful layback. When he reached a handy ledge he belayed and Dean and I quickly joined him. The next pitch was thin hands, Dean had a go and after about 35 feet he reached another ledge and belayed us both up. The last pitch was mine, nice hands to the top where I sunk in a ¾ baby angle in such a way that it could not be cleaned. When we were all at the top we had to do something we had never done before, think of a name and a grade.

The Name: Energy Crisis to freeze the moment in history.
The Grade: We all said 5.8

The climb is now sporting a “this climb closed to climbing” …. Years later some ass holes chopped down a tree so they could get on a line about 20 feet to the right of EC. This revealed some very faded petroglyphs and the Park Service shut it down.

I still go and do this climb every few years just to gauge myself, I can’t believe we called it 5.8… we were young and dumb and full of it.

Oh yea, we made it back to Woodland Hills with about 2 gallons to spare.




Sorry no photo of Mike Pope....

EDIT... this is not on MP cause its a closed climb. Its a bit to the right of ZZZZZZZZZZZZ The NPS put up a closed sign at the base.


Spider Savage

Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
Sep 18, 2015 - 04:10pm PT
Climbing choss piles near Moscow, Idaho as youth was nothing but first ascents.

I was fortunate enough to be out at Stoney Point right after the Northridge quake and plucked a TR FA away from some Redondo Beach guys who couldn't pull the crux move on a boulder that split in half.

Crafting moderately spicy moderate sport routes at Texas Canyon in the 1990's was my best and real FA work.
MisterE

Gym climber
Being In Sierra Happy Of Place
Sep 18, 2015 - 05:13pm PT
Great posts from some real Old School FA'ers - thanks!

I can tell you from first-hand experience one thing about ego and first ascents:

Your closeness is truly tested when someone chops one of your routes.

For me? Hardly Visible and I are friends because he chopped my route and I realized he did the right thing.
We got together and talked about it...

You know, like before the internet?

Edit: oh, and JHealy: your post reminds me of the CC.com days - where's Pope and Dwayner? LOL!

Sierra Ledge Rat

Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
Sep 18, 2015 - 06:22pm PT
Here is what a guide service says about my first FA route:

This great climb is about 13 pitches long. It has a lot of quick and easy climbing but is not for the "faint of heart". It contains areas of stacked loose rock but it is easily managed by a competent climber. The sections of polished, metamorphic rock provides interesting headwalls and corners that prove great climbing to a high summit.
JEleazarian

Trad climber
Fresno CA
Sep 30, 2015 - 11:48am PT
a little thing at Big Rock called Let it Bleed

I led that climb in 1974, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for your efforts.

John
rmuir

Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
Sep 30, 2015 - 12:32pm PT
from a Stonemaster thread: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2294321&tn=80

Jun 23, 2006 - 08:36pm PT
So while we're "slandering" Mr. Clevenger, let me recount one of the very first times I ever placed a bolt. Vern, too, I'll bet...

Summer of 1971, we were both so green behind the ears, you coulda harvested the algae for protein. I was barely 19, and Vern was a bubbly teeny-bopper himself. First Summer in Tuolumne, back in the day when you could actually pitch a tent and camp at Soda Springs, right below the Sierra Club lodge (which back then was also a lending library.) There were full-on camp tables and fire rings then, and it was a free campground--mostly filled with climbers. Hell, you could park your car there, too. (See, LEB... That was part of what enabled the Stonemaster lifestyle. ...cheap lodging!) I spent three or four weeks there that Summer.

Vern and I had scoped-out a possible first ascent line! Hot damn! Probably our first foray into the unknown; possibly our first entry in the guidebooks! A place in history! To the right of the main face of Meddlicott, was this slabby little hunk that had a dike running vertically up a two-hundred foot sloped wall. Modest, but unclimbed!

Somehow, between the two of us, we had a drill, a hammer and a couple of 1/4" rawls and some hangers. We were all set!

"Baggage" would be ours. We hammered-in a bolt (or two), ran it out, and returned to write it up in the Meadows' notebook. As Tarbuster would say, "we were swole!" Our first FA!

"Ruby the Dyke." (Spot that reference, old timers.) ...couldn't have been more that 5.7 at the outside.
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