Supertopo: photos only

Nov 21, 2014 - 04:22pm PT
That is how I last saw it, Dingus. Raining. RR and I spent a day or so there, camping too. It was back in 1970. When I was his climbing partner/employee at 22 yo. Neither of us had seen the dome; it was still semi-secret. I had the flu, RR was furious about something really private in his life and skirted the issue the entire time. And we were being chased by storms the whole time, even down in JT when it snowed in the night on us. Tahquitz had a foot of snow on the hike up.

We were on a long road trip that included JT, Tahquitz and the desert out near Kelso and Amboy, west of Needles, CA and The Needles by Lake Isabella. Plus Calaveras Dome.

By the time we arrived at Calaveras Dome we were both so off the mark that we only climbed for a couple of hours. What we did was aid up a tight, maybe bottoming dirt filled crack on I guess the NE face for a partial pitch. Apparently a new route, wow. We did not realize the possibilities in front of us here. Same thing already had happened in The Needles (Isabella). Almost no one knew about the Needles and almost no routes were up yet. We were also really still Valley-fixated. RR would soon attempt the FA of Tangerine Trip and find that he just didn't give a crap anymore and did a giant rap off something like 6-7 pitches up. Vandiver and I went up to help him with his gear. Still troubled, he rudely handed the ropes to me and said, "Here, all yours!!" as if I was lurking around to outdo him as soon as possible. Thank god he found kayaking.