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scaredycat
Trad climber
Berkeley,CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jan 23, 2015 - 07:47pm PT
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Would someone please remind me of where the late 60's early '70s write up of an ascent of Doug Robinson and Carl Driesback's Starlight Peak's Piper at the Gates of Dawn appeared. I could have sworn it was Ascent, but I can't find it in any of mine. AAJ?
Walking up from the Meadows? ....
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
extraordinaire
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Jan 23, 2015 - 08:48pm PT
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Shut up, troll.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jan 23, 2015 - 10:50pm PT
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It's written up on page 45 of the 1969 Ascent, so your memory was correct.
John
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 24, 2015 - 01:44am PT
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Ha ha ha belly rolling laugh!!
if this is a troll she has a real com hither look.
To this man and his family. that sounds like a good long day out!
if the post above missed it the OP was time traveling and has highlighted
a lot f good climbing , taking some of us with him trailing behind in the Sparks of the comets tail.
thanx for the memories !
!! tarbuster for the win!, THNX I will show my ten year oops eleven year old, he and his sister will dream tonight!! As well as I did some unrecorded climbs on Elephant Perch!!
to tell the bedtime stories about!,
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Jan 24, 2015 - 07:51am PT
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Gapers on the Pipe at Dawn.
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Darwin
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 24, 2015 - 02:03pm PT
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Wasn't there a subsequent writeup that was a reflective essay about some (subsequent?) ascent in a "creative writing" style? Lots of: sound of water flowing and sun glinting. I remember liking it. Maybe it was by DR and about the FA.
Thanks John and Tarbuster.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 24, 2015 - 03:20pm PT
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I'll ping Robinson.
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scaredycat
Trad climber
Berkeley,CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 25, 2015 - 09:22am PT
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^^^ Daipers at the Dates (of) Gone
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 25, 2015 - 10:17am PT
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Lookout! We may have a ...
Sniper at the Gates of Pawn
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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Jan 25, 2015 - 11:11am PT
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Great old Pink Floyd album as well...Nice seeing you posting Roy! :)
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jan 25, 2015 - 09:05pm PT
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To a couple of 23-year-oldd Valley Boys transplanting to the Eastside, that slab seemed irresistible. Flat, smooth, rearing up off the Palisade Glacier, pointedly aiming toward Starlight, itself an elegant spire hovering off the noble bulk of North Pal. We named it the Flatiron before we even got close.
I wanted to amplify this story in my huge Palisades article last fall in Alpinist. I got as close as calling out the Starlight Buttress, just left of the Flatiron, as a viable alternative to the melting out U-Notch, now that the gravel and boulders in its bed are raking randomly down its skirts. But, oddly, there wasn't room.
We weren't so into ice at that point (and the U-Notch was, mostly, just a snow climb, filling its gully like -- who could know? -- it never quite would again). So the immediate problem was how to come up off the glacier onto the Flatiron. Steep along its lower margin. We mounted our primitively forged-in-the-Alps hinged crampons and scratched up steepening terrain along its right margin. Eventually found a short, vertical, cracked section we could climb by dismounting those crampons and kicking the snow off our mountain boots to gain purchase and pull up onto the slab itself. Right where the crack meandered left, breaking the smooth surface.
We followed, delighted, and the hand crack doglegged upward,across the heart of the slab. For a couple of pitches, maybe more. Pulling two prominent but manageable roofs.
You know how one moment of a climb ends up signifying the ascent for you? Well, those pitches jamming up the Flatiron, feeling reminiscent of the Harry Daley route on Monday Morning Slab in the Valley, still form that image for me.
Above, things devolved to third, fourth, and low-5th class, stretching up the middle third of the climb. But above there the wall reared up again into gaping chimneys heading straight to the summit. Wet and wide, dark, with huge foreboding chockstones. Fifteen-tonners, and no telling what was holding them up, overhead.
So we went around left, up sunnier and more broken, blocky terrain, which felt kinda classic alpine and led us to the summit ridge, right next to the Milk-Bottle summit block.
I don't know of a finer summit monolith anywhere. Sure, Thunderbolt's is harder at 5.8, but somehow feels messier than this spiry elegance standing into the sky above us. Monolithic -- forget pro. You just sack up like Clyde would do all alone up there, put the jagged landing into talus blocks out of your mind, and start finessing liebacky friction moves. By the time we got there it already sported a bolt twenty feet above on its airy summit. We didn't think too much about those old guys, past masters and our invisible mentors, downclimbing without its reassurance. Yet even with it to clip to, we didn't dream of both standing on that sketcy rounded top the way Jules Eichorn and Glen Dawson did in tennis shoes when they were nineteen, the year the rope arrived in California.
As we slogged back across the glacier to High Camp, Carl and I were pretty thrilled with our new route, named with romantic memories of a boyhood favorite chapter in The Wind in the Willows.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 25, 2015 - 09:19pm PT
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"You know how one moment of a climb ends up signifying the ascent for you?"
Yes we do!
Thanks for stoppin' by the pop stand for a little yack, rack 'n roll Doug!
(nice little hand-tooled response you laid on us)
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 26, 2015 - 03:57pm PT
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"As we slogged back across the glacier to High Camp, Carl and I were pretty thrilled with our new route, named with romantic memories of a boyhood favorite chapter in The Wind in the Willows."
So it ain't the Pink Floyd album after all ...
And how about that piper?
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Jan 26, 2015 - 10:32pm PT
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So cool, Roy!
I had never seen any of the illustrations you posted.
My edition of the book was...different. I'll have to see if my brother still has it.
Thanks! these bring the image to mind in whole different ways.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 27, 2015 - 02:54am PT
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Speechless very nice, bump . . .
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| Messages 1 - 16 of total 16 in this topic |
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