Discussion Topic |
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 13, 2015 - 02:12pm PT
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We've all been there.
"DUUUUDE!!!" You yell from your precarious belay stance, your silhouette bends to the east in long shadow.
"Climb faster! That sun's goin DOOOOOWN!"
You watch the sun dip below the horizon that seems to bend downward in a condescending frown, not proud of how you squandered the gift of daylight. You will be rapping in the dark. Or huddled in a nook trying to hide from the wind. Your mouth is dry. Your stoke gone. Your feet and hips raw. Wandering and fear and uncertainty lie ahead for sure. "Why do we do this to ourselves?" you ask yourself. Over and over. The beauty of the sunset is lost on you cause you know its gonna be a long night.
The Alpine Finish. The wicked stepsister of the Alpine Start.
This post inspired by Grippa's Alpine Start thread
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Aug 13, 2015 - 02:14pm PT
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The Alpine Finish....if you're still alive chalk up a win.
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looks easy from here
climber
Ben Lomond, CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 02:16pm PT
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Nice bookend, micronut. I don't have any pics from my only brush with an epic; too busy trying to not get crushed in a landslide.
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norm larson
climber
wilson, wyoming
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:18pm PT
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That moment when you finally admit to yourself you ARE going to bivy.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:23pm PT
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Nice.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:26pm PT
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That last 100 feet as you stagger to the car, the bastion of stashed goodies and hot drinks or cold beer.. dirty, frozen, worn out, sore and happy...
Never did the unplanned bivy thing.. sorry. Where I came from they were not much of an option so I never got in the habit.
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mike m
Trad climber
black hills
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:29pm PT
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Some pictures from Jack and my last trip up DT. Didn't start til 5 so I am not sure Alpine is the right word.
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splitclimber
climber
Sonoma County
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Aug 13, 2015 - 03:49pm PT
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not many experiences, but the best was my wife and I all alone on the top of solar slab in Red Rocks. It got dark right when we found the rap station down into that awesome bowl. A looong tiring hike out. Cairns saved the day and an unplanned bivy.
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adrian korosec
climber
Tucson
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Aug 13, 2015 - 05:45pm PT
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Topping out on the King Fisher Tower and looking at your partner noticing how the bright evening alpenglow is on his face.
Did you bring YOUR headlamp?
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steve s
Trad climber
eldo
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Aug 13, 2015 - 05:52pm PT
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I like the alpine finish better than the alpine start ! Hopefully ya got "somewhere".
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cat t.
Sport climber
CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 05:55pm PT
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Pretty? You think this is pretty? Well you should not be on the summit right now. Things are about to get real.
Hahaha this is great
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland, CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 06:22pm PT
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Yeah baby, Micro and Grippa getting me through an extended work day. Love you guys!
Wandering and fear and uncertainty lie ahead for sure.
Something I vocalize each morning while looking into the mirror.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Aug 13, 2015 - 08:30pm PT
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The best alpine finish of all is the summit bivi.
That's when this...
Leads to this...
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cleo
Social climber
wherever you go, there you are
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Aug 13, 2015 - 08:39pm PT
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland, CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 09:47pm PT
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Never lose the stoke, benighted be damned!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 09:55pm PT
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Oh, here's to the everlasting romanticism of settling in to a nice long night of not knowing
if you'll still have functioning toes in the morning!
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Aug 13, 2015 - 09:58pm PT
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Yeah..but you gotta remember these are summer sierra climbers..developing bad habits.
Kinda like getting benighted in Kauai
Now that I think of it I did get benighted once in Alaska.. but it involved tequila and my front lawn.
I coulda died.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 13, 2015 - 10:24pm PT
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HaHa, climbski, sadly that happens a lot up there on the mean streets of
Bethel and Anchortown, doesn't it?
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 13, 2015 - 11:08pm PT
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Climbski2,
I don't think I like your condescending tone about us "SummerSierra Climbers." You make it sound like we never suffer down here. Four weeks ago night fell on us down near the Needles. It got real sketchy real quick. We only had one bottle of scotch after my buddy broke the other one when it fell off the tailgate of my truck. We almost sent out a SPOT for a rescue.
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 13, 2015 - 11:09pm PT
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Aug 13, 2015 - 11:34pm PT
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Condescend? Oh..I haven't even begun to condescend.
Lets see here...the pathetic excuse for so called alpinism in the sierra..No bushwacking..no rivers..no mosquitoes..no cold..no ice , no crevasses, no altitude, no choss, no snowpack instability... ok none is perhaps not quite accurate but you gotta look hard for those things and then once found it's just a mere shadow of the real thing.
The Sierra..Yeah it's rough..
No wonder I moved here. God I love this place!
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 13, 2015 - 11:54pm PT
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Ha!
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ECF
Big Wall climber
Colona, CO
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Aug 14, 2015 - 03:29am PT
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It's all about where you bivy.
I've never seen any "George Washington climbed this" signs.
Nightfall hasn't mattered since I got my first petzl headlamp 25 years ago.
It's not a bivy if you don't sleep. Stay up, drink whiskey, embellish stories...
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 14, 2015 - 08:01am PT
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Great story Dingus.
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norm larson
climber
wilson, wyoming
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Aug 14, 2015 - 09:44am PT
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Sometimes the route is just too big for a day. But you convince yourself that you'll get up and off. Then you don't. The worst is when someone else slows your party down and there is no place to pass. Sometimes it's worth the cold night just because the view is s cool and the ledge is a ledge instead of a stance. 40 years of big routes and I've only had four unplanned bivys. I remember each one well though.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
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Aug 14, 2015 - 10:17am PT
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I've spent a number of unplanned nights out.
Each one is still vivid in my memory.
Standing and stomping for a while, lying and spooning for a while, watching the slow parade of planets and stars, always cold, very cold.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 10:42am PT
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I don't have any pics from my only brush with an epic
I don't have any pics either - mainly because my epics all happened before I had a camera capable of taking pictures in the dark.
Those epics included at least one rap to a sling belay on a moonless night, but most of them came after we got onto unroped territory. Three in particular stand out. The first was in June of 1970 on the East Face of Glacier Point - a route first done in the 1930's and described by the first ascent party in part as having "well-watered rock gardens (in season)."
We definitely did it in season. There normally would have been two or three easy fifth class pitches and a similar amount of fourth class, but with the water flowing, things got a lot harder. The final pitch was a lieback of a low-angle waterfall. We got to the top and reached the Panorama trail just as it got dark. We were able to work our way to the junction of the horse trail to Happy Isles and down the switchbacks in pitch blackness, but we often had to pick up a small rock as a guide (at least I hope that's what they were. It was, after all, a horse trail, and there were other possibiilities. . .) We would give it a toss in our intended direction of travel. If it immediately hit the ground, we were OK. If it kept falling, it denoted a switchback.
The other instance happened a year later, when I was teaching a noob friend about aid climbing on Nevada Flake. Once again, I was expecting a rather casual ascent, since I'd soloed the route in about three hours a couple of months earlier. Unfortunately, it took my friend about three hours to lead half of the first pitch. We got down in the dark, managed to cross the Merced River, and knew that the trail was somewhere between where we were and Liberty Cap. We managed to make it all the way to Liberty Cap without finding the trail, and spend the rest of the night shivering. At first light, we discovered we were shivering five feet from the trail.
The most memorable Alpine finish, however, happened a couple of months before that. We had one day (from Fresno) to try to do the Salathe/Nelson route on the southwest face of Half Dome. We did it largely with nuts (first-generation Stoppers and Hexcentrics, which were brand new to climbing then), but we also enlarged about a dozen pin scars doing perhaps 150 feet of the route (and two pendulums) with aid. We got to the summit at 9:00 p.m. just as it was pitch black, and discovered a couple of dozen people sleeping on top. This gave me the chance to use a line I had thought of years before. I asked the campers where the cables were. When they pointed to the north, I told my partner "See? I told you we came up the wrong way!" We descended the cables in the dark and made it back to the Big Raisin at about 3:00 a.m.
John
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 10:52am PT
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Lessee, standing on a 6" wide ledge, trying not to lean on the two pitons
too much, for 16 hours while it snowed and sleeted. That was SWEET!
No pics though so I guess it didn't happen.
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Burnin' Oil
Trad climber
CA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 01:34pm PT
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Just a couple weeks ago I climbed Tenaya Peak with my wife and almost didn't make it back to the car before dusk. It was almost 6:30 p.m. Then, I realized I forgot the beer. The only reason I climb is to drink beer afterward so the day was a bust. Just glad to make it out alive.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Aug 14, 2015 - 01:37pm PT
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When I think of Alpine Finish, this is the picture that comes to my mind: the happiness in the moment, the triumph, and bracing for the cold and suffering to come :)
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Aug 14, 2015 - 05:02pm PT
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Alpine finish.... Dropping the partner off at Providence Hospital with some nasty frostbite after a -40 bivy one pitch from the top of the route.... Picking him up with Mooses Tooth pizza, tequila, and 30 pairs of new cotton socks. The look from his girlfriend when I dropped him off made me shiver just as much as the January AK cold.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Aug 15, 2015 - 12:04pm PT
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The REAL Alpine Finish is when you reach your bivy site at dawn, the next day!
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Aug 15, 2015 - 12:41pm PT
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First time on the route, no topo, two pitches left. The "uh-oh" feeling
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dee ee
Mountain climber
Of THIS World (Planet Earth)
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Aug 15, 2015 - 07:04pm PT
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Maybe the dumbessed (sp?) one. I top out on North Six Shooter (Lightning Bolt Cracks)at dark. Marge takes a while to clean and tops out a while later, way after dark. No headlamps. No research into the way down.
What are we gonna' do? It's pitch black, all we can do is rearrange the rocks on top into a better windbreak, for as long as we can bother to.
COLD, way frikken cold, November.
Next morning, 1.5 raps to the ground. Coulda' just hung one rope off and touched down.
Fuc.
At least Scout stayed cool at the base.
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
climber
/ ne'er–do–well
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Aug 15, 2015 - 09:36pm PT
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Aug 16, 2015 - 04:42am PT
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hey there say, micronut... thanks for the share, :)
and to all, as well... wow...
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Aug 16, 2015 - 09:50pm PT
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moonrise over the berner oberland
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Aug 16, 2015 - 10:07pm PT
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Don't think the alpine finish is complete until you are on terra firma with all difficulties behind you. Many have been finished with the "finish" in sight.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 16, 2015 - 10:13pm PT
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Tami, it could happen! Chris Bonington was beknighted, weren't 'e?
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Chris McNamara
SuperTopo staff member
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Aug 21, 2015 - 10:15am PT
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The Alpine Finish. The wicked stepsister of the Alpine Start.
Brilliant.
If you are going to spend all night hiking back to the car, bring good food.
Top of Lurking Fear.
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noriko nakagawa
Trad climber
sin city
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Aug 21, 2015 - 10:57am PT
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I'll take an alpine finish over an alpine start any day.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Aug 21, 2015 - 11:44am PT
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Sadly, I've managed to bracket a few days with both an alpine start and an alpine finish. Oh, I have excuses mind you. But still.
My last AF was in Red Rocks after getting a rappel hung. Below, the view of Vegas from lower down after finally recovering the hung rope. We were still rappelling when the shot was taken.
Once the raps are done, finding your way around in the desert by headlamp light can be tricky. Everything looks like the trail. Nothing looks like a trail.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 21, 2015 - 12:01pm PT
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My worst alpine finish was after my well-known pardner, who shall remain nameless,
dropped a large rock on my knee. Since nobody knew where we were we figured
we had to finish as a descent seemed more improbable. Well, 14 pitches
later, (oh, yes, I counted them) with a leg that was splinted (but could bear
some weight) we got to the top as the sun was setting. He headed down the
glacier on his own to get the Mounties while I settled in for a romantic
night alternately shivering and fighting off wee furry beasties who were
trying to eat the boots on my feet! Oh, yeah, and I also lay there looking
at the lights of the distant town torturing myself with thoughts of people
eating steaks in nice warm restaurants.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Aug 21, 2015 - 01:10pm PT
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torturing myself with thoughts of people
eating steaks in nice warm restaurants.
hee-hee
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Jay Wood
Trad climber
Land of God-less fools
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Aug 21, 2015 - 01:13pm PT
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A few of the usual suspects:
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Seamstress
Trad climber
Yacolt, WA
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Aug 21, 2015 - 01:16pm PT
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Alpine Start to Alpine Finish = A Fabulous day and mini-epic.
Once you accept that the dark doesn't hurt, you learn to savor the alpine finish.
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WyoRockMan
climber
South Fork of the Shoshone
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Aug 21, 2015 - 01:21pm PT
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BrassNuts
Trad climber
Save your a_s, reach for the brass...
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Aug 21, 2015 - 01:32pm PT
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Mar'
Trad climber
Fanta Se
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Aug 21, 2015 - 02:07pm PT
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haha!! what a great sentiment and lead-in to some very epic tales over dinner and drinks (later)…
Oh, just one night on Mt Mendel in October in the early 80s. I'm sso glad the air was dead-still all night!
We started at 3:30am. My partner dropped his axe at the bergschrund and had to go all the way back down to get it. I led every pitch. Ya, one look over the north side from the top at sunset and I knew I wasn't going to be doing that at that hour.
No food, no water, no bivi anything. Eventually the feet went into the Dachstein mitts and then into the little pack. Loooooong night.
At first light, we dropped down into Dusy Basin and walked ALL the way around and back up to the base of the north side and out the col.
hehe. Alpine finish~ never thought about it that way. hehe.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Aug 21, 2015 - 03:39pm PT
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Jay! That was a wonderful day! I love the mood in that amphitheater in the winter time.
And how many folks here have been on a day climb and enjoyed watching the last rays on half dome?
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melski
Trad climber
bytheriver
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hopefully this thread is endless,,Climbing in the dark is;nt much fun to me unless I;m in the sooutheern serria,,with a full moon,and a head full of wizards,[ been along time since i rock and rolled ] theres worse places to spend a loooong night,,
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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ah f*#k!oh well.
a night in the open
on this peak
is leagues better than
the rubbish reality that's
awaits me down there.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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I've done my fair share of alpine climbing....kinda glad I always finished.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Once you accept that the dark doesn't hurt, you learn to savor the alpine finish.
Heh..you are not from Alaska are you?
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