Best Supertopo Post in A Long Time...Thank you Kingtut

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micronut

Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 29, 2016 - 01:35pm PT
FOR SOME CONTEXT REGARDING THIS ELOQUENT RESPONSE JUST KNOW THAT SOME YOUNG FOOL BLEW OFF ROYAL ARCHES AS A LESS THAN MEMORABLE ROUTE. KINGTUT'S RESPONSE BELOW MADE MY DAY AND REMINDED ME JUST WHY I VISIT THIS SITE. JUST HAD TO SHARE IT. If you have others in the running for the "Best Post on Supertopo in a Long Time" go ahead and post 'em up here!

Did it yesterday. Didn't see what was all the hype about. IMO Snake dike is a lot better as the best 5.7 in the valley. No pitch on it was that memorable. A lot of dirty scrambling/walking, only a few kind of cool parts. Took longer to rapel than to climb it.



Ok, this has got my old fossil dander up RAwR! :)

F@$$RatF$%$ whipper snapper big deal popsicle soloist! Insulting my boyhood adventures!

DUDE.

BITD if you wanted to go rock climbing 25 years before gyms were invented you sacked up and learned to climb chimney, laybacks, fingers, hands and slab literally while on the Royal Arches. If you were lucky some fat guy named Harry Crags (IRL troof) took you up as your first climbing experience EVER.

The sum total of my climbing experience beforehand was books (heard of those???) The Royal Arches was Annapurna, Eiger: Wall of Death and Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills all rolled into one! Those were books I checked out of a "library". You begged, borrowed or stole a few stoppers and hexes and took the rope your parents bought you for xmas, snagged some used Robbins boots and got on that rig. It was 15' of 1" tubular for a harness, leg loops (?)...learned how to tie a water knot and a one handed bowline that day.

Lionel Terray, Ricardo Cassin, Ax Nelson, Gaston Rubberfat and John Muir et al climbed this directissima! Rumor had it there was an Italian party still encased in ice somewhere, lost in a storm sweeping in from antarctica....a sailor drilled the penji bolt standing on one naked toe and it was mank too! Unplanned bivies, cold, heat, thirst, waterfalls, pine needle death slabs, firewood...this climb had it all and a death march walk off too!

Opening chimney with ice water trickling down, previously numb hands aching thawing out in the sun above....Harry Crags taking a fall on the 5.7 above the ledge at the edge of the drop off, caught him on a fixed pin probably placed by Tenzing Norgay or some other legend...with a hip belay and had the rope burns to prove it...might need a rope gun to send that bad boy, had to work it....the pendulums awash in ankle deep water...no pro as the water was too deep, oh the humanity! Brrr cold!

Then THE LOG...woodpecker eaten, huge black ant living, piton drilled and slick, burnished by famous sweaty hands and piss soaked woolen knickers...this toothpick of a vibrating twig was like climbing Satan's rotten pecker spanning a void straight above hell...you can't imagine humping that swaying f*#ker with death between your legs...kids today...it wasn't sport bolted fun!



Once across, no going back. Could you retreat and reverse the penjis? No one knew. If you did you might find the remains of the Italians stuck forever on rappel...mmmkay...committed, summit or plummet! Onward and upward...some sketchy route finding...Up here? No...hurry, getting dark...then the no-pro pine needle death slab 1500' off the deck as the sun sets. I am telling you the verglass covered exit chimneys on the reggae North Face of the Eiger probably had nothing on this pitch done in full steel shank shoes...I think I blacked out...ma mere....ma mere...ma mere...

A race across the rim to get to NDG before dark, some wading in snow drifts in shadowed gullies, dusk deepening...contemplating many premature voids trying to sucker the unwary...Not today grim reaper! Keep moving...Got across the last bit of 3rd class and into the gulley right before pitch black, flashlight failed, headlamps weren't a thing...butt sliding in the dark down the sandy bits...crab walking the boulder field not being able to see your feet in the blackness...back to the car...alive! So alive!

Thanks, Harry Crags. I will never forget that day, something like March of 1976, as I probably imagined it as a boy of 15 at the time.

--------------------------------------



Floundering on the Royal Arches like a gumby, a single day spent...getting back to the car thinking you finally were a Yosemite climber having ascended one of those "un-climbable" walls where no tourist would ever tread...priceless.

A classic trial and route of passage.

Shitting on the Royal Arches is like saying the smores after the panty raid of the girl's camp weren't that great.





clinker

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
Sep 29, 2016 - 01:53pm PT

Sport Climbing is...
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Sep 29, 2016 - 02:01pm PT
What a great post! Thanks!
Bargainhunter

climber
Sep 29, 2016 - 02:09pm PT
That come back was precious. TFPU!
JEleazarian

Trad climber
Fresno CA
Sep 29, 2016 - 02:10pm PT
Too funny!

To pile on, in 1975, Tim Schiller and I took my brother-in-law, who has never been climbing before or since, up it using one 50 meter rope, a rack of 4 Stoppers and 4 Hexcentrics (which was excessive), 1" webbing swami belts, and, for my brother-in-law, hiking boots. (In fairness, I'd been up it thrice before, at least).

The Rotten Log's demise robs the route of some of its charm, but it remains, for me, a better training ground for beginning trad climbers than Snake Dike, simply because it presents such a variety of problems. Yes, Snake Dike is cleaner (by a lot), and marvelous in its own right, but a beginner will learn much more about trad climbing spending a day on the Arches -- and the approach and descent are both easier than Snake Dike.

So there!

John
zBrown

Ice climber
Sep 29, 2016 - 02:14pm PT
Personal, personable and nary a 'tard' word to be found.

*
micronut

Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 29, 2016 - 02:42pm PT
Oh man the fact that it was Vitaliy (what a punk) makes it even better!
PAUL SOUZA

Trad climber
Central Valley, CA
Sep 29, 2016 - 03:01pm PT
I took a 10 year old boy up the Arches for his 3rd climb in Yosemite. That is, AFTER he climbed Sherry's Crack, 5.10b. His handle is "climbingkidcory." We had a blast that day and did it 2 years later. Those were the 2 of the most memorable days in my 7 years of climbing. Watching a 10 year old cruise the P1 chimney while figuring out how to climb chimneys. He puked halfway up P8 because he wanted to finish all 15 pitches so bad!

10 years old..


12 years old...



In other news...

Cory is a freshman in high school, buried in books, and a drummer in the jazz band. He's so busy in school now that I never see him anymore. :( He has another mentor who bought him a brand spankin new Cannondale road bike with all the bells and whistles. So he pedals everywhere now. PROUD!
Ed H

Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
Sep 29, 2016 - 03:18pm PT
Unplanned bivies, cold, heat, thirst, waterfalls, pine needle death slabs, firewood...this climb had it all and a death march walk off too!

That's the way it was and we liked it!
thedogfather

Trad climber
Somewhere near Red Rocks
Sep 29, 2016 - 06:06pm PT
Hey, that's me on the rotten log in 1976. It was my second multi-pitch after Snake Dike.
Daphne

Trad climber
Northern California
Sep 29, 2016 - 09:44pm PT
Man, that was one of my first multi-pitch climbs. I remember struggling and my partner saying, "It's only 5.7, you can climb 5.7." (The pitch was steep and wide for me, at the time. I wonder what I would think now.)

Vitaliy is a very different person now than back in 2012.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Sep 30, 2016 - 11:04am PT
First post is great and nostalgic, and DMTs post is pretty hilarious too!

How many of us have a story about asking to pass someone and then bumbling it like a gumby? I gota pretty bad one.
micronut

Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 30, 2016 - 11:20am PT
DMT that made my day. What a couple of idiots. Proud send.
Fossil climber

Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
Sep 30, 2016 - 01:25pm PT
When mentioning luminaries who have been on Arches, I had Tenzing Norway and Bill Anders (Apollo 8) on it on the same rope. We only did a few pitches as they didn't have time to do the whole route, but they loved it. Anders sent me his poster of the earth showing over the moon's edge with inscription saying that "...the adventure was almost as good as this one!" A bit of hyperbole, for sure, but one's perception of the Arches depends on the time and the circumstances. And don't forget rattlesnakes in the lieback as hazards!
ron gomez

Trad climber
fallbrook,ca
Sep 30, 2016 - 01:55pm PT
1977 no sticky rubber, no pendulum, no H2O proof stretchy parka. EB's, painters pants and "oh I didn't know thats where the pedulum was" so we free climbed it. Started raining right after this pitch...scarey schit back then, but it was all part of the fun and adventure. Still love this route and all the cool pitches on it.
Peace
Larry Nelson

Social climber
Sep 30, 2016 - 02:34pm PT
Great initial post plus Dingus's. Funny stuff...TFPU
Painter's pants, Rugby shirts, tennis shoes, hip belays, Munter hitches, biner brakes.
Climbing hard and getting strong in the gymn isn't the same.
zBrown

Ice climber
Sep 30, 2016 - 03:15pm PT
I must be missing something

Bingo, bango, bongo
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Sep 30, 2016 - 04:26pm PT
Good post but I,for one, agree that the Royal Arches is not a great route but deserves to be sampled once.
TomKimbrough

Social climber
Salt Lake City
Sep 30, 2016 - 07:23pm PT
Warbler - You shuda done it... Schmitzt and I done it back in '65. We didn't use the rope, maybe on the pendis, until the last pitch. It was covered with pine needles, covered! we put on the rope. Kim led.... He was sweeping the needles off with his jacket, It all worked, I followed.... So long ago.
couchmaster

climber
Sep 30, 2016 - 08:40pm PT


Did it last trip down with my son. Great climbing (still). Miss not introducing the lad to the horror show of the log, but that's the way the rotten log bounces:-)
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