O come on now who doesn't have a scary story (stupid ones ok

SLR, really?

Near the top of 3-4 Couloir: the loose, wet limestone blocks finally gave way to a high angle scree slope. At the end of my last lead I suggested un-roping, but without comment Mark continued past me roped-up. Halfway up his scree lead he pounded a piton into a Cadillac-size rock buried in the now gravel like surrounding rock. Fifty feet higher, Mark just flopped down in the gravel and told me, “on belay.”

When I got to Mark’s piton, I removed it. Rather than slog through the steep gravel around the Cadillac-sized rock, I simply stepped up onto the rock. As I stood on the rock, arms akimbo, catching my breath; it suddenly rolled out from under me! I jumped into the air: landing on my feet in the scree, as Mark pulled me up tight with the rope.

Let me repeat myself: the Cadillac-size chunk of rock that we had both assumed was bedrock, or at least damned solid, rolled out from under me like a log in water, when I stood on it!

We were nearing the end of Moraine Lake and had finally reached a trail, when we heard a helicopter. To our dismay it appeared, then headed right up toward Mt. Fay: without a doubt looking for Mark and Fritz. Mark took off running for the Ranger hut, still one mile away. I sped up, but trotted along fatalistically. After all, I knew we would get an ass-chewing whenever we both appeared. Mark was able to stop a second search helicopter from getting in the air.

We were asked to appear at the main Ranger Station. The rangers were stern, but pleasant. They let us off with a minor lecture on climbers’ responsibility.

Then one ranger shocked us by explaining the early morning rescue helicopters were due to their fears that we had been injured or killed when the summit cornice fell off the afternoon of our climb. There was silence ---- while the fact sunk in that the annoyingly drippy summit-cornice, we had both spent too-much time under, had fallen off right after we summited.

The cute girl who got her hair caught in the rap biners and the "rescuers" cut it all off. (I watched this)

Heading up to Mammoth on 395 for some skiing.

I know what the sound multiple 36" TV sized rocks make when they go by yer head a few inches away.

3-4 Couloir was first climbed in the 1890’s and is a class 4 scramble. Like a few other venerable Canadian routes: it is one loose, steep, dangerous, long, scary, bitch of a scramble. It turns out the hut at the top, is named for a climber killed in 3-4 Couloir by rock-fall. The hut journal contained many mentions of rock-fall injuries in 3-4 Couloir.

I had been up it, & was hit by a storm that night & then went down it in the storm, the previous year, so I was familiar with its charms.

A photo near the start, that Mark took, shows me running across rock littered snow.

Since Mark didn’t know yet, he yelled at me; “Hey: what’s the hurry?” When the first rock screamed by his head a minute later: Mark quickly got the idea.

After 3-4 Couloir steepened and narrowed; the rock fall diminished, but never ceased entirely. Somewhere along the way, Mark insisted on roping up, in case one of us was cold-cocked by a rock.

(Mark hadn’t done enough Canadian climbing to be at ease on wet, loose, steep limestone swept by rock-fall.

Somehow, the romance of it all, just didn’t seize his imagination in a positive way.)