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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Nov 29, 2016 - 10:55pm PT
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So a few years ago at Christmas dinner my surly 80 year old great aunt starts off the dinner conversation by confronting me with the question - " so.... are you going to let your grandmother die without a grandchild?"
Terrifying- it's a miracle I survived the night.
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 29, 2016 - 11:31pm PT
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Hey all
Love all these slices of your lives. Thank you and I want to hear more. What do you tell around the campfire.
I've been posting my stories not to brag or demonstrate my stupidity but because I want to hear more of your stories.
I've got some I'd love to share but I don't think I should here. So I'll tell a different one next.
We all love stories.
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 29, 2016 - 11:49pm PT
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Justthemaid
I was very young at the time and meeting my girlfriends parents and siblings for the first time over dinner.
They're all transfixed on me wanting me to talk. So I start talking about a book I just read. I think it was Billy Jack. But anyway I started talking about how the "extra" buffalo "bison" were killed off by trophy hunters and the shooters made coin purses out of their testicle sacks.
It wouldn't ordinarily have been an odd topic with my friends until I suddenly realized where I was and who I was talking with. Scared to death.
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 30, 2016 - 12:49am PT
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I'm just putting my motorcycle helmet on to leave the Meadows for the Valley.
Along comes some guy on a bike ripping past the store. Well I like going fast on windy roads but a race is even better. I go after him. It takes a little while before he notices he's racing me.
He's on a 750 to my 550 but I know the road better. He's completely reckless to my caution. (Oh shet their might be black ice on that curve). He doesn't slow to check it out. There's not and we blast along.
I catch up with him and we're passing the typical long caravans of bagos and other tourists. I noticed that we passed a number or green NPS trucks along the way but only thought of it in "passing".
Down the road not far from getting into the Valley there's a roadblock setup to pull us over.
So we get pulled over and the officer tells us that we were going too fast and doing unsafe passing. All that info was radioed ahead. But since all the witnesses to our excessive speed and unsafe passing were 60 minutes behind us he just wrote us a ticket for "don't do it again".
Not proud of that (well maybe a little) wouldn't do it again but it sure was fun and scary. And no tourists were injured.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Nov 30, 2016 - 02:39am PT
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It is scary that I'm here It is stupid Too
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 30, 2016 - 08:21am PT
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I was only about four years old when I was out playing in the woodlot near an old farm where I grew up in upstate NY. I was with my brother and some older kids and guess what?, we were playing with matches. At some point I thought this is not ok. One of the older kids said it was ok, he was six years old. Wow, the voice of experience. Matches were lit and the grass soon caught on fire. It was only a little ring, about a foot in diameter. We went down to the creek and got some water. When we got back it was a ring of fire about twenty feet wide. Uh oh. After some furious stomping we bailed home. It was lunch time. Fire engines roared and they put out the fire that became several acres. After lunch we went back to see what the damage was. About five acres burned and they were still looking for those damned kids.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Nov 30, 2016 - 12:12pm PT
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I think I've nearly died so many times I can't begin to remember them all.
Age 11, my somewhat spirited pony, who had a previous life as a barrel-racer, grabs the bit in its teeth and takes off running towards the corral, when we're about 100 yards away.
It runs full speed towards the 5' high wood fence, with me barely hanging on. When it reaches the fence, still going full speed, it cuts a 90 degree left & I part company, soaring over the fence & landing back-first on a soft pile of horse-shit with rocks 2' away on both sides. After I picked myself up, it was patiently waiting by the fence.
In my late 20's on a solo-hike I found an interesting & challenging 15' high granite boulder. I was nearly at the top of my first pick for a route, feeling quite confident on the slightly overhanging rock, when a handhold popped out. A nano-second later, I was flat on my back on soft dirt, sandwiched between two 10" high rocks.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 30, 2016 - 12:45pm PT
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I know what the sound multiple 36" TV sized rocks make when they go by yer head a few inches away. It's a low pitched sucking sound.
Wanna know know the sound you make when one of the portable TV sized ones lands on yer leg? Also a low pitched sucking sound.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Nov 30, 2016 - 01:51pm PT
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I know what the sound multiple 36" TV sized rocks make when they go by yer head a few inches away. "falling motorcycles."
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Nov 30, 2016 - 03:25pm PT
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Reilly & SLR! I've only ever had one that big come close, but it was kicked off by another climber & exploded on a spot I had just vacated. I had a sudden feeling that the clumsy lad was going to pull off the car-door sized loose flake we had just been warned about, & I walked left 30 feet on the ledge we were on, hung a pack in front of me & waited expectantly.
I wasn't disappointed.
The boulder landed right where I had been standing, exploded, & then produced a spectacular rockfall down to the Salmon River, 500' below.
Unfortunately, a plate-size chunk got me in the shin & I limped for a month.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Nov 30, 2016 - 06:50pm PT
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In my mid 20's i had the exact same 15' high solo boulder fall Fritz. Unfortunately I didn't miss the Boulder landing at the base. Landed back first on a 5 gallon sized rounded boulder. Couldn't breathe for what seemed like minutes. Forty five minutes later the searing pained subsided enough that I crawled the 200 yards to my tent. Crawled inside, coughed up some blood and passed out. I awoke again 2 days later sore but able to walk again. Not a scary story, but rather a cautionary tale about the perils of going it alone in a somewhat remote area.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Nov 30, 2016 - 07:37pm PT
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Rick! Wow! I have a glass of wine in front of me, & I'm drinking a toast to both of us "cheating death!"
That is such a scary story. I'm glad you survived! What an experience! I wish I could say I never did that sort of solo climbing again, but at least I never took another unexpected fall.
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Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
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Nov 30, 2016 - 07:55pm PT
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I was returning from a snowed out trip to the Bugaboos and my buddy's car got a flat near Winnemucca. The car, known as the Cressica, was a Toyota sedan with a nine inch limo extension. The owner, a notorious chef, dead head and Donner partier, brought along his notoriously gurglesnarlwaggrowler Chesapeake Bay Pig Dog. Mookie by name.
It turns out that you are allowed to sleep in the Winnemucca City Park. But, if you leave your PigDog out then the Winnemucca PoPo Police will draw down his service revolver on said Pig Dog and instill a great deal of fear on young happy hippy hillbillies.
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2016 - 06:45pm PT
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A friend was bouldering up the north overhang at Stony Point on boulder 2.
He's a move or two from the top (maybe 15 or 20 feet off the deck). This is before crash pads. The guy who is supposed to be spotting him is all attention. Suddenly the climber pops off. The spotter yells EEKEEEEKK or something like that and jumps back letting the climber plant on the ground. We were thinking he's dead!.
Fortunately no one was seriously hurt and the "spotter" went on to career as an enforcement ranger (LEO) in the Meadows.
We were chatting with him up there much later when a tourist comes up asking for help getting his keys out of his locked car. One of our group says "well "EEEEEKE" why don't you just shoot his windows out.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Back when I was in my 20's, I thought alpine rockfall was part of the adventure & I loved the whistle of rocks blowing by me on Alpine climbs.
Back in 1978, I finally tired of the sound, while approaching Mt. Fay, in the Canadian Rockies.
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.)
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2016 - 08:33pm PT
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"Back when I was in my 20's, I thought alpine rockfall was part of the adventure & I loved the whistle of rocks blowing by me on Alpine climbs"
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning
I used to too but not so much any more.
Thanks
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I was a n00b, but an ambitious one, not necessarily a healthy combination.
I actually think this climb was Steve's idea. He got me into alpine climbing.
He was a farm boy from Ellensburg, WA and introduced me to the Prater brothers,
Fred Stanley, and Fred Dunham. Anyway, we left Camp Muir in the dark and
headed down and west to the Nisqually Glacier. We aimed to make the terrifying
traverse beneath the hanging glacier to climb the left side of the mixed face.
It wasn't a frequently done route, for good reason. We got to the start
of the long traverse and stopped for a drink and to gird our loins. The
sun was still well below the horizon and it was colder than a loan shark's
heart. Conditions could not have been better. Steve took a swig and said
"I don't know. I don't feel real good about this." This took me completely
by surprise as only a short while before he had expressed his enthusiasm
for this 'outing'. I looked into his eyes, the eyes of a church-going
salt-of-the-earth farm boy, and I saw grave misgivings. He had much more
experience than I did so I deferred and said, "That's fine, we can go up
the couloir to the right of the ice fall to the top of Gibralter Rock."
We started simul-climbing, although back then it was only known to us as
moving together, up the steepish couloir. I was in the lead and pushing
the pace. The towering ice fall to our left had enormous seracs right up
to the edge of the couloir, which was about 75' wide. We were already
about 300' feet up when I heard a thunderous CRACK! and saw a serac a good
75' high on the very edge of the couloir and 400' above us topple into the
couloir! I ran across the 35' of 40 degree neve to the rocks on the right
side in no less than a couple of seconds. I fully expected that Steve
and the other guy (?) to be atomized but when the smoke cleared it was
apparent that they were at least as light of foot as I had been. That
was the first time I was saved by a premonition. It would not be the
last, even on Mt Rainier. Always trust your gut feelings, and those of
your mates.
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Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2016 - 11:53pm PT
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Ok this is something like 40 years ago
we climbed to the top of the light towers that guided the big planes in,
Imagine Star Wars One. We're up there and giant planes were coming in over ou4 head. Too much.
It was pretty amazing. Not scary really to do it but stupid.
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