Your guide to the perilous waters of the internet

9-26-09

You can see pictures from the trip here.

We invented two new terms this trip to Yosemite. I got plakked means Pregnant Lady Ass Kicking. Take and Bake is obvious. It was hot, we climbed over our heads, we baked, we take.

Saturday: Jam crack, top roped orgasm climb (lazy bum)

Sunday: Royal Arches 6 am start, back at camp at 1 am. Got off route on a 10b flaring finger open book. Missed pitches 4 and 5 alltogether and ended up at the top of pitch 6 before we got back on route. The pendulum was dead easy, just a little swing on a fixed line over to a 5.8 friction grab on a nice ledge.

Monday: we were hammered and slept in. In the afternoon we hiked up to El Cap base where we climbed Little John Right, a challenging 5.8 offwidth followed by Christines lead up Moby Dick, which took so long I had to clean it in the pitch dark

We slept in the next morning as well and went back up to El Cap where Christine led the first pitch of Salathe 10c. I followed it with one hang, and then led the 5.8 second pitch, with one hang before I figured out the proper body position. It was getting late, but Christine conviinced me to lead Moby Dick, which I had followed in the dark the day before so cleanly in the dark.

I loaded up with the entire El Cap rack (how appropriate!) and started up the 10a fingers section with my heart in my throat. I hate thin steep fingers, especially with a heavy rack, but I needed to bring it all up because the bottom is finger jams, and the top of Moby is fist jams up to 5 inches. Surprising myself, I led the climb flawlessly, no hangs, no falls, just walked up it with a little heavy breathing in the sustained sections. We had a 5, which was too big, two 4 camalots, my old rigid stem 4 (needed 2 of them), two 3's (blue) and 4 yellows (2 inches) plus an assortment of finger sized cams for the bottom 40 feet. Chris got up it again fine in the twilight, but still struggled with the fist jam section.

She got some joy out of hand/fist stacking but it was still very hard for her. I felt bad watching her struggle with every ounce of her strength to move up just 6 inches. After trying for half an hour to use offwidth technique, she simply laybacked it and floated on up.

Wednesday serenity, see epic below on 9-22

thursday lazy bum and bummer, both 10c. Chris took a couple falls on Bummer and I'm happy to report that my new purple mastercam is built well.

friday we hiked up to the cookie for some take and bake on Outer Limits 10b vertical finger and hands. I was very paranoid looking up the route. It starts with glassy laybacking on finger flakes. The pro is fine, but the moves are not secure feeling at all, and there are really no rests to speak of for 40 feet. I followed it 26 years ago and liked it, but I'd never been back. Once I started up it, I was determined to see it through. There was no way I was going to let the pregnant lady finish the lead for me. I kept going up, hanging when I got tired but determined to see it through to the end.

Halfway up the 100 foot pitch the crack opened up to good Karate style hands and I finally felt secure moving up...until I realized I was going to run out of gear. The pitch needed 4 yellow camalots and 2 blue, but I only had 3 yellows left and one blue. I walked up the yellows and blue, leapfrogging the gear until I was looking down at a 30 foot runnout, and a possible decking from 70 feet up.

Realizing it was time to start leaving some gear, I managed to find a hex and a wired stopper placement that allowed me to carry the vital cams higher. I was so pumped by then on the vertical right trending flake/crack that I had to hang every 10 feet to rest. Finally I came to a ledge below the roof where I could catch my breath and managed to climb the last 20 feet cleanly to the anchors.

At the bottom of the cliff I ran into Kevin who I met at calamity jam and lives in Port Orchard. He was climbing with John Bachars ex girlfriend named Anastashia (supertopo name). She was the girlfriend who was in the car accident with him that broke his neck. She was recovering from cancer and very weak, but still game for climbing.

While I was up on the cliff leading, she asked Christine if I was the father of her unborn child. This was the third time she had been asked this, and her reply was not just no, but Hell No! We found this a very funny question to talk about afterward. Why anyone would think a smart good looking young woman like Chris would have a kid with an old grey haired has been like me? I guess it was flattery for me, but an insult to Christine.

I asked one of the guys who asked that question why he thought we were married. "Well, you guys talk like an old married couple. You have an easy familiarity and banter that is typical of married partners."

"No, we are both happily married, but to other people. My wife had to work this week, and Chris's husband doesn't like hard core climbing enough to drive this far." I think part of it also is that because we are both happily married to other people, we have the communication skills built in successful marriages, and we use those naturally with other people, including our climbing partners.

9-22-09

Chris rappelled over the edge. She was a long time rappelling. We expected her to be off rappel and she was just hanging there for a vey long time. Lisa and I talked about what could have happened. We were 4 pitches up, having done Serenity and then the first 2 pitches of sons of yesterday. Lisa leaned over the edge to see Chris but Chris was out of sight. We shouted, but could hear nothing.

Lisa extended her daisy with a couple of slings, backed it up with a cordallette and was able to lean out far enough to see Chris.

"oh no!" She rappelled to the wrong tree! She is a hundred feet climbers left of the anchors, three pitches up on an overhanging wall. Does she know how to prusik up the rope?"

"We've talked about it, but she doesn't have true prusiks, just shoestring alpine slings," I said.

Lisa walked down the bulging dome until she could see Chris again, 60 meters down ,and shouted into the wind: "Can you prusik up the rope? Shit! I can't hear her."

Lisa came back up to me and slumped down in the crack. "We will just have to wait and see if she can prusik," she said. "Christ! Do you have any water left, it's baking up here."

"Dream on," I said, "I've been out for 2 hours."

15 minutes later Lisa walked down to the end of her extended cordalette, and hung there over the edge, balanced precariously 420 feet up in the air attached to the cliff by the slender cordalette, "Damn, I can't see her!"

"Where did she go?" I asked.

Suddenly the rope went slack. We wondered if she had anchored into something, but in the back of our minds was a far more ominous possibility. We had knots in the end, and she has done many 15 pitch rappels, just days before she and I had rapped the entire 16 rappels of royal arches in the pitch dark. Still, as heat stroked as we all were, there was possibility that the worst had happened. My heart gave an awful lurch as I thought about it.

The double 60 meter lines went taught again and we looked at each other with big smiles, "She's still there!"

"We may have to consider the possibility that we will have to lift her up with a z-pulley," I said. "Do you remember how to do it?"

"Um, maybe...I've done it before in rescue classes, and I was reading that book on the way down," Lisa said as we stared at the unmoving taught double strand representing our partners life.

"I've done it before too," I said tentatively, "but it's been 32 years since we pulled each other out of crevasses at Mt. Rainier."

"Let's see if we can remember how to do it, at least we'll be doing something!" Lisa said.

From Christines perspective:

You guys told me it was ok to go first, and I thought I could easily find the rap stations, having just climbed the route. It looked too hard to go to the top of third pitch of serenity since it was far off to climbers right, so I rappelled down, angling off to climbers right, but heading for the top of the second pitch instead of the top of the third pitch.

After 150 feet, as I rappelled downward on the dual 60 meter ropes, I found myself angleling down to climbers right along the edge of an exposed arete. I saw a sturdy tree, and thinking it might be the top of the second pitch, I headed toward it. Suddenly, my feet slipped and I pendulumed leftward off the arete, flew over an overhang and slammed hard into a right facing open book. I managed to hold onto the rappel rope, but I was stunned from the force of the impact with the open book.

Because I was now below the overhang, I was hanging in free air. 20 feet down I saw a lesser angled slab, so I rapped down to that. I rigged up my thin alpine slings as prusiks and tried to prusik up to the tree, which was now above me. With mounting frustration, I realized the prusiks would not allow me to climb the rope. They would grab, but were so thin and flat that I couldn't slide them upward. They would lock under load, and stay that way.

Once Lisa leaned out far enough for me to see her I tried to tell her I was going to prusik up to the tree and anchor, but she couldn't hear me. When I heard Lisa yell: "Do you want us to lift you up to the belay?", I tried to tell her my plan, but the wind blew my words away.

When I again heard the distant, wind blown words: "Do you want us to lift you up to the belay? Yes or No?", I thought for a moment about my options and yelled "Yes!"

It took us half an hour before we could figure out how to get the z working but eventually we had our prusiks on the line and we were ready to start hauling Chris up the cliff.

"Ok, ready, set, pull!" I pulled directly on the rope while Lisa pulled on the z pulley cordalette. The rope came up 5 inches.

"Can you hold her while I slide the holding prusik down?" I asked Lisa.

"I've totally got her, it's easy to hold her weight with this z pulley, slide the prusik!"

I slid the prusik down the rope and Lisa eased off on her z pulley strand until my prusik held Chris.

"Now we've got to slide the z pulley prusik down the rope as far as it will go and do it again" - Lisa.

We lost track of time after that as twilight approached and the desperately hard work of hauling Chris and the two ropes up the cliff continued for what seemed like forever. The z-pulley wasn't able to haul Chris up at all, even with both of us pulling on it. It seemed to add only about 20 percent of lifting force, and was great for holding her while we maneuvered the prusiks. But the bulk of the lifting power came from me, yarding up the line. I was giving it everything I had because that was my partner down there and I was not going to give up on her. Not that day, or any other day.

We knew that she had a cell phone, and at one point we saw a helicopter fly into the valley and we wondered if she'd called for a rescue. The hauling took so damn long, and only through the combined efforts of both of us could we pull her up, and our progress was measured in inches. Many times I thought it was not going to work, it was just so damn slow, but gradually the rope came up the cliff and we actually had a 20 foot loop of slack line that needed to be tied off in case the prusiks broke.

We took breaks now and then and Lisa would walk out to the end of her cordalette and shout down to Chris, who, once the sun had gone down seemed to emerge from her heat stroke and said she was fine, and that we should keep hauling.

She got up to a ledge that led to our position and was able to climb up it to us.

"I know you're not touchy feely," Lisa said, "but I need a hug after that. We are just so glad to see you!"

Lisa and Chris embraced. I looked at Chris, and remembered all the times she had said she is not the hugging type. The hell with it, I thought.

"Give me a hug Chris, I am just so glad to see you alive. We thought we had lost you!" Chris and I embraced, and Lisa joined in, it was a very emotional moment.

The rappels down were uneventful. It was dark then, and the temperature no longer baking us out of our brains. When we reached the ground and tried to pull the double ropes, they were stuck. Lisa wanted to come back in the morning, but I knew we all needed to sleep in to recover so I volunteered to prusik up and clear the knot, which had got stuck in the crack at the top of the first pitch of serenity. The prusik up was uneventful. Just another long water and food free effort in the dark, by headlamp. Lisa and Chris hung around to cheer me on, telling me stories and singing bad songs.

 

9-18-09

What a busy week! Monday and Tuesday I worked on re-writing my web principles class. I'm using a nice book on css by Tom Negrino. It is only a quarter inch thick so I simply scanned as many pages as are practical for my class of beginning web designers.

Wednesday I went to REI and bought a pair of size 15 Mad Rock climbing shoes. I cut the back 2 inches off them and sewed them back up to make a pair of wide size 7. I was surprised to finish them in just one day. I need to buy or rent a belt sander next time I do that. They must be making them with better glue because I had a hell of a time heating the rubber with my torch. I'd get it red hot and smoking, making a real mess of burnt rubber dust out on the porch, and I still couldn't peel the rubber back.

9-11-09

Went to Smith with Austin. I started with 'phone call from satan' and did it cleanly. I have that route memorized now so it's almost like cheating. I followed him up the ten next door cleanly and might have been able to lead it. I think that was the day we did 'calamity jam 10c' and 'pack animal direct 10c'. I led pitch 2 of pack animal, cleanly this time. I couldn't figure out the crux on calamity. It looks like a fingertips undercling, but the fingers are uber thin. I couldn't get more than a quarter inch of tip into the crack, and the wall is vertical, though textured, so I had nothing to work with. Austin floated through it like it was 5.7. Insert long frustrated sigh here.

Don't remember what day it was but I followed him up karate. We both climbed it cleanly , though I had to grab gear as I came around the corner into the chimney. I was tired from trying to clean a maxed out purple cam on the traverse. I felt really solid all the way up. We climbed 3 pitches up 'wherever I may roam' before I ran out of nerve due to the long day, the wind, the cold, approaching twilight and Austin's shivering. I generally don't like steep 5.9 climbing at smith. The falls look like ankle breakers due to the bumpy frozen mud nature of the rock. There is a lot to grab, but also a lot to snag an ankle during a fall.

We explored the lower gorge for the first time on Monday. I got mad at Austin for wanting to climb only his routes, finally telling him: "Austin, out of the last 5 pitches, you've led 4 of them. It's my turn, fair is fair." He didn't take that very well, and shortly there after told me he wanted to leave that day, instead of staying another couple days. This is the problem with climbing with partners who are not at your level, it leads to conflicts.

My new macbook is running great as promised. I'm gradually getting used to living in a mac land and it's not so bad. I've using mac email and calendar now, and even have it syncing with my smartphone. Vista completely corrupted my smart phone, and I had to reformat it. The mac talked nicely to it to my great surprise. I had to buy some mac to smartphone software for $50 but it works great.

Now I need to buckle down and work on a lesson plan for next quarter. I've milked tables for too long simply because it was inconvenient to rewrite my lesson plans. That is the truth. They gave me a nice raise, so in theory I'm being paid for this effort.

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