Uncle_Tricky

Was it the goggles or the sweet one piece neon ski suit that made you swoon? lol

Newhalem climbing site

First series is the NW corner on NEWS. What's the second?

I recently got my cordless drill and toolbox stolen from my van. The drill is a $ loss, but luckily the toolbox was largely empty because I left all my tools strewn about my project. Sometimes messiness pays off! And as far as tools, the theives didn't need much: this is the second time in the past year I've had stuff stolen out of my van and both times I accidently left my doors unlocked. I think my mistake was cleaning my van recently, which made the items of value more obvious. I'm currently experimenting with a low-tech security solution: do not replace the (currently burnt out) fuse for the interior lights so it's super dark in the back of the van. Then pack the van with so much crap that a thief would need to spend hours searching through the mountains of junk in the dark to find something of value. Either that or they would have to rent a U-haul to try and take it all away! I think this solution might have potential, as I know I'm never able to find anything of value back there when I'm pawing through it in the dark.

While Mr. Peru and I were scrambling up the eye-opening "Beckey 4th Class" approach to the Barber's Pole route, I reminded myself that leeches are realtively rare on the NE face of Liberty Bell. I was also hopeful that there would be no major bloodletting going on that day. See, I had this weird bit of historical trivia stuck in my head: Back in the Middle Ages, barbers not only cut hair, but performed minor surgeries and did bloodletting. Back when bloodletting was seen as the solution to all problems, the barber-surgeons had a tall pole alongside the barber's chair. Patients grasped the pole so the veins in their forearms would stand out clearly, thus allowing the barbers to easily cut into the veins and apply leeches. On top of the pole was a bowl used to hold the leeches and catch blood. After the bloodlettings, the bandages would be hung on the white pole, which was then displayed outside the shop where the bloody bandages would twirl in the wind and catch the eye of potential customers. Over time, painted poles with balls at both ends symbolizing the blood and leech basins replaced the actual bloody bandage-covered poles. Hence the origin of the modern spiral-striped barber pole: After some scary scrambling, the route begins with a long (maybe 350 feet?) traverse trending up and left along a narrowing ramp system that ends with an exciting blind lieback that leaves you on M&M ledge. At this point, the route joins Thin Red Line. From M&M ledge, the routes goes up a cool clean lieback ramp with hand and finger pockets, then up a corner crack to some face climbing and a really fun hand traverse and mantle out from under a huge flat block. A great pitch. The next pitch goes up corners, sweet solid hand cracks, and a short chimney to a slab underneath huge roofs. The crux pitch traverses right across the slab, around an arete, then up a short pillar to a flaring hand crack. I put gear in before going around the arete, which was a mistake that cost me some rope drag later on. But I didn't like the potential for a 30+ foot pendulum directly onto the belay, and I didn't know if there was good gear around the corner (there is). After the flaring hand crack, the angle eases off and there is several hundred feet of easy terrain to the top. While Burdo puts the Barber Pole route on his "Unrecommended List" as loose with poor protection, this is a fun adventure route. There is a lot of moderate climbing with huge exposure as you wrap around Liberty Bell onto the sheer East Face. While there is plenty of looseness, the harder pitches are quite solid and the position is great. There is a lot of traversing and some serious pendulum potential in places, and for that same reason it's a fairly committing climb for the grade because there is no easy way to retreat in the event of bad weather, injury, etc. If you pitch out all the 5th class, it's 8 pitches. If you simul most of the 5.6-7 you can do it in three leads plus 2 long simulclimbing pitches. Overall, I'd give it out of 5. And no, I'm happy to say we encountered no leeches and there was no bloodletting on the Barber Pole that day.

Hey Lummox, yo mama's so stupid, she thinks sexual battery is something in a dildo! Well, I guess that my monthly quota of spray! Oh, hey Lummox, have you ever checked out the band by the same name? Those guys I think Natural Born Swillers is their best work thus far. An excerpt from the cover: Punk isn't dead... it just smells bad. The artists formerly known as Cretin are continuing research in the field of 'Human Reaction to Hostile Stimuli'. They have discovered that the two best ways to provoke a reaction out of Human Beings are... to say something that people think they can identify with, or identify with something that they can't say outloud, or even think about. The CD release titled 'Natural Born Swillers' applies these concepts in fashion that some may feel is socially unacceptable, but if you find that you indentify with earlier works of 'the artists formerly known as Cretin' such as, the Dayglo Abortions 'Feed Us A Fetus' or 'Here Today Guano Tomorrow', then 'Natural Born Swillers' by Lummox should provide you with enough hostile stimuli to make you want to fuck your dog and eat it too!

The last two times I've crossed coming back into the US, I wasn't asked to show ANY form of ID. Guess I got that innocent look down cold. The only time in the many dozens of times I've crossed I've been searched was returning from Nelson, BC at that podunk crossing north of Spokane. We'd combusted the last of our contra a half hour earlier and were riding in my gf's hippie bus. At the lonely crossing, there was an old veteran, and a young awkward guy who was clearly a nervous rookie. It was quite fascinating to watch how they conducted the search. I stayed in the driver's seat, and while the wily old veteran make innocent small talk with me about the weather and other inane subjects, the young guy poked around in the back. The whole time the veteran was making small talk with me, I could see under his aw-shucks smile and manner that he was watching me intently to see if I was nervous or distracted or wanting to look back over my shoulder at the other guy who was searching the bus. One guy searching, the other just making casual conversation while watching me like a hawk. I can't remember the specifics, but there were also couple verbal traps he laid for me as well--the cleverness of which I didn't fully appreciate til afterwards. Later I understood the idea was to make me tell a lie--even a white lie--to get some sort of body language baseline from which he could judge other more significant deceptions. Anyway, while I chatted with the veteran, my gf helped the rookie by moving stuff around, etc. When she opened the back door of the bus, which was packed with crap, out fell a big green ribbed battery powered dildo, which landed literally on the foot of the rookie. As he bent down to pick it up, an avalanche of my gf's lingerie, bras and panties cascaded down on him. The veteran looked back just in time to see the rookie straightening up with a big green battery powered dildo in one hand, and several bras and panties clinging like colorful starfish to his head and shoulders. He looked so ridiculous that all of us--except him--started laughing at him. The search ended shortly thereafter and we were on our way back into the usa. Several miles down the road, we found that one particular roadside historical marker that we'd passed on our way into Canuckland and pulled a sucessful Fargo, uncaching buried treasures from the snow.

I did some time in Walla Walla. Mascot: "Fighting Missionaries" Slogan: "Missionaries, Missionaries, we're on top!"

yeah yeah...keep em coming.

So I was partnerless, bumming around the Blue Lake parking lot, wondering about the wherebouts of Mr. Peru. As good luck would have it, bivied in the lot was another partnerless climber from Maine. He'd never climbed in the area, so I thot the NW Corner would be a good into. We put together a rack and headed up the trail. Maine was just heading up the first pitch when we heard what sounded like a crazed snafflehound whistling, hooting and hollering up through the basin below the spire. Sure nuff, Bobbyperu shows up a few minutes later. Instead of jumping on the NW corner, he opted to meet up with us later, instead entertaining himself on a solo the SW Rib of SEWS. Meanwhile on the NW Corner, I grabbed the lead for the zig-zag lieback flakes pitch--one of my favorites anywhere--which of course left Maine with the shoulder-eating offwidth. I've had the pleasure of leading it, and told Maine I'd feel guilty if he didn't have a chance to lead the OW, because I'd be cheating him out of the full NW Corner experience. He looked at me skeptically, searching for signs that I was sandbagging him, and then gamely thrashed up it. That evening the three of us met up at the newly re-opened Twisp River Pub where Mr. Peru was staffing the bar. Maine and I hung out and sipped a beverage or two while waiting for the arrival of Szyjakowski. He was making the trip up from L-town so we'd have two teams of two the next day. (Commercial side note: climbers, go patronize this place! Formerly the Methow Valley Brewing Co., which burnt down a couple years ago, they have employed a lot of talented local builders and artists in the rebuilding. They have fine brews, good chow, frequent music and a nice deck right above the river.) The next day the four of us parked at the hairpin below WaPass and headed up the gully towards the South Spire, each suffering somewhat from the late night before. While I would generally run screaming in the opposite direction of "5.10c overhanging flaring 5-inch offwidth," Bobbyperu had a wild hair to get on the Inferno Route, a rarely climbed line (I found no references to this route on cc.com?) on the SE face of SEWS. According to Beckey, the route was named for the scorching August day on which it was first climbed in 1966 at 5.9 A2, and was first freed back in the 80s by Yoder. Seeing as how the forecast was for a windless day of mid-90s, it seemed an appropriate day to get cooked on the Inferno, a corner which closely resembles a solar oven. The first pitch is vertical, juggy and loose--but at least there's uninspiring protection. BP led this while the rest of us hid in the cave at the base to avoid the rocks that came whistling down. The second pitch is the hardest 5.6 I've ever come across. It climbs a steep chimney filled with stacked loose blocks of all sizes then cuts out onto a slab, where you pass a steep bulge on shallow finger pockets. I moved carefully to avoid annihilating the three people below me with one of the car-door-sized blocks. Although I had some rope drag issues, the last few fingery moves before the belay are certainly thot-provoking "5.6." The third pitch is solid and clean and features a nice crack, followed by a spicy 9+ face traverse/step-across move to reach the base of the hanging offwidth. BP cruised it, and Maine and Szyjakowski led up on a separate rope right on our heels. The fourth pitch is the business. You see this intimidating feature coming for two pitches, and it just looms over you like "Come and get some of this you jokers, poseurs, hosers and wannabees!" As you get closer, it only looks steeper and wider and wilder. Below, a sharp dead tree we dubbed "Vlad the Impaler" juts like a spear right into the fall zone below the crux. The direct sun was baking our baked brains at this point. (This is you brain on drugs on the Inferno!) BP, maniacally enthusiastic as usual, launched up the hand crack that widens quickly to fists and then becomes wider still where it bulges out into a weird flaring overhang. He buried the 4.5 cam deep in the crumbly flare, and moved up and down a number of times, trying to figure out out to approach the section. There was no obvious gear above, and the nearest rest was a somewhat distant flake for a foothold on the otherwise featureless face next to the unrelenting wideness. After up and downclimbing several times trying to figure out the best way to tackle this monster, he took a short rest, then launched into a committing layback off the insecure edge of the crack. After reaching the flake and whooping it up, he realized that it wasn't over yet. There is another difficult move to get back into the 5 inch crack to top out, the nearest gear being the 4.5 left down below the 10c layback crux. Heady fer sure! Out of respect for the women and children that may read this site, I hesitate to detail the sweating, swearing and psycho-physical scarring that followed as the rest of us did battle with this beast. But we made it and finished the route off with a couple hundred feet of 5.6 tree wrestling and dirt climbing. By which time the water content of our sun-fried hides was approximatly that of the "Hey Dude" brand of beef jerky I'd brought and could not eat for lack of water and a dying-in-the-Sahara-Desert-case of drymouth. Let's just say we all got a little bit singed a bit by the Inferno.

--Klahanie Crack at Squish, 5.7 (perfect to introduce someone to crack climbing) --Karate Crack, Smith, 10a --Dodd's jam, Beacon, 10+ --Heart of the Country, 2nd pitch Davis Holland, Breakfast, Libra to slab crack at index all 10a --Last pitch W face NEWS 10a (starts fingers and widens to perfect hands, nice position!) --shield pitch on minuteman at Washington pass, 5.8 --about 400 feet total of sweet 5.8 hand cracks on W face Silver star, also last pitch of 10a hands

I didn't know it was odocoileus season yet!

A good one tho!

Lucid post, Erik. I've enjoyed climbing with beginners where I get to observe the process of learning and see the psychological side of people trying to overcome their fears. It keeps me in touch with that which I otherwise start to take for granted. I enjoyed the several years I spent climbing almost exclusively with two girlfriends. While both were competent climbers, I did virtually all the leading. Which was fine, because I love the thrill of leading. Inevitably, climbing leads to situations that are stressful/thrilling/scary/beautiful/exhausting/wonderful, and it's nice to be able to experience that emotional and physical ride with your honey. I like climbing with partners at roughly my same exceptionally mediocre level, because usually each person has different strengths and weaknesses and you can share the leads and not feel too much like a guide. And it's great experience to climb with a stronger or more experienced partner, because you get to learn new tricks and follow stuff that you might have been scared to lead, and afterwards you usually realize that a good portion of your "lead limit" is self-limiting and psychological. I've also learned a lot recently about climbing quickly and efficiently, without ever rushing or being in a hurry. Which is a lot of fun--when you spend more of your time on a route actually climbing rather than messing around at belays, you get into that flow state more easily and the pitches blend together and the climbing actually seems easier. I get this phrase in my head when I'm climbing well: flowing like an avalanche, rolling up the mountain... Rarely do I climb with someone who does things exactly as I do, and that's always an opportunity to learn. Then again, you can always get stuck halfway up some mountain with somebody like "Elmer." ___________ Puff, puff, send...

Index is never too hot to climb and you can always find shade somewhere. You can spend the morning on the lower wall and head up to the upper wall to do davis holland/lovin arms in the early afternoon when the sun goes behind the wall. The best guide for the area is Sky Valley Rock. If I had friends coming to WA and only one day to climb, I'd probably take them to WA Pass. Your friends would be blown away by the alpine beauty of Washington Pass. It's a shorter drive than Squish, but super scenic and there is lots of stuff to choose from with EZ approaches.

Just a couple more details that might be helpful to another party... Approach: As for Burgundy Spire, when trail flattens out in basin below spires, take a right towards the base of the W. Face of Silver Star. Aim for the 30-40' high horizontal band of snow-polished white rock that trends up and right from the toe of the buttress above a snowfield. Route begins a couple hundred yards up right from the beginning of the white band, just after a big orange scar, about 50 feet left of a 4th class ramp system. While you could go up the 4th class, don't miss the first pitch: fun liebacking on perfect compact white granite up to a nice handcrack. Descent: Two single rope raps from summit block into gully to right (south) of Whine Spire. Descend exciting gully, downclimbing several spots where it cliffs out. After watching BP work out some hard moves downclimbing the toughest section I opted instead to sling a chockstone and rap. Setting up a rap in other places might be difficult for lack of non-portable natural anchors.

Bobbyperu and myself went up and climbed this route yesterday--a fine line and a great adventure with a rowdy descent! We swung leads, which worked out well--BP got 3/4 of the 5.10 pitches. The 10+ crux pitch is really spectacular--50' feet of hard slippery chimney, to 40' of classic offwidth, to 30' of flakes, to 30' of an overhanging shoulder-width slot with fingers in the back. A full value pitch! We topped out by doing the 5.10 splitter up the face of the final pillar (FA?). The descent is a long steep loose gully to the right (south) that cliffs out in several spots, requiring mid fifth downclimbing in maybe 4 or 5 spots, and maybe 5.7 downclimbing in one spot. We managed it in 7 long (averaging maybe 180' each) pitches and made it back to the car in 10.5 hours. Thanks scott/larry for posting the topo and sharing your discovery. Maybe I'll post a TR with a couple more details later. You can find the FA's Gato Nego Topo here.

ChucK + Hexes = Complete Fabrication Sounds like much fun !

Yeehaw! I see Trask ate his Wheaties this morning--Breakfast of Champion Sprayers!

First of all, thanks to the several cc.commers who hooked me up with Colorado partners (or tried). With no solid pre-trip plans other than visiting my relatives, I ended up climbing every day. Second of all, there ain't much climbing in this TR. So just move along, nothing to see here. No beta, no carotene, just a bunch of frayed ends of mental rope. Ironically, while I spent a good deal of my youth in Estes Park, I failed to appreciate the rock climbing possibilities until after I graduated from EPHS and left town. It was only after I moved to SE Washington, and learned how to climb out in a wasteland of chossy basalt that I realized I'd been living in something of a rock paradise. It's one of those "don't know what ya got til it's gone" things (cue big-hair-glam-rock band Cinderella). The one thing you can count on in Estes in the summertime are the afternoon thunderstorms. The mornings start out clear, and by 2 or 3 pm, big black thunder clouds accompanied by rain, wind and often hail sweep down the valley, peppering the granite formations of Lumpy Ridge with lightning. As soon as the storms come, they are gone, leaving the warm summer air thick with humidity and the smell of rain on hot granite. Since most of the routes there are multi-pitch trad lines with no fixed anchors, you either start early enough to top out, or you retreat and leave gear in the thick of an electrical storm. As a result, there is a thriving gear-collection business among resident climbers. Each afternoon after the thunderstorms have subsided, locals sweep the most popular lines, collecting a bounty of booty left by people fleeing the lightening. I talked to one guy in the Lumpy lot who'd collected over 200 pieces of perfectly good gear in the last year alone! Anyway, the first day I headed up to Lumpy Ridge with my uncle, who's hardly been climbing since the early 70s. After climbing a couple pitches we ended up on the Roosting Ramp, a long ledge system below the Twin Owls. We decided to climb the East Ridge. I started up, clipped an antique piton,(probably the same one my dad and uncles had clipped 35 years ago) and the rain came down. I downclimbed, unclipped the pin and we took shelter at the base of the owls. The rain eased up, but lightening and continuous thunder rolled across the valley, so we wandered along the protected ledge, eyeballing all the classic lines and my uncle told me about some climbing adventures they had in the area. My dad and his three younger brothers spend much of the late 60s climbing around Estes Park and the Front Range. (The youngest of which, incidentally, was struck and killed by lightning in the backcountry in 1992, his body subsequently eaten by coyotes. When they finally found his remains, they were easily able to determine the cause of death: everything metal he and his co-worker (who also died) were carrying had been melted and fused together by the immense electricity.) At the base of an infamous old school 5.8 named Wolf Tooth Crack (then rated 5.7, now some call it 5.9), my uncle started laughing as he remembered their effort. The climb begins with a fist crack on the side of a detached pillar, widens slowly to offwidth, then a chimney for 150' of strenuous dead vertical climbing. Quite similar in appearance to Damnation Crack on Castle Rock in Leavenworth, but twice as long. Back when my dad was a teenager, he took his his younger brothers to climb Wolf Tooth. Outfitted with hiking boots, a few hexes, stopper and pitons and pitons, he spent over an hour of thrutching and thrashing his way up the offwidth/chimney. Upon arriving at the top, crazed with fear and exhaustion,he prompty puked his guts out down the chimney and then lay dry heaving for 10 minutes on top of the Tooth. After seeing their older brother nearly die, his younger brothers decided against climbing the puke-covered chimney... Wolf Tooth Crack (not my pic) climb goes up crack/chimney on left side of pillar---> While waiting for the rain to stop, we gaped up at the aptly named Crack of Fear, a 300 foot 10D squeeze chimney that is famous for brutalizing even the most competent and masochistic of offwidth fanatics (A category that does NOT include me--gaping is as close as I'll ever get to that one--unless one of ya'll wants to lead it!). As we were sitting there, a couple of young punks came huffing up. One punk, clearly the know-it-all punk of the two, was admonishing his buddy to always maintain three points of contact on the class 3 sidewalk-like ledge. They approached us: "Hey man, we want to do some free-roping. What's an extreme way to get to the top of this thing?" "Well, there's an easy class 4 way around back that'll get you on top," I offered. "We don't want to do anything EASY! That sounds totally lame!" the one sneered at me. They had no rope and were clearly not climbers (what is "free-roping" anyway?) but they had plenty of attitude. "Well, I guess it depends on what you're comfortable with," I said. "we'll do anything extreme" said the annoying one. "I've climbed Long's Peak before." "Ah, that's a great fun hike," my kindly uncle said completely sincerely, trying to be nice to the kid. (He's hiked Longs over a dozen times via the various non-technical routes) "That's no hike!" the loud one said shaking his head disdainfully, "you could slip and fall like 2,000 feet!" he said, talking to my uncle like he was talking to a retard. My uncle just shrugged, somewhat taken aback by this kid's attitude. I'm no sandbagger, but this kid was an ass. I rubbed my chin, then pointed to the gaping manacing maw known with the reputation as the hardest 5.10 in the universe. "Well, I've heard the Crack of Fear over there is pretty fun. It's a little tricky at the start, but it gets a lot easier once you get up a hundred feet or so," I deadpanned in my most helpful, earnest voice. Now, I would never give somebody bad advise if I thought they would hurt themselves, but after watching this kid climb the class 3 ramp, I knew he'd never get 10 inches off the ground on the Crack of Fear, much less 100 feet. The punk and his buddy took a couple steps in the direction of the Crack of Fear, and then looked up...and up...and up... I gave my uncle a discreet wink and supressed a smile. "Hum...that's looks fun--maybe another time," said the annoying one. "So what were you saying about the back way up?" The next couple days were great. We did a beautiful 5 pitch 5.7 route on the Book called Osirus with deep chimneys, teradactyl fins, and groovy grooves of granite. I climbed with and got spanked by Mistress J, who climbs way harder than I can ever hope to in my life. I flailed around on the crystal-toothed granite boulders along the Gem Lake trail until my fingertips bled. Each afternoon was an exercise in dodging lightning. Not that it would be a bad way to go, but I'm not ready to follow in my late uncle's footsteps just yet.

While it's possible to generalize about different areas, I've found the ratings tend often to reflect the character of the first ascentionists. Sometimes the person who did the FA is a better indication of the difficulty of the climb (relative to the grade) than what area the climb happens to be in. For example, if you're doing a Layton Kor climb, it pays to remember that the guy who originally rated it was a manic 6'6" bricklayer with hands the size of George Foreman. Some areas have a longer historical traditions and powerful personalities, and perhaps in those cases the original ratings are more respected more and less likely to be changed? Especially in the case of "classic" climbs, maybe people are more hesitant to change the grade? Maybe these are the ones that become "testpieces" in the area for the grade? Then again, many of the old school climbs have been re-rated several times (always higher) in an effort to create "consistency" and the FA's original grade is long gone and forgotten. Which begs the question: to what extent is the "sandbag scale" of these different areas attributable to the character of the individual climbers who put up the FAs? To what extent is the "sandbag scale" more a result of the guidebook authors who, in some cases, take it upon themselves to regrade climbs? In other cases, the authors of the guidebooks are also the FAs on many of the climbs in the guide, which reminds me of a relevent quote: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

I might be up for that one of these coming weeks. Let me know if ya'lls decide to go. I'd probably have to meet you up there as I may already be on the eastside. Edit: Just checked the weather--it's going to be too bloody hot for now. But hey, at least we wouldn't be slogging through the snow in the rain again!

That's it! I'm setting up my lean-to in the maple at the base of godzilla to protect it from you arboreal murderers!!!

Shouldn't that be the NEW TREE KILLING FORUM ?

Hey freeks, I'm gonna be out visiting relatives in Estes Park, CO. While I'll be taking my uncle out to do some Lumpy classics, I'm hoping to find some more partners to do some climbing between Tuesday, July 15 and Thursday July 17. Do any of ya'll know some people out there who would want to climb those midweek days? Lumpy Ridge, RMNP, ElDorado, whatever. Anyone got some friends living in the Estes/Ft. Colins/Boulder area who climb? Hook me up!