jlamo

You still looking for a partner? I got the day, desire... check pms

I confess that this is not my story, it is my partner’s. We were climbing partners, but now when I call her my partner I mean she is my life partner. We have one kid together and another on the way, and all the good stuff that goes along with that. But alas, that is another story for the “I just fell in love with my climbing partner” forum. Some of the names have been changed… In the mid 90’s DR was working in a gear shop in Portland and having just broken up with her boyfriend, she was looking for a climbing partner. In walks this guy we shall call the Boy Scout. BS is fresh off of K-2 and has a lengthy climbing resume. Besides he has a renowned reputation as quite an alpine climber, just ask him. They agreed to climb N Ridge on Stuart together. On Friday they bivied at the trailhead in DR’s Subaru and then left real early in the morning, traveling light, planning to carry over and bivy on route. The approach and the first part of the route was a little slower than DR would have expected or liked, but she is a nice supportive person and willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone she just met, especially a Himalayan hard man. When they reach the Gendarme it is late in the day. The Boy Scout is pretty worked and he declines the lead even though it is his turn. DR figures “fine with me, the first is supposed to be the more straight forward of the two gendarme pitches”. DR leads without her pack, hauls it up and then belays the Boy Scout up. He struggles grunts and takes but manages to get up to the belay. At that point he again refuses to lead the next pitch. DR can’t believe it because she has never really climbed an alpine route with someone who can’t hold up their end of the rope. She was a naive gal and never expected that someone would misrepresent themselves in that sort of situation. She leads the pitch and sets up to haul her pack. The Boy Scout shouts up that he can’t climb with his pack on, so he wants her to haul both packs. She begins to haul and immediately hears the sickening sound of a backpack falling a long ways down. It is her pack that fell of course, but miraculously the Boy Scout’s pack arrives at the belay intact. By that time it is dark and time to bivy. He actually makes a pass at her and so she declines to share his sleeping bag and suffers through the night on the rope with just her wind breaker. The next morning they get up finish the route. DR descends the Cascadian Couloir in her rock shoes. Somewhere on the hike out she politely suggests that the Boy Scout let her wear his larger rock shoes to give her at least some minimal relief. The Boy Scout declines her request saying that he doesn’t want to ruin his rock shoes. When they arrive back at the car, they don’t have the car keys. The Boy Scout volunteers to hot wire her car, which to his credit he does without too much trouble, the rub being that the steering wheel is locked. So he then proceeds to tear apart the steering column of her car. DR never heard from him again. It was hundreds to repair the car, the electrical system never worked right again. We were all at the same party a few years later and he didn’t even acknowledge that he knew her!

Once when demonstrating VT to a group, I placed one near the ground and had everyone yard on it to demonstrate the strength. Well the cord busted, when I looked closely it appeared that it might have been cut. I don't know if it was a fluke, bad tat, or the ice was real brittle that day. My theory is that the edge of the ice where the two holes meet was so sharp it cut the cord. Now I always grab the ends of the cord after I thread and before I tie it off and I floss it back and forth a couple of times to smooth things out in case there is a sharp edge where the two holes meet. I haven't had a failure since and that was probably 14 years ago...

"Ascent of Rum Doodle" and Dave Robert's Moments of Doubt" as it was the first climbing book I read (over and over...)

Also see this... http://fowlerboskoff.blogspot.com/

Wow, some of you are real self rightious sanctimonious and elitist. The poor bastard died and I am sure he was just unlucky. The report doesn't even say if he was snowboarding or skiing, what dif does it really make? There are so many variables including conditions, snow type, circumstances, terrain, time of the month, etc. Why can't we all just get along?

I grew up in VT and went to UVM, I have done most of my climbing since I moved out here, but most of the straight-up techninical ice has been in VT. Like ML says much hair pullin and failure along with some seriously fun big alpine routes in the PNW. You really can't go wrong, pick the best school, you will climb no matter what.

We approached the route on Thurs and Fri last. The route looked good and the snow conditions seemed right on (especially based on the ice and neve we found on north side of Hood a couple of days before). We turned back on the last part of the approach because we couldn't see traversing the last few hundred meters of the ridge before the high camp bivy. It was a totally dry, knife edged choss pile with some good exposure. We may have been missing something and I would love to know it if we were, but I think this passage would only be reasonable if there were a little snow there to hold things together a bit. Also could be we just aren't hard enough for the route!

I used to live in Asolo, about 5 miles from Montebelluna. The nearest via ferrate are on Monte Grappa 10 mins away. I'm not sure that those are in any books, I got some beta from some local climbers, but you can go to the tabacco shop or local bookstore and buy tourist maps (carta turistica) that show hiking trails and via ferrata. There is one for Monte Grappa - Kompass Carta turistica #632 Bassano del Grappa - Monte Grappa. If you want to drive a couple of hours to the Dolomites there are tons. I had a british climbing book by Ron James - Select Climbs or something like that, but once my Italian was good enough I used an Italian book most of the time. There is also a great little limestone sport area right up the road from Montebelluna - it is called Val de Schievenin, it is in or very near the town of Pederobba.