Dog Days Wednesdays

[Dru]

quote:

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Originally posted by max:

It seems like I've had the "best day ever" happen to me several times. I've been finishing a day that seemed so regular...no huge climbs, no super hard pitches, maybe not even that long of a day. But as I'm walking back to the car I think to myself "This is probably the best day of climbing ever! I love climbing" Maybe I'm just easy to please. Maybe I've got bad memory.

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The ordinary days of climbing are pretty good but there are some that stick out even years later for me - a bunch of alpine climbs like Purple People Eaters, Lillarete, Standing Wave, Beautiful Nightmare, s. ridge of Gimli and east ridge of Rexford, the Matriarch to Grimface traverse; then things like doing White Lightning and Squamish Buttress for the first time; Gibraltar Wall, Weeping Wall, Moonlight; passing parties left and right on Black Orpheous; rapping of Space Shot in a thunderstorm; a "fifteen-star day" at J-Tree in December; Keyhole Canyon near Red Rocks; stumbling back to camp after 21 hours on Redoubt and watching David Persson have enough energy to ski a quick run on his short skis while the soup water was boiling; soloing 20 routes at the Smoke bluffs in about 5 hours then just sitting on top of Pink Kliff and watching eagles soar; soloing Banana Peel for the first time; putting up "Routopia" at Skaha, cleaning onsight from the ground up and throwing holds at my belayers

Basically the stuff where i went climbing and had a good time and did something that was memorable in some way, and gfelt like life was worth living, and that climbing was what it was all about.

sorry for the spray about myself and a serious post for once

[allthumbs]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dru:

sorry for the spray about myself and a serious post for once

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...that's okay, ya hoser, we won't hold it against ya.

[Rafael_H]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dru:

arent you worried if you took that many pictures of your ass you might start to notice it growing?

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Ha-ha-ha, funny, I meant "posts above", you smartass

[Peter_Puget]

Dru –

I was being somewhat serious in my original post. Down here in the States it was just Martin Luther King day, so I have been thinking about people wi th disparate viewpoints coming together. As I have said before, I have a dream where all climbers climb together in peace and harmony. No silly divisions. Isn’t there some saying about arguments having to be so vitriolic because the are over so little? Just a couple weeks ago Mattp was nominated for Poster of the week. He is a steadfast believer in joining together. This week’s nominee, Dwayner, is well known for his quote, “Where is the Aloha.” I am willing to bet that if Pope and I did go to Vantage we would burn the place up and not only from the heat of our debate. Better than any Pub Club is a day on the rocks!

[pope]

Peter,

I've been out there to climb, to clip bolts and get a pump. It's simultaneously fun and depressing...but where are you going to go when Leavenworth is drenched? I don't know when I'm going to have time soon, but I'm living in Ellensburg again this summer, so I'd be happy to go out there (although it seems like time could be better spent doing real climbing). Want to go? First you have to convince me that you like girls. Some of your teases in this thread begin to worry me...although whatever you're into privately, I mean, hey, that's cool. I don't want to know, but you seem like a good guy and everything. I'm a liberal dude. There's room for everybody.

Pope.

[Peter_Puget]

quote:

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Originally posted by pope:

Peter, this could be arranged. My guide's fee is a bargain at $250 per diem. You would not be allowed to refer to me as your "partner", although you could call me your "climbing partner".

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Pope –

Don’t worry I’ll do all the leading so we won’t need to use your guide and thus we would avoid what seems to me to be his terribly excessive fees. Do you always climb with him? I must warn you that I have never been attracted to men but since you seem so sure that I’ll like your ass, I will approach it with an open mind – just don’t get your hopes up.

[Dru]

quote:

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Originally posted by Peter Puget:

Pope –

Don’t worry I’ll do all the leading so we won’t need to use your guide and thus we would avoid what seems to me to be his terribly excessive fees. Do you always climb with him? I must warn you that I have never been attracted to men but since you seem so sure that I’ll like your ass, I will approach it with an open mind – just don’t get your hopes up.

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CAT FIGHT!!!!

meow! girlz this is funny, more please! forget email spray where all can see!

[Cairns]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dru:

Seems to me that Wednesday is the cruelest day of the week.

if you could define one day of ideal climbing - the best climbing day of your life - what would happen on that day? What would you do? With what and with who would you climb?

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This will be my second night of work this week so I guess this is my Tuesday, and I work Fri,Sat, and Sun nights, so that can't be my weekend. I don't know if days or life can be cruel, but something must be going on because the fantasies described heretofore soothed me. Good prescription, Dru. Good medicine, all.

I can't define an ideal day, so I'll try for a good-enough one. That's how a parent needs to think, sometimes.

South Africa, Northern Province. Oscar Wolfarht. Some of Oscar's friends "spent 3 days on the rock without getting to the top". We don't really even know where the crag is, just that it must be too big to miss.

We leave our car in the care of the king of the nearest village. Three hours later we are lost and crawling on hands and knees under thorn trees. We find a trail as night surrounds us and follow it to a meadow where we sleep.

In the morning Oscar trades 3 cigarettes for water and info from a local. We get lost again and meet another local out searching for his cattle. He is carrying an axe and we understand why his cattle are trying to avoid him. He points us in another direction and we find the cliff.

A helicopter flies overhead. Oscar gets excited because there is a radio installation on top of the mountain and the weekly maintenance visit is a fabled party time. We don't know, however, whether the heli was arriving or leaving.

We drag our way through more thorny vines to the base. We reconnoiter. No signs of earlier climbing. We decide to see what the climbing is like and start up at 4pm.

After 6 steep but moderate pitches we reach the top. All we have with us are a few hard candies. We need water. We're pretty high up and it's cold. We start for the radio station and get there just at dark.

No one is at the station and it is very well protected against forced entry. There are a couple of metal huts nearby and on one of them the door opens to show a bare concrete floor. The door of the other hut is locked. We discover that we can pry up the locked door until the hinges unseat. Inside the second hut are cots, water, a stove, huge quantities of powdered non-dairy creamer, and some old newspapers.

We brew batches of Cremora, then lie on the cots with the newspapers spread over us, and the stove going at the slowest burn we can get from it. We almost get warm enough to sleep.

As we head back to the top of the climb next morning we notice a line of bolts, well spaced, leading up an overhanging bluff. It looks way hard. Could it be Wolfgang Gullich? He was here. Far and away the most remote sport climb I ever expect to see. Just one lonely climb.

We rap back to the base and as we get there an Africa-hard thunderstorm lets loose. We hide out under an overhang and admire the discharges which could kill us at any moment.

On the walk back out we pass a hut which has a necklace of cattle bones strung under its eaves.

The next week Oscar and I were at Cedarberg, a climbing area outside of Johannesburg. It rained all night and we had no protection from it. Since then any climbing day when I stay dry is near enough ideal for me.

Cairns