Advanced Technique

[ketch]

I was shootin the breeze with some friends early this week and was reminded of my longest seeming bivy. As it happened I had worked out a technique with some buds to climb a large brick chimney at my High school. I set three others up with a swammi belt and a biner brake. Each of us stood at a corner with a rope tied off on our belt and then leading to the right through the next brake. After that it was all coordinated effort. we all leaned back and held our line locked off. It was walk up until were leaning way back, then everybody one, two, three, pull we all leaned in and hauled some slack. Then lean back and walk. So it went on the way up.

 

It all worked sweet until about 55 - 60 feet up. The Man shows up and bull horns "you kids come down" my buddy yells down "Heck no, you come up here." So came the long bivy we spent all night standing on a chimney while they sat in the car waiting. They bailed around 5:00 ish and we scampered down so we could make it back to school.

 

A long post to ask if there's any other advanced buildering techniques out there. Other cool stories would be sweet too.

[Mr._Natural]

the chimney of the house i grew up in consisted of slate blocks that were featured with small edges. i had some pretty cool probs that were not easy. that thing got my fingers STRONG. i would go back but since my parents don't live there anymore i would prolly freak out the current residents. oh yeah i was aiding up it once and almost decked when a cam placed between two blocks blew out the cement holding them together. my gf at the time was belaying me and was heard to mutter, "i dont know abot this hole aid climbing thing" yeah, no shit I think she was onto something. go check it out 9242 se 46th st. MI

[EWolfe]

When I was at Western back in '82, me and some friends were taking advantage of the fall shroom season, and were wandering around campus, ripped out of our skulls on Herfy's "mushroomburgers".

 

 

We saw a huge sequoia tree and decided it was a most excellent idea to climb that tree. The bark was smooth, the branches easy to climb and well spread apart - -perfect!

 

 

We got way up and before we knew it, we counted 6 floors to the level we were at. We hung out for a while and started discussing what was a crazy thing to do in a large sequoia tree.

One of us mentioned that cows can't climb trees and we mutualy decided that mooing was the funniest fucking thing in the whole world to do 7 stories up in a tree.

We started mooing like bulls who smell the heat, laughing our asses off with each outburst and one-upmanship

 

 

 

Well, as you can imagine, campus po-po showed up (it was 2AM in an otherwise quiet campus), and ordered us down.

We could hardly believe it! We weren't hurting anyone,but eventually, after an extended conversation from on high, we relented and came down.

 

We both got tickets for "reckless endangerment" - it sems that they weren't worried about us hurting ourselves, but we might have landed on someone else and hurt them

(at 2AM in an isolated tree)

 

[Mr._Natural]

MisterE said:

When I was at Western back in '82, me and some friends were taking advantage of the fall shroom season, and were wandering around campus, ripped out of our skulls on Herfy's "mushroomburgers".

 

 

We saw a huge sequoia tree and decided it was a most excellent idea to climb that tree. The bark was smooth, the branches easy to climb and well spread apart - -perfect!

 

 

We got way up and before we knew it, we counted 6 floors to the level we were at. We hung out for a while and started discussing what was a crazy thing to do in a large sequoia tree.

One of us mentioned that cows can't climb trees and we mutualy decided that mooing was the funniest fucking thing in the whole world to do 7 stories up in a tree.

We started mooing like bulls who smell the heat, laughing our asses off with each outburst and one-upmanship

 

 

 

Well, as you can imagine, campus po-po showed up (it was 2AM in an otherwise quiet campus), and ordered us down.

We could hardly believe it! We weren't hurting anyone,but eventually, after an extended conversation from on high, we relented and came down.

 

We both got tickets for "reckless endangerment" - it sems that they weren't worried about us hurting ourselves, but we might have landed on someone else and hurt them

(at 2AM in an isolated tree)

[Cairns]

ketch said:

I had worked out a technique with some buds to climb a large brick chimney at my High school. I set three others up with a swammi belt and a biner brake. Each of us stood at a corner with a rope tied off on our belt and then leading to the right through the next brake. After that it was all coordinated effort. we all leaned back and held our line locked off. It was walk up until were leaning way back, then everybody one, two, three, pull we all leaned in and hauled some slack. Then lean back and walk. So it went on the way up.

 

Good thing you were coordinated.

 

At Brown University Denny Merritt was getting ready to rappel from a 5 storey rooftop when a security guard came by and saw him. The guard yelled, "Come down from there!", so Denny the quick thinker said, "Okay." Guard the not-so-quick thinker said, "No, wait!". But Denny jumped. By time he was down the guard was nowhere to be seen.

[Bug]

Jeffy was bright kid with a little too much energy. In Highschool Biology, Mr Perrin was a droning sort of lecturer. Jeffy was glazed over staring out the window when he suddenly straightened up, smiled brightly and said, "I'll bet I could climb out that window, traverse that ledge (2" wide) and come in that window". We were on the third floor. Mr. Perrin was a really nice guy and just laughed and said " that probably wouldn't be a good idea Jeff". Then he walked out of the room. Was this a challenge? Jeffy took it as such and was out the window in a flash. When Mr Perrin came back in the room jeffy was just reaching to the edge of the entry window and climbed in. He saw Mr Perrin and got a little nervous so he accidentally knocked a couple microscopes off the table. He then jumped down, spread his arms and said, "TA DAAA". Mr Perrin was not amused.

Later that same quarter, Jeffy's friend Greg was still angry at Jeff's suspension and decided to stage a protest. In the middle of Mr. Perrin's lecture, Greg SCREAMED, "I CAN"T TAKE IT ANYMORE". He lept up from his desk. People were backing away. He ran to the window (third floor rember), and dove out. There was a large tree about eight feet out that Greg dove into but Mr. Perrin barely made it the window without fainting.

After that, Greg and Jeffy did some wild things.

[Matthew]

There seems to be a running theme to this whole po po thing. When I was in college in Boston, where climbing is more on the fringes than in the NW, I had a couple similar encounters. Every now and then we'd set up a rappel rope from the 6th story of our frat house brownstone, and just start doing stupid stuff - mainly aussie style, and seeing who could get down one bounce - which was tough! It was a good way to introduce fraternity brothers to a little bit of climbing gear, and give them and idea of what we did for fun. Anyway, on one memorable occasion the campus po po showed up (with the police chief too!) and gave us a similar line to the sequoia - telling us that we were complete morons and theatening a fine if they caught us again. This was from our OWN building, on our OWN property, where we ought to be able to do pretty much whatever we want within the bounds of the law! We told them as much, but they gave us the same rap about endangering the public and ourselves, or something. Wasn't worth the fight. It was a good night though; earlier we had rapped past the house president's open window as he was getting it on, which became house lore.