Most Hardcore Epic ever?

[willstrickland]

Can someone point me to the complete story of Takeyasu Minamiura's 1990 solo of Nameless Tower?

 

This was where he soloed a new 30 pitch route over 40 days, summitted, chucked his haulbag, and parapented off. He was blown right back into the face where he was stranded at 20,000 ft on a 16inch ledge for about a week with virtually nothing...(only a jacket, radio, and pocketknife) until his bros could climb an adjacent route to rescue him. The adjacent route had only seen one or two ascents and was pretty tough in it's own right.

 

I read this sometime in the past (seems like the 1991 AAJ but might have been in one of the rags), and recall someone mentioning it over a campfire recently.

 

Along with Endurance and Alive, this is probably the most intense epic I've heard of...anyone care to add?

[Dru]

what about Joe Simpson on Siula grande huh?

[willstrickland]

Indeed it's referenced in the 1991 AAJ, but I don't know if it's the whole story or just the blurb about his new route. If anyone has a '91 AAJ, it's on p. 272

[dberdinka]

I don't know much more than you do Will....

 

Except that his bros climbed/jugged fixed ropes on the British Route that had been hanging there for.....16 years! Bet those were in good shape!

[willstrickland]

Dru said:

what about Joe Simpson on Siula grande huh?

 

Yeah, that was a rough one too. Rob Taylor on the Breach Wall was pretty rough as well, but more from the hospital conditions and sadistic nurse after the fact.

[Alpinfox]

I haven't found the story, but check this out:

 

 

and this one, YOWZA:

 

More mountain porn (sorry I couldn't help myself):

[Rodchester]

Not climbing, but adventure: Shakelton's Antarctic trip with the crew of the Endurance is in my mind the greatest epic of survival of all time.

 

It even makes Simpson’s story seem almost short and sweet. Well, almost anyway.

 

[forrest_m]

will - the nameless tower story is in the first Climbing magazine "Epics" issue, but i couldn't tell you the date. There were actually a bunch of great stories in that issue.

[willstrickland]

Thanks Forrest! Issue is Sept 2000.

Edited November 15, 2003 by willstrickland

[Dru]

willstrickland said:

Dru said:

what about Joe Simpson on Siula grande huh?

 

Yeah, that was a rough one too. Rob Taylor on the Breach Wall was pretty rough as well, but more from the hospital conditions and sadistic nurse after the fact.

 

Doug Scott breaking both legs on the Ogre too, and Bonington carrying him down partway and him crawling partyway.

[fern]

my favourite part of the Japanese dude's story is the sidebar about the British FA where the guy got a kneebar hopelessly jammed in an offwidth and had to sharpen up a knifeblade and hack away at his flesh until the blood lubricated his escape. FUN!

[Ced]

On the same line, how about the fellow from Colorado who cut off his own hand!!! Then hiked out on his own.

[catbirdseat]

It was Aaron Ralston and he was forced to cut off his arm with a dull knife. There was a story in Backpacker magazine about another solo hiker who's leg was trapped. Unfortuanately, he died after several days because he, like Ralston, never told anyone where he was going.

[EWolfe]

Then there was that dude who jammed his knee in a fall, and had to clear it by stabbing flesh until enough was removed he could pull it out.

 

Our own local, James, hiked out for three days from Patagonia on a shattered knee, solo.

[ScottP]

Bataan Death March- 6 days, 90 miles.  

 

The P.O.W's were moved by foot, carrying their own rations to the border of Bataan and Pampango.

 

Troops started to march in a long column on a dusty road without food and water. For many of the bloody, frail men, this was the last march.

 

One man fell from exhaustion and was then flatten by a tank, as all the other troops witnessed this horrible action, other soldiers were hit by Japanese trucks passing by.

 

The P.O.W's  were forced to stand next to a fresh stream but weren't allowed to drink from it, even though they were exhausted and dehydrated , after a while one soldier could not take it any more, he ran to the stream and fell  in, face first,  to drink. Immediately one of the Japanese guards ran over, pulled his sword out and cut his head off.. 

 

A great many men reached the end of their endurance. The dropouts became numerous. They fell on the roadside, some making no effort to rise. Groaning and weeping, some succeeded while others fell back helplessly. 

 

As the march continued, the diseased, starving men staggered up the dusty road, prodded by the Japanese guards to keep moving. As one soldier was dying, he cried for water. He died on the dusty road. The heat of the day was so intense that they were half crazy from thirst. They arrived at a small stream  that was contaminated with filthy water, a bloated corpse filled with maggots,  this filthy stream the P.O.W's were allowed to drink from, as the Japanese guards laughed at them. 

 

Of the approximate 68,000 who endured the march, more than 9000 never finished.

 

Those that survived had nothing to look forward to but an unknown amount of time as prisoners of the Japanese Imperial Army.

 

[EWolfe]

The Long Walk:

 

Synopsis

In this gripping account, the author recounts how, in 1941, he and six fellow prisoners escaped from a Siberian labor camp and trekked across frozen Siberia, China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and finally over the Himalayas to safety in India. Without a map or a compass, carrying nothing but an ax, a knife, and a tiny amount of food, they walked for two years, and their experience constitutes a nearly incredible tale of hardship, suffering, and final triumph.

 

 

[lummox]

my first marriage. lasted for fucked up years.

[chelle]

Lummox -Was that four or just for?

 

What about the escape of Heinrich Harrier and his buddy (can't recall the name) from India to Tibet? I think it was 15 months of wandering before they reached Lhasa.

[catbirdseat]

Whenever some kid tries to tell me how horrible the United States was to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, I just tell them stories like the Bataan Death March. That usually shuts them up. Japan had it coming. A very traskian thing to say, but there you have it.

[ScottP]

catbirdseat said:

Whenever some kid tries to tell me how horrible the United States was to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, I just tell them stories like the Bataan Death March. That usually shuts them up. Japan had it coming. A very traskian thing to say, but there you have it.

 

Look up a book entitled The Rape of Nanking. Between December 1937 and March of 1938, the Japanese Imperial Army committed "one of the greatest atrocities of modern times." In those 4 months, between 250,000 and 300,000 people were slaughtered, many of them women and children, often for sport. Over 20,000 Chinese females, some as young as 7, were raped and then murdered.

As recently as the 1990's, Japanese government officials have denied, discounted, or shown little remorse for the acts of Japanese soldiers in Nanking.

Despite all of this, I can't say that the largely civilian populations on the receiving end at Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved what they got.

[joe_average]

ScottP said:

catbirdseat said:

Whenever some kid tries to tell me how horrible the United States was to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, I just tell them stories like the Bataan Death March. That usually shuts them up. Japan had it coming. A very traskian thing to say, but there you have it.

 

Look up a book entitled The Rape of Nanking. Between December 1937 and March of 1938, the Japanese Imperial Army committed "one of the greatest atrocities of modern times." Between 250,000 and 300,000 people were slaughtered, many of them women and children. Over 20,000 Chinese females, some as young as 7, were raped and then murdered.

Thanks, now I'm sick to my stomach.

[catbirdseat]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but it didn't seem like it was going anywhere anyway. I don't have any bonafide epic of my own to relate, fortunately. The closest thing was rapelling off of Guye Peak in the dark with Leejams last winter. But you have to suffer a lot more to call it even a sufferfest.

[jordop]

Back on track: recent article on Simpson and notes on upcoming film ()

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=464102

[Mtguide]

catbirdseat said:

It was Aaron Ralston and he was forced to cut off his arm with a dull knife. There was a story in Backpacker magazine about another solo hiker who's leg was trapped. Unfortuanately, he died after several days because he, like Ralston, never told anyone where he was going.

 

Several of the early mountain men ran into some minor inconveniences:

A member of the Lewis & Clark expedition was mauled by a grizzly bear,suffering lacerations on his leg.The wound became infected and eventually gangrenous.Realizing that his choice was to remove the leg or die,he asked to have it amputated,so he could continue with the trip.Finding out that the leaders were concerned about delaying the expedition and were planning to leave him with the nearest tribe of friendly Indians to recover from the surgery, the man got up in the middle of the night while all the rest were asleep, and secretly commandeered a large cigar and a small flask of rum from the stores.Taking the the cigar,spirits,and a large knife,he went off by himself,built a small fire,applied a tourniquet to the leg,smoked the entire cigar,drank several shots of the rum,cut the leg off,using the rest of the rum as an antiseptic,cauterized the stump by heating the knife blade,and then whittled himself a temporary crutch and prosthesis.He made it back to camp before the others rose,and reported for duty the next morning,ready to move out with the expedition,adamantly insisting on his fitness and desire to see what was beyond the Rockies.Lewis and Clark were impressed enough by this fellow's grit,initiative and enthusiasm that they immediately promoted him in rank and realized that, as Clark wrote in his journal,they "cuold ill aford to leave behind a man of sutch calibre".The man completed the journey,was later awarded a medal by Pres.Jefferson,and lived to a ripe old age on a small farm in Virginia.

Another member of the Lewis & Clark expedition was the (later to be)famous mountain man John Colter.On the return trip,when the expedition was just a day or two away from arrival in St. Louis,they met two men coming up river in a large canoe,fully stocked and provisioned for a long trip.They asked if any of the Lewis and Clark party would be willing to guide them upriver,and Colter,although having been out with the expedition for over two years,immediately offered to go.He then and there was mustered out,took his gear and headed right back up the Missouri with his new company.

Over the next months,Colter and his partners made it to the headwaters of the Missouri,and from there down through the country just east of the Yellowstone,over what is now Togwotee Pass,Wyo., into Jackson's Hole,and down the Snake River to near present-day Idaho Falls.It was here they met disaster; rounding a narrow bend on the river,and preparing to beach their canoe for a rest stop,they were surprised by a large band of hostile Blackfoot,who drew their bows and ordered them in to the bank.Colter immediately raised his hands and whispered to his partners to show no sign of resistance, but the two raised their rifles and were instantly filled with arrows,and Colter was captured.Relieved of all his belongings,stripped naked and beaten,Colter was marched to a large camp about a mile and a half west of the Snake,where the Indians discussed what to do with him.Finally they asked him if he could run;Colter said yes,but(lying)not very well.After picking their best runners,they told Colter he was being given a chance to run for his life.Colter was unarmed; chasing him would be about a hundred tough young Blackfoot armed with knives and spears.Giving Colter enough of a sporting head start to get out of immediate spear range,the chase was on,and Colter headed straight for the river,to an area he had earlier noticed had several large drift piles and beaver lodges near the bank.He was running barefoot over stony flats covered with sage,buckbrush and cactus,and although he quickly outdistanced most of the pack,his feet were being ripped to shreds and one large Blackfoot with a spear was gaining on him.Colter slowed,carefully, to avoid making his pursuer suspicious,and when the distance and moment were right,suddenly whirled round in mid-stride,taking the man by surprise.He managed to wrest the spear away from the Indian and killed him with it,took the spear and kept on going.As he got closer to the river,he noticed his mouth felt frothy,and looking down, saw that his chest was covered with the blood that he was coughing up.As he reached the river the closest pursuers were within a few hundred yards.Colter jumped into the ice-cold water,made it well downstream,and hid inside an old beaver lodge before the Indians reached the river.The Blackfoot searched exhaustively up and down the banks and the flats on both sides all the rest of the day till nightfall,and Colter completed his escape that night,covering almost 15 miles before daylight the next morning,having still no clothing,and having taken in nothing but water.He continued traveling at night and hiding by day till he was well out of Blackfoot territory.Four months later,he made it back to St. Louis,having walked clear across what is now Wyoming ,Nebraska,and northeastern Kansas,alone,dodging hostile Pawnee,Oto,Osage and Cheyenne.Colter continued to trap and explore for several more years,discovering Yellowstone,the Wind River Range,Red Desert and South Pass,before retiring to a farm near St Louis.

Finally,there's another mountain man,Hugh Glass,who was horribly mauled by a large grizzly sow with cubs while scouting the bank for game as a company hunter on a trip upriver with Jacob Ashley and Manuel Lisa's party of trappers.His entire scalp and the upper right side of his face were torn off his skull and hanging like a flap in front of his face,all the flesh was ripped and shredded off the sides and back of his ribs on each side,and his left leg was broken at the femur;he also sustained numerous other lacerations,fang punctures,and crushing/chewing injuries on hands, arms,neck and shoulders.Bear worked him over pretty good until the other hunters,Tom Fitzgerald,and none other than Jim Bridger,then just 19 and on his first trip into the mountains,came up and killed the bear.

The party stopped for a day or two,patched him up as best they could,and then, nervous about lingering too long in one place in hostile Arikara territory,left Fitzgerald and Bridger with Glass,with Fitzgerald in charge.They were instructed to stay with Glass either until he was well enough to travel,or died;and with the extent of his injuries,and the huge amount of blood he'd lost,no one expected him to live more than another few hours,maybe another day at best.

Only problem was,Hugh didn't die.He hung on,day after day,and Bridger,having become a close friend with Hugh on the trip so far,refused to let Fitzgerald leave him,or put him out of his misery.Finally,increasingly fearful of being discovered by the Arikara,Fitzgerald persuaded Bridger that they had to rejoin the party while they had a chance of catching them;and,to make it appear that Glass had indeed died,they had to take his rifle,powder and shot,knife and kitbag.Before they left,however,Bridger managed to get Hugh's flint,striker and tinderbox out of the bag while Fitzgerald wasn't looking,and to hide them in Hugh's shirt.

To make a long story short,Hugh Glass pulled off a Colter's run of his own,including being captured twice by hostile Indians and twice freed by friendly ones,plus having to crawl on hands and one knee to travel for the first couple of months until his broken leg healed enough to walk on,while allowing the maggots and blowflies to clean the pus and rotting flesh from his wounds so he wouldn't die of septicemia.Took him a bit longer to get back to St. Louis,about 7 months.And,at the time this happened,Glass was in his early fifties,considered really quite old in aday and age when the average life expectancy was about 37.He recovered,fueled by hatred,to hunt down Fitzgerald,who had joined the Army and couldn't be touched without incurring a federal offense,and Bridger, whom he forgave after hearing the full story.Hugh Glass never left the mountains,and continued trapping and traveling in the company of people like Jedediah Smith,Osborne Russell,Bill Williams,Joe Meek,and other illustrious mountain men till he was killed in a scrape with the Utes near present- day Chama,New Mexico,at the age of 75.Kind of a tough old boy.

Native Americans had their own sagas.The Blood Indians of SW Alberta(middle band of the Blackfoot nation) have passed down for many generations a story of a group of young men who decided to go on a long journey to the south to seek better hunting at a time when scarcity of game had become very serious and ongoing. At the time this tribe was still living just to the southwest of Hudson's Bay and had not yet migrated to the great plains.

The boys( most were about 14-16 years old,the oldest was 17)simply followed the stars south and somewhat west.They were gone for almost 5 years.They all came back in good health,with amazing stories of the animals, people, and country they had seen.They had continued south to a point where they were able, with directions from local people,and following local trails,to go see first one ocean,and then go back and see another,in about two month's travel;and in the forests,they had seen "little men running around up in the trees",brightly colored birds and so on.Some of the feathers they brought back are still in the possession of the Blood tribe,kept in several of the 144 sacred medicine bundles owned by the tribe.The feathers include toucan,parakeet,parrot,and there are some remnants of jaquar and ocelot hide.On their return they had traveled north for many days and changes of the moon,along the eastern base of what they described as very high snow-covered mountains,until sensing that they needed to turn more to the east to get home.

The boys had been all the way to central America and the isthmus of Panama;they had avoided death and imprisonment at the hands of other tribes through a combination of caution,wits,luck and eventually out of respect for their youth and courage.As their journey continued,word of their remarkable journey began to precede them,and they were considered sacred,not to be harmed.Once they had returned and told the full story of their adventure,the Blood tribe and their related bands,the Piegan and Siksika,as well as neighboring tribes that would become the Cheyenne,Gros Ventre,and some subtribes of the Sioux,began a series of migrations based on the boys' reports of the abundance of bison and other game,to the areas they occupied by the time the first whites began to show up on the plains.A little different orientation to the whole idea of epic,and/or survival; to these young men,it wasn't wilderness in the same sense that it was to the mountain men;it was just a bigger look around at what was already, home.

[catbirdseat]

Nice post, MtGuide.