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Worst Newbie Climbs


Gripped

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We talked about the Best Climbs, what about the worst???

 

Anyone have stories about getting in over their heads in their first year or two of climbing??? How about taking a newbie out, and realizing they were in over thier head?

 

Coming over from lots of cragging at E38 and trying to lead Godzilla at index was a pretty horrible idea... blush.gif

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Happens all the time in Yosemite. Some selfish yob decides to take 2-3 of his buddies on a climb....typically a classic like Nutcracker, and bungs up the whole day for everyone else behind him by having to do all the leading and then hand-holding everyone else up.

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i think my 3rd lead ever was Cat Burglar at Index and my newbie belayer could not second the 2nd pitch in her running shoes resulting in me having to borrow a second climber from a nearby climbing party in order to get the gear out hahaha.gif which considering they actually owned half the rack I was using, is understandable.

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Had some excitement on Devil's Tower, taking forever to do the Durrance route, then getting the ropes stuck on the way down.

 

First time lead climbing on our own (without "mentor") on our honeymoon at Smith. Super slab, giant pack, one set of QD's a set of stoppers and 3 cams. Catch is, I was convinced that you couldn't fiddle around while climbing to place the piece, then clip in the draw, so insisted that we put all pieces on draws before climbing rolleyes.gifyellaf.gif, thus only 6 or 8 pieces. Well, we did the first two pitches, then luckily my wife convinced me it was stupid to keep going to we bailed and didn't die.

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Do you have a liberty ridge story/epic? I'd be interested in hearing it.

 

Hoo boy, do I have one from 1991! If you want, I could try to find the incident report we filed, or type it up with a word processer to get it just right.

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i think my 3rd lead ever was Cat Burglar at Index [...]

 

Cat Burglar at Index? confused.gif

 

well wha d'you know? They moved it!

yellaf.gif

 

Seriously - I have never climbed at Index. I have never been through Index when it wasn't raining. Ok maybe once at midnight driving home from L'worth yellaf.gif

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I took a newbie, big titty girlfriend up the Narrow Arrow via the 2nd pitch of Tatoosh. She got stuck and cussed a blue streak before I was able to haul her through the squeeze part. She was wearing a light blue shirt and the "front" of it ended up smudged in all the right places. I dared little more than glance at the obvious due to the foul look on her face. She ended up a damn good climber despite the experience.

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any thing at vantage..

there some bomber placements but when ur new to trad and u watch ur last 2 peices fall out and what was a 10-15 ft becomes like 30+ -posible deck u can almost smell the shit runing down ur leg, at the same time the crack ar very good to learn on if u climb way below ur level and watch what causes the cams to walk, and fall out, also good for learning jaming tech. btw long runners seem to solve the problem completely

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My first gear lead ever was at Tieton on Mushmaker. My climbing partner watched me thrutch my way up about half of the climb showering beads of sweat down on him before he causually reminded me to try and jam the thing as it is perfect fist size jams. I almost pooed my pants when it widened up on top. As he followed the climb almost all of the cams I had placed had walked to the point where they had nearly fallen out of the crack.

 

I go bouldering a lot now. grin.gif

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My first gear lead was some shit-encrusted chimney at Vantage. I placed all my gear in one-move intervals from the bottom, so naturally I was running it out when the crack got wide near the top. There was no anchor at the top and I didn't have any 12-inch cams to build one with, but (surprise!) someone had bolted the column to my left, so I traversed around the column, fighting huge rope drag, and reached for the bolts. I was gripped, but not as scared as my girlfriend, who cleaned the pitch and faced a big scraping pendulum around the column. This was also my first time belaying up a second, so I was concentrating so much on dealing with my belay clusterfuckage that it didn't even occur to me to take my shoes off at the hanging belay. My feet were still numb when I finally got to the ground. Oh, and it was getting dark. ooo.gifhellno3d.gifyellaf.gif

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My nomination for worst newbie ice climb:

 

I was taken to Ames Falls (Colorado, WI4-5) on my first day of ice climbing. You lower into a deep canyon, from which the only way out is to climb up the falls. The falls are 100' high and rather steep. There was rushing water off to the left, which is exactly where you would pendulum (and be stuck in a gap between the canyon wall and the ice) if you fell. Communication with the belayer top-side was impossible. After flailing for an hour, I ended up with a broken front tooth and hypothermia, and was eventually hauled up on a Z-pulley. pitty.gif It was a while before I went ice climbing again.

Edited by Stephen_Ramsey
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