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Best Trundle?


ScottP

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My best, and first trundle occurred during the first summit I climbed when I was an adolescent. After a morning of fishing, my curiosity led me to scramble to the summit of The Watchtower in Sequoia National Park. On the way back down, I came across a saucer of granite the size of an end table perched on a slab above a drop. At first I thought it looked cool, sitting there all by itself like that. When I touched it, it rocked a little, so I gave it a little shove. I can still hear the grating noise it made as it slid toward the edge of the drop. I scrambled after it so as to see it fall. It dropped about thirty feet before hitting the wall, where it then bounded out into space, flipping like a coin and making a weird whirring sound, before hitting again near the base wall and shattering into hundreds of pieces. The sound echoed off the walls of the canyon and drown out the river far below. strange smell of ozone hung in the warm, summer air. I watched the dust settle for a considerable time after, dazed by a ferocity I had never witnessed before. I was hooked. I must have sent another dozen chunks of Sierra granite on the inevitable erosive journey before I hit the talus field that had been my approach to the ridgeline that led to the summit.

 

A close second was in Boulder Basin on Glacier Peak and was quite by accident: My friend Brian had been trundling in the basin (and pissing off the other climbers camped therein). I walked over to tell him he was bugging the other parties camped there. (He said something to the effect of "Big Whoop.")

As I watched him working on another launch, I leaned against a boulder the size of a VW Bug. It immediately started to roll and didn't stop until long after it hit the trees. I thought Brian was going to pee his pants he laughed so hard. We went back to our bivy and broke out the Stoly to salute the occasion.

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Up in the Cedar Ponds area between Sultan and Duvall there is a nice big cliff that was popular for kids to steal cars, drive up there, hammer down and jump out at the last second to see who could trundle the cars the farthest. There must be 200+ cars in that heap dating back to the 60's. It's pretty fun to trundle rocks onto the cars now although I wouldn't mind shoving a car off of it if there were any volunteers. [Roll Eyes]

 

Who says country folk don't know how to party?

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we were climbing on the NW face of Slesse (not on route but more towards the West rib), when I pulled on a big flake of rock (7ft tall, foot wide, 6" deep). It rocked, and then I rocketed it seeing as no one else was on the mountain. Down the face it went which started a literal avalanche of debris down the gullies. I think it got a good 100 ft. of air before it hit. sweet!

 

[ 07-17-2002, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: dbb ]

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Never saw it but,

 

100 foot high columns at vantage knocked over with construction jacks. It would be pretty cool to see and hear.

 

Of course this is before most of the sorry ass routes were established there -sorry I couldn't resist.

 

[big Drink]

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My trundleing career ended at Eagle Rock in Tahoe. Sent a monster loose then watched 3 people come around the corner below. Felt about 2 inches tall after that.This was not a popular place at all! David Parker accidently sent a boulder of the top of Goode last mont, It cleared off the whole face as it picked up incredible amounts of stuff on the way down. It was tremendous.

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Best trundles by me and partner-

 

Last September on Toketie Wall* I lead the 2nd to last grunge and knocked loose a 50 lber that sung down the wall which was only a prelude to Cappellini careening a monster down almost to the lake. Sparks and white dusty shit etc all the way down! [big Drink][big Drink]

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As a member of the Sensitive Climbers Against Trundling (SCAT) I am appalled at your behaviors. It is one thing to accidentally knock off rocks and boulders but quite a different matter to intentionally knock off xenoliths which have been perched on the abyss for millenia. Who are you to decide when a rock is to fall? Are you God? The next thing you know we will be trying to create kids in a test tube. Personnally I find a monolith sitting on the edge of the nothingness one of nature's most beautiful phenomenons. Thanks to our members dollars we are educating students across the country about the destruction, dangers, and stupidity of the insiduous act of trundling. I can see from the posts here we have a long way to go. So remember to hug a rock and not shove it.

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quote:

Originally posted by texplorer:

Are you God?

No, no, think of it as being an agent of entropy, just doing your little bit to hasten the heat death of the universe. That rock really wants to achieve a lower energy state, and you're just lending a helping hand.

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On top of Scuzzy... 2000' face studded with loose rock... I swet up a belay and kept Doug on tension while he levered with an ice axe below a 5'x6'x5' boulder... man when it took off it bounced like 200' out from the cliff and destroyed trees at the base and set off a rock avalanche... dust clouds everywhere... sparks flying...

 

TAKE THAT MOSQUITO BASTARDS!!!

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When I was a kid friends would scramble up hills in the Ca foothills with a car jack to give those big boulders an extra heft. Some of them were really big and would go bonding quite a ways. I think the cops were looking for them for quite a while.

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Walking around the base of elcap one spring day my buddy said stop! do you hear something? It took about a half a second to realize what it was so we made a V line to the trees and cowered behind the bigest boulders we could find. When it hit there where big rock and ice chunks flying over our heads. Never saw how big it was but we both trundled our pants.

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Dru's post reminded me of a funny Midnight Rock trundle story I heard about quite a few years ago. The story is second hand and thus may be inaccurate ... but here it goes. The characters involved are responsible for developing the crag in the late 70's-early 80's. There was a huge block wedged close to the edge which apparently resisted this group's (3-4 people) best attempts. As is often the case, the difficulty was shoving the darn thing without pitching oneself over the edge. Upon which they decided to tie into the end of a rope (the lot of them) to finally get their jollies. The boulder eventually went (where did it stop I don't know, but one can imagine), and so did they! I am not sure whether they were able to extract themselves on their own or help was needed but the thought of 3-4 hard Washington boys dangling in a bunch at the end of a stretched rope must have been quite a sight. Definitely, the best trundle story I ever heard.

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quote:

Originally posted by MATT B:

Walking around the base of elcap one spring day my buddy said stop! do you hear something? It took about a half a second to realize what it was so we made a V line to the trees and cowered behind the bigest boulders we could find. When it hit there where big rock and ice chunks flying over our heads. Never saw how big it was but we both trundled our pants.

As your story indicates, it has been my experience that the base of El Cap is not the place to be walking around. I've observed big rocks, ice and haul bags taking the plunge while lounging the Meadows and had rocks and biners fall in the immediate vicinity while climbing at the base.

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Trundling is fine if you're off in who knows where, but I was pretty upset to learn that some drunken fools trundled an entire pillar at Vantage. That's not the sort of thing that should be going on at a popular cragging area with a lot of good routes. I dare those people to try pushing something over at Smith. [Wazzup]

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