Sufferfest

[AllYouCanEat]

What is your worst moment in climbing, skiing, kayaking, hiking etc (well, it doesn't have to be the worst. At least the best story)? The where doesn't matter but the situation does. For instance, we are 17 miles off track in the pouring rain with no shoes. Instead our ski boots are eating up the pavement. It was half an hour from dark and we didn't know where our car was.

 

What happened?

 

A car eventually passed by and we begged for a ride.

[specialed]

Ten miles away from basecamp on some spur of the Kahiltna in a blinding whiteout and my ski pops off and goes sliding into a crevasse.

[bonathanjarrett]

I was changing in the parking lot of Timberline after climbing; it was stinking hot down low, so I was going to take the long underwear off and slip on some shorts (the kind with the bathing suit lining). There didn't seem to be anyone around, so I dropped trou and was about to jump into the shorts when a tour bus rolled up right next to me. My toe snagged in the lining of the shorts, a mass of Japanese tourists with cameras got off the bus expecting to shoot pictures of Hood, but all they saw was my bare ass. Flustered, I tripped and face planted in the parking lot with nothing on but shorts still tangled around my feet. Of course they started taking pictures. Somewhere in Japan my retarded, naked ass is in someone's vacation photo album.

[specialed]

I like it when European chicks undress in the parking lot in front of everyone.

[glassgowkiss]

taking first shit after 4 days of constapation.

[Ponzini]

In Mick Fowler's article in the 2003 AAJ, he mentions that his climbing partner went 16 days without taking a shit....

[Thadsboner]

when i felt my tib-fib slide up the backside of my femur when i cleared the landing and cased it skiing in 2000'

[ScottP]

Red Rocks.

Spent the night in the Solar Slab Gully 2 days after the winter solstice wearing daytrip clothes after rap ropes got stuck in the dark on an overhanging rappel.

I have never been so cold in my fucking life. I think the heat from a pitiful pile of sticks and grass I manged to scrounge from the bottom of our bivy hole saved my ass, otherwise I was ready to solo the descent in the dark, leaving my snoring partner to deal with it all by himself.

[catbirdseat]

North Ridge of Baker as a one day climb. I didn't wear enough clothing and didn't hydrate enough. On the hike down the Coleman it was hot and we postholed all the way down. I was exhausted and staggering. My partner kepts saying, "just follow the pretty blue rope". Every once and a while, he'd set one of those yellow marshmallow peanut things in the snow for me to pick up as I went by. It was, part sustenance, part bribe. Those things were a life-saver.

[chirp]

Old story but its always quality and I think falls under some variant of "suffering". I will make it brief:

 

July 1991;

 

Five days after I get married, my wife and I finally decide on a camping trip to Melakwa Lake with some peak scrambling.

We choose a 4th class route on the west(ish) face of chair peak. After getting 300 feet up, we decide this is NOT the best place to spend a honeymoon and down climb to the snowline.

Toni and I unrope and begin the 100' steep snow descent to the talus.

The sun has come onto the snow making a nice slushy bit over the hard stuff...I slip and arrest. Toni slips and

fumbles the arrest, losing her axe and whipping toward the talus. She hits the talus and begins endoing for 300' and comes to a stop towards the bottom. I proceed to RUN down the talus and upon getting closer to her I notice big splotches of blood on the rocks.

I find her sitting upright, looking off into the valley. I proceed with an assesment of her condition, conscious and aware of who I am but not what happened.

I carefully place her scalp back on her head and put a snug hat with several bandannas on to

quell the bleeding. She took the bulk of the fall damage on her face and head but is miraculously aware and alive.

We walk back to camp where a vet and a nurse happen to have witnessed the whole thing. We get her stabilised and someone runs for help...we wait for her to "relax" a bit, then I empty my pack and slip her inside with her legs coming out the sleeping bag compartment.

The vet and I take turns carrying her...periodically bending over enough when she needs to puke (All we had eaten that day were chocolate powerbars)

At last we meet a party with a litter and MAST comes in and whisks her off to Harborview.

 

It was a long day. After a little plastic surgery she is 90% recovered to this day

 

Needless to say, we love to show off our Honeymoon Photos.

[layton]

Belaying IVAN directly off my harness from above. My kidneys have permanent dents in them

[cluck]

September 2003 we did the Tatoosh Traverse round trip in a day from Longmire. After 19 hours, we had bagged 11 peaks and stumbled down the talus slopes below Unicorn Glacier and out to the Snow Lake trailhead. Exhausted, my partner drags out his backpack rain-cover (emergency bivy equipment) and collapses into a quivering ball in the parking lot while I retrieve our stashed mountain bikes and prepare for the ride back to Longmire.

 

We sat in that parking lot under the moonlight in stalemate for nearly an hour before I was finally able to coax my partner out from underneath his "bivy cape" with some Red Bull that we'd stashed earlier with our bikes. It provided just enough energy for us to pedal slowly back to Longmire and much deserved warm beer and day old Subway.

[ivan]

Belaying IVAN directly off my harness from above. My kidneys have permanent dents in them

in a similiar vein, belaying joshk with the rope running over my leg when he decides to go over to simply jugging the line - incapable of getting the line off my leg nearly my entire lower body goes to sleep - months later i can still barely feel my pee-pee

[dberdinka]

I got my start climbing with the Olympia Mounties back in the day. I was a 16 year old who probably weighed a 135 lbs.

 

The mounties attract all varieties of people (you've seen the photos ) some of which are packing on a fair number of extra LBs. There was a woman in the class who was LARGE, I guess you gotta give her credit though.

 

Regardless our rock climbing class took place at the choss-errific Cushman Crags in a light but steady drissel. Near the end of the day I found myself belaying this woman using a HIP belay on some dank wet 4th class chimney. Should could not climb it, she will never climb it, it just wasn't going to happen. But for a solid hour she tried and tried and tried doing a fine job of hanging, sliding and falling as I held her on a hip belay with that rope slowly rubbing the sking of my waist. It still hurts.

[Squid]

I carefully place [my wife's] scalp back on her head

 

Christ.

 

pretty much puts any of my 'epics' in perspective.

[foraker]

Getting benighted near the top of Braille Book in Yos.

[Dechristo]

January, Wind River Range, Titcomb Lakes Basin, twenty-five miles from the car. Temps hovering around zero Fahrenheit (daytime), winds 25 to 45 mph, zero visibility during gusts (which is most of the time), water bottle stashed inside all but first layer of clothes, skiing out after five days in backcountry for solo ascent of Gannett Peak.

 

Nothing but white everywhere; the ground and air the same to sight, only gravity communicating to my feet the difference.

 

In the blind ski out, I happened to ski directly over the outlet of the high alpine lake; through the thin crust of snow and ice I descend as the black liquid ice envelopes my skiis, feet, legs...

My mind told me I must be hallucinating as liquid water seemed impossible in this arctic environment, let alone ice thin enough to collapse under skiis.

 

Not knowing how deep the water (I'd be totally fucked if I went in up to my chest) I gambled and threw my torso backward in the chance the ice behind me was thick enough to hold the impact... it held. I rolled, pulling my soaked legs from the water.

 

During the remaining twenty-three-plus-miles out, my frozen leather ski boots separated from their soles. Bivy a night. I duct taped the boots to the skiis, but the tape kept breaking during strenuous tele moves and subsequent head plants; I ran out of tape. Postholed/waded through the snow for the last five miles or so.

 

I was so wasted when I got out to the small ski resort (where I'd parked six days earlier) that I splurged on a room at the resort. After gourging on some pie from the cafeteria, my next luxury was to be a long hot shower. Back in the room, I pulled off the battered boots, mangled socks, and stripped to long underwear. Walking across the tile floor of the bathroom to start the hot water in the shower I noticed a strange deadened "clicking" sound and stopped walking. I moved some more, the sound resumed: I discovered most of my toes were frozen solid.

 

I took the shower, but I never enjoyed the luxury of the bed. I spent the LONG night on the carpeted floor in a delirious stupor of exhaustion, rocking in fetal position while grasping with my hands my toes; which, irregardless of reality, screamed at me of being squeezed in a red-hot vise.

 

Days later, a doctor informed me he was scheduling me at a hospital to have six toes, including my two big toes, removed. I refused.

 

But, that is the start of another sufferfest story involving scalpels without anesthesia.

 

 

 

[Dru]

the other day i went into the squamish starbucks and they were all out of maple nut scones. the horror!

[specialed]

Dude, you think that's bad, I was car camping at Grasslands once and went to cook breakfast, and I was all out of bacon!!

[dkemp]

At the risk of repeating myself...

 

We're crossing the McKinley River on our way to climb Mt Brooks. The riverbed under my feet gives way and suddenly three of us are swimming in the torrent. We clambored up onto a sandbank - beat up, coughing, cold and scared. The relief of immediate survival is followed by the discouraging sight of my backpack floating downriver, around a bend, and out of sight...

[Dru]

I nearly went 5 days without posting on cc.com too. Fucking epic, let me tell you.

[chucK]

Here's my scariest moment in the hills: link

 

Not much compared to some of the other "hightlights" in this thread though.

[griz]

Our group was recouping in Huaraz after a couple weeks out climbing and we were playing russian roulette with some tasty local pizza...and we lost.

 

All five of us spent the next three days stapled to toilets unable to puke without blowing shit or shit w/o blowing puke. The best technique was ass on toilet and puke bucket in front between the feet.

 

Upon entering the room of one still sick buddy one of us said that the shit/puke molecules in the air easily out numbered the o2 molecules in there 10 to 1....

 

[Cobra_Commander]

that is when you cut your losses and sleep in the shower

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

the other day i went into the squamish starbucks and they were all out of maple nut scones. the horror!

 

Try the pumpkin. Frosting's delicious!