Looking for amazing stories

[Fred]

Hey there.

 

I’ve just created something called “Dose of Inspiration”. It’s going to be a DVD sent out every month of inspiring stories and documentaries. It’s not religious, just some great thoughts to make you think a little bit about life, overcoming the impossible, conquering your fears, love, truth, and seemingly small things that can come along and change your life. I’m having people use their personal video cameras to videotape themselves telling their stories, and send them in. If I end up using it, I’ll compensate you.

 

I personally feel that people would love to hear stories from your perspectives of being on the face of that rock, and what it feels like to do an insane climb that you never thought you could do. Have you overcome anything to get to where you are today? Any free climbing stories? Any injuries that you came back from? Is there someone who motivated you to go farther than you thought was humanly possible?

 

Please visit the website I set up for submissions for more information:

 

www.doseofinspiration.com

 

Thanks!

[G-spotter]

COCK SOUP FOR THE CLIMBER'S UNCAGED SOUL!!!

 

[Dechristo]

Let's have "an amazing story" told in boulderer-speak.

[G-spotter]

I am waiting for the Mike Layton feces story submission.

[Dechristo]

excretion

[DirtyHarry]

I overcame my addiction to midget porn by spraying on cc.com

[dan_forester]

c'mon, let's hear some free climbing stories!

[G-spotter]

I overcame my addiction to midget porn by spraying on cc.com

 

So that's why RuMR is unemployed now?!

[DirtyHarry]

Nope. He's unemployed primarily because barn animal porn is illegal now.

[RuMR]

baaaaah baaaaah baaaaah...

 

dammit...doesn't work...

[layton]

i can't find my feces climbing story???

[G-spotter]

Just Google "Michael_Layton feces"

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showthreaded.php?Number=451145&page=

[layton]

ok sweet, i'll submit it right now!

[layton]

fucking bullshit!

[chris_stolz]

OK. Here's one from the campfire.

 

Back in the day, in the Valley, if somebody died on a route, they would unofficially close the route for a year.

 

So this guy dies by decking onto a ledge and a year later, Yvon Chouinard and [insert name] go up to get the body/skeleton/whatever. It is Chouinard's lead and he works his way up to the huge ledge on which the body is supposedly laying. Chouinard pulls the mantle, disappears, and the rope stops moving. There is silence for many minutes.

 

Finally, "F**k!" comes Chouinard's voice.

 

"What's up?" yells the belayer.

 

"His jacket's a size too small!"

[jordop]

That also works for Euro climbers on the Matterhorn/Eiger/whatever:

 

"Oh SHEET mahn!"

"Vat is it"

"Dehrs a dead bodee up hehr"

 

*a few moments pass*

 

"Oh SHEET man"

"Vat is it now?"

"His boots don't fit!"

[layton]

.....so I was fucking TWO chicks at the SAME TIME

[G-spotter]

Did their boots fit?

[layton]

....so I end up choking one of the bitches to death. Luckily the other one was so strung out on blow that she didn't even realize what was happening. He face was all caked in blood and coke and she was braying like a mule.

It took several blows to her head to finally silence her. I just wanted her to SHUT UP. Doing her from behind I was shouting "DON'T LOOK AT ME! DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME"

Anyways, thank god I was in Squamish, cuz there was plenty of clear plastic tarp and bags of Lime laying around. And then I free soloed Diedre caked in blood and lime and found jesus christ, our lord and savior

AMEN!

[mountainmatt]

Shouldn't that be posted in the TR forums?

[DirtyHarry]

....so I end up choking one of the bitches to death. Luckily the other one was so strung out on blow that she didn't even realize what was happening. He face was all caked in blood and coke and she was braying like a mule.

It took several blows to her head to finally silence her. I just wanted her to SHUT UP. Doing her from behind I was shouting "DON'T LOOK AT ME! DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME"

Anyways, thank god I was in Squamish, cuz there was plenty of clear plastic tarp and bags of Lime laying around. And then I free soloed Diedre caked in blood and lime and found jesus christ, our lord and savior

AMEN!

 

I fucking HATE it when they just die on you like that. Lame! Glad you got some climbing in anyway though!

[billcoe]

 

"Oh SHEET mahn!"

"Vat is it"

"Dehrs a dead bodee up hehr"

 

*a few moments pass*

 

"Oh SHEET man"

"Vat is it now?"

"His boots don't fit!"

 

Damm- that almost worded for word happened to me. Size 12 fires didn't fit my size 8.5 feet but I put em on so I could climb above and lower them to the ground anyway.

 

The Chouinard story was origonally told by Steve Roper, I think the route might have been Lost Arrow Chimney.

 

Great stuff, keep it coming, the dude needs some inspiration and I don't know if Laytons stuff, abiet good quality, will quite get him over the hump.

[ScottP]

OK. Here's one from the campfire.

 

Back in the day, in the Valley, if somebody died on a route, they would unofficially close the route for a year.

 

So this guy dies by decking onto a ledge and a year later, Yvon Chouinard and [insert name] go up to get the body/skeleton/whatever. It is Chouinard's lead and he works his way up to the huge ledge on which the body is supposedly laying. Chouinard pulls the mantle, disappears, and the rope stops moving. There is silence for many minutes.

 

Finally, "F**k!" comes Chouinard's voice.

 

"What's up?" yells the belayer.

 

"His jacket's a size too small!"

 

"The death of Irving Smith, on March 19, began an unfortunate trend: he was the first of fifty-five rockclimbers to die in the Valley during the next thirty years (all but four of these occurred after 1970, the end of the Golden Age). Smith, a blond, crew-cut high school junior from Fresno, had been climbing with enthusiasm for a year and wanted to be the youngest person to stand atop the Lost Arrow Spire. 'How old were you when you did it?' he asked me one night in the coffee shop at Yosemite Lodge, two months before his death. After I replied 'eighteen,' he grinned shyly and confided that he would soon---at age seventeen---be attempting the spire with a group of Fresno climbers. I raved about the route and predicted he'd have no trouble whatsoever.

 

"Ironically, he never even set foot on the actual spire: he was killed on the 'approach.' A pair of long and frightfully exposed rappels must be made to reach the airy notch separating the Arrow from the main cliff. Smith, first down the second rappel, never got to call 'Off rappel!' No one saw what happened; a brief howl echoing from the depths marked his last moment. He may have rappelled off the end of the rope; perhaps the rope knocked a loose rock down on him. More likely, however, is that he had reached the notch and was making the transition from rappel to the shattered granite gap when he lost his balance or grabbed a loose rock. He plunged into what I regard as one of the most sinister places in the Valley: the Arrow chimney. This slot, prehistorically dark and damp, is a place to avoid. Certainly it is not a good place to die. Smith ricocheted down this dreadful crack for 500 feet, lifeless long before he smashed onto a chockstone ledge.

 

"The body, first spotted by Smith's friend George Sessions a few hours later, was thought to lie in an 'inaccessible' spot by the rangers; they and the lad's father opted to leave the corpse where it lay. To justify his postition, the father told reporters the standard cliche: 'This is the way Irving would have wanted it.' What else could a grieving dad believe? Warren Harding, uneasy with the decision, immediately volunteered to rappel and recover the remains. The rangers declined his offer and placed the Arrow Chimney off limts to climbers for a year. Chouinard and I were first up the Arrow Chimney after the death, and I was in the lead when I came upon the desiccated remains. To break the tension, I yelled down to Chouinard, 'Goddamn it! His parka doesn't fit me!' The body had quickly decomposed and within a few years would be washed down the chimney by winter storms.

 

"We immortal ones shrugged off Smith's death. 'The guy couldn't even rappel right, for God's sake,' I remember saying glibly. We thought accidental death could be avoided by sound methods: if you checked knots, checked anchors, checked each other---then all would be well. Only incompetents died. It could never happen to us."

 

Steve Roper, excerpted from Camp 4--Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber, pp. 110-111.