First Ascents

[wayne]

Maybe this should move to Author Request Forum?

I am writing a page on first ascents and the allure they can hold. There are many fascinating aspects that beg to be covered from logistics to psychology.

If there is some serious opinions or insights on the matter. Please share them here. We all could learn much from it.

 

What are some of the core motivations?

What role does fear play, if any?

Risk factors, how do you minimize them?

Scenario play-outs.

What is learned from attempts

Competition

Ego

Adventure

Gear geekery

I am hoping to stick to mountaineering on this topic, but am looking forward to all discourse (except bolts...)

 

Looks like it could be a fun project..... Just please dont allow this idea to be blogged/copied before It is finished?

Thanks, Wayne

[ivan]

fa's = something to do between black outs

[Jens]

Good thread Wayne. We are lucky to live in a place with lots of remote terrain.

---------------

for my rant....

 

Eliminate the winter "F.A." classification in Washington. We've had WAY to many of them poached with some of the pitches with bare hands and rock shoes or uncramponed boots during abnormal years..... claiming "FWA"- and sometimes even chalkbags. We have some really warm pineapple express weeks in winter.

[JosephH]

So if by 'mountaineering' you mean alpine and alpine rock then I'd pass. If you're including rock climbing then I'd be willing to contribute something.

[wayne]

Go ahead Joe!

[RokIzGud]

Because someones going to climb it eventually, why not be the one to name it.

[Bug]

For me it was the adventure.

Not to get an adrenaline rush or anything like that.

At least not after I cratered when I was 19.

It was just fun to see what I would find.

In the B'root we didn't document anything outside of Blodgett, Kootenei, Mill, and White Horse. We just told others about it in case they wanted to branch out.

The cool thing about that IMO, is that anyone could go back and do the first ascents all over again.

 

 

[Le Piston]

For me it was totally unplanned. I was in Canada trying a new route on Rostrum Peak which my partner wanted to try. We had to bail short of the summit, so he suggested two "consolation" peaks nearby...which I only found were first ascents when he told me on the summit. My partner was a professional guide in Canada, so I figured he knew. I'm no high level alpinist, so it was pretty cool for someone like me. I'm with Jens...we are lucky to have some unexplored and unclimbed areas so close. I figure most people try first ascents for the joy of climbing and exploring.

[Dane]

For me..alpine or hard rock it was always about "the line".

 

It is kinda like painting a picture. The unclimbed stuff is a blank canvas with no reference to human beings until it is climbed. Once climbed you've added your own brush strokes, your own picture to the landscape.

 

But I have to imagine "the line" being there first, then imagine myself being able to climb it, let alone being the first to climb it (which generally takes a huge ego imo) and then actually pulling it off.

 

There are lots of FAs to do but few of them are "lines" that really inspire me to put in the effort. Once found those kinds of FAs might inspire or nag me, depending on the day, for years.

What really does amaze me is that we still have lines like that to climb. Stuff I looked at 30 years ago and would still like to do, are still unclimbed. Never thought it would be possible.

 

I also view second ascents in a similar manner. You are tracing another climber's art and reaping some rewards from his intitial thought process and action. Just knowing one party went before you eases so many doubts. I view 1st ascents, mine or someone else's, unfinished and incomplete until repeated at least once...silly I know but just the way I look at it. The 2nd ascent is what really connects the climb/the line to the community. The first ascent only a fleeting vision of what is possible, the unframed picture. The 2nd ascent frames the art and shows it as a completed piece.

 

One of the things I really look forward to even now is a 2nd ascent of a line I did. I always want to ask, "Was it hard?" "Was it fun?" "Is it worth doing again?" The answers to those questions are hopefully a mirror of your own experience and in some small way validation to your original effort. However you look at it I find the 2nd important as well and part of the FA experience for me. Enough that I have done several 2nds of my own lines. Not the best feedback for sure but better than nothing.

 

Another thought that occurs to me. Be it a 6000' alpine FA or a 40' rock route each has its own passion. I've spend as much time, energy and thought doing either size route. And both required at least the same level of committment if not the shorter one requiring more. Funny that, thinking back on it.

 

 

[G-spotter]

First ascents are bullshit next to virgin cave passage. You can see where you're going and everything.

 

Maybe if Erik Weyenmaher was doing some nonsight ground up FAs the difficulty would be comparable.

[G-spotter]

On the other hand in caves they still go in siege style with fixed ropes and stuff.

[Mtguide]

I think it was either Ricardo Cassin or Walter Bonatti who said that the aesthetic ideal of the "line" would be the route that a drop of water would take if it could fall from the summit to the ground unobstructed. And the actual route being as close to that as possible. It was this idea that inspired Harlin's Eiger Direct, for example.

Edited December 23, 2009 by Mtguide

[j_b]

It was Emilio Comici's saying about letting fall a drop of water from the summit.

 

I am with Bug on this: FAing is mostly about adventure and discovery, which implies that on-sighting makes the experience even fuller (IMO of course). It is the form of climbing that embodies best moving freely as the spirit moves you up the mountain. As already noted, a similar sensation can be had by later ascensionists if they choose to leave the guidebook at home.

[montypiton]

j b is correct - Comici coined the falling drop of water saying. It is sometimes mis-attributed to Cassin because Comici was one of Cassin's mentors. I sometimes report (claim) FAs, but not often anymore. The feeling of being on an undocumented line is indescribable, and I have taken to not reporting my ascents of "undocumented" lines, because I wish to leave that same experience to subsequent teams... I share reports with close friends whom I think might enjoy a particular climb, and given the traffic in the Cascades these days, I prefer not to claim that any climb is a "first ascent" - I consider it more accurrate to report the climb as being a previously undocumented one.

 

-Curt

[AJScott]

"The feeling of being on an undocumented line is indescribable, and I have taken to not reporting my ascents of "undocumented" lines, because I wish to leave that same experience to subsequent teams... I share reports with close friends whom I think might enjoy a particular climb, and given the traffic in the Cascades these days, I prefer not to claim that any climb is a "first ascent" - I consider it more accurrate to report the climb as being a previously undocumented one."

 

 

Edited December 24, 2009 by AJScott

[Mtguide]

Right you are, it was indeed Comici. And what a great idea, not to report the ascent of an undocumented line. That is in the true spirit

of the wilderness, and of alpinism. That's a spirit as large and open as the mountains themselves.

[leearden]

a great idea, not to report the ascent of an undocumented line. That is in the true spirit of the wilderness, and of alpinism. That's a spirit as large and open as the mountains themselves.

 

I agree completely, but some First Known Ascents may be too valuable to our peers to keep secret, even if the reporting does dilute the experience for future ascentionists.

 

Indeed, for me you touch at the real magic of adventure climbing, moving up despite the uncertainty of a passage above. This uncertainty of success (and the horrifying prospect of an irreversible impasse) is what makes each person's first ascent (percieved or literal first ascent, it doesn't matter) a trial and a true test.

 

to example: my first multi-pitch climb up was straightforward and laughably within my physical capabilities, but without the mental crutch of a copy of the routo topo and descent description this same route would have been a far more serious outing.

 

 

i'll say it again...

 

 

TICK MARKS KILL ... (brain cells)

 

 

[Dane]

That is in the true spirit of the wilderness, and of alpinism.

 

Might be the spirit of the wilderness. Never been the spirit of Alpinism. The greatest climbs are the human stories of those that have gone before us.

 

Imagine no records of the Eiger ascents or on the Grand Jorasses?

[wayne]

You guys are delivering. To keep the stoke flowing..... this may be one of many unclimbed Cascade walls waiting for a FKA!!

 

And yes , it is big and steep!

Edited December 25, 2009 by wayne1112

[JasonG]

Not the NF of little J'berg? If so, the late, great Roger Jung soloed it a few years back. His quote in the summit register- "No route description, no rope, no problem". He didn't give it a grade and I'm sure never reported it . . .

[Alpinsanity]

Climbing an unsavory choss pile just because it's never been done, has absolutely no appeal imo. I fully agree with Dane on the first and most important part of a climb being "the line". It should be aesthetic, draw you in for some unknown reason, and then if you're lucky enough to send it, and it's never been climbed before, it's just a huge bonus.

[layton]

With an FA, you don't know it's in the bag till you're back at the car. You've created something real that's ultimately intangible.

 

 

[pope]

For me it's always been about the free drinks and loose women.

[genepires]

for me it's always (and I mean always) a good friend whom I trust, who convinces me it is a good idea. Then I get really scared, tired, beat up but in the end, it is always worth it. I probably wouldn't seek it out on my own though.

 

btw Wayne, what is that burly mountain? DOn't worry I won't scoop it unless Darrin talks me into it.

[Dannible]

Get rich or die tryin.