RuMR Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 three decades later...great read if you've been following this at all... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivan Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougd Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 A sincere act of contrition. A beautiful thing. d Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Off_White Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 I dunno, pooping on someone's ropes is rude, but its hardly the worst offense someone can commit climbing. I knew a guy who dropped the belay rope while the leader was 80' off the deck on Stoners Highway (Middle Cathedral in Yose) and ran away because of some rock fall. Way way worse than water soluble poo. Not assisting another climber in distress at high altitude because you want the summit? Orders of magnitude worse than fecal insults. Both of those WOS guys have had children, I'll wager they've had to deal with a lot more human waste since those days on El Cap. Other people's poop is just titillatingly icky, grade school humor, but we're all far more familiar with it than we'd admit. Wings of Steel is still a stupid route put up by a couple of yahoos who'd never climbed El Cap, taking an insane number of days to put up a 9 pitch variation. While the second ascent made it clear they didn't drill nearly as many holes as they were accused of, they still drilled far more than they claimed. Not only that, they put out an overblown book about their travails, total drama queens. Yes, they were very poorly treated and didn't deserve that, and the Valley has always had a cliquish in-crowd, but those two boys are really lucky they didn't take up surfing; they'd have suffered some real physical harm with never a whisper of hope for an apology. Thumbs up to Steve Schneider for his apology, but he's a bit of a drama queen himself, and has certainly spun it well enough to up his cred. The tearful apology still smells of shameless self promotion, but folks sure are lining up to congratulate him on how brave he is. It's as if Reality Television is now defining reality, action doesn't matter if its unwitnessed and not sprayed to the world. Will I get points if I call up the Del Mar Safeway to apologize for shoplifting a roll of slice & bake chocolate chip cookie dough (kind of like poo) back in 1972? Will I get more points if I get Good Morning America to film me doing it? The WOS guys set out to try and revise their reputations for posterity, recasting themselves as the hardest aid climbers ever for a vastly expanded climbing population who wasn't around back in the day. They seem to have achieved their goal, but I still see them as a couple of whiners who failed to get over sleights from their youth. Whatever, it all still amounts to exactly what it did before the retro-polishing of history, a hill of beans. Guess I'm getting all curmudgeonly in my dotage. Bah, humbug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julian Posted December 11, 2011 Share Posted December 11, 2011 Didn't Steve Schneider also get into a fist-fight with Bean Bowers in El Chalten over bolt-chopping on Cerro Torre? Or is that a different Steve Schneider? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Choada_Boy Posted December 12, 2011 Share Posted December 12, 2011 Now he can die in peace? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivan Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Now he can die in peace? w/o feeling like the good lord gypped'em? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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