billcoe Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 (edited) Post em up! I will eventually get some once I recover my camera and all my wide cams and big Bros. Everyone I was with seems to not think they have the crap. I triple checked my bag and it wasn't there (borrowed from Graham) but maybe it got left behind in the woods. You'd think it would be pretty hard to loose a #9 and #12 Valley Giant, but there ya go. Sh*t, just remembered where they are. Left them all at the cliff, just laying on the ground. An entire rack of wyde stuff: #4's up to through #12 Valley giant, 2 big bros, with the camera attached to the rack. ha ha! Glad it wasn't left at Smith or someplace popular:-) Probably over a grand of crap. Edited September 15, 2008 by billcoe Quote
billcoe Posted September 15, 2008 Author Posted September 15, 2008 Don't know the route but that's a good lookin kid Rudy! My boy is leaving for college next week, both of us are gonna miss him big time, he's so damn much fun to hang out with. Quote
fenderfour Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 3rd pitch Heart of The Country above GM at Index. Big Science area. Quote
RuMR Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 Don't know the route but that's a good lookin kid Rudy! My boy is leaving for college next week, both of us are gonna miss him big time, he's so damn much fun to hang out with. Damn bill...i get all sad when i think about my kids leaving...i hope they will want to hang with the grumpy old bastard up until they leave for college or other places...i'm scared they won't want anything to do with me when they are teens... Quote
RuMR Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 3rd pitch Heart of The Country above GM at Index. Big Science area. no local guessing allowed... Quote
kevino Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 your kids make me feel like less of a climber. Quote
ivan Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 i'm looking forward to climbing w/ my kids, but i think i'll likely have to wack the wife out on thorazine in order to keep her out of the way of the door Quote
kevbone Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 i'm scared they won't want anything to do with me when they are teens... Maybe you should lay off the beatings? Just saying..... Quote
RuMR Posted September 15, 2008 Posted September 15, 2008 i will beat them worse if they ditch me...just sayin'... Quote
billcoe Posted September 16, 2008 Author Posted September 16, 2008 Damn bill...i get all sad when i think about my kids leaving...i hope they will want to hang with the grumpy old bastard up until they leave for college or other places...i'm scared they won't want anything to do with me when they are teens... Oh man, you guys will be super tight. My son and I still are. In fact it got even tighter as he aged. We play basketball, do family bike rides, hikes...all kinds of things. Kid was shaking my hand today telling my how much I'd done for him and how much he appreciated it. It started great when the lad was a lil pup and just kept getting better. I'm going to (as is my wife) really miss him. Jas and I just got in from a short hike to pick up my forgotten gear I left laying in the dirt in the woods and it was a bigtime subject of conversation. Quote
RuMR Posted September 16, 2008 Posted September 16, 2008 That's awesome, bill... on another note, i have to ask "How in the hell did you not notice the weight missing from your pack from offwidth gear and camera stuff not being there?? You tokin' at the office?????" Quote
billcoe Posted September 16, 2008 Author Posted September 16, 2008 No tokin Rudy:-) I wish I had an easy excuse. Its a long story, so settle in. Ujahn carried my rope in. I had all the gear and the bolt gun (the lil Dawg) and the hammer etc. After we finished the route Kyle took off to go do some real climbing. The temporary anchor for this route was a dead tree stump on top. I wanted to put in a bolted anchor for whomever does it next, but the anchors were stashed in a bucket on the other side of the wall. The start of the route is a bit of a steep affair, and I had to back off to get the bolts. A fall on the descent to get there, unroped, would be most likely be a bad thing, so I decided that I would ferry loads since I was unroped and all and had to do the trip more than once anyway due to the natural logistics. I needed all the bolting crap left at the base, so I grabbed the rack and eased on down traversing the cliff base to flat ground. Dropped the rack, went and grabbed the bolts. Coming back I just 3rd classed directly up to the route base, jugged and put in the anchor, grabbed all the loose gear which weighed a ton by itself (at this time Kyle is gone and Ujahn has jugged up another line far away) and decided I could just rap the 3rd class directly down instead of doing the unroped death traverse. As Ujahn wanted to use my rope to rap off so we could pull his, I beat cleats over there so he'd have it if he needed it. He had the pry bar up there and pulled off the biggest loose flakes I've ever seen anywhere pulled off of anything. Unbelievable or "pants filling" is the only way to describe the sound and fury of that event. In the excitement, and in the heat and exhaustion and joy of succeeding on a brand new route which I thought I would fail on, I'd completely forgotten the gear. In fact I'd dropped my back back on the trail and didn't have it with me either, and it was at a different location than the gear. At days end, he'd pulled his line that he'd left fixed out there for a month, and I was carrying mine out and trying to help him with the pry bar and extra gear (I decided to take out 10 bolts and hangers from the stash left there) etc etc, once we started out and we reached my pack I had to put the rope in which filled my pack right up. I'd also filled up all my water bottles from a spring right there. So with the bolts stuff and extra springwater which I freeze for drinking later I was packing big weight. Jasmine and went back last night to make an evening of it. She's been walking marathons and working out, so she took the opportunity to head out for a hike into the woods at dusk as a good thing and a grand adventure. It was fun, and she got to see where I've been hanging on occasion. Where I'd left the gear. Jasmine and the pups. The boy was sleeping over at some friends house and missed the action. Hank the dog blew biscuits in the car on the way in though, that was exciting. Quote
billcoe Posted September 16, 2008 Author Posted September 16, 2008 Wow, it took how many posts to see that? I missed it:-0 Quote
billcoe Posted September 16, 2008 Author Posted September 16, 2008 OK, now that the camera is back. Can't believe I just plopped all my gear onto the ground and went home forgetting it. But we retrieved it last night after work and now that I have the camera here's some pics Kyle Silverman took of Ujahn him and I doing the GFA of "Bride of Wyde". I call it Bride of Wyde because you don't actually get forced to do some of the classic wide moves like chickenwings: which is a good thing as the route leans to the right and would be sick hard. Lots of grunting is still called for, both Kyle and Ujahn had foot slips while following, which only gave me some small measure of satisfaction as they are both in so much better shape than I. The other thing I'm very happy for is that I swung by and borrowed Graham from Cilogears new prototype Big Wally backpack. I am so glad I didn't forget that as I really wouldn't need that kind of ass kicking. Here's the gear with Cilogear's pack to the right in my living room. I wasn't suppose to be doing this route this weekend anyway. My wife had decided to have a get together on Saturday to celebrate my son going away and told me Thursday I had to get home early to help out. We'd been planning on a real serious project for weeks which had to get scrapped for this deal instead. Of course I tried the usual whining and complaining but it fell on deaf ears. I was pretty good with this one after the fact though. That other stuff will stay there until I'm ready anyway. The pry bar got made by an old friend Keith Litchfield 30 years ago or so when I was doing concrete construction and it still get's used in rockclimbing. Keith lives in Ballard now, and surprisingly popped into my house the other day with his family after 6-7 years absence to say hi etc. The water bottle is a liter and a half sized, and the drill is the biggest cordless Bosch 36v to give you some idea of scale here. Here's the lid, still big but in fact better as Graham has improved on the original. Then I have to get my climbing shoes, ice axe and pistol still in the basement and are still yet to get loaded. I chose to leave the pistol in the car for the climb, I already had too much weight. Side note, this is a Wilson Combat Protector in stainless steel, oh baby, it's as smooth as butter on the trigger! Groups could be better, but I suspect it's the shooter, not the tool. Here it is in the basement with the lid open. We'd seen this last year. The wider, near body width line of the right. It's a real obvious line, but I didn't have gear then and didn't want to top rope it. Just getting to the top would have been a mini expedition any way. Over the winter I bought the gear I thought I'd need (and then some), Kyle was cracking up as he was pointing out that the #4 Big Bro, the only one which wasn't used on this route, still had a sale price tag on it: $76.00 Let me start by saying that I've always found offwidths and squeeze chimneys very distasteful. That 50 classics in Lovers Leap, Travelers Buttress, for instance, was downgraded 2 stars in my mind due to that squirming thing you have to do to send the route. Part of my issue is that early on I'd never owned any wide gear, #4 Friend being the largest cam of mine. Later I bought some Chouinard tube chocks. So I never really did any wide stuff. It's very physical and not graceful, and I don't like the movement necessary to get it. I've done up to 5.9 but it tended to be runout, which is another issue as well as it's then usually a scary proposition. I spent the winter accumulating the gear for this climb. It was not too long ago I realized I still hadn't sent, or even tried it yet and year was winding down! I fully expected to be falling on this route, but hidden holds and and odd side pull or hold inside the wide worked the magic and cruised it with the usual grunting. That’s why I over protected it. That and I'm a pussy. Got tired of carrying those heavy cams, so when I got to the wide I plugged them in anyway, and they were close to each other, although they were really not needed. Ujahn belaying, all pics by Kyle Silverman. At this point I realize I have a lot of weight on the rack I need to dump off my fat ass! Didn't have to pull any roots. Hey Drew, kneepads and shoes are aid....no tape, left it behind in the car on purpose:-) Didn't bring the chalkbag either, going all traditional. If there is a star of this show, it's the Cilogear pack. Graham only let me take it out for a shake down so that he could get some feedback and iron out the kinks. He had some things he was going to improve, one was that he didn't like the shoulder straps. We'll, my original Big Wally has damn awesome straps, so I was prepared to hate these. Furthermore, that prybar, last month at another cliff, had worked me so hard that both shoulders are still in pain, fortunately, the left one is coming along, but the right one still screams. I'm typing on Ibuprofen right now cause it hurts so bad (insert endless old people noises and complaints here about that). Picking up and swinging a 50 some odd weight pack isn't any easy thing to do in full bloom and health, and although I do give the nod, by a slight margin to my old Wallys straps, these were pretty damn good. I also put all my stuff on top of the hip belt Graham had tossed inside, and found the belt only after the fact. So add that positive into that equation. With a hip belt there will be even less weight onto the shoulder straps. Graham has a bigtime winner here. The material on this pack will outlive you, I don't care how young you are. Quote
RuMR Posted September 16, 2008 Posted September 16, 2008 Drew is new-wave!!! different rules...plus, he has STYLE!! oh yeah, Ibuprofen is aid!!! Quote
powderhound Posted September 16, 2008 Posted September 16, 2008 Bill when can I get the hook up on a NEW Big Wally Quote
billcoe Posted September 17, 2008 Author Posted September 17, 2008 Bill when can I get the hook up on a NEW Big Wally I have no clue. I think they're gonna have to tear this one out of my hands if they want it back though! Are you in California now studying your ass off again? I'm trying to get Frieh and Joseph hooked up with this pack soon so they can give engineer type feedback to Cilogear as Graham wants to donate this prototype for the Kevin Rauch benefit on Oct 1st. Wish you could have test drove it for those spectacular Idaho FA's you did a bit ago. Running low on time. Compounded by Cilogear moving their mfg operations across country right this very moment. BTW, I'm glad your weren't around to crank the lead on this FA off cause I would have let you have it, glad I sacked up and did it though:-) I have a good pic of Ujahn following I'll post later. Kyles pics were great, the ones I took of him suck and didn't turn out so good. Quote
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