Flying Buttress (aka Guide to Surviving an Aggressive Manchild in the Alpine)

This is long, but too insane not to tell. 

TLDR: asshole threatens to throw us off the wall, and makes us wait on a ledge for 2hrs.

So the other day my friend Story and I climbed Flying Buttress on Meeker. We woke up at 3am, donned our silliest shorts, and set out. We caught a gorgeous sunrise along the way and made it to the base by 7. While burying our packs in the rocks to keep them from marmots, we noticed two other parties making their way up the talus field. One party took their time, while the other raced ahead. We racked up and made our way to the route.

20ft below the start, we met the couple in their 40s who had booked it up after seeing us, Patrick and Stephanie. They seemed nice enough, but were taking a while to rack up and get ready. We greeted them with smiles and chatted for a bit. Noticing how long they took to get ready and the fact that they were starting below the actual beginning of the pitch, we asked them how they expected their pace to be and what grade they were comfy on. They expressed confidence, so we decided they should go first and then we could reassess as we went if we were moving faster. All parties were happy with the plan.

We scrambled up to the intended start ledge where we met a party of 3 about to go up the 10c direct start. We got ready and chatted with the guys for a while. When we looked up, we saw Patrick had stopped to belay mid pitch. We waited for Stephanie to get up a little ways before Story started her lead. Naturally, she passed the couple, built her belay at the proper ledge, and put me on belay. Patrick started leading the second half of the pitch while I was following. As I climbed past Stephanie, the ridiculousness began. Story had climbed fast and placed your average number of pieces, while Patrick completely sewed up the crack, and started clipping into our gear as well. I cleaned one of our pieces, and Patrick called down "you should leave that in as a directional for Stephanie!" Incredulous, I looked up at him and said "this is our gear.. I'm going to take it with me..." He scowled, but kept climbing and clipping our gear. I reached Story while Patrick was building his belay, he laughed and told Story, "man am I glad your were above me, I was seeing Jesus on that pitch! I don't know what I would have done without your gear! I ran out." He ran out of gear.. on half a pitch.. Story and I gaped at each other, completely stunned by this dude. From the looks the guys in the other party gave us, they were equally baffled.

"Dude.. we gotta pass these guys. That was ridiculous" I whispered. She made a face and nodded. We quickly exchanged gear and moved left to start the next pitch. As I approached the couple, I asked if they minded if we went ahead. We were totally ready to go and they were still arranging gear.

"Well sure! I can clip your pieces again, this one looks even harder!" Patrick said cheerfully. Somehow I managed to be polite "I would actually prefer if you didn't do that.. it was kind of a mess back there." His face darkened and Stephanie jumped in "I think we're goung similar speeds.. I'm confused, I thought we would have a conversation about this before you passed."

Story and I tried to explain tactfully that we were moving quicker and that we were ready to go. "Well just make up your mind. If you're going to pass us, just go. If not, wait your turn," Stephanie said coldly. I glanced at Story a little desperately and then made a decision to go ahead. I started climbing quickly, only placing pieces when absolutely necessary to save time. For the first half of the pitch I could hear Patrick ranting angrily below me. "Fuck this! I'm not waiting on this fucking ledge for 30 minutes. This bitch is going so slow. Fuck!" I managed to stay calm, willed my nerves away, and climbed. Despite being berated from below, the pitch was fantastic and I was flying.

After a spooky run out slab, I reached the next ledge where I set up my anchor next to a guy, Kirill, from the other party. We chatted about climbing and traveling and work while I belayed Story up. About 10 minutes in, I saw Stephanie leading up. She stopped and built an anchor a little ways down from us. Another 10 minutes passed and we heard a commotion from below. Patrick was climbing up and yelling "Fuck this! I'm gonna pull everyone off this fucking mountain, I fucking swear!"

Kirill and I looked at each other "What the hell...?" I peered over the edge and saw one of Kirill's partners, Connor, trying to climb up past Stephanie and under our rope, which was tight. I called down to Story and asked if I could give her some slack to let Connor pass under. I received a slightly panicked "no, I'm sorry!"

Connor made it up to our ledge and we asked what happened. "We'll talk about it later.." He said, "We should just let those guys take the next pitch first. Nothing is worth this.." my stomach flipped. Did this guy just threaten our lives? How violet could he get? When Story finally made it up to me she was shaking and a little teary. I rushed to give her a hug and asked if she was okay. She told me the reason I couldn't give her slack earlier was because while Patrick was climbing up, he shoved her out of his way and unclipped one of our pieces so that he could climb past her. He then yelled at her to stay put, which, scared of what he might do, she did, hanging onto a flake to keep from taking a swing. My blood boiled. This asshole just did that to my friend, threw a tantrum, and we were going to give him his way?

When Stephanie and Patrick made it to the ledge, Patrick was still shouting and cursing while Stephanie tried to calm him down. Connor said "hey man, you can take the roof pitch first, just calm down." Patrick chilled out in minutes, and suddenly he was cheery again, joking and trying to be all buddy-buddy. I rolled my eyes and made a gagging face at Story. Mr and Mrs Sloth then decided to once again take their sweet time getting ready, and only after about 20 minutes did Patrick start climbing.. slowly.. he got to the bottom of the 5.9 roof and sat there for a bit before calling to Stephanie in a fake hick accent "okay babe, here goes nothin! I'll see if I can catch us some squirell for dinner up there" Story and I snorted. What the fuck?

Patrick made it about two feet before calling "babe, take!" He slumped and hung in his harness for a minute before taking off his pack, clipping it to a piece, and trying again. This went on a few times before he decided to pull on gear, which only managed to get him up another couple feet. Finally he got the amazing idea to throw on a sling to step in, but he also did that very poorly and continued to inch his way up at the pace of a slug. He struggled his way up the roof for a solid 45 minutes, which would have been more entertaining if we hadn't been waiting on the ledge for over an hour by this point. We were emotionally and physically tired, running low on water, and just wanted to get down.

Patrick finally made it up to guess where? That's right, midpitch. He belayed Stephanie up, who cruised it, even with needing to stop and clip Patrick's pack to a rope for him to haul. Even though she hadn't been the most courteous person either, we felt bad for her having to deal with this guy as a partner, so we all cheered her on. Unable to get out several of their pieces in a timely manner, she decided to leave them for us to use if we wanted and clean for them.

Connor led the pitch next (making it to the actual belay- crazy, right?), and brought his 2 partners up in the same amount of time that it took Patrick to just get up the roof. While Connor was leading, another party reached the ledge. We filled them in a bit on the shit show that had just ensued. They were as disgusted as we were, and the four of us considered bailing, but ultimately decided to finish the route due to the questionable bail route we saw. The rest of the climb went fairly well. Story killed it on her roof lead, and I followed up quickly.

We swapped gear and I led us out right towards our supposed "3rd/4th class" descent, opting to skip the last 5.8 pitch in order to get down faster. I am also glad we skipped this because when I passed by, the start of the 8, our friend's were leading it while Patrick and Stephanie waited to go up. I heard Patrick say he didn't think he could lead it efficiently (surprise, surprise) and they just wanted to get down and home to their 4 month old (!?!). Connor extremely generously offered to tag their rope up and belay them. I hope that made Patrick think long and hard about what a complete asshole he had been.

I made it out to a tat rappel station, spied another station a ways below, and decided to go for it. The guidebook description hadn't mentioned this, but it looked reasonable enough and I just wanted to get out of there. I brought Story over, and we began our slightly wandering, but doable descent. By this point we were so, so done and giddy to finally be getting down. We giggled and joked the whole way down, exchanging an enthusiastic high five when we made it back to our packs. I looked up to see Patrick and Stephanie far away on the scramble descent, it looked like they were too far left, and in the middle of some harder downclimbing. We packed up, snacked, and took some victory pictures. When we left, good ol Pat and Steph were still in the same spot. I do hope they made it out okay, but I certainly found some humor in the fact they were willing to bully their way ahead of everyone, and ended up so far behind.

We linked up with the guys for the hike back, decided to take a quick detour to jump in Chasm lake, and made our way back to the parking lot, talking about what a crazy day it had been.

Never have I ran into anyone remotely as horrible as Patrick in my 8 years of climbing outside, and I hope I never do again. At least it makes for a good story, and a good bonding experience for a new friendship. Glad we were in it together for this one, Story!

Please let me know if this post isn't appropriate for MP, will take down.

Kind of makes the Canal Zone look like an oasis of competence and decorum.

We can only hope that Patrick and Stephanie have MP accounts

What day of the week was this? Sounds like a lot of people on the route. 

If you were in the right to pass, you would have gotten it done - but you didn’t, so too bad.  You sound like a different flavor of the same thing.

You were clearly the more competent climbers but maybe too accommodating. Next time, I say jump on that first pitch and leave them in the dust.

Rose Gallantwrote:

Please let me know if this post isn't appropriate for MP, will take down.

Appropriate? This is the raison d'être of Mountain Project.

Jeez. Patrick.

Definitely a man-child. Get into another sport, my dude. You're too high strung for sharing classic alpine routes with others.

And definitely, everyone avoid Canal Zone! Ugh. What a shit show.

You should have held this one up until Monday. We’d be on page 5 in a couple of hours

Bill Schickwrote:

If you were in the right to pass, you would have gotten it done - but you didn’t, so too bad.  You sound like a different flavor of the same thing.

Did you read the same story as me? Glad you made it back safe Rose

Rose Gallantwrote:

 "Well just make up your mind. If you're going to pass us, just go. If not, wait your turn," Stephanie said coldly.

Stephanie is most correct.

TLDR - two teams of low skill noobs make each other miserable with very aggressive maneuvers to pass on a short easy route, but neither can close the deal.

A V wrote:

The solution to this problem is to remember to always stay off of the moderates. 

All of my mentors said the same. I learned to finish routes anyway possible because not being hounded or having to hound folks was worth it for a day in the hills.

Always expect a shitshow on trade routes. Learn something new daily.

Bill Schickwrote:

Stephanie is most correct.

TLDR - two teams of low skill noobs make each other miserable with very aggressive maneuvers to pass on a short easy route, but neither can close the deal.

Yeah, they should've just passed when they had the chance but what kind of "very aggressive maneuvers" were Rose and Story pulling again? Definitely not unclipping another party's gear and tossing around lame threats. Don't try and blame them for that other guy's whiny actions.

Sorry you had to deal with that shit, Rose.

Jeez, that's some seriously fragile male ego. Rose, your only mistake is trying to be considerate to a complete ass.

Rose Gallantwrote:

This is long, but too insane not to tell. 

TLDR: asshole threatens to throw us off the wall, and makes us wait on a ledge for 2hrs.

So the other day my friend Story and I climbed Flying Buttress on Meeker. We woke up at 3am, donned our silliest shorts, and set out. We caught a gorgeous sunrise along the way and made it to the base by 7. While burying our packs in the rocks to keep them from marmots, we noticed two other parties making their way up the talus field. One party took their time, while the other raced ahead. We racked up and made our way to the route.

20ft below the start, we met the couple in their 40s who had booked it up after seeing us, Patrick and Stephanie. They seemed nice enough, but were taking a while to rack up and get ready. We greeted them with smiles and chatted for a bit. Noticing how long they took to get ready and the fact that they were starting below the actual beginning of the pitch, we asked them how they expected their pace to be and what grade they were comfy on. They expressed confidence, so we decided they should go first and then we could reassess as we went if we were moving faster. All parties were happy with the plan.

We scrambled up to the intended start ledge where we met a party of 3 about to go up the 10c direct start. We got ready and chatted with the guys for a while. When we looked up, we saw Patrick had stopped to belay mid pitch. We waited for Stephanie to get up a little ways before Story started her lead. Naturally, she passed the couple, built her belay at the proper ledge, and put me on belay. Patrick started leading the second half of the pitch while I was following. As I climbed past Stephanie, the ridiculousness began. Story had climbed fast and placed your average number of pieces, while Patrick completely sewed up the crack, and started clipping into our gear as well. I cleaned one of our pieces, and Patrick called down "you should leave that in as a directional for Stephanie!" Incredulous, I looked up at him and said "this is our gear.. I'm going to take it with me..." He scowled, but kept climbing and clipping our gear. I reached Story while Patrick was building his belay, he laughed and told Story, "man am I glad your were above me, I was seeing Jesus on that pitch! I don't know what I would have done without your gear! I ran out." He ran out of gear.. on half a pitch.. Story and I gaped at each other, completely stunned by this dude. From the looks the guys in the other party gave us, they were equally baffled.

"Dude.. we gotta pass these guys. That was ridiculous" I whispered. She made a face and nodded. We quickly exchanged gear and moved left to start the next pitch. As I approached the couple, I asked if they minded if we went ahead. We were totally ready to go and they were still arranging gear.

"Well sure! I can clip your pieces again, this one looks even harder!" Patrick said cheerfully. Somehow I managed to be polite "I would actually prefer if you didn't do that.. it was kind of a mess back there." His face darkened and Stephanie jumped in "I think we're goung similar speeds.. I'm confused, I thought we would have a conversation about this before you passed."

Story and I tried to explain tactfully that we were moving quicker and that we were ready to go. "Well just make up your mind. If you're going to pass us, just go. If not, wait your turn," Stephanie said coldly. I glanced at Story a little desperately and then made a decision to go ahead. I started climbing quickly, only placing pieces when absolutely necessary to save time. For the first half of the pitch I could hear Patrick ranting angrily below me. "Fuck this! I'm not waiting on this fucking ledge for 30 minutes. This bitch is going so slow. Fuck!" I managed to stay calm, willed my nerves away, and climbed. Despite being berated from below, the pitch was fantastic and I was flying.

After a spooky run out slab, I reached the next ledge where I set up my anchor next to a guy, Kirill, from the other party. We chatted about climbing and traveling and work while I belayed Story up. About 10 minutes in, I saw Stephanie leading up. She stopped and built an anchor a little ways down from us. Another 10 minutes passed and we heard a commotion from below. Patrick was climbing up and yelling "Fuck this! I'm gonna pull everyone off this fucking mountain, I fucking swear!"

Kirill and I looked at each other "What the hell...?" I peered over the edge and saw one of Kirill's partners, Connor, trying to climb up past Stephanie and under our rope, which was tight. I called down to Story and asked if I could give her some slack to let Connor pass under. I received a slightly panicked "no, I'm sorry!"

Connor made it up to our ledge and we asked what happened. "We'll talk about it later.." He said, "We should just let those guys take the next pitch first. Nothing is worth this.." my stomach flipped. Did this guy just threaten our lives? How violet could he get? When Story finally made it up to me she was shaking and a little teary. I rushed to give her a hug and asked if she was okay. She told me the reason I couldn't give her slack earlier was because while Patrick was climbing up, he shoved her out of his way and unclipped one of our pieces so that he could climb past her. He then yelled at her to stay put, which, scared of what he might do, she did, hanging onto a flake to keep from taking a swing. My blood boiled. This asshole just did that to my friend, threw a tantrum, and we were going to give him his way?

When Stephanie and Patrick made it to the ledge, Patrick was still shouting and cursing while Stephanie tried to calm him down. Connor said "hey man, you can take the roof pitch first, just calm down." Patrick chilled out in minutes, and suddenly he was cheery again, joking and trying to be all buddy-buddy. I rolled my eyes and made a gagging face at Story. Mr and Mrs Sloth then decided to once again take their sweet time getting ready, and only after about 20 minutes did Patrick start climbing.. slowly.. he got to the bottom of the 5.9 roof and sat there for a bit before calling to Stephanie in a fake hick accent "okay babe, here goes nothin! I'll see if I can catch us some squirell for dinner up there" Story and I snorted. What the fuck?

Patrick made it about two feet before calling "babe, take!" He slumped and hung in his harness for a minute before taking off his pack, clipping it to a piece, and trying again. This went on a few times before he decided to pull on gear, which only managed to get him up another couple feet. Finally he got the amazing idea to throw on a sling to step in, but he also did that very poorly and continued to inch his way up at the pace of a slug. He struggled his way up the roof for a solid 45 minutes, which would have been more entertaining if we hadn't been waiting on the ledge for over an hour by this point. We were emotionally and physically tired, running low on water, and just wanted to get down.

Patrick finally made it up to guess where? That's right, midpitch. He belayed Stephanie up, who cruised it, even with needing to stop and clip Patrick's pack to a rope for him to haul. Even though she hadn't been the most courteous person either, we felt bad for her having to deal with this guy as a partner, so we all cheered her on. Unable to get out several of their pieces in a timely manner, she decided to leave them for us to use if we wanted and clean for them.

Connor led the pitch next (making it to the actual belay- crazy, right?), and brought his 2 partners up in the same amount of time that it took Patrick to just get up the roof. While Connor was leading, another party reached the ledge. We filled them in a bit on the shit show that had just ensued. They were as disgusted as we were, and the four of us considered bailing, but ultimately decided to finish the route due to the questionable bail route we saw. The rest of the climb went fairly well. Story killed it on her roof lead, and I followed up quickly.

We swapped gear and I led us out right towards our supposed "3rd/4th class" descent, opting to skip the last 5.8 pitch in order to get down faster. I am also glad we skipped this because when I passed by, the start of the 8, our friend's were leading it while Patrick and Stephanie waited to go up. I heard Patrick say he didn't think he could lead it efficiently (surprise, surprise) and they just wanted to get down and home to their 4 month old (!?!). Connor extremely generously offered to tag their rope up and belay them. I hope that made Patrick think long and hard about what a complete asshole he had been.

I made it out to a tat rappel station, spied another station a ways below, and decided to go for it. The guidebook description hadn't mentioned this, but it looked reasonable enough and I just wanted to get out of there. I brought Story over, and we began our slightly wandering, but doable descent. By this point we were so, so done and giddy to finally be getting down. We giggled and joked the whole way down, exchanging an enthusiastic high five when we made it back to our packs. I looked up to see Patrick and Stephanie far away on the scramble descent, it looked like they were too far left, and in the middle of some harder downclimbing. We packed up, snacked, and took some victory pictures. When we left, good ol Pat and Steph were still in the same spot. I do hope they made it out okay, but I certainly found some humor in the fact they were willing to bully their way ahead of everyone, and ended up so far behind.

We linked up with the guys for the hike back, decided to take a quick detour to jump in Chasm lake, and made our way back to the parking lot, talking about what a crazy day it had been.

Never have I ran into anyone remotely as horrible as Patrick in my 8 years of climbing outside, and I hope I never do again. At least it makes for a good story, and a good bonding experience for a new friendship. Glad we were in it together for this one, Story!

Do you have a description of the perp? You need to call the police for his threat to throw you off the wall. That's serious!

Tradibanwrote:

Do you have a description of the perp? You need to call the police for his threat to throw you off the wall. That's serious!

The obvious solution is to ban trad climbing

I smiled all the way while reading your story.

Exactly the same happened to my partner and I on a multipitch in the Swiss alps 2 years ago.
My partner was so shaken that she almost forgot to clip to the anchor when she arrived at the first belay after the tantrum the others had throw...

As someone else said I think you (and I at the time) were too nice.
Today, if I ever find myself in the same situation where I feel our security in threaten I would have no problem going ahead and leaving them in the dust... that's the kind of people you want to stay away from...
Being a noob is not an excuse for being a jerk and/or a security threat. 

I think there are couple of valuable lessons in this story:

1. Do NOT dawdle on the approach to a classic multi-pitch route. You spent all that time getting up early, only to let some packers get past you on the final approach. Big mistake. When you're in the lead, STAY THERE. Make it a race, if you have to.

2. When you have a chance to pass the shit show, do it. Those of us who will tell you this have suffered through plenty of shit shows ourselves. Tough love is the key here, let the people epic... BELOW YOU.

We've all been the noob, well most of us. We been the guilty party, we've been the aggrieved. We've chased the  de rigueur classics same as you, enduring endless repeats of the tragedy of the commons along the way. Its not some lofty judgement, to say "stay off the classics on the weekends." Its simple self-survival :) we all end up in the same place, old and retired. So have some fun along the way!

Seems like Patrick was mad, perhaps rightfully so, that you two climbed over them while they were still completing the first pitch, albeit with an intermediate belay. Climbing over them like that, without first discussing it with them is not usually the right thing to do. If you couldn’t ask to pass them once they were on route, or if they said no, you should have just patiently followed, or gone somewhere else. Once on route, they, in general, had the right of way and you didn’t respect that. Of course his subsequent passive aggressive attitude and use of your gear, etc., is in itself inexcusable and dangerous. 

It’s like a road rage incident—you cut him off, which isn’t cool, then he rams into you car from behind to make you pay, which is super uncool. 

M Rwrote:

Seems like Patrick was mad, perhaps rightfully so, that you two climbed over them while they were still completing the first pitch, albeit with an intermediate belay. Climbing over them like that, without first discussing it with them is not usually the right thing to do. If you couldn’t ask to pass them once they were on route, or if they said no, you should have just patiently followed, or gone somewhere else. Once on route, they, in general, had the right of way and you didn’t respect that. Of course his subsequent passive aggressive attitude and use of your gear, etc., is in itself inexcusable and dangerous. 

It’s like a road rage incident—you cut him off, which isn’t cool, then he rams into you car from behind to make you pay, which is super uncool. 

I don’t think Patrick was very passive in his aggression

Don't climb up another person's ass.