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Your Most Epic Beak Fall!
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I am thinking about either falls from blown beaks or falls onto beaks......... Post up, hombres!  |
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Decided to hand place a shitty tipped out #2 pecker in a seam instead of top stepping to get to a micro nut placement near the top of the the Salathe headwall. Held the bounce test and held for a while when I was on it. Blew when my side to side motion looking for my nuts tweaked it out.
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Ross Goldbergwrote:
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You need to ask Matt Lambert about the Sunkist headwall. ;) |
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Man, I aspire to have a clip like that one day to show the non-climbers. Incredible. |
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I hand place all my beaks. And then I hit them with my hammer. ;) |
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I’m glad this topic came up. That vid is oddly reassuring. I’ve been practicing aid and getting seriously sketched worrying about the falls. Having never taken an aid fall, the concern is freaking me out. I can anticipate most of my free climbing falls and have had plenty, so there’s a familiarity. The nature of aid falls - fully committed, laden with all kinds of faff, with sudden mechanical failure - is something I haven’t experienced yet. When a piece blows while bounce testing, it really amps up the pucker factor. Any advice to conquer the willies? |
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Includes beaks! |
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About 15 years ago I was rope soloing Latitudes on the Streaked Wall. This route is primarily pitch after pitch of continuously overhanging, right leaning, thin and bottomed out seams. Midway up the wall, as I slowly navigated my way up this beauty of a pitch, sand would pour into my eyes each time that I tapped in a wobbly and ridiculously tipped out beak; I couldn't help but notice the circling Vulchers behind me, as if they could smell my impending doom. I don’t even recall placing a single beak on that pitch that didn’t fail bounce testing. Some of them took 3 or 4 attempts to get them to stick. It was the kind of stuff that had me exhaling my breath thinking I could get a little lighter, all the while, cautiously lowering my hammer onto its leash out of fear of the weight of my hammer acting like the straw that broke the camel's back. It’s worth saying at this point in my wall career I had not alpinised my rack, so the sucker was super heavy and primarily loaded in a top heavy fashion on my chest harness. Hours into the lead and halfway up the pitch, while working off of a beak placed in a seam so steep that the foot of the piton wasn't even touching the wall, gravity acted and prevailed. Amongst the release, there was no typical ping noise that I would normally associate with blowing a pin. I heard nothing initially, but rather, I saw the orange streak of accelerating sandstone as I began to feel the gentle jerks of the rope pulling piece after piece of gear from the seam. The pulsing turned my body into the ticking second hand on an analogue clock, falling from noon towards 6 o'clock, Tick Tick Tick.. All the while, each tooth of the zipper was incrementally pulling me further back, until I was upside down. I was now hearing the air rushing past, the sandstone was gone and all I could see was blue sky. The undulating sensation of zippering gear was my only connection to my realization that I had not severed my rope, plummeting to the talus field below... How long would this continue? Swoosh! The rope finally catches me. Adrenaline was now coursing through my body. It took a few moments, maybe longer, to collect myself. I could now see the rope that caught my venture into human flight, which was fully decorated with a healthy nest of blown screamers, draws and beaks. I wish I had counted them. I cautiously begin to ascend the rope, ever so delicately as I am trying to avoid disturbing and blowing whatever piece of gear caught my fall. Upon my arrival to the top, I found that I had fallen all the way clean to the anchor. That ^ ladies and gentlemen and esteemed dirtbags is called kissing and telling. Ps I sat at that anchor for quite some time, scared to the bone, knowing that I had to re-lead that pitch. Bailing was out of the cards, due to the leaning and over hanging nature of the route (yes I would have bailed). |
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Right on, dudes. Some nice posts there. Cheers for that. That fall is beautifully captured. That is what I call a wall souvenir! Kristoffer, that is a rad tale. In relative terms, how hard is the beaking on Ephemeron? That seam alongside the pancake flake looks WILD. Cheers from Osaka... |
Ben Podborskiwrote: Great performance of the beak there, even in shitty-ish rock. I think that is a #2, isn't it? |
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Um, yeah, Kristoffer ..... just how hard is Ephemeron? Asking for a friend... |
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Pete and John, it’s a tall order to answer the exact question of how hard the route is, we took a stab at quantifying it when we rated it at 5.10 A4, but as you all know that is still very loose ended, subjective, and probably all together unhelpful. I don’t think anyone with decent mileage under there belt is going to be ripping huge strings of gear on that route. With the general “lower angle” nature of the route we did our darned best to protect against the dangerous strike potential with good bolts, all the while still keeping it entertaining. Some of those iconic looking thin pitches just ate up beaks, I don’t recall it being a lot of stuff where placements blew on bounce testing time after time… that’s sort of my criteria to know when I’m in the territory of really hard stuff. I’m regards to technical difficulty, I believe our newer route neptune is more testing. As a matter of fact there is a great beak story from that climb, it was Brandon’s lead so I’ll let him tell it if he is inclined, otherwise I could share it from my vantage point. |
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Ah, you know, it's all really the same story. Getting scared on small beaks. Tap tapping away and trying to put as little weight as possible on marginal pieces as you string together a haphazard path up a wall. Sometimes you risk big falls, most of the time you don't. It's all pretty silly really. Oh yeah... that time the micro beak kept me from the big winger? Yeah, that was puckering fun. |
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Hey Kristoffer and Brandon, Right on, amigos. Ephemeron and Neptune are so rad. Are there any second ascents of either of those lines? Both speak to the way of the beaks that I was interested in for this thread. Killer new wave stuff. I can understand the difficulty in grading it. Pete, I think you need to make one of you "public announcements," declaring that you are going to have a go at one or the other of these lines. I will support you in any way I can ;) Cheers from Osaka... |
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The first half or so of Ephemeron was climbed last year by Vitaliy and Chris. I think they were running short on time and finished on the Nose. Neptune was just put up last year. Both are awaiting true repeats. I think both certainly deserve em. Neptune goes up the coolest part of EC IMHO. Anybody wanting to go for it can reach out to me if they want all the beta. |
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i have already forgotten what happened… but i know it involved this beak- and a dropped aider  |
Quinn Hatfieldwrote:  Happened right after this pic was taken and ripped every piece to the bolt |
Fail Fallingwrote: Dang! Did you meteor into the portaledge? |
Sam Skovgaardwrote: Rocketed up to the bolt because I was on a long tether to the anchor. Messed up my arm and it was spasming for the next few hours while Quinn was fine. #skinnyguybelayerproblems |
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Hahaha! Pitch and route? I think that's one of my old beaks! |
