Pranking Your Partner

Andrew Gramwrote:

If you see a good sized piece of lumpy ridge granite near the start of Honeymoon Chimney on the Priest, it was because I carried it up there.  The partner who hid the rock was the same I climbed the Priest with, and i'm not sure i've ever seen a more gleeful look on someone's face when I pulled that rock out of my pack.

yeah, that fucker rocked me good a few times - i never learned!

Trad lead up a route and set up a TR anchor for others in my group to use and lowered.

One guy who wasn't around when I set the anchor came back and proceeded to climb said route. As he got to the top and yelled "take" to ready to lower, I shout up to him "Hey! I wouldn't weight that anchor if I were you!". Not quite something you expect to hear when you're about to be lowered. Everyone around had a good laugh.

every once in a while, while lead belaying with a grigri in the gym, i'll give my partner the old, "hey, how do you use this thing again?" when they're around the 3rd clip. the looks i get from people next to me are fantastic...

I just stick to the classic whip your partner in the balls with the rope if he clipped high or is TRing

On the original ascent of the totem pole didn’t one of the climbers tie the ropes around his ankles and throw them off the edge. Feigning that they had been dropped?

Back in my own day I pulled the same prank on the summit of Lost Arrow Spire in the city of rocks.

Not quite as committing but it still got my partner excited.

Edge wrote:

‘Heads you lead, tails I go.’

I like "Heads you lead, tails I belay."

At the base of a popular climb a “friend” pulled a prank and filled his buds packs with rocks.   About 20 min later another party picked up those packs and hiked down.  Would have loved to see their faces after the 2 mile hike to parking lot.  

atomupwrote:

I believe the rock in the pack is the original, & still best. They don’t find it till next climbing time or more sometimes! 

I was both a perpetrator and victim to this. Loads of fun until I stumbled out with 10lbs of sandstone buried under my rope, lead gear and water. It was a summer day too.

The whole thing makes me laugh today.

Thanks!

The 1st time I visited Indian Creek I met up with Jim Donini in the parking lot below Super Crack.  Jim proceeded to show me around the standard classics, and the first climb we jumped on was , you guessed it, Super Crack. 

Jim, of course had this wired, and he was about 2/3rds of the way up, with only 2-3 pieces in. I'm a very attentive belayer, but hadn't noticed that Jim had placed a cam directly in front of him, at the waist, spaced probably 15-20 feet above his last piece. With no warning, Jim yells out this blood curdling scream as his feet pop off. Little did I know that he had 2 solid hand jams, as he proceeded to scare the shit out of me.

My heart skipped a few beats as Jim pulled this off perfectly, but I wasn't amused.  There was quite a crowd of younger climbers, half our age, hanging around at the base , and I yelled up a few choice words, as my pulse was coming back down to normal.  One of the guys expressed surprise that I would respond to Jim's antics with such curt remarks, saying to me,  " you must know him pretty well"

I let him know that we go back quite a ways.

Some I’ve done over the years;

Exploding velcro QuickDraw, toy rattlesnake on routes, placing a bolt after a required dyno, fake tick marks, condoms on crux gym holds, fake cairns in the alpine, toy army soldiers in limestone pockets, fake barefoot campfire walks, wiring death slabs incessantly on TR before bolting (common JTree tactic with many of the self proclaimed gurus of JTree of former decades), hidden beers in partners packs, and last but not least, telling Park Rangers lines of BS. 

stephen arsenaultwrote:

The 1st time I visited Indian Creek I met up with Jim Donini in the parking lot below Super Crack.  Jim proceeded to show me around the standard classics, and the first climb we jumped on was , you guessed it, Super Crack. 

Jim, of course had this wired, and he was about 2/3rds of the way up, with only 2-3 pieces in. I'm a very attentive belayer, but hadn't noticed that Jim had placed a cam directly in front of him, at the waist, spaced probably 15-20 feet above his last piece. With no warning, Jim yells out this blood curdling scream as his feet pop off. Little did I know that he had 2 solid hand jams, as he proceeded to scare the shit out of me.

My heart skipped a few beats as Jim pulled this off perfectly, but I wasn't amused.  There was quite a crowd of younger climbers, half our age, hanging around at the base , and I yelled up a few choice words, as my pulse was coming back down to normal.  One of the guys expressed surprise that I would respond to Jim's antics with such curt remarks, saying to me,  " you must know him pretty well"

I let him know that we go back quite a ways.

Good story. Went alpine ice climbing with this guy once  20 years ago. I was at the top of that game at the time. I offered to carry everything & offered to throw a rope down to him on the approach AI3 solos. He held his own & didn’t need me for any of that stuff at all. 

dino74wrote:

I'd strongly advise not to pull the "off belay" prank. Someone did this to my friend and the word got around. As a result, some peeps refuse to climb with the "pranker" guy who thought it'd funny.

LOL.  Wait, did the “pranker” actually take people off belay?  Follow up question: where does such a community of humorless alarmists exist?  I’d like to avoid if possible.  

Jake Joneswrote:

LOL.  Wait, did the “pranker” actually take people off belay?  Follow up question: where does such a community of humorless alarmists exist?  I’d like to avoid if possible.  

I find a sh*t ton of stuff funny but I don't think telling someone they are off belay while climbing is funny. 

> I’d like to avoid if possible

You're doing me the favor.

Fair enough gentlemen.  I still climb often with the people I’ve pulled this on, and they seek me as a belayer on stuff that’s at or beyond their limit.  Different strokes I guess.  Maybe it’s because they know me really well and they didn’t take it seriously when I said it.  Idk.  

We had  lots of fun  with the  rubber  snake  that I  bought at the  dollar store.   I hid it in my shirt and placed it on the pitch  I was leading.  My friend Alex the  desert rat  dead panned when he  found it.  Nice  rubber  snake.  Then  naturally  he made a  quick  plan.  He lets out a  big  scream, SNAKE and flings the  rubber snake  off the climb.  People at the base  aslo  screamed and  scattered  in all directions. 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

We had  lots of fun  with the  rubber  snake  that I  bought at the  dollar store.   I hid it in my shirt and placed it on the pitch  I was leading.  My friend Alex the  desert rat  dead panned when he  found it.  Nice  rubber  snake.  Then  naturally  he made a  quick  plan.  He lets out a  big  scream, SNAKE and flings the  rubber snake  off the climb.  People at the base  aslo  screamed and  scattered  in all directions. 

That’s way better than mine haha.  We used to do something similar in portable bathrooms on job sites.  We’d take a wire hanger, sharpen the end and feed it through the rubber snake and prop it up in strike position on the shitter seat.  Man I’ve never heard so many strong rugged dudes hit octaves that high before or since in my entire life.