New and Experienced climbers over 50 #21

Eric Engbergwrote:

All tame compared to flying your drone while lying in your hammock at the base (oblivious to falling objects).  Now that's rad and worth of the gram. 

The child in the playpen in the rockfall zone is always a good one too, possibly the child of the drone owner?

I certainly drummed up a lot of business for ski patrol and Springfield Orthopedics every time I shot the terrain park. DUDE! the camera guy is here!  Watch This!

Eric Engbergwrote:

All tame compared to flying your drone while lying in your hammock at the base (oblivious to falling objects).  Now that's rad and worth of the gram. 

Duh!!
At least runner up for the Darwin Award.

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

Kristian. Vitaly is a beast!  soloing big grade 5 however is pretty routine for lots of real ice climbers. Heck I have a 60 year old partner who could casually hike that thing with two new fake knees..  the thing that made Vtalys video so gripping is that it looked like he was pretty much learning to ice climb while soloing widows tears...  That thing is fickel so you have to grab it when it's in.   Seemed like by the time he got 2/3rds of the way up he had it figured out ;)  Ice climbing is easy if you have the head and the guns... 

Yea, he said he didn't have much ice experience when he went up there. Truly on-sight, no camera crews, I'm not sure if anyone even knew he was up there... Soloing in pure form.

 

No comparison though to Honolds solo of free Blast.  the difficulty is not even close.   Widows tears is so special because of location and its so fickle. It rarely comes in and its only in for short periods of time when it does come in.  If the same formation was in the ice fields parkway it would be climbed by multiple partys every day with many of those ascents clean on sights.  It would also likly be  soloed a dozen or so times a season. Difficulty compared to rock  its probably mostly  5.8 with a few sections of 5.9 and maybe a spot of 10a. 

Happy Father's Day to all you Dad's and Granddads out there.
Do something meaningful.  Make it memorable!

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

No comparison though to Honolds solo of free Blast.  the difficulty is not even close.   Widows tears is so special because of location and its so fickle. It rarely comes in and its only in for short periods of time when it does come in.  If the same formation was in the ice fields parkway it would be climbed by multiple partys every day with many of those ascents clean on sights.  It would also likly be  soloed a dozen or so times a season. Difficulty compared to rock  its probably mostly  5.8 with a few sections of 5.9 and maybe a spot of 10a. 

Have you climbed  it?????

rgoldwrote:

I have the Gunks App but forgot to look there.  They've done a lot of updating and YYYY is there with a good pic of the start.  The app has a GPS feature I've never used. You click the "Navigate" button and magic happens. Teleportation for all I know.  The combination of that and the first-pitch picture should get you there.

Worth noting is that there is no rap highway down. It's a nice walk on the blue trail, but then you end up on the carriage road just south of the bridge. If you want to get back to the Near Trapps base trail, you have to verge off to the climber's cliff-edge path. If you left a pack at the bottom of YYYY you then have to walk back again to get it, My favorite way to do this route is to make it the only one of the day, start in the afternoon, gearing up at the car at the West Trapps Lot, and so carrying nothing to be left at the base---like the old days. Then the Blue Trail descent back to the car is perfect---or of course you can verge off to the base trail and do other routes...

Either way, there's enough walking to carry a pair of shoes to hike with.

Always prefer to walk off anyway if I can talk anyone into it these days.  Noticed that the MP description mentions the the start is pretty close to the closure sign, so if that is still up, that should help as well.

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

No comparison though to Honolds solo of free Blast.  the difficulty is not even close.   Widows tears is so special because of location and its so fickle. It rarely comes in and its only in for short periods of time when it does come in.  If the same formation was in the ice fields parkway it would be climbed by multiple partys every day with many of those ascents clean on sights.  It would also likly be  soloed a dozen or so times a season. Difficulty compared to rock  its probably mostly  5.8 with a few sections of 5.9 and maybe a spot of 10a. 

My off the cuff edit wasn't about numbers. What Vitaly did was almost the polar opposite of Honnold's climb. The route was a total unknown. Even talking with someone else who had done an ascent of it would have been largely pointless, since it's never the same. No one else was involved. No support team to help rig rehearsals and such, no film crew. Nothing but complete aloneness and uncertainty. Soloing in its purest form. Those are some of the things that blow me away about Vitaly's ascent.

 No I have not climbed Widows Tears.  I have however climbed an absolute shit ton of grade 5 and 5+ ice and absolutely Zero 5.13 rock.  There is absolutely nothing about grade 5 ice that is remotely as technical as even 5.11 rock. What Honlove did was insanely unique.  Only he could do it. Hundreds of folks solo big grade 5 ice climbs.   1/2 grades are full grades on ice.  For example 5+ is a full grade harder (4 rock letter grades) than grade 5.  You don't hit rare air on ice until you get into  6+ and 7  Grade 5 ice is a relatively pedestrian grade with todays gear and mindset.   I can get your average carpenter up 4+ on their first day climbing ice.  This was Kyles 2nd day climbing ice and he only had climbed rock once  over a year before this day. 

Despite one fall he made it to the top no problem, Dracula 4+ Kyle is a big boy. No way in hell he is getting up 5.9 on his 2nd day rock climbing.  this was 4+ only one grade easier than grade5 and I have no doubt I could have gotten him up a 5 that day if I was slightly less responsible... Ice climbing is really pretty easy compared to rock. It does take a certain kind of mind ;)    Heck one of the N Conway guides guided Remission 5+ with a first time ice climber simply because it's a fickel climb he needed to tic and it was in on a work day... ;) The Only reason Widows tears does not get soloed regularly is because its in California instead of BC or Quebec or Colorado.

kris. I totally agree with you on that one. Vitally is a beast and the fact that he had very little experience on ice and still pulled it off kind of  proves my point about the difficulty and also highlights how  much mindset is most of ice climbing.  I know many people who have been ice climbing decades, can easily follow 5+ and  yet don't have a cold day in hells chance of leading even a single pitch grade 5.  Vitally walks up to a Monster grade 5 with very little ice experience and hikes it solo.  all that being said Honlove is in an entirely different league despite the rehersing...

I was listening to Alex Honnolds podcast Climbing Gold on the way home.  The topic was “sometimes you don’t get to choose the risks you take. It’s a matter of survival.”  A fast change of plans due to weather, rock fall etc, turning it into an epic.  Would anyone share their favorite epic?

Does an epic have to entail near-death experience?  If so I don’t have any.   However if it can include a surprisingly wonderful day on the rock then I could mention a few.

I’ve been home just a few hours, still very sick. I’m surprised I made it.  Even my eyeballs hurt.  

Maybe I need some warm kombucha.    

epic has to be epic....

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

kris. I totally agree with you on that one. Vitally is a beast and the fact that he had very little experience on ice and still pulled it off kind of  proves my point about the difficulty and also highlights how  much mindset is most of ice climbing.  I know many people who have been ice climbing decades, can easily follow 5+ and  yet don't have a cold day in hells chance of leading even a single pitch grade 5.  Vitally walks up to a Monster grade 5 with very little ice experience and hikes it solo.  all that being said Honlove is in an entirely different league despite the rehersing...

I'm with you. That's kind of what I meant when I said they were opposites. They can't really be compared. 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

epic has to be epic....

Agreed.
Also, for me, epics become less epic with passing time.
Only one truly stands out after 25 years; the rescue of my friend who suffered a tib fib comopund fracture at Summerville Lake.
Hallucination, ad hoc litter, splinting, etc. Ultimately evac by boat owned by a good samaritan. Whole nine yaards.
Victim was so shaken up by the experience that he gave up climbing two yeras after that.

Epics probably need to be a close thing, a death experience if anything at all had not gone perfect.  And if you lived thru your own epic I don't think it ever gets less epic with time unless you are just forgetting how close it all was to disaster.

Jan Mcwrote:

Epics probably need to be a close thing, a death experience if anything at all had not gone perfect.  And if you lived thru your own epic I don't think it ever gets less epic with time unless you are just forgetting how close it all was to disaster.

You're right.  "My" epics all turned to Type 2 fun days or weeks after!

A pic of me climbing at my local crag down here in South Australia this weekend. Cold, wet but with excellent friction. I so love climbing and the social interaction that comes with it. A good part of the day was spent sheltering from the rain in a cave with only about 4 pitches climbed but it was fun and invigorating.

Carl the snakes probably don't don't like cold and wet so you have that ;) 

I've had a couple of epics backcountry ski touring but just one climbing.  Wake and I were on Solar Slab, late start, no other parties, rope stuck after first rap. We we're rapping with double 70's, so a long way down.  Free solo (easy 5.6) to the top to free the rope.  We reached the big ledge around 10pm.   Very slow raps down the gully.  We knew where the rap stations were, but still interesting finding them in the dark.  Reached the base just before midnight.

Two lessons learned.  First rap on Solar Slab: go to the last pitch anchor (skiers right) instead of straight down to the rap anchor.   This greatly reduces chance of rope hanging up in the crack under top rap station.  Bi-color ropes make finding the middle mark much easier in the dark.   

Not an epic, but another lesson just learned.  It's now 4 days after surgery to repair detached retina.  Vision already improving.  I now understand that there were two warning signs that I ignored:  a sudden increase in "floaters" in one eye,  bright flashes in same eye with certain head movements. If I had understood these warning signs, it's possible that the retina could have been repaired before becoming completely detached.