Critters in cracks

Jake woowrote:

Had a perfect 0.5 placement and I refused to try another spot. Kept jamming it in and finally after too many tries a frog leaps out of the crack. I plugged the cam and yelled down to my belayer to let him know to be on the lookout for the frog. When he got up to the anchor he told me he cleaned the cam and the frog hopped right back in.

I’ve heard of being skunked. But frogged. That’s quite a leap. 

Not all that creepy or scary, but I remember mud swallows bombing out of a big roof crack towards me in Ely, NV as I'd approach the crux roof moves. You could hear the wind in their wings.

Had a fun encounter while climbing in BCC a couple years ago. While on route I stuck my fingers in a nice slot and felt some weird pinching on my pinky. Thinking it was just a sharp crack I didn't think much of it until I pulled my fingers out and found a bat chomping down on my pinky. Freaked me out pretty good. Went to the docs right after to get a rabies immunoglobulin shot and a fresh round of boosters.

Had a tarantula pop out of a pocket and start downclimbing a 5.10 at enchanted tower.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/1e8iMb4oXgm2ktMq6

DWS-ing at Summersville. I pull up off the kayak, get established on the wall and pull myself up to look at the shelf I'm hanging off.
3 feet to my left sitting on this shelf is a baby copperhead, just living his best life.
I would not be humanly possible to get back in my kayak any faster than I did.

I've had all sorts of wildlife come out of cracks while climbing, but the most recent was a tree frog. I yelled down to my belayer that the hold seemed wet, then when I looked back, the frog was wiggling out from under my finger. Idk why but it startled me and I almost whipped.

My first ever sport lead about 12 years ago, I stuck my finger in a mono that turned out to be a wasp colony entrance. LIKELY the most scared I've ever been since at that time I had a phobia I've since overcome, largely thanks to frequent encounters while climbing 

Lizards and frogs many time.

At a local crag, a guy found a baby rattlesnake in a pocket near the anchors and yelled out. Wasn't bitten. This somehow caused his belayer to drop him. Fell about 30' and, as I recall, broke both ankles.

In Central Texas, we have these red and black centipedes that can get to a foot long. They sometimes come crawling out of pockets, and it's freaky. They're also supposed to deliver a very painful bite. Once, a huge one came out of a pocket just as I was about to put my hand there. I took the whip. Goodbye, onsight.

The one below is pretty small, but we did not climb that route that day.

Off the top of my head...

• Over 100 Scorpions, once, pulling off a loose rock. I don't think they were venomous 
• Bats (many, many times)
• Africanized bees (f these things!)
• Paper wasps (many times; once placed a #3 cam so the wasp was between lobes)
• Yellow jackets (got stung once over 2doz times after pulling a rope hitting a giant nest. Only time I ever got hives, also causing me to be hyper reactive to any sting ever since)
• Crows (flew right in my face on a FS)
• Western diamondback (rattled deep in a crack; didn't see)
• Pissed off owl
• Chill peregrine
• Pissed off prairie (aka a-holes of the sky)
• Tree frogs 100ft off the ground on a hot&dry day (Oregon)
• Possum flew out while cleaning a mossy route; CAMPUS-ED up a shear wall with her front legs only dragging four babies on her belly. Still amazed.
• Various lizards
• 100s of silverfish poured out of a crack and on my head once. Gross.
• Dozens of ladybugs, once. Lady bug juice doesn't smell great.
• I wouldn't usually mention ants except there was this really cool experience where if you squished one ant (by accident), you could ruin a tidy line of ants by blowing the pheromones on it causing them to rage and look like static on an old TV.

Ryan Never climbs wrote:

in tuolumne there is a climb called the yawn. it is fabled of a monster living within the depths of its offwidth. 

Its not a monster, its just the collected ego deaths of all the finger crack climbers that lead the 2nd pitch of the Yawn.

Put my hand on a King snake halfway up Little John right once, yelled "Cobra!" Guess I needed a cold one from the village store. 

At HCR in AK, I threw for a huge jug/hole in the wall on Learning to Fly, and when I pulled up and looked inside there was a wasp's nest. I immediately 'learned to fly'. 

Kevin Mokracekwrote:

While laybacking a huge flake I started hearing a squeaking sound and immediately thought the flake was starting to detach from the wall until I realized it was just a bunch of bats in the back of the crack.  

On more than a few occasions I’ve encountered rattlesnakes in cracks.  

Loads of rats on bivy ledges and portaledges at night.  

Was that flake the one at the top rope wall at Horse Flats? I remember the first time I went there with the Sturz a million moons ago... he was roflao as the big layback started squeaking. I swore a million bats were behind d that thing...

Did it a zillion more times over the years, and it most always squeaked.

After squiming up some choss, there was a bat in a crack screaming a high pitched squeaking noise ... When I got past the bat to the ledge w the anchor one of the bolts had fallen out and was laying on the ledge. :/

I was doing some solo aid climbing at night (don't ask) when I saw 1, then 3, then a dozen wasps coming out of a cam hook size crack.  They all sat poised with their wings standing straight up, ready to attack as I gingerly downclimbed and pendulumed to the next crack system   

Who here has been attacked by the ants on the third pitch of East Buttress of El Cap?

I was belaying my partner as he led the Fickle Finger of Fate pitch on Moby Grape on Cannon Cliff in New Hampshire.  I was doing so high to the left at the rappel station where there is quite the abyss behind you.  I hear something whizz behind the back of my head.  Assumed it was a falling rock. Not a terribly infrequent sound on Cannon.  But this was close and really pretty loud. I snap my to the right and look down just in time to see a Peregrine Falcon flare its wings and extend its talons at very high speed not more then 30 feet away.  I hear a loud thump and see a small cloud of feathers fly out from whatever it struck.  The Peregrine and with its prey in its talons, which I could not identify, drop some tens of feet.  The falcon then somewhat laboriously flaps its wings, gains a bit of attitude, stabilizes and then glides off with its prey in its talons down and off to the right.  Wow, I say to myself that was spectacular.  Then I look and catch the eye of a leader coming up about 60 feet down from me.  He looks up at me somewhat bug-eyed and says "Wow! Did you see that!" in a very excited voice.  It was a spectacular experience.  I had seen Peregrines stoop at Cannon Cliff before, truly an awesome sight.  But I had never witnessed a kill. Never expected to see one so up close and personal.  Thus far it has been a once in a life-time experience for me.

I have come across rattlesnakes in crakes several times.  Sometimes several pitches up.  The last one was on the 2nd pitch and the previous rattlesnake was on pitch the 4th pitch.   I am scared of snakes, even cartoon snakes, so it always takes a bit out of me.

I have also seen bats in hand cracks a couple of times.  Plenty of lizards, ants, the occasional bees and wasps.  

When I was young, we were driving around the desert in the winter when we saw a rattlesnake.  We stopped to look at it thinking it was odd to see a rattlesnake when it was so cold (below freezing).  Next thing we know we have a rattlesnake wrapped around the radiator of the car.  

Going up a single pitch long ass route about 50m as a continuous pitch, about 30m up a fulmar threw up on me from 6ft to my left and out of sight it was incredibly accurate in that it was straight in the middle of my head. Never knew a bird could so accurately direct its throw up. Fortunately we had a 70m rope so I could get lowered off, I was absolutely covered in the most vile smelling throw up you could imagine. 

Here's a bat in what was a #0 TCU size crack if I remember correctly. This was in Pisgah National Forest in Western NC.

I once encountered three rattlesnakes on a single climb at Lover's Leap! One at each belay lol

Craziest wildlife encounter I've ever seen whilst climbing was also at the Leap—there was a lot of peregrine screeching, far more than normal, but it wasn't very close to the wall so it couldn't have been climbers. I plug a piece and turn around to see two falcons grappling in mid air, wild! All of a sudden, they fly apart in a puff of feathers and I see a set of wings helicoptering slowly down to the ground. Apparently they were fighting over a kill and one literally ripped the wings out of the bird they had killed!

To confirm this story, on a completely separate trip to the Hwy 50 corridor in a different year, I found a pair of wings that had been freshly torn out of another bird on an approach trail.