New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #33

yes this is Canon but not Moby or Consolation. its one of the longest climbs on the cliff and only 5.7.. If you find the right path and it doesn't fall off on you.. 

this is not Canon or the East and certainly RG, John G,  Brian SLC etc know this one. 

Ok Nick. From your 'hints', the one in Cannon has to be Sam's Swan Song---though the route is undoubtedly virtually a different one than it was when I climbed it 40 years ago!!!

The other one---looks like Teton rock. Not recognizing that big flake, but other parts do have a familiar look. Guides Wall?

Yes and Yes though perhaps John Gill would remember it as SW ridge of Storm Point..  Sams is a really fun climb but stupidly loose and unprotected in many places... 

Looking from Sams to the Direct Direct

More shots from Storm Point

I got to climb tollhouse rock with my daughter.  We have climbed it together at least once every year since she was in kindergarten 25 years ago.  She never caught the climbing bug but likes easy fun in the sun low angle climbing and I do too.

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

Yes and Yes though perhaps John Gill would remember it as SW ridge of Storm Point..  Sams is a really fun climb but stupidly loose and unprotected in many places... 

Looking from Sams to the Direct Direct

More shots from Storm Point

New England trivia: The name Sam's Swan Song has an interesting 'history' and, in some ways is an inappropriate name. It was named for Sam Streibert, in 'honor' of his then imminent nuptials!!!! Sam is one of the largely under appreciated top NE climbers of the '60s and '70s. However, he was not actually part of the successful FA team and, more importantly, it was far from his 'swan song'---his many contributions to NE climbing were just getting started!!!!

I assume that the older generation climbed to the summit of Storm point instead of just doing 6 pitches and rappelling from bolts like us modern wimps. -17f at my house this morning. 

rgold wrote:

I'd add something from my experience, not only with rehab but just with training in general.  My experience seems to regularly include something worse than plateaus---there are times when I get worse at the things I'm training, and these times usually come before leaps forward.  It can be discouraging of course. A serious drop in performance can often be a symptom of overtraining, but that's not what I'm speaking of here.  I see the normal progress graph as a bumpy thing with peaks and valleys but a general upward trend. You just have to work through the low points, but I have found that, rightly or wrongly, thinking of them as precursors of an advance helps to navigate the doldrums.

Not only true for rehab and training. " The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” One can hope. 

John Gill wrote:

A factoid: The first bouldering guide (1898) was probably done by the infamous Aleister Crowley: 

Climb what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, to paraphrase the great beast

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

yes this is Canon but not Moby or Consolation. its one of the longest climbs on the cliff and only 5.7.. If you find the right path and it doesn't fall off on you.. 

this is not Canon or the East and certainly RG, John G,  Brian SLC etc know this one. 

I hope you at some time climbed the hand crack (5.9) to the right of the shown 5.7 variation.  It's wonderful!  Few people climb the entire Storm Point--it goes at about 12 pitches (and then climb another 6 pitches up Symmetry Spire--18 pitches of Teton rock, long day!).

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

this is not Canon or the East and certainly RG, John G,  Brian SLC etc know this one. 

Nick, these two look like the pitch on the guides wall where you can either go 5.7 on the left or 5.9 hands to the right.

Kristian Solem wrote:

Pretty good live coverage of the Hughes Fire here:

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/la-wildfire-hughes-fire-castaic-5-freeway/3612218/

Kris, pardon me if this is not the appropriate place to post this link, but I’m quite concerned about the fire risk here in California and interested in the issues you’ve mentioned as far as funding, maintenance, budget, etc., regarding the LA Fire Department

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire-truck-roll

Rich Goldstone, has been a keeper of the flame for us oldsters in the climbing world for a long time. Rich is a great writer and he has freely shared many outstanding tales of his climbing life, making him one of the most important voices of that era. This is something he wrote on supertopo about doing triple levers, I have reassembled it here restoring the picture and video links for your enjoyment.

The "how many pullups could you do before you reached your current nadir of decrepitude" thread got me to thinking about stupid feats of strength, apparently an active sideline for many climbers.

Although I see no hope of achieving either fame or notoriety for mere feats of strength, a very competitive category, when stupidity is added to the mix I believe I can taste the gold, which is not to say that there aren't worthy competitors who have also managed to combine exceptional physical prowess with notable intellectual deficits.

As my entry in the sweepstakes, I offer the saga of the triple lever.

Most of you probably know what a front lever is. John Gill did 'em one-handed. The performer's body is held rigidly horizontal, facing up, suspended from straight arms. Its a bit harder than it looks. 

(Gill doing the ordinary two-hand variety)
Now a double front lever requires two idio...er, performers. The first does a front lever on whatever apparatus is available, and the second does a front lever off the shoulders of the first. You can see where this is headed. In a triple front lever, a third person does a front lever on the shoulders of the second person, who is doing a front lever on the shoulders of the first person.

There is, of course, no limit to this process in theory, but in practice the top person, sometimes referred to in the technical literature as the chief idiot, has to support his or her own weight and in addition the weights of the assistant idiots underneath. At some point, the design limits of the chief's sinews will be exceeded, and so there is a practical, if not theoretical, limit to the number of levering losers.

In our case, there were three of us who could do front levers, and so a triple lever it was. In addition to myself, the cast included the legendary Gunks master Jim McCarthy and the much-beloved "Mayor of the Gunks" Kevin Bein.

Of the three of us, Jim was the biggest and strongest in absolute terms, so it was clear that he would be on top. Kevin, who had survived long ground falls directly onto his head, was apparently the most durable, and since it was to be many years before crash pads would appear on the scene, we put him on the bottom. That left the middle position for me.

Before taking our show on the road, we naturally practiced it under ideal gym conditions. Jim did a front lever on the rings, I pulled into a front lever on his shoulders, Kevin popped into a lever on my shoulders and we started to count off the requisite three seconds of holding for full gymnastic credit.

Somewhere around two Jim's hands exploded off the rings and the whole ham sandwich hit the one-inch horsehair gym mat with a loud thud combined with the triple "uuuhhh" resulting from the attending full-body compressions.

Here is a contemporary repetition of our feat: 

Having thus perfected our craft, we went on to our first engagement, a typical Vulgarian rave at Tom Scheur's house. Here, after ingesting various judgment-relaxing palliatives, we determined to perform our feat of strength for an audience unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy and suffering from various exotic and usually pleasurable forms of attention-deficit disorder.

There being no ring set available, we settled on the next best thing, a beefy quarter-inch doorjam at the top of a flight of stairs leading down to the basement. Jim pulled into his lever, I followed suit on his shoulders, and Kevin just barely managed to crank into the horizontal position on my shoulders when Jim's grip on the quarter-inch edge inexplicably failed.

With toes pointed and in perfect form, the team made the rather arduous journey down to the basement, accompanied by thunderous thudding and various exclamations of discomfort, especially from Kevin, doing yeoman duty on the bottom as combination crash pad and rocket sled. The audience treated our sudden disappearance and the subsequent sounds of mayhem with the equanimity one would expect of those languishing in the midst of private miracles.

Our faith in Kevin's indestructibility was well-placed, and we mounted the stairs sore but uninjured to the puzzled looks of our fans, who were unsure where we had gone and why we were now returning from the basement.

Although there were no lasting injuries, our memory of the various impacts argued for retirement, and so the saga of the triple lever came to a premature and inglorious end.

Time marches on, and even the most highly-trained athletes such as ourselves eventually have their most exceptional achievements regularly performed at middle-school talent shows. So it should be no surprise that, our heartbreaking failures notwithstanding, the triple lever is alive and well in the twenty-first century:

One last jewel...

Kevin's and my improvised front levers had a long history of catastrophes. When I was in college and Kevin was still in high school, he came over to my house one day and we were doing what any pair of teenagers do to while away a boring afternoon---trying front levers on all the door jambs of my family's apartment.

Well, we got to my room and Kevin pulled into yet another one in perfect form, when a loud explosion and cloud of paint and plaster dust announced the demise of practically everything connected in any way with the door. I had not yet perfected the art of the spot and instead viewed the cataclysm from the safe perspective of my bed. My mom came rushing, and found Kevin on the floor, sputtering from ingesting plaster dust and covered with wood and paint chips. She didn't even ask what the hell we'd been doing, just left and returned with a broom and dust pan, which she silently handed over. Kevin and I sensed that we were on the cusp of overtraining and decided, with some reluctance, not to perform any more front levers for the rest of the afternoon.

OK …. All this talk about front levers… I’ll give you this. Three on a 55 gallon oil drum! Try it sometime- takes, skill and stupidity all at the same time.
Typical Stoney Point after hours shenanigans.

Fossil so it seems like you have the missing TACO photos, right?
If so- do you have the one of 3-4 climbers jumping off of the Valley Shuttle into the Merced River?

That little stunt would bring the LAW running but most just made an escape down river, blending in with the regular tourist.

Ah fun times.

Roped up today for the first time in months and felt a bit rusty. Need a different mindset compared to bouldering. Climbed a route that was first done by Gary Slate way back in the 70s when he was a Carolina boy.

Edit: Dam I was wondering what Gary was up to since I know he put up so much stuff in CA so I did a search and saw that he passed last year. RIP.

Fossil….. that photo is Dick Schlocky and Bulwinkle……. Photo courtesy of Bulwinkle (his camera anyway) ….
Yes the TACO was wonderful. I was able to reconnect with many from the C4 days on it and get first hand stories from the participants.

What went down at the end left me sad. All that history, the stories, published material- all freely given and shared gone. I know nothing about websites so I’m not going to point fingers at anyone. It would have made sense to have the access fund, AAC pick up the baton, as a fundraising tool.

MP is doing a decent job despite having folks like Kevin, Russell and who knows banned. Shoot we have a nice collection of important historical figures going on right here. Keeps it interesting.

And I don’t know if you have been following this from the beginning. Lori is the crazy, very motivated, new to the “life” at 66?, who went for it and now climbs full time and lives in Josh.

Later all 

Fossil, that story from John Stannard was definitely about William Shockley, Dick's father. John, of course--nice guy that he is, was very 'gentle' when he described the elder Shockley as being known for 'speaking his mind', since he was, in fact, an outspoken racist and eugenicist. However, that still doesn't justify redacting his name from his seminal route in the current Gunks guidebook.

Night climbing in the Gunks, or anywhere, in the 50s must have been particularly challenging as I'm sure they didn't have particularly functional headlamps---if any. Even a couple of decades later, we waited for a full moon for our nocturnal escapades, and even then the shadows led to some 'interesting moments'!!!!

I am very glad that you, Tarbuster, and others had enough foresight to preserve at least some of the Taco. Being technologically incompetent, the only way I was able to save anything ( a tiny bit) from it,  was by printing, and, unfortunately, only did that after they had already purged the photos and much other content. There were several threads that were especially interesting/meaningful to me and I'm sad that I wasn't able to preserve them in their 'full glory'. While that purge was highly regrettable and very overbroad, some of it was  legally necessary for copyright reasons--which is likely why no other organization stepped up to 'take over'. While it would have been great if they had separated out the photos, etc provided by the actual 'owners' from the copyrighted stuff and only removed the latter, I'm sure that would have required a large amount of effort and they were being told by their attorneys to do it quickly to avoid possible suits. One of the big issues of our current 'information age'.

Fossil— frequently the words “cross talk“ come to mind on this thread. Totally unacceptable in an AA or Al-Anon meeting where more than one conversation happens at the same time. This thread has nothing but cross talk.   There’s unending chatter on various topics on this thread and I truly enjoy listening in but feel totally unqualified to add my two cents most of the time.

On a good day I spend 20 minutes with my morning coffee browsing here.  Sometimes I have something so urgently pressing – – like uh oh I found a scorpion in my bathroom sink – – that it merits massive attention. This crew has been generous in helping to navigate this phase of life. It was Guy who warned me that I may not know what I’m getting into moving here.  It was Russ who saved the day when my psychotic Neighbor sat on his roof with his AK (with a prompt and cogent email response). And I apologize I don’t know who to thank for pulling me through this situation with Tony and advising on a rehab – – it saved his life.  Anyway. Cross talk.

I hope the information that flows here helps make this journey a little easier and a little happier for everyone.

By the way, I really enjoyed your post on the triple lever. I realized that was the name of the exercise rgold posted several years back that just blew my mind.  

I still feel ignorant where climbing is concerned. Things that Bob has coached over the last few years should be automatic by now but I have to learn the hard way. I’ve been thinking about the lower third of the decompensator.  Probably most of the climbers here would get it in the first go, but for me, it’s the perfect mini project. There are a lot of options in the multiple cracks leading up to a horizontal, and so trying to figure out where the best hand jams, the best toe smears, how to hit it right so my feet are under me – – “ trying the thousand ways that don’t work to find the one way that does”.  Exhaustion and not enough steam to finish the route.

I think the answer is chalk.   Pacing out the route and putting a small dot of chalk at the critical holds. This is pretty routine when I’m out with Bob, but it never occurred to me to map out this overhanging crack.

I can’t overstate how profound this recent lesson has been for me – – economy and efficiency.  With limited reserves of energy to begin with I need to know where I’m going right out of the gate. I knew this before, but I didn’t KNOW it.  

Li Hu… to save space from below … god yes! It feels like an impossible task. My admiration grows for all of you who have acquired these skills through hard work and patience. It’s damn frustrating for me. That’s why I hone in on something short but unique to see if I can learn while doing.  When I think of the multiple challenges just on this little piece of real estate… Loose rock, over hanging rock, a missed toehold, and the fact that there is just no time to hang there and figure it out. This is so damn fascinating.

Lori Milas wrote:

I still feel ignorant where climbing is concerned. Things that Bob has coached over the last few years should be automatic by now but I have to learn the hard way. I’ve been thinking about the lower third of the decompensator.  Probably most of the climbers here would get it in the first go, but for me, it’s the perfect mini project. There are a lot of options in the multiple cracks leading up to a horizontal, and so trying to figure out where the best hand jams, the best toe smears, how to hit it right so my feet are under me – – “ trying the thousand ways that don’t work to find the one way that does”.  Exhaustion and not enough steam to finish the route.

I think the answer is chalk.   Pacing out the route and putting a small dot of chalk at the critical holds. This is pretty routine when I’m out with Bob, but it never occurred to me to map out this overhanging crack.

I can’t overstate how profound this recent lesson has been for me – – economy and efficiency.  With limited reserves of energy to begin with I need to know where I’m going right out of the gate. I knew this before, but I didn’t KNOW it.  

This might work for some climbs, but as they get longer, the same chalk lines may not work for you. Learning the technique is more important than sending routes.

djkyote wrote:

Fossil

Please remove your meme with the R word. It may be a joke to you, but those of us that work with  people with special needs find this language demeaning.

Writing in the third person and the R word memes...