New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #40

We followed these for about 2 miles one rainy day.  Notice that there isn't even any water settled into them. About the size of my closed fist.

I've see 5 lions in the wild I think.  Only one of them was scary where he was seeing me at the same time.  That one was about 6 miles into the back country but thankfully the North Fork of the Kings River was between us.  He did consider whether it was worth the effort to cross over.  I considered whether I could out swim him down thru the rapids if he tried.

This guy just showed up, fuil grown gentleman, very sweet. Grey and white. We called him Mr Tom. 

Then, he just disappeared again. 

The slab plate is my son's work, a pottery class we did together, back when he was quite young and saving up to buy an excavator. A thumb excavator. Full sized. 

 Oh, and yes, there's a LOT of clay in my soil, lol!

Hey, post up that Maine coon cat, Al!

John Gill wrote:

Victor, I communicated with the Verm last February, asking about Midnight Lightning. His reply was "After four season-ending injuries four years in a row I called it quits ". He is living in Kentucky and is engaged to a lady who lives on a beautiful horse ranch. He may do some climbing there when he is fully healed. 

I still look forward to the movie.  I met Verm bouldering in Hueco Tanks in the 90’s, he was quite the character.  I admire him for sticking to his ground up ethics, but getting all broken down is a consequence of so many bad falls.  I guess that I am a “cheater,” but using top rope rehearsal on highballs has allowed me to keep bouldering fairly hard at 65 without (so far) major injury.

John Gill wrote:

“A year or so later Jim Holloway visited me and we drove out to several of my bouldering areas. He was very impressed with the plaque. Incidentally, Jim made the largest leap in difficulty in the history of modern bouldering.”

Loved the custom car story! Love all the anecdotes… especially the 19th century accomplishments.

As to Jim Holloway, I have some memories that I’m not sure are all mine or have been influenced by seeing old photos. Anyway… it was a rainy May(?) of 1977 in Camp 4 and on a dry day I happened across a small bouldering group that included a rail thin and very tall Jim H (didn’t know who he was until later) dressed in white painter paints with a white painter’s cap perched backwards on his head.

Now here is what I remember seeing that maybe John or others might confirm about Holloway’s strength and flexibility… they were working this very short (one move?) mantel problem. Jim walks up to the sloping mantel, places his hands palm down on the granite with his fingers pointed in toward his body and his elbows out in front almost touching… then he proceeds to simply do a press until he could lock out his arms straight and step up. Don’t you have to be double jointed or something to get your elbows to touch this way??? And then the tricep strength to press up! Or is my memory clouded by the years?

That same month we were sitting at a picnic table in Camp 4 when this short, sort of nondescript, older (in my eyes!) dude walks by. My buddy says, “Hey, that’s Yvon Chouinard.” I had no idea. He just looked like some lost tourist to me.

Another thing I had no clue about… I think it was that previous winter that the pot plane crashed in the lake and Valley climbers were inexplicably getting rich all of a sudden. I had no idea about this either until years after.

I wish I had known then what I know now about climbing history and about how fleeting life is… I would have liked to have paid more attention to what was going on and to have engaged those earlier pioneers in conversation—much like Lori has been able to connect with past and current climbing pioneers… but I was just a clueless kid then.

Oh… that same spring I caught the ride from Boulder to the Valley in an old VW bus with a small group of hippy climbers. I think my portion of the gas was like $10 or something. I also think they were high most of the time as we struggled at 20mph up the hills and maxed out at 60 per on the descents… heading west and off to glory! Who were those climbers I now wonder??? Were they climbers I had read about or would read about in the magazines? Or just normies like me? No idea and no clue, being very young and focused pretty much on just myself…

Kristian Solem wrote:

5.13 face in Josh? I'm just curious which route. Those things don't get a lot of ascents, it's good to hear about someone getting after it...

The route my friend was working on is called darkness at noon at Smith. He’s been back a number of times to try again.  Meanwhile, he’s back here in Josh this weekend, picking off the hardest routes he can find.,,ones that I never even heard of. 

But your question got me wondering about 5.13 climbs here in Josh. Aside from two or three famous routes I’m not sure what all there is so it might be a fun project to go look at them all.  

——

I had to take my 2016 Lexus to the dealership on Friday and they sent me home with a brand new Lexus GX as a loaner. I was so angry and frustrated when I returned that car and I thought about the qualities that make Climbers a little different.  First of all, for no reason that I could tell, the damn car starts dinging the second I turned it on. Why? Backing out of the driveway is a technological feat. There is no “rearview mirror“ in these modern cars, it’s now a “rear view camera”.  It literally looks like a video game running the whole time and very disorienting.

The car does not trust the driver to stop itself so as I would approach a red light, or another car, or a curve in the road, it starts applying the brakes way ahead of time. I thought I was having engine failure.

If you put your drink down in a holder in the center console, when you pick your drink up again, the door closes automatically behind you. Try to put your drink back down, good luck finding that holder.

And yet, with all the high-tech innovation, they cannot figure out how to build a seat where you cannot drop your cell phone (or loose change or taco) between the seat and console. Because there is no place to put a cell phone of modern size you lay it somewhere and the first time you take a sharp turn the cell phone slides off and down into that chasm. How hard would that be to fix?  Millions of dollars in R&D and yet they can’t find a better place for a cell phone.

So I dropped the loaner off yesterday and when the service guy said, how did you like it I said I HATED IT.
can we clip some wires or disable all this techie stuff? Nope… It’s all integrated into the car and you’re stuck with it. So I asked him what he had that similar to an old Jeep – – and where I won’t be so embarrassed that it’s a complete wreck on the inside from all the dirt and gravel and climbing stuff. I’d be happy with a stick shift. 

When my car starts dinging because I have not fastened my seatbelt, it brings out the rage in me and I will drive without the seatbelt and listen to dinging until it finally stops-THEN I will fasten the seatbelt.  (Tony says the new cars never stop.) . That’s where I was going with this – – I think there is some rebellion in Climbers and this is proof.

100% on the car tech rant. I bought a newer Outback several years ago (my third such model over 35 years), and have been irritated by the 'technology' in it. Too many 'nanny car' features (as I call them), including braking when you speed up to pass a car. And the electronic tailgate is just plain dumb- it only opens electronically...there is no mechanical operation option, and it is slow, and has weird behaviors where it stops working altogether. Just let me open the damn door!

Perhaps most ridiculously, if you leave the tailgate open, the 'tailgate open' message appears on the dash, drawing 4 amps off the battery- this will drain it completely in a very short time. There is no workaround to this issue (the dealer knows it's a problem)- you can't disable it in the firmware of the car. There are several modifications owners have done to avoid this including installing a switch in the tailgate (dumb) and a little thing called a 'Hatch Catch' that a guy made on a 3D printer and sells on Etsy. Outback roots are in adventuring...like car camping, for starters...where you commonly camp with the tailgate open. WTF, engineers?

I'd give anything for a car that combines some of the power and efficiency improvements that have occurred over the years, minus the majority of all of the electronic technology. This stuff only adds to the irritation of using the car, and is ridiculously expensive to repair (which happens too commonly). I often wonder if some car manufacturer will eventually recognize this, and build a simpler option- there must be a market out there for it.

I get it with the bells and whistles they are putting on cars these days. We have a fairly new Honda Fit (Honda Jazz over here) and I don´t know the half of what all the buttons and dials can do.

 Having said that, here are the modern things I have come (some quickly, some slowly) to personally appreciate...

--One button to start as long as you have the key with you.

--Back up camera and warning beeps are great for the tight European parking spots. (My only accidents in the past decades happened by backing up my Toyota Tacoma into unseen rigid objects,)

--Audio (and visual, in side mirror) warning when using the turn signal and someone is in my blind spot.

--Cruise control.

--Multiple USB ports for charging.

--Seats you can heat.

--Windshield wiper setting that moves the wipers at a rate appropriate for the amount of rain. Ours seem to work pretty well.

--Headlights that automatically adjust based on environmental condicions--daylight, night, fog, a tunnel, oncoming traffic, etc. Again, ours work well enough that we just keep the lights on the AUTO setting.

--The hybrid drive (getting about 51mpg... our next and probably last vehicle in our lives will likely be all electric)

--The car has a NAV system, but I tend to just use my cell phone and Google maps.

But, yeah, a lot of the rest--especially the many layered pages on the control and nav panels, I could do without, or at least they could be simplified.

I am VERY glad my car doesn´t have the above mentioned PITA tailgate switch or anything like it.

Re the bells & whistles, they can be annoying but they do have their utility. Twice my wife’s RAV saved us from a catastrophic rear end collision when the collision avoidance system engaged on rural I-25 at night. Both times were cruising at 80 mph when we came upon someone crawling at 45 or less without any lights on. The radar sensed them long before we saw the rolling obstruction. And, my wife’s sister was woken up on the freeway by the lane departure warning on her Prius. It’s a trade-off, but it’s a net positive. 

apogee wrote:

100% on the car tech rant. I bought a newer Outback several years ago (my third such model over 35 years), and have been irritated by the 'technology' in it. Too many 'nanny car' features (as I call them), including braking when you speed up to pass a car. And the electronic tailgate is just plain dumb- it only opens electronically...there is no mechanical operation option, and it is slow, and has weird behaviors where it stops working altogether.

Good to know, I have a 2021 Crosstrek with a manual rear hatch - and most all of the safety things like autobraking and lane control can be disabled with the touch of a button. I made sure of that before I bought the car  but there are many tech things I love about it. the side mirrors flashing when someone is in my blindspot  that is essential to me because I have such limited mobility in my midback and neck.  I love love love the eyesight adaptive cruise control. It’s fantastic for any highway driving esp around LA. And I love that somehow all the engine and tire stuff is monitored remotely and tells me every month that everything is OK.

But I’ve been thinking recently about selling my van and if I do that I was planning to go back to the Outback Wilderness. I can sleep in the back of that.  That would be my 4th Outback.

White’s yesterday from A-Hills.
edited to say I also love the little lines on the video screen that tell you where you are when you back up, or parallel park! Great invention. 

Lori Milas wrote:

First of all, for no reason that I could tell, the damn car starts dinging the second I turned it on. Why? Backing out of the driveway is a technological feat. There is no “rearview mirror“ in these modern cars, it’s now a “rear view camera”.  It literally looks like a video game running the whole time and very disorienting.

Saw this the other day and got a chuckle....

I drive an older vehicle without all the gadgets.  When I rent a car that have lane control, assisted cruise control stuff, back up camera, blind spot warnings, etc...I'll have to admit I like it.  I think it will allow older folks to keep their driver's licenses a lot longer...

Although I still managed to back my rental car into a post in a parking garage last year in Europe...ugh...  The scratches were pretty deep in the finish so I took it to a repair shop for a quick quote.  Guy was hilarious and we chatted about his trip to Vegas.  He said repair would be around 1400 swiss franc.  I went to the store and bought a sharpie and colored the scratches in.  Rental car company "found" another scratch on the car in a different location  ("Damage(s) Door, front (Car body) Driver side scratch < 5 cm (down to primer)"...and I was happy to pay 145CHF.  Funny.

Lori Milas wrote:

The route my friend was working on is called darkness at noon at Smith. He’s been back a number of times to try again.  Meanwhile, he’s back here in Josh this weekend, picking off the hardest routes he can find.,,ones that I never even heard of. 

But your question got me wondering about 5.13 climbs here in Josh. Aside from two or three famous routes I’m not sure what all there is so it might be a fun project to go look at them all.  

——

I’m looking forward towards some 12s I did in my youth, but they’re really hard!

5.11 cracks are more realistic, and I’m just getting on the 11a cracks in Joshua Tree. Finally feeling good about my placements. Pretty much all cams, totems…Maybe that’s as far as I go?

My partner wants to push me up some ice. Just got the gear. My Nomic broke during training. Looking to the Grivel North.

No matter what the outcome, it’s the journey that makes it all worthwhile.

I had to take my 2016 Lexus to the dealership on Friday and they sent me home with a brand new Lexus GX as a loaner. I was so angry and frustrated when I returned that car and I thought about the qualities that make Climbers a little different.  First of all, for no reason that I could tell, the damn car starts dinging the second I turned it on. Why? Backing out of the driveway is a technological feat. There is no “rearview mirror“ in these modern cars, it’s now a “rear view camera”.  It literally looks like a video game running the whole time and very disorienting.

The car does not trust the driver to stop itself so as I would approach a red light, or another car, or a curve in the road, it starts applying the brakes way ahead of time. I thought I was having engine failure.

If you put your drink down in a holder in the center console, when you pick your drink up again, the door closes automatically behind you. Try to put your drink back down, good luck finding that holder.

And yet, with all the high-tech innovation, they cannot figure out how to build a seat where you cannot drop your cell phone (or loose change or taco) between the seat and console. Because there is no place to put a cell phone of modern size you lay it somewhere and the first time you take a sharp turn the cell phone slides off and down into that chasm. How hard would that be to fix?  Millions of dollars in R&D and yet they can’t find a better place for a cell phone.

So I dropped the loaner off yesterday and when the service guy said, how did you like it I said I HATED IT.
can we clip some wires or disable all this techie stuff? Nope… It’s all integrated into the car and you’re stuck with it. So I asked him what he had that similar to an old Jeep – – and where I won’t be so embarrassed that it’s a complete wreck on the inside from all the dirt and gravel and climbing stuff. I’d be happy with a stick shift. 

When my car starts dinging because I have not fastened my seatbelt, it brings out the rage in me and I will drive without the seatbelt and listen to dinging until it finally stops-THEN I will fasten the seatbelt.  (Tony says the new cars never stop.) . That’s where I was going with this – – I think there is some rebellion in Climbers and this is proof.

Hahaha, same thing happened to me! I thought I hit something. Now I back up extremely slowly.

All the new electronics seems to help on long drives. I autopilot most long tedious drives up and down the 5 fwy to Bay Area…

Li Hu wrote:

That group was engaged in sex with 12 and 13 year old girls. 

I missed it.
Do you have a link?

Add me to the auto 'bells and whistles' haters. When I purchase cars, as infrequently as possible, I always ask to only be shown the most basic vehicles available. Though, even with the used cars I am looking at, most (all?) now have increasing amounts of 'tech' ---groan. For example, I'm perfectly happy to have manual windows, but they now seem to be virtually extinct. I admit that certain features are helpful ( back up cameras, for instance, but always supplemented by mirrors). While my car doesn't have them, 'blind spot warnings' are definitely beneficial. But much beyond that---no thanks.

Yury wrote:

I missed it.
Do you have a link?

We’ve been asked not to discuss it this topic, and it’s easy to find.

Daniel Joder wrote:

Loved the custom car story! Love all the anecdotes… especially the 19th century accomplishments.

As to Jim Holloway, I have some memories that I’m not sure are all mine or have been influenced by seeing old photos. Anyway… it was a rainy May(?) of 1977 in Camp 4 and on a dry day I happened across a small bouldering group that included a rail thin and very tall Jim H (didn’t know who he was until later) dressed in white painter paints with a white painter’s cap perched backwards on his head.

Now here is what I remember seeing that maybe John or others might confirm about Holloway’s strength and flexibility… they were working this very short (one move?) mantel problem. Jim walks up to the sloping mantel, places his hands palm down on the granite with his fingers pointed in toward his body and his elbows out in front almost touching… then he proceeds to simply do a press until he could lock out his arms straight and step up. Don’t you have to be double jointed or something to get your elbows to touch this way??? And then the tricep strength to press up! Or is my memory clouded by the years?

That same month we were sitting at a picnic table in Camp 4 when this short, sort of nondescript, older (in my eyes!) dude walks by. My buddy says, “Hey, that’s Yvon Chouinard.” I had no idea. He just looked like some lost tourist to me.

Another thing I had no clue about… I think it was that previous winter that the pot plane crashed in the lake and Valley climbers were inexplicably getting rich all of a sudden. I had no idea about this either until years after.

I wish I had known then what I know now about climbing history and about how fleeting life is… I would have liked to have paid more attention to what was going on and to have engaged those earlier pioneers in conversation—much like Lori has been able to connect with past and current climbing pioneers… but I was just a clueless kid then.

Oh… that same spring I caught the ride from Boulder to the Valley in an old VW bus with a small group of hippy climbers. I think my portion of the gas was like $10 or something. I also think they were high most of the time as we struggled at 20mph up the hills and maxed out at 60 per on the descents… heading west and off to glory! Who were those climbers I now wonder??? Were they climbers I had read about or would read about in the magazines? Or just normies like me? No idea and no clue, being very young and focused pretty much on just myself…

Jim on the juggernaut in S Colorado, ca 1978. I would guess everything you read about Jim is true. He was quite thin, but exceptionally strong. After I was credited with V8 and V9 in 1958-59 (in retrospect), Jim jumped to V11 and V12 in the 1970s. He was probably the most amazing boulderer of the 1970s-1980s. But he left bouldering for bicycle racing of some sort, and never returned to the sport, to the best of my knowledge. 

Yvon as I knew him in the 1950s. He told me what I was doing was called "bouldering", and I assumed the S Ca climbers had coined the word. Forty years later I discovered that the Brits had used the term in the 1880s. The "Bleausards" had been practicing their skills even before, but their title implies a specific locality. 

Daniel, you and I are USAF affiliated, so you can appreciate how I stayed in shape at the airbase back in 1959-62. No climbing walls, of course, but on evening or midnight shift and the officer in residence at base ops, I would put on my shoes and climb around the metal stairwell to the top of the control tower. I also had some tricks I did at the base gymnasium. You had to improvise back then. 

My issue with the new cars is how big the screens are. Its fine for someone  to dive into that touch screen while driving but I get the equivalent of a DWI for touching my phone to refresh the GPS . The few times I have had a rental car I almost crashed trying to figure out the screen. 

Finally got a decent amount of climbing in today after my long drive through the snow.  P1 and the first half of p2 just as dry and picked out as last week. it's been cold but the water is not running... Hangover from the drought. 

This is a lot thinner than it looks.  every placement is bottomed on rock with less than 2 cm of ice. 

the middle section was still super thin with a heady slab to overcome (the spot I bailed last week.  but then the top looked great!

it climbed pretty well to almost the very top and then it went completely to shit just 20ft from the trees.

It was totally doable but not 100% and I had options and that is why I am still alive after 43 years of ice climbing. 

3 raps got me down.. I still bailed but at least I got over 250ft of climbing in. Better to bail 20ft from the top than  120ft from the top like last week. 

Ward. life is better when you are smart. You are smart to rehearse the heck out of those highballs and get them dialed.  you cant send if you are all broken up... 

As a kid, I pretty much climbed everything everywhere. At 8, my family scolded me climbing buildings etc.

Today, we were at the Getty, all that Travertine looked so climbable. Guessing 5.10 to 5.11 ish?

My daughter saw me looking up at the wall and scolded me   

I've been driving manual transmission since I started driving in the mid 1960's.  I dislike automatic transmissions, but it is getting harder and harder to buy a car with manual. My current ride is a 2019 Honda Fit with a six-speed manual transmission--best car I've owned. It a gasoline car, but gets 35 mpg, which is pretty good.  It has a pretty large screen, a backup camera, which I find extremely useful, and a right-side camera.  The right-side camera is so much better than a mirror (which I also have and keep adjusted).  The camera has a much broader field of view with no blind spot, and tells me how many car-lengths back approaching traffic is, and I can check it with a glance without turning my head at all. The Fit accommodates a surprising amount of junk and shoehorns into tight NYC parking spaces that other cars have to pass up.  For such precision parking maneuvers, the backup camera is an invaluable aid. Oh, it also has push-botton ignition, which I could take or leave, but it is convenient to have your keys in your pack and still be able to drive the car.

rgold wrote:

I've been driving manual transmission since I started driving in the mid 1960's.  I dislike automatic transmissions, but it is getting harder and harder to buy a car with manual. My current ride is a 2019 Honda Fit with a six-speed manual transmission--best car I've owned. It a gasoline car, but gets 35 mpg, which is pretty good.  It has a pretty large screen, a backup camera, which I find extremely useful, and a right-side camera.  The right-side camera is so much better than a mirror (which I also have and keep adjusted).  The camera has a much broader field of view with no blind spot, and tells me how many car-lengths back approaching traffic is, and I can check it with a glance without turning my head at all. The Fit accommodates a surprising amount of junk and shoehorns into tight NYC parking spaces that other cars have to pass up.  For such precision parking maneuvers, the backup camera is an invaluable aid. Oh, it also has push-botton ignition, which I could take or leave, but it is convenient to have your keys in your pack and still be able to drive the car.

When we lived in San Antonio we bought a new Honda Fit in, I think, 2005. Absolutely loved it. Great gas mileage, reliable, and more room than you would think inside. I’m 6’ 2” and had no trouble driving it. At the time I was big into bike racing and I remember sleeping in the back with the rear seats folded down along with my bike and other gear. Lots of options for folding down combinations of seats. It didn’t have much clearance, though, so you had to be careful on rougher dirt roads so maybe not the best option for a climber out west. Our current Fit (called a Honda Jazz over here) is a 2021 hybrid model with very low mileage. Getting 51mpg average and plenty of room to carry stuff to the crag. Great car!

P. S. I have always driven cars and trucks with manual transmission and preferred it. This Honda Jazz is an automatic (our first automatic) and I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised at how much I like it—especially in the stop and go traffic coming back into Barcelona!