Sketchiest thing you've ever done

A couple of vaguely humorous ones come to mind. One was a first ascent on a creaky little pinnacle at Titahi bay near Wellington.  My mate Gary won the toss and lead up truly appalling rock to a stiff 5.11 move onto the summit. After a bit he yelled "on belay" and I followed, retrieving wires and discarding the placements as I went.  As I started the crux move Gary yelled "yeah don't fall", which was motivating.  Turned out the belay was a sling around a block that he was sitting on to hold in place. We downclimbed a first descent to avoid rapping.

Another. Not me, but some mates related a tale of rapping off a nut tool hooked on a carrot bolt in Arapiles.

Many more involving soloing, breaking holds and dodging rockfall, also at Titahi bay. Epic place.

I once tried a traditional body rappel. Summer, so just a tee shirt. All went swimmingly at first because the upper section of the cliff was slabby. Then the angle changed to overhanging for the last 50-60 feet. Things quickly went south. The pain of burning skin got so bad I had to let go of the rope ... as I let go, I aimed for a tree, landed in a thick mass of foliage, then down-climbed 30 feet to the ground....

In 1977 my partner and I were trying to do the second ascent of a coveted route on Fairview dome in the meadows. About six pitches up these enormous black thunder clouds rolled in and we took shelter under our rain wear, while the most intense thunder storm I have been through ensued.  The lightning was so intense that we could see through the webs in our fingers while we covered our faces and laughed. After an our or so of this, we decided to rap.  Unfortunately the route traverses and does not have fixed anchors and it is pouring. We made it to stances for a few pitches and then we just couldn’t get to the cracks. We had been given a single 1/4 split shaft bolt to back up a sketchy anchor up higher by the first ascent team. So, in the pouring rain, I hung on the end of the rope and drilled one of my first bolts on a completely blank face about 200 ft from the ground. My partner and I both hung off that bolt and did a double rope rap to the easier terrain near the ground.  We later found out that people died in a flash flood in Tenaya canyon that afternoon.  One of many sketchy adventures survived in my youth. 

Back in the 1980's I went to Scotland to climb ice.  

My partner bailed on me (because he was getting married,) so I was alone.  My plan was to meet a local and climb with them.

Got to Fort William, and the locals said that Ben Nevis was out of condition (too warm.)    I decided to climb (solo) anyway.  Ended up soloing an ice/mixed route with big ice chunks and rock raining down on me the whole time (no helmet.)  Managed to finish the route, but decided to not do any more climbing and spent the rest of the vacation touring castles in Wales.  

Ronald Amick wrote:

Second to last pitch on the Nose, darkness fell as my partner was starting out the bolt ladder on the summit overhang, and he finished it using our only headlamp. Mike clipped every bolt for protection rather than every third or so, and rope drag stopped him cold, right at the lip where the angle kicks back. He told me that he had anchors and was setting up a hanging belay. We decided that I should follow the bolt ladder on belay as unclipping and clipping ascenders to pass every bolt would be too dangerous in the dark.

 So instead of jugging a fixed line, Mike took up the slack to put me on belay. When he did that it created a loop of slack than hung down right in front of my stance, but 12 feet out, since i was hanging in an alcove. I had to wait for Mike to haul so he could belay me. We had been using our 3rd rope to lower the bag out in situations like this, but this time i just let it fly. Unbeknownst to us, the bag was swinging back and forth and wrapping the haul line around the hanging loop of slack as he pulled it up. When Mike got the bag up, there was a giant knot of rope on top of the haul bag. Mike had to crank on it really hard to get the bag clipped in, which cinched the knot tight.

I hung there in the dark while Mike tried to undo the knot, and after an hour or more i finally told Mike to just leave the knot for now and bring me up. The rope came tight and i began following the bolt ladder by feel alone. Reach out, find the bolt and clip aider in, swing onto aider then reach back and retrieve the other aider, repeat. It was slow going, and when I got to the belay I about had a heart attack. We were hanging on a blank vertical section of rock, and our entire anchor consisted of 3 old 1/4" bolts, only one of which had a hanger. Mike used wired stoppers to clip the two studs.

 I took the headlamp and began pulling loops out of the knot and laying them on my lap. Then I dropped them and had to start over. Suddenly the headlamp died, leaving us in total darkness. We hung there as the seriousness of our situation settled in.  We had no light and no rope, it was all involved in the knot, except the length that Mike brought me up on. I found that when i switched on the light it would give a poof of light then die. After a little rest it was good for another poof. Somebody had to do something, so i pulled up the loop that was attached to my harness and gave it to Mike for a hip belay. Then i stood on the haul bag, then Mikes shoulder, then onto the slab.

It was around 1100 by now and I was standing on the very lip of El Cap in the dark, hip belayed off the worst anchor imaginable. I clicked on the lamp and in the brief burst of light saw a line of scoops heading left. I felt my way across the scoops until they ended. Another poof and I saw a line of holds leading up to a big flake. I climbed up to the flake by feel and in another flash of light i saw that the flake looked like a solid lieback, and i climbed to the top of the flake in the dark. I was now at least 30 feet out with no protection and so gripped i was ready to barf. Another burst of light showed that the foot wide ledge that I was on ran for around ten feet left then petered out at a blank slab.

I edged across the ledge and the light wouldnt fire again, so i gingerly stepped onto a slick, holdless slab. It was probably 5.6 but felt like 11d as i inched up it in stark terror. I got to a place where i could hit the light again and in that brief flash saw the most beautiful sight, a little sapling maybe 4 feet tall, with a trunk the size of my wrist. I knew if I could make it to Mr Tree we would live. I also knew that if I fell, I would pull the belay and we would all go for the long ride. The last bit of slab felt extra greasy and i was fighting panic. I switched the light on and there in front of me was Mr Tree. I grabbed it and the relief was indescribable.

I tied off to the little tree and ran an ascender down the rope to where Mike was hanging. His head was level with my feet. So how to get the haul bag up with no haul rope. We decided that on the count of 3 Mike would unclip the bag and I would swing it up. Dropping the bag would rip the belay, so excitement was running high as Mike counted. On 3 I swung the bag with all my might, realizing in mid swing that I had nowhere to put it. I jammed it behind my legs and held it there with the friction of my shoes, the toes of which were pointed over the void. I put Mike on belay and he turned a desperate mantle onto my tiny stance, where we jostled like drowning me for secure footing.

Between us we pushed and pulled the bag up the slab in the dark with Mr Tree as our only anchor. When we got on top we couldn't get to our bivy clothes in the haul bag, so we laid down in cracks in the capstone and shivered ourselves to sleep

I'm getting gripped just reading this! i'm also just surprised that thin sapling was enough to hold you guys

Boofed a molly press with a group of girls at a party one time. 

About 15 years ago, I wrote a short article about soloing The Prow in Yosemite Valley, back in 1971.  Here is the story:

I had returned from Vietnam, one year prior and had partially recovered from a serious injury to my ankle which happened on my last day over there.

 I was hot to get on a big wall, but the weather sucked. It was April, and one storm after the other was hitting the valley. I was from Boston and new to the valley and had been hanging out with the locals at the time, John Dill, Phil Gleason, Jim Donini, George Myers etc. I couldn't get anyone to join me on a big wall. The weather sucked and I was a newcomer. I really was frustrated, so I decided to solo the Prow.

As far I knew, it hadn't had a second ascent and it was considered a pretty hard aid route, rated (5.9 A4). I started in good weather. I had never soloed a route, so I decided to tie a knot in the rope every so often, as I proceeded upward. There were a few memorable memories of this climb, which stick in my mind, 40 years later.

I remember an aid pitch, on a dead vertical wall, which slanted from left to right. Well, I had the bright idea of tying my hall bag to a fifi hook. I thought, after cleaning the pitch- I would just pull the bag off the anchor and haul the bag up. Upon trying this-the bag would not release. I pulled like hell and all of a sudden-the rope pulled free from the bag and I was looking down at the bag hanging there all by it's lonesome-way off to the side, on this vertical wall. What a Fu---up! Well, I lowered myself off and after many tries swinging on the rope- I finally grabbed the bag. I rested on the bag awhile and finally cut loose with the bag, for a wild swing across the wall.

It was a long time ago, but I remember about halfway up the wall, there was this long A4 pitch, ( which I'm sure is A2 now). Every placement involved stacked tips of lost arrow etc. I tied them off with nylon shoestrings which I thought was pretty cool. Well, at the end of the pitch, Robbins warned of an expanding flake. I was careless and tired and started to drive in a pin behind the flake. The pin I was standing in shifted for just a second and I tried to react, but I was not quick enough. I zippered the entire pitch. I must have fallen over a 100 feet. I still remember the placements pulling out, some with hardly a tug, others with a little more resistance. I had time to think about my parents on the way down. I felt sorry for them. I thought this was it. John Dill had been watching me from the Valley floor with a spotting scope, (long before he was involved with Yosar), and he said later that I completely went out of his view). Suddenly the rope came tight, with one hell of jerk! I was lucky. I hadn't lost my hammer or jumars and was unhurt. I didn't make the same mistake twice!. After going up again-I placed a nut behind the flake. (I remember that I had one hell of a time untying that rope after I reached the top). The long fall had practically welded the knot together.

On the third day, the weather was turning bad. It was getting dark, and I had to make this belly crawl along this ledge into a corner, which I hoped would protect me from the impending storm. I made it just in time, before the lightning storm hit. I was cozy and dry all night and the valley was getting hit hard. I had these pain killers with me that the VA doctor had given me for my Vietnam injury and I was feeling pretty good. My ego was flying high, knowing I would be off next morning and everyone in the valley was getting soaked. Well, next morning was another day and it wasn't over yet.

I was free climbing up the final pitches when this horrendous lightning-hail storm hit. The strikes were hitting real close and I remember hail going down my armpits as I was making it to the top. Then, as I reached the top, the sky cleared and it was sunny! A few days later, George Myers asked me if I wanted to do the Nose. We got hit by a storm on that too. Jim Donini followed with the Salathe Wall., and the weather sucked on that too! 

The things you remember years later are the epics, if you servive them.

Joined Mountain Project. . .

Hank Caylor wrote:

Boofed a molly press with a group of girls at a party one time. 

You still run with burros? That looked pretty fun, but definitely crazy, lol!

Helen

Hank Caylor wrote:

Boofed a molly press with a group of girls at a party one time. 

No idea what that means but it does sound way sketch.

Sketch caught up with me in an unlikely place some years ago in Snow Canyon on the left end of the Circus Wall. 

We arrived at camp and walked over to do a 2-pitch 5.6 with a walk off per the guide book. Wearing shorts and t-shirts with a single rope we charged up only to discover there were an additional two pitches to top out. It was getting late in the day on top and where the hell is this walk off?

We explored the top of the mesa, hit a dead end and backtracked to our top out. At that point dusk was becoming night and with it the desert was cooling quickly. I noticed a tight crawl under a boulder and at the drop-off a sling wrapped around a shrub. Here we go, me using a squeeze light between my teeth to light the way. 

Two raps in the dark led over an overhang to a ledge with no fixed anchor. We were pioneering a descent in the dark with only a squeeze light. I rapped the face below, finding one seam that offered gear and set a new rap anchor. The next rap led nowhere so I ascended the rope and fixed it as a single strand. That reached another overhang where I could now see tree tops through the dark. I couldn't tell how far the rope went or where the ground was.

At this point someone in the campground noticed my little light on the face and from a distance yelled "jump." Helpful. I decided to go for it and rapped over this final overhang into the dark, soon coming to the rope's end. I could not see the ground in the darkness but took my chance and rapped off the end, free falling to the ground. I landed on top of a mound of sand unhurt and had my partner do the same. 

In the morning we scrambled up an adjacent rib and recovered our left gear. I don't think there is a true walk off but have never been back to look.

Couple summers ago I climbed Fishhook Arete on Mt. Russell with a friend. After successfully summitting, we intended to take the 3rd class East Ridge descent back down to Upper Boy Scout Lake where our camp was. Due to reasons I won't get into, the plan was changed and we started rappelling down one of the steep gullies next to the ridge line. Long story short, we chose the wrong gully and found ourselves cliffed out as night fell, with no way to ascend back up. Even if I'd had hooks and beaks and ladders, the face was too blank to aid back up. Thus, it became a very long night full of bail anchors and leaving gear behind. To be specific, we went down the first gully you encounter while taking the ridge descent. I believe the second gully would have been safe and is an option, in addition to the east ridge of course.

On one particular rappel, I'd built a bail anchor around a big boulder close to the edge of a cliff that was high enough that our headlamps couldn't see the bottom of it. I tied knots in the end of the rope, took the rack and a radio, and rapped to the ends of the rope where I found myself still a good 100' above the next ledge below me. 

In front of me was a crack on a vertical if not overhanging cliff face so I built a 3 piece anchor of 0.3 and 0.4 size pieces with a #3 as backup in a questionable crack nearby and transferred my weight onto the anchor. I radioed up to my partner to let them know the situation and explained that they'd need to come down to me, put their weight on my anchor, and we could then do another rappel that should get us to the ledge below. My partner raps down to me, we transfer their weight onto the anchor so that both of us are fully hanging on my gear anchor. At this point we're both hanging on my gear anchor, around 1am, can only see as far as our headlamps allow, and despite my full confidence in my ability to place gear and build iron clad anchors - I know full well that if this anchor fails, we both die and have absolutely zero chance of surviving what would be a potentially 1000' fall since we'd likely bounce off the ledge and continue down the next cliff. We both know this and say nothing, we just focus on the task at hand.

We pull the rope from above to thread the next rappel without issue. I successfully rap to the next ledge, then my partner does, leaving more gear behind. We continued this probably 5 or 6 more times until we reached the lower angle mess of a scree field which eventually takes us down to easier terrain where we continue on, getting back to camp around 3am. Obviously we survived the ordeal and it was all fine aside from costing quite a bit of $, but that specific rap was one for the memory books.

Edit: Please do not attempt to go recover that gear if you value your life. Without serious self rescue skills and a lot of luck, you'd very possibly die in the process.

Steve A. I love that story.

I rapped a 100 foot pitch on a grigri and discovered i had only clipped my locker through the body but not the colored face plate. Works fine.

Untethered myself from the wall and did a bunch of rope stacking before realizing I was free at the belay stance before the big roof on west face of leaning tower.

I had a work trip planned to Ecuador and found a nice 5.3 arete in the mountains to solo on a weekend.  I didn't have much room in my luggage so just packed a pair of climbing shoes.

The hike in was chill, the weather was good, and the climbing looked easy so I started up.  The climbing was a broken ridge line of mostly on and off 4th class.  I climbed for about 45 minutes when some dark clouds came in quickly, the temps dropped fast, and it started to flurry.  I think I was at about 15,000 feet of elevation.   Besides the weather the snow was getting a bit deep so I decided to bail and down climb.  I turned around and realized that I couldn't find my foot prints in the snow and that there were many ridge lines to choose from for a decent and I had no idea which one was mine.  The odds were that I would pick the wrong ridge and end up who knows where in the mountains.

I looked down at myself and I was wearing a v-neck work sweater and chinos (my work trip attire) and the weather continued to worsen.  Not clothes in which to spend a night out or extended time in the mountains.

Going down was a terrible option as was waiting it out.  I decided the safest option was to keep going to the summit where I knew there was a hiking trail going down the backside.  It turns out that was the right decision and I have never been so happy to find a hiking trail.  Overall, pretty poor preparation on my part followed by the right decision to go up rather than down.

Drove 2 hrs to climb this ice in Kanab Ut.

Climbed it- thought- it’s getting kinda warm.

Finish my last lap. And am breaking down the anchor at the top and hear a loud crash- 

Huh- what was that?
hike back to car.

Look back.

The "just going to grab a closer look at those rocks" to "smearing lichen in vans 30 feet off the deck" pipeline will eventually kill me

ddriver wrote:

No idea what that means but it does sound way sketch.

Uhhhhh....

Seventh grade. Already half Spider-Man, half Darwin Award nominee. Somehow convinced my normie parents to buy a real rope at REI (miracle #1—we didn’t end up with a static line- not that we would have known that you can’t lead on a static line- a rope was a rope).

We rapped everything taller than a mailbox: water towers, overpasses, middle-school roof (RIP Mrs. Henderson’s peace of mind). Got bored going down, stared at the wall, and uttered the sacred words: “What if we went up?”

One year later: plastic-gym vet. Knew a figure-8 (kinda), could clip draws mid-lead with my on-hand (badly), owned chalk → basically Honnold (pre-Honnold era).

Met Chad—(every bad decision needs a Chad). Upstairs- bedroom specialist. Friday after school: “Bro, Parley’s canyon tomorrow? First real outdoor lead.
Can your mom drop us off?”

Dropped at the crag like royalty. Picked the “easiest” 5.6 (felt 5.12d to us). Tied in, chalked like a steak, sent it, screaming “WALL WHISPERER!” Back-cleaned with our total arsenal of 7 quickdraws. Topped out crying tears of survival.

Then I looked down.

The rope… ended… about eight feet above the ground.

I had exactly enough rope to reach the top and then… nothing. No rappel. No lowering. Nada. Just me and a very confused Chad staring up like a golden retriever who just watched his owner eat the last treat.

But I was prepared for this. Sort of. I’d heard legends — whispers — that people sometimes belayed from the top. I’d never seen it. Never done it. Never been taught it. But in my 13-year-old brain, that was just a minor technicality, like remembering to put the lid on the blender.
How hard could it be?

So I shouted down the single most responsible sentence in climbing history:

“CHAD, I’M BELAYING YOU FROM UP HERE! JUST CLIMB, BRO!”

Chad, bless his trusting little soul, starts up. I’m frantically trying to manage all this 11mm dynamic cable while sitting on the ground and simultaneously realizing I have zero idea how to manage the stiffest rope Sterling has ever made AND belay from above. I’m basically doing interpretive dance with a rope and carabiners (tho very few of them).

Chad is almost up, grunting, when it hits me like a freight train made of pure panic:

I had clipped the device straight to my gear loop like a decorative keychain. The entire time Chad had been climbing, I was just… pulling the rope, with my hands, through the tuber, Like a very enthusiastic jump-rope coach. No backup. Nothing.
Chad -> rope -> tuber -> biner -> gear loop -> nothing, nothing else in the system- 

keep it simple right?

 If he had fallen, the only thing stopping him from becoming a Chad-shaped crater was my Petzl “Jump” harness’s gear loop, well that, sweaty palmsand sheer delusion.

At the exact moment this cosmic realization slapped me across the face, Chad crested the lip, stepped onto flat ground, looked at me with the biggest, proudest smile, and said:

“Dude… that was awesome.”

I just stared at him. Then at the rope hanging uselessly from my gear loop. Then back at him.

I whispered the only thing my brain could produce:

“…We are never telling anyone about this.” (Enter Mountain Project stupidity thread)

Epilogue:

The next day I beelined to the school library and checked out the lone copy of How to Rock Climb! by The Sierra Club so many times the librarian started side-eyeing me like I was planning to eat it. Eventually I just “forgot” to return it. That chalk-crusted, spine-broken relic still squats on my shelf today, radiating pure shame and zero remorse.

I’m pretty sure I owe the school district roughly $1,847 in late fees.

Worth every penny.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how two idiots accidentally invented the world’s most successful “trust fall” on actual rock… and somehow lived to tell the tale.