Titanic Washout

I wanted this blog entry to be titled “Freeing the Titan: A True Account of a Tasmanian Wilderness Climbing Adventure Epic.” Or maybe not so melodramatic as this, but at least serious sounding. Of course, it turned into one big joke of a bumble through the bush, up to a giant choss pile of a cliff and eventually abject failure. However we had lots of fun and got a good climb in the end. Well here is the story, anyway…

6 years ago, as the crow flies, I went out to Lake St. Clair with Deano to climb on Mt. Geryon and the Acropolis. We thought we might have a play on the Shield, a 450 meter (supposedly) grade 24 route or Old Wave Heroes 21 on the Acropolis. We hiked into the forest on the West side of the Geryon formation to camp near Sissyfuss creek. This is where we were to spend the next 5 days huddled under a tarp in the pouring rain eating Nuttella on bread with Mee Goreng noodles and playing spades. This actually turns out to be the standard “wilderness” climbing trip in Tasmania. The weather had moved in after we barely had time to climb a couple of the top pitches at Acropolis. We did, however get a chance to downgrade one of the handcracks, tough guys that we were. Little consolation that was. A couple years later, I went out with Grug. We actually had decent weather but the cliff was wet and imposing. Basically Grug shit his pants so we went back to Hobart and got drunk.

For the next 4 years I kept wanting to go back and climb Mt Geryon to even the score. The Titan was this epic route on Geryon done in 1968 by a couple of heavy hitters from Victoria. They gave it 17 A3, which to me just screamed awesome hard free climb. The fact that I knew the sons of the first ascensionist, Lachy and Ross, made it even more appealing: History comes to life. And it gave me the chance to dangle freeing their old man’s route in front of their faces! Well the stars were lined up against me as usual. We had awesome weather and a few days off work but the day before we were to set out, my beautiful fiancé and climbing partner extraordinaire, Anna-Veronique, decided she was not up for it and bailed! Apparently, Judo training, working full time as a lettuce farm hand, and climbing had taken its toll and she just had to call it quits. I don’t hold it against her one iota.

Luckily by now, even the slow to motivate brothers of yore, Lachy and Ross Taylor, had decided they would be damned if some half-ass Tassie/Yank wannabe was going to steal the FFA out from under them. They wanted to climb the Titan as well! The only sensible thing for me to do was team up with them and assault the Titan together!

Unfortunately, by now I had lost my psyche as well. I txted Lachy and left a msg that said I had packed in climbing and good luck with it all. The thing is that once a man reaches my age, if you’re lucky enough to survive as long as this withered old plum, you start to make concessions. You start to prioritise. You start to get soft and stupid. I started to contemplate climbing within the scheme of the rest of my existence. Well it took exactly one more day of working on that fucking lettuce farm to quit work and get out to go climbing! I told the boss I was gone and spammed everyone I knew that could belay that the biggest ascent in the history of climbing was going down and if they wanted a ride to fame and fortune, the train was leaving in approximately 14 hours. I got a positive from a certain Simon Bischoff! What luck!

I had climbed with Simon once before up on the Columns of the Organ Pipes. We did a couple classics,he onsighted Skyrocket, then finished on the 25 Resurrection Shuffle. His hands were a bloody mess! He had just spent 18 months climbing mostly limestone in Europe and did not have the best crack skills, but his tenacity was certainly impressive. His gumption coupled with the fact that his old man was a badass climber back in the Tassie Stone Age gave us some historic climbing credentials to rival the brothers Taylor in our own bid for freeing the three-headed monster (that’s Geryon, look it up).

We jumped in the “BOOTY” mobile (my car’s number plate) and two hours and one dead spotted quoll later (sorry little guy!) found ourselves camping outside the park to get an early ferry ride. I sent a txt to Lachy letting him know we were coming. I figured by the time we hiked up there they would already be climbing the Titan. My hope was that Titan would prove too difficult a free climb for the two of them and me and Simon would have to step up to the plate, free climbing ridiculously hard pitches they had no business being on. Or something like that!

The walk in was easy and overcast. The idea was to hike up to the Acropolis and use my spotting glass to scope some lines on the East Face of Geryon, watch the boys progress on Titan, take a few photos, maybe climb some of the top pitches at Acrops, then downclimb to the col and meet them at the bivy cave below the North Geryon summit. Unfortunately, overcast turned into sideways rain and 20 meters of visibility. We did not bring any rain jackets using the impeccable logic that if the weather was so bad as to require these, we would just turn around and leave. So no tent or tarp either… And I was wearing shorts and sandals. Hmmm…

My Wet Left Foot.


The weather worsened but we marched on and although we couldn’t find the proper downclimb through the mist and rain, we eventually found an only ‘slightly’ suicidal descent gully and followed our noses, eventually bashing and sliding around to the col. By then the weather had cleared a bit and I was able to scope the bivy cave and the brothers inside it. No surprise they were not climbing that day!


Mt Geryon from the saddle. The weather had cleared up by now.

The wet bash down to the cave was nothing compared to the shit we had just got through and we were greeted fondly by the Taylors at the accommodating cave known as “Heim”. Earlier that day they had been rained off the second pitch of Titan and were keen to get back on it in the morning. Too much loose rock on route would keep both parties from climbing it together, so we decided to try Steve Monks Shield 24. Ross reckoned we wouldn’t even find it. We showed him!

The evening was dry and breezy and the morning presented us with a spectacular sunrise. Awakening from the cave to look over the valley of ancient forest gives one the simultaneous feelings of isolation and embrace, nestled as we were in our makeshift home, companions in search of adventure; a lifetime away from the plastic world of eternal consumption…. That is until Lachy pointed out that the multi-million dollar “cradle huts”, his employer, was basically a stones throw over the hill. Thanks for blowing the illusion!
I find myself waking up in caves quite a bit these days.


Caveing it up.

Lachy and Ross Taylor. Ross is the one who has just spotted an alien space craft and so has taken off his aluminum "mindbeam" helmet to allow his alien mates access to his frontal lobe. Lachy looks on.


The morning was warm, the rock was dry, and it was time to climb! We tanked a bunch of water and began up what we took to be the start of the route. We mostly scrambled, interspersed with unprotected boulder problems, up 200 meters of the most shitful, horrible stuff imaginable. Why anyone would write this up as a route is beyond me! Without exaggeration it was the worse cliff I have ever climbed in Tassie. And I usually like this kind of stuff. Eventually we got up to what I reckoned to be the point of no return, that is, easier to go to the top than to rap off. I was swinging out over yet another shitty gully to get our bearings as one of the many, many trees we were forced to climb over disconnected my fiancé’s camera from my harness and I watched it bounce down 100 meters of broken ledges to disappear over a final cliff.



After screaming abuse to everything in existence, I decided to forget about it and keep climbing but horrible rope drag stopped me so I made an anchor and brought up Simon. He was less than impressed with the route (something about most scarred in life) and was keen to get the fuck out of there. I kept thinking about the camera and after realizing that the small chance of rescuing the camera was far more appealing than the next 100 meters of death scramble required to get to the proper climbing (which in all honesty did not look that good either). We bailed.
The East Face of Geryon at its Finest.


I hate bailing. I hate quitting. I don’t do it much. Occasionally I quit drinking for awhile but I always start back up again…. I once created a 24 hour climbing competition at Arapiles where we developed our own points system for each climb. It was number of stars multiplied by the total meters of the route (going for quality over difficulty). So Auto da Fe, a three star 100 meter climb, was worth 300 points. The team with most points at the end of 24 hours won. It was two teams of two, me and Grug vs Jake and Doug. Jake and Doug pulled out, probably because it was a very stupid idea for a competition, but Grug and me wouldn’t give up! We competed against no one for the next day and night, climbing a couple thousand meters for no other reason but to show em up. Ive done a lot of pigheaded things just to cram in it people’s faces or prove to myself I could do it. But this climb sucked, so we bailed. :)

We slung a horny rock and the first rap ended at the top of an easy gully. After looking around for another horn, I found Anna’s camera, and it worked! After this good omen, now I thought about starting back up there and GET ER DUN! But we a were a bit further out from the cliff and could much better see the epic horseshit we were suppose to climb to get to the headwall. After 30 seconds of debate, we did one more rap to the ground, which was about 15 meters from the bivy cave. How is it that two abseils got us down what amounted to 200 meters up? Answer: The climb is the most wandery fuck-around in Tassie. It bisects the East Face at a 45-degree angle. Absolute shit. The first ascent of a 450 meter grade 24 in the “Tasmanian Wilderness” SOUNDS great on paper, or a resume if you’re a professional guide… Too bad it doesn’t exist on Geryon. Claiming any route on Geryon is 450 meters long is like saying you have a 12-inch dick when you know damn well you started measuring the length from your asshole. There just might be an awesome 100 meters of climbing on the shield of Mt Geryon, but there is definitely 250 meters of asshole to crawl through to get there.

Bailing off of Geryon.


A photo of Titan. If you look closely you can see the smallest bug of a person wading through the choss. Thats Lachy seconding. Ross is buried deep in some chimney above him.



With spirits low we went around to see the progress of team extreme. They were slowly but surely ascending the Titan. Good on em! We sulked back at the cave and ate a double ration of dinner (Mee Goreng Noodles), with the plan to bail the next morning and go climb some real rocks.

The sound of the boys triumphantly screaming at the summit of Geryon drifted down to our cave… Mixing with the mp3 of a Raymond Feist audio book we were playing on my speakers. The reader made the main character, Rupert, sound like Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy-“Hey! Im walkin here!” Ross and Lachy came back quite chuffed. However, the titan turned out to be only hard 18 maybe 19 and quite dirty. They hesitated to say much about the quality. I missed out on a historic moment with some friends, but I did have an interesting experience nonetheless. The boys got up at 5AM to hike out of there.

We got up shortly after they left and Simon asked if I was psyched to climb on the Acropolis. I quickly said yes and we were off! We didn’t have a guidebook, but you could see the line of Fury 18 from the moon. This one had not been properly freed either. So we got to the base and sussed out the options. Fury looked to be the best and we got up the first two pitches. The corner to the right of Fury, although containing a bit more foliage, looked pretty inviting and had not been climbed at all so we went for it. We were not disappointed! The day was a scorcher. It reached 40 degrees in Hobart. We were a little parched to be sure. Ill let the photos and vid describe the rest.

Topo of the Acropolis and the route we took.


Simon started us off by climbing the first pitch!


The view from the 2nd pitch of Fury. Im presenting a slide show en route as I already knew it would be a classic.



View of Geryon from Acropolis. Commentary on the tran-sexual nature of the place.



A nice little trundle. We wanted to make sure that the route was clear of loose rocks that might injure the queue of climbers wanting to repeat this.


One of the cracks we DIDNT climb... Its all pretty wide up there!


The way we took from the top of the 2nd pitch of Fury.


Top of the 2nd Pitch.


This is the top of the third pitch. The "Can of Corn" chockstone is a good landmark. All the belays were quite comfy.



The anchor at the top of the third pitch. One cam but pretty good!


4th Pitch! The shrubbery surprisingly does not get in the way too much.
Below the crux of the route. Very interesting sit down rest below the flaring crack and OW. Pretty hard!



Crux of the 4th pitch. Its a 23 smearing thing into a flaring V-slot. Fun!


Simon resorting to double arm bars in order to thrutch up the slot.




Interview with an Offwidth Victim.



5th pitch. 50 meters! Step right long before you get to the shrubbery.



Last pitch. Video filmed on lead. I still had a final OW at the top that almost spit me out.



Summit!


The hike out was horrible. We got hopelessly turned around on the walk off the West side of Geryon and went down, then back up the wrong gully. We were loathe to climb back up the Acropolis and reverse our approach, it sucks don’t do it. So instead of hitting an EPERB, we just called ole Lachy on the mobile phone and got directions. After another call and with his brothers directions (Lachy’s sucked!) we were on the right track. The bashing started to get a bit old but we finally found our river, Sissyfuss creek, and washed up. Low blood sugar and adrenaline burnout caused us to get turned around one last time before we finally got to the Pine Valley Hut at around 11pm.

Surfing the scree! Demonstrating the slippery nature of the trail.


Simon shagged after finding the trail. We still had one final idiot turn-around to go before getting to the hut. AHH! Beard stroking bushmasters we are not...



The next morning we *somehow* :) scammed a free ferry ride back to the BOOTY mobile and started the drive back to sleepy little Hobart, or as Grug calls it, Faggy Little Fagbart. We drove by the corpse of the spotted quoll we had run over on the way up(sorry little guy!) and shortly after, with Simon driving, we came to a windy section with double solids and were slowed down by a ute carrying a ton of rusty scrap. Simon said fuck it and went for the pass anyway, and as soon as he did, out from behind pulls a police truck with red and blue lights a-flashing! The next scene was straight outa Super Troopers as we had to drive a few K’s to finally pull over and the truck just blows by us! Turns out, he was on the way to a fire. We passed the big bush fire with every truck in Tassie there to make sure the road stayed open for us to get home and drink beer. Thanks guys! We called the route "Take Me To The River". It is worth climbing if your in the area.






The End.

More boring climbing stuff.

Photos by Jed Parkes. Thanks Jedi!


So last time I said I would send Street Fighter and I did. Great. Jed was sick as a dog and sending down the odd snot rocket from the top of the cliff using his super zoomo camera. It was worth a little festering snot for those photos.

Thanks to a giant ash cloud hovering over Australia, Simon Young (the guy who is flipping you off at the top of the page) had to stay in Slowbart for a couple more days before flying to Pakiston. He wanted to go on a day mission to the Star Factory to have one more shot at Cockhead Crack. Even though I had an exam the next morning, I was psyched to have a top rope burn on it as well so agreed to go on my first "day trip" to the Star Factory. 2.5 hour drive, hour hike in, hard climbing, hour hhike out, 2 hour drive back. It was worth it to give Youngy a shot.

He did pretty fucking good! Hes got pretty strong lately. Too bad hes going to waste it all jerking off in a hut in Pakistan for the next 6 weeks.

He did good but not good enough! This crack is hard, I guess 30? Its broken up half way with an escapable ledge and sit down rest but the rest of the crack makes it worth getting back online. Not a three star classic but definitely a worthwhile crack. Wow! This is starting to sound like a climbing journal! Time to bitch about dirtbag life.

Im about to buy tickets to the US of Gay to go climb el cap, the hulk, and a few other bits of rock. A few days ago the price from Sydney to LAX went up $300 to $1650. I was gutted. But then yesterday Merry tells me he found cheap tickets to the US from NZ. So I had a look. What I found makes me understand why we are all doomed to drown in a apocalypse driven by a spiraling nightmare of climate chaos... Actually we will probably die of cancer. Anyway, I checked the NZ airfair and it is $1050 AUD to fly round trip from Auckland to Sydney. Hmmm... Interesting. It also costs $160 to fly one way from Sydney to Auckland. So I will save $400 (%25 of my ticket cost) by flying from Sydney to Auckland, then getting on a plane to fly BACK to sydney, then get off a plane and wait a couple hours to then fly to LAX. If a broke loser like me will SAVE $400 by taking a worthless international flight the wrong direction to fly across the planet, what are people who have shit loads of money doing to save even more money? Answer: Wasting all of the world's fossil fuels, pumping CO2 into the air like mad and dooming us to the hell I so recently described.

I dont even give a shit any more. Im saving the $400! In fact, I would take the extra flight if I came out an extra bag of peanuts ahead. I have now resigned myself to existance as a rational wealth maximizer. Its my duty as a sober dual citizen to not fuck with the laws of economics. Next Im volunteering for jury duty.

It is now 20 days until my reunion with Anna-Véronique. Oh joyous day! It has been a long dark slog of an uphill-both-ways kind of journey to get to this magical moment. I think the pause in writing on this blog is in large part due to the loss of my muse. But as the day grows ever closer, the creative juices start flowing! I wont get into the specific contents of those juices. A couple pics may be worth a word or so.

There was a guy wearing a dress and a funny hat down at the Regatta handing out australian citizenships the other day, so I stood in line and got one. The highlight of the day was free champagne and sandwiches. Apparently, I made the TV news as well.


In my crappy share house I installed a vegie garden on a 20 degree hill with the help of Mr. Dave, a builder of some repute. Unfortunately, we did not foresee how popular these vegies would be to the local wildlife and the little bastards ate everything. Well I love Australian native animals as much as the next guy. Especially when they are minced and formed into gourmet BBQ burgers. What pisses me off is that to protect what amounts to $15 in produce after a 5 month growing period, I am expected to spend even more time and material to keep out animals which I would much rather prefer to eat instead of the handful of beans and spinach I will get out of this crop. I would be better off just leaving the garden as bait in which to catch and kill the hopping BBQ burgers. When I suggested this, many people were shocked and offended that I suggest eating native wildlife! It is just assumed that if you want to do something “sustainable” like grow your own food, it must be more expensive and unwieldy, ecologically ideal, and somehow more ethical than any existing method of food production. These negative comments all came from people happy to go buy plastic-packaged-factory-processed cow meat from safeway. Somehow you fail in food production if you are not a PC organic/animal-loving/hippy. The big problem is that critics(by and large people who DO NOT grow any of their own food)have this huge pretense about "sustainability" and if any aspect of their ideal is failed, it somehow justifies not doing anything. Basically the whole gardening exercise was boring as fuck. The bin diving has been very good, thankfully. However, a group of crazy pig-farmers smashed out the windows of some friends of a friends car while at the local bin. Apparently the pig farmers were defending their turf. Weird shit.


I am staying at this share house determined to finish my degree at UTAS. Soon after the semester started I fell badly while at a party doing some drunken party tricks. This has been a common theme in my life.


However, in this case the injury was diagnosed as a stener lesion. Basically this does not heal without surgery. So I had to get surgery to reconnect my thumbs UCL to the rest of my hand. This was a bad thing with a silver lining. After a week of school I was totally fed up with it and would have dropped out if not for being a cripple. So I was forced to finish the semester and I ended up getting decent grades.
Another good thing about the injury was my new found interest in sobriety. This is by far the worse injury I ever had. Lucky me.


After getting the stitches out, I started hanging out on my new Big Red board. This thing kicks ass!

I tried Jedi’s Beastmaker last night and I know I am new at this training thing but I reckon I get more out of Big Red. I never thought training would be this much fun! Well next Saturday is the time to test out this new found hanging strength.
I got surgery on March 10th So it will be about three months this Saturday and I plan on getting Street Fighter 28! Yeah I know 28 is not hard but that’s about as hard as I ever climbed so Im pretty psyched for it! Sobriety and training… It is a strange life. Even my rants are starting to make sense. Weird. Its been two months or so of sobriety. I spent a month after the accident feeling sorry for myself. Now Ive found coffee! Wow! Its like the exact opposite of beer! No shit? Well, Im pretty slow on the upswing, but its never too late in this crazy world energized by the insane waste of the entire planets billion year supply of fossil fuels! Have fun out their kiddies!

Just like the Greatful Dead. Another comeback tour! Plus- A Tassie Film Beat the Favrisse Brothers in Brussels

So Im not dead. im getting better! In fact, I just recovered from surgery. No, they did not sew my mouth shut, but Im sure some people would like that. This little story is what inspired my revival of the blog:


There has been a 18 year old kid from Belgium ripping up Austrlia lately. That would be Merlin Didier. Great kid. I met him at Arapiles in December. One day I was lounging around the Pines nursing a hangover when Gandalf comes running up (remember the guy who wanted to climb the totem pole a month ago? Painted Green? Ed the Scottish giant? We called him Gandalf because when he sat in camp on those little chairs with us he looked like Gandalf sitting with the hobbits!) and stutters out, "Do you know CPR?"

This is never a good question to be asked outside of a job interview. That said, it is NEVER a good question to be asked.

Apparently Gandalf was belaying Merlin on an old crappy climb on the front of the Pharaohs to get up to Aftermath Roof. Somewhere up the middle of this chosspile Merlin dislodges a boulder the size of the Balrog which crashes down the cliff, with Merlin close behind! Gandalf dives out of the way, narrowly dodging the Balrog boulder. This time, he let the Balrog pass. Gandalf was unscathed, but what about our other conjurer of cheap tricks? Merlin took a bouncy little 15 metre tumble and was lying in a pool of blood when I got to him. Fortunately Merlin did not need CPR. With the help of Gandalf and the rest of the little hobbits from the Tas Uni Climbing Club, we called in The Great Eagles to fly Merlin's soul from the lady of the lake and sent him riding through the air into the healing arms of the House of Elrond (000, helicopter ride to the Alfred, if ya dont speak Tolkein).

Anywho, turns out Merlin just had a swollen brain. My hangover that morning was actually quite a bit more serious. So after a $20000 helicopter ride and business class tickets back to Camalot/Brussels, Merlin came back to Oz to finish his little trip. Long story short, Gandalf moved out of my little Hobart Hole and Merlin moved in. Lucky for Merlin, as you all know, April's weather was amazing. So he filmed all the climbing he did and made a movie about it and then entered the movie in a film festival via my wireless internet account (which cost me more than the prize money). And he won! The link is below. Its pretty good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4yTRdnZQEA

All things come to an end. Good and bad. Actually, there is no such thing as good and bad. We just make these up as we go. And this bunch of bullshit that I have been making up as I go is now gone. Good bye blog.

Freerider AKA Aidrider

Anna and me decided to make a trip to Yosemite and try our hand at bigwalling. The post below describes our first attempt. This is our second effort. This photo sums up the effort beautifully and not just because Anna is in the shot. :)These photos were from a generic disposable camera which I smashed open on accident. Pretty bad quality but the subject matter makes up for it!

My second trip to the valley was an eye opener. 4 years ago my first time was with my usual attitude to climbing: I showed up with little more than a desire to climb some things and have a lot of fun. I thought I might try Astroman. I walked into to camp 4 with my gear and paid little attention to the sign that said CAMP FULL. I left my bag at the empty booth and strolled through camp. Within 5 minutes I ran into a mate I had met from Squamish. He told me the ins and outs of the camping and hooked me up with a camp site. I never climbed Astroman that trip but I had lots of fun. I climbed long routes every day, then got pissed on Cobras and passed out by the camp fire through the Autumn. I eventually climbed the Rostrum route and Astroman was on the cards, but I left the valley for Joshua tree where I met up with a naked fire spinner and her infamous straight jacket.

This trip I was determined to climb the Freerider. A couple years ago I had a big climbing day with Jakey B from tassie before he went to the valley and he ended up smashing the route when he got there. When he got back, he said I would probably have a good shot at it... Even after he had "altered" one of the crux pitches by breaking off a hold.

After our first botched effort followed by more crap weather we went up as soon as it stopped raining. The route was wet and I ended up pulling on gear or properly aiding 12 of the pitches. I swore some were impossible because of the wet. As usually happens in climbing, as soon as you swear its impossible some swiss guy who has the build of an action doll comes behind you and frees it onsight.






This was our bivy at the round table. Must be nice with a portaledge. We strung up a rope like a web with our asses hanging over a 800 metre drop. Kinda comfy!

5
on the hollow flake for an evening of Glasnost with the Russians. Nostrovia! We shared the Hollow Flake and the Block bivy with these guys. Very nice. It was interesting to hear them screaming profanities at each other in Russian.




Anna-V led the last pitch and in keeping with the style of our ascent AIDED the 5.6 move to the top!

After five days on the wall we summited El Capitan! Cedar Wright (who we met in Arapiles) took the shot and it was a cool little moment. He was working golden gate and living on the top with his mate Nick.


WARNING: ETHICS RANT BELOW! DO NOT READ IF EASILY BORED!

After me and Anna climbed the Freerider, I took a few days off then went up again with Tobias Wolf from Dresden. We hauled to heart and slept. Woke up at 4AM and got to the spire in one day with no falls. I didnt free four pitches but Tobias freed everything. The dihedral was top roped and he got the boulder pitch in 2 shots after top rope. Finished in 3 days. It was fun... Escept the part where I threatened to kill him. Not really, but their were moments of tension.

I recently watched Blood Sweat and Bagels again to show my mom some of what we climbed. I had forgotten just how badly they got pummeled! Not that we didnt get our buts kicked as well, it's just reassuring to see real "rock climbers" struggle on this route. Freeing el cap is not easy. "No shit", you say? Well "Ingvar Says" Freerider is pretty much a trade route. Now this is interesting.

In BS&B these fellas originally had their little hearts set on the Salathe route. They abseiled in and top roped the headwall. This is not terribly controversial. The fact that some climbers have gone for the onsight or at least ground up ascent is inspiring, but the way the poms did it is the way most people(almost everyone)who wants a realistic chance of freeing Salathe will approach the route. However, they went up freeblast then rapped off and came back to haul up. Eventually they gave up on the idea of Salathe and went for Freerider. Not a big deal, but read on and you will see my point.


Not to talk too much shit about this, but Zac V from the Blue Mountains tried the salathe ground up the first time he was in the valley. He didnt free it but he tried. Hats off. Why is this a big deal? Cuz their was alot of people who rapped by us or jugged passed us to get to pitches in the middle of el cap so they could "work" them for a one day ascent. This last season in the valley opened my eyes to the fact that it still takes the best climbers in the world to free el cap ground up. Freerider IS NOT a trade route. There were probably less than a dozen teams to free El Cap in various styles while I was there. A few of those were one day ascents after heaps of working the route, stashed gear, etc. Zac V. sent Freerider this trip with one fall going from the ground and leading every pitch.

The point of this rant is a BIG congrats to Lee and Lowry, Jake and Ben, and Zac V. for the ground up sends. Folks in the valley are still talking about their visits. After I send Freerider I may try for a day ascent as well. Its kind of strange that there were very few people freeing el cap this season. Maybe it is too easy to even bother with!

see ya later kids!

Salathe, Bloody Salathe

Back in the USA. What a shit hole.

After making a B-line to Yosemite (the only interesting place in Kalifornia)and being reunited with Anna-V, it was all systems go for El Capitan! Ufortunately, due to gimpyness brought on by old age and alcoholism, I was in no shape for free climbing. But thanks to the absolutely shit weather we had here in "sunny" Kalifornia it didn't make much difference cuz there was no climbing anyway! We arrived to see Garry and Alex from Tassie going ape-shit from cabin fever.

Between blizzards and monsoons we got in some climbing as I limped to the crag. Gaz and Alex aided the nose and then were evicted from the valley upon return. Oh yeah, before I forget... Id like to give a big FUCK YOU to rangers everywhere, but especially the cunt who works in the box at camp 4.

After healing up a bit and dropping $700 on big wall gear, we were ready for el capitan! Our first big wall would be Salathe. After looking at the diagram on the protraction we figured out how to haul our gear up to the heart ledge. Jugging up the ropes took a little more time to get down, but no biggie. We rapped back down and climbed freeblast with one fall... Kind of funny though. It was on one of the slabs passed a little roof and up to bolts. I spent some time on the roof as the gear is fiddly, and I guess Anna thought that was the crux so she starts eating a chocolate bar. When I get to real crux and slip off I fall and fall and start running backwards down the slab! I look down to see Anna has shoved the candy bar in her mouth and first feeds slack then takes in. :) Pretty funny.

I climbed the hollow flake in tennis shoes but forgot the socks and still scraped my ankle up. The pitch is a bit involved and us big wall bumblies took 5 hours to get from heart to the hollow flake ledge. Considering the entire route has been climbed in 4.5 hours I am a little humbled. That said, I know some of these speed ascents are a little questionable. And they probably don't have time for sex at the belays, which kind of cheapens the experience. Anyway, both our teams end up getting in each others way and in the evening we are log jammed at the alcove with the Austrians above us on the spire and another unknown team quickly catching up with us from below. All 3 teams meet in the middle of El Capitan, 500 metres off the deck.

We had decided to bivy in the Alcove even though there was plenty of light left. I was tired and the logistics of climbing over another team were boring the shit out of me. We figured we would get some sleep and let the other teams well and truly pass us. So I was sleeping when the other team reached the alcove. I mumbled some apology about our gear being a mess and he said he was French and didnt speak english so proceeded to lead up the chimney to the spire with his belayer 10 meters on the cliff below. Alot of parties finish the pitch this way. I glanced up at him once to see him cruising up the chimney before I lied back down to sleep. A bit of conversation from the spire drifted down to me and then I heard a very odd noise. A kind of -fwipp! fwipp! fwipp!- and then -THUD!-. It sounded to me as if someone up there had dropped a haul bag! If only.

Anna screamed something and I looked up to see Frenchie dangling upside down unconscious about 2 meters above a big slab behind the spire. The odd noise I heard was the rope flaking out as he fell and the thud was him whacking the cliff. Well, that woke me up. I wasn't wearing a harness but I threw on my shoes and ran up to see what I could do. I knew that you don't live long in his position. As I scrambled up the slab I screamed down to his unseen belayer, "Lower him! Lower him slowly!" The poor guy below responded, "Lower who? Jeano! Jeano! Are you OK?" Anna explained the situation to the belayer quite well because in the minute it took me to get up to Jeano, he was getting lowered slowly. I cradled him in my arms to keep him horizontal. This guy looked pretty bad. Lots of blood, near totally unconscious, and breathing raggedly and irregular. I screamed up at Stephan to help us and for someone to call "triple zero"... Kind of stupid cuz emergency is 911 in the USA!

Stephan came down and we spend a couple ineffective minutes rigging a chest harness and trying to lower this fella down to the bivy spot on the alcove. It is difficult because one of his legs is stuck in the slab. The belayer quickly joined Anna at the alcove and I can hear him talking on the phone with search and rescue. At this stage, me and Stephan realize that without some complicated rig we cannot free his leg to lower him down the slab. While we are struggling to quickly free Jeano I hear the belayer respond to a question, "I am sorry, I do not know his heart rate". Realizing the call is worthless I yell down to the belayer, "Hang up on them and get up here and help us!" He replies, "Yes, but there is no security, no rope..." To which I retort, "Its easy! Stop being a pussy and get up here and help us!".

With the belayer, a swiss climber named Tibalt, the four of us quickly got Jeano to the bivy. Two of us weighted the lead line, which was tied off at the belay 10 meters down the cliff, and freed his leg. Then Anna cut the lead line and Stephan lowered him by hand as me and Tibalt walked him down the slab to the bivy. Anna grabbed all our sleeping gear and prepared as warm a spot as possible for Jeano. We were able to lower him onto his back in the bivy spot and his head rested between my legs. So now we had him sorted out and ready for the helicopter rescue. We saved a man's life and could probably finish the route! All we had to do was call the rescue boys back and tell them, "One to go!" Turns out... Not so fucking easy.

Tibalt called emergency and I heard him say "His complexion? I do not know. His face is covered in blood". Now I am a bit impatient because the conversation does not contain any, "Yeah. See ya guys soon! Thanks for the rescue!" So I get the phone and tell the operator,"Right. This is NOT a minor hiking accident. We are on El Cap Spire with a DYING man. He is not dead yet but he needs a helicopter evacuation RIGHT NOW! If you do not get up here RIGHT NOW, he will probably die." To which, the operator informed me that they do not enact rescues like this at night and we would have to wait until morning for a helicopter rescue. Not fun.

The night proved cold and wet in the alcove. For the first hour, Jeano coughed up blood and vomited until empty then dry heaved. Tibalt thought he "would not pass the night." His head wound was pissing with blood and 2 first aid kits and a t shirt were quickly soaked. It took a minute to find the wound and properly apply pressure. After 30 minutes of compression, we shifted Jeano to a better position and lifted the bandage to look at the wound. Blood pumped out at a steady pace. Tibalt then adjusted the bandages and put as much pressure as he dared on Jeano's head. Over an hour later, Tibalt was exhausted and had to rest.

We commandeered a stashed bag of bivy gear and Tibalt rested himself in a warm bag. I checked the wound and was relieved to see it had almost entirely stopped bleeding. The night passed slowly and at first light, the helicopters started coming. The ensuing rescue by Yosemite Search and Rescue was conducted efficiently and without any drama. The guys that rescued Jeano were cool. However, these are law enforcement rangers as well as rescue and they enjoy busting climbers camping illegally. Its the same deal with cops. %2 of what they do is cool and %98 is bullshit. Anyway, we moved him into a gurney and a chopper came and plucked him off the cliff.

After the rescue, a lack of motivation coupled with blood soaked gear forced us to retreat. The prognosis for Jeano?

FULL-RECOVERY

Thanks to Tibalt and Stephan and Anna. Thanks to YOSAR, including the dozen people at the summit ready for Plan B: Two 500 meter abseils!