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stick233
Mar 3, 2004, 5:57 PM
Post #1 of 2
(1455 views)
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Registered: Sep 18, 2002
Posts: 339
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I put this together over the past 2 years... it makes a better campfire story than TR online. My best rendition was at the Flagstaff Gathering in September of '02 when I first met a bunch of you fools!!!! Enjoy...
Yodel-odle, odle, odle. “What the hell? Oompah-oompah. “Where they hell are we?” That was how it ended. As I sat up and cleared my head, the previous days antics began to re-focus in my head. We were alive. I looked over my shoulder and saw Todd stir. We made it. I was already thinking that yesterday was the best time I would never want to happen again.
As Todd slowly woke up, he gave me a reassuring look, as to say ‘no problem, I knew it would work out.’ It was some time in 2000, and all I could see were Bavarian huts. We were in Leavenworth, Washington, and I had just completed the most epic adventure in my then-short climbing career. Todd Smith was my partner, and the reason I’m still here today. We met at REI, him a novice climber, myself relatively inexperienced. We quickly became friends and climbed as often as possible. As he began to introduce me to trad climbing, I knew he had high ambitions. We had been out to Leavenworth before, for some short 2-3 pitch climbs. When he asked if I wanted to give Outer Space a try, I said sure. Outer Space is a perfect wall located in Icicle Creek Canyon. It looms overhead, begging to be climbed. After reading the topo, it seemed to good to be true. A great mixture of face and crack climbing, with flakes, traverses, and the signature chickenheads at the top.
Todd and I planned on making a nice day trip out of it. So we packed up our gear and headed out from Seattle. Unfortunately, neither of us had a car, so we hopped on my crotch-rocket, never to be deterred by insufficient transportation. The ride out was rough, but the anticipation of the climb made it easy. We stopped in Sultan for a donut and a cup of coffee, then headed into the mountains. At one point, I looked down into the canyon to my left and saw an F-16 streaking through the valley. I put my head down, gassed it, and gave a wave like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. How pathetic…
It took us a little longer to get to the approach site than we expected, but eager as we were, we headed into the woods. It couldn’t be that hard to miss it, could it? The guidebook says it’s about an hour, but 2 hours into it, we were still short of the base. You see, there was this river, and a primitive trail that we just couldn’t find. When the wall stared at us evenly from our right, we decided to bushwhack it. We found a sub-par river crossing and headed up the hill. By the time we reached the base, it was well past noon.
As we peered up at the task at hand, several friendly billy goats came by to see if we had any handouts. I wish I could have asked them for some food! They played around us for a bit, as curious about us as we were about the wall. It was time to climb. Being somewhat green on multi-pitch climbing, I obviously had no problems letting Todd make the command decisions. He sounded confident and assured me that we could make it by nightfall. I guess he had more confidence in my shortcomings than I did. When we set out on the first pitch, it was somewhere between 2 and 3 p.m. The first pitch went smooth, but then I had the bright idea of leading the second. Bad choice. It required some interesting traverse angles, and I created so much rope drag, I could barely pull it as Todd cleaned. The pitch took way longer than it should have, and it was easily decided that my leading was done for the day.
As the pitches continued, I remember an exquisite flake move and a right hand traverse. The climbing was not so much difficult as it was time consuming. We were having a blast, but we needed to speed it up if we wanted to finish up before the sun went down. We had left all non-essential gear on the ground. We were both wearing shorts, Todd didn’t even have a shirt on, and of course the headlamps were tucked neatly away below!
When the sun began to go down around the fourth pitch, I began to worry. We didn’t have a second rope to bail, and I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. Luckily, Todd was cool and collected. Logic prevailed when he told me we could risk staying out on a small ledge and freeze, or we could push on and get off the rock. It finally made sense that the only way to go was up. Todd pushed on with great leading skill. There was just enough light from the moon to be able to see the route, but it was terribly slow going.
Sometime in the night, the fatigue from having no food, climbing all day, and mental anguish on my part took grip. I started to nod off as I was belaying, literally smacking myself awake. I knew I had to stay up, or this trip could turn fatal. I tried to study the other side of the canyon; impress it’s features into my brain. Then all of the sudden I saw a face. It wasn’t an actual face, but a face against the rocks, and it was huge! I couldn’t possibly be seeing a ghost could I? I’m guessing not, because then I saw a small tent, and a car, on the opposite wall. I was hallucinating! I couldn’t believe it. As I stared across, my head was clear, I knew the images weren’t real, yet they were there nonetheless. I debated not mentioning this experience to Todd when I cleaned the pitch, but told him anyway. He admitted that he too was having the same sort of head games. At least I wasn’t going crazy alone…
It was after midnight and we were getting near the top. We kept referring to the guidebook to try and stay on route. It may sound silly, but the only light we had to read the book came from the Indiglo on Todd’s watch! We were headed in the right direction. I looked up at the next pitch and could see nothing but a hand crack as far as my eyes let me. I had never done any sustained crack climbing, and the next two pitches became my crux. Todd made easy work on the sharp end, and I thought he had no fear. As I followed the first crack pitch, I noticed that I wasn’t cleaning much. I hadn’t cleaned anything at all. Todd had leapfrogged the entire pitch, free and in the dark, with two cams. Thank god he was leading and not me.
The next pitch of jamming was almost my breaking point. I was halfway up when my arms didn’t want to go anymore. Todd tried to encourage me, but my body was giving up. Every jam seemed to slip out before I could even weight it. If we were going to have to be rescued, this was the pitch. As I sat there hang-dogging, something began to stir inside. I started to feel the fight-or-flight syndrome. I had to keep going. To this day, I don’t know how much Todd was “helping” me along with the rope, but I pulled and squeezed and twisted as hard as I could until I finally peaked a belay ledge to see Todd smiling in approval. At that point I knew it would be okay.
The last couple of pitches were great. It was relatively low angle, and the chickenheads were everywhere. I think the name “Outer Space” was derived from the lunar appearance of these last humps. You really felt in another world as you scrambled the 5.7 face. At this point we were cruising. After what we had just been through, the 75 foot runouts Todd left behind seemed like nothing. We could smell the top and nothing was going to stop us. Well, nothing did. At around 3 or 4 a.m. we peaked out. We threw an arm around each other and held up the disposable camera for a triumphant victory picture. Outer Space was ours at last!
As our excitement began to ebb, the dread of the ensuing decent began to set in. I once read that if you could make the decent in daylight without a rappel, you are pretty special. I was just hoping to get down in one piece. The sun was still a couple hours away, but we were not going to wait. With the help of our Indiglo flashlight, we deciphered a rough descent from the book. We quickly learned we made a wrong turn somewhere, because we ended up in a gulley with a very intimidating drop at the end. We didn’t even attempt a rappel. We climbed back out of the trough and headed farther south. We scrambled down some choss and into a bunch dirt and leaves. Let me tell you, it is not comfy having a climbing shoe full of dirt. When we came to a short ledge, we decided it was time to rappel. We dropped down and continued our shaky retreat.
It turns out that the rappel probably cut a bunch of time off, because as the sun was coming up and we could see the ridgeline going on even farther south. Now it was a free for all scramble to try and find the base of the wall. We weaved our way through branches and boughs, getting torn up by the foliage, but managed to find our gear as the new day dawned. We were glad our pack was still there, but noticed someone had been poking in it. As Todd inspected his bag, he realized it was a something, not a someone. The billy goats ate a nice little hole in his bag! They also got away with his last Clif bar. Filthy animals, no respect for the wicked I guess. We quickly packed up and headed for the bike.
The hike out was a happy, albeit haggard slog to the road. As we approached the parking lot, neither of us was too excited to be riding a motorcycle back to Seattle. So it was off to the Bavarian village for a little R & R. We hit this little breakfast dive and then it was over… we couldn’t have ridden a train and gotten back home, we were spent. As we exited the restaurant, we noticed the town green had a nice plot of grass. We threw down our packs and drifted quickly to sleep. We could have died right there and been happy. And then we woke…. “Yodel-odle, odle, odle”…. What the hell?!?!
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orion
Mar 4, 2004, 12:23 AM
Post #2 of 2
(1455 views)
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Registered: Nov 8, 2003
Posts: 19
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love it... great story! Makes me want to go there....
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