Greetings from the Front Range…
I spent yesterday evening at the grand opening of the Bradford Washburn Museum of American Alpinism, at the headquarters of the American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org). (BTW, if you’re a climber, you should be a member–it’s cheap and the club is an invaluable advocate for mountain-type people like us.) There were a few celebrity climbers there including Lynn Hill, the phenomenal woman who is regarded as one of the finest rock climbers of all time. She sent The Nose in Yosemite Valley, at a time when a) it was not thought possible to free-climb the route, and b) it was definitely not thought possible for a tiny female to do it.
I’ll admit I was too shy to actually go up and say hello, so I entertained my friends with an imagined conversation.
Me: “Hi Lynn. I’m John. You may not know this, but we have something in common.”
Lynn Hill: “Really? Like what?”
“Well, we’ve both freed an old aid route in the Valley.”
“Huh. Which one did you do?”
“Oh, it was [indistinct mumble] ssgghtsh.”
“What?”
“Uh, mmfsttbbls rrchhsalghtz.”
“Sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Uh, never mind. Hey, look, you can get Fat Tire over there for two bucks. Bye Lynn, seeya out in the woods.”
Well, Lynn Hill and I in fact have both freed old aid lines in the Valley. The difference is that hers was 30-some pitches with a 5.13c crux that had never been done, and mine, Royal Arches, was a crowded, 13-pitch 5.7 trade route with a half-dozen moves of 5.9+ that were usually avoided by the use of a short fixed line. (But hey, it was thin 5.9+ man! And it was scary!)
Wolfy, I still count that among my better days on the mountain. The beer sure tasted good that night.
SB
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That was a good day bro!! Highlights include, clumsy 5.6 chimney w a pack, simulclimbing, finding two stoners from SF asleep on the 6th pitch, you sending that thinass 5.9, and having those stoners sort of catch up and ask if they could climb through after they’d taken an amazing spread of food out on a ledge also hosting a big three coil duce, you getting stung by a bee on the first rap, throwing back pale ales after dark on the Rixon Pinnacle Hilton…
Ahhhh the mamaries…
-M
Yeah but I bet Lyneepoo can’t write her name in the snow while she pees…..One more victory for gutless nonclimbing foquetards like myself.
Something tells me that if Lynn Hill wanted to write her name in the snow, she could do so right-side-up, hanging sideways by a crimper and a footjam, or while in freefall. Her climbing is an exercise in the graceful defiance of physics.
Wolfy, you forgot about the Euro-trashes who were smoking on the route, the super-hottye we met who I used to know in Boulder, and you taking one for the team on Synapse Collapse. I bet there’s still blood up there. Yah, that was a good day.
I still have a dent in my shin from that one!!!
Lynn Hill vs Chuck Norris???? (Better yet, a product of the two…)
-M