Back in the Day (Final Set of Scanned Slides)

[Brad Young]

This is the third and last of the "back in the day" threads I'll do (the previous same-title threads are much earlier in this part of the forum). I finally had the last of my climbing slides scanned. These cover 2002 to 2005.

I'll have to post up as I can - moving the scans to IPhoto, labeling them, and then loading them to Flickr is slow.

First up: several of you know my good friend Ron Skelton. In September, 2002 we did a week-long trip to the Gunks that was one of the best climbing trips I've done. Those who do know Ron know that he drives hot and fast. So we rented a convertible while we were there:




Most of the climbing shots from this trip are so-so. But here's a good one of Ron leading the second pitch of the ultra-classic Bonnie's Roof (this is Gunks 5.7 climbing!):




In May, 2003, Ron and I went to Idyllwild for some great granite. He and I were very proud to (together) onsight Valhalla - the three pitch, classic, 5.11a, Stonemaster's test piece. Here's Ron leading the second pitch:




We made time on this trip to get out to Joshua Tree to visit our friends Don and Karen Reid. While there, the three of us went out to the Star Wars area so Ron could lead Cedric's Deep Sea Fish Market (5.10d, total sandbag). This climb had spit me off repeatedly; it took until my 10th try over three years before I redpointed it. Ron was very curious about the route (it spit him off too, and it spit Donny out too, although he'd led it before, calling it 5.11a/b). Here is Ron leading it:




And here's one of my favorites from a day that included a lot of laughter: Don and Ron at Star Wars Wall:

[squiddo]

Great series of picts and memories Brad. Never met Don and only briefly met Ron. my impression is Ron is a blast of a partner and friend. Thanks for sharing.

[Brad Young]

Thanks, Marc. Yeah, Ron's one of a kind (he and Liz are our daughters' godparents). Don is a great friend and partner too.

The next slides are from an ascent of Bastille Buttress on Lone Pine Peak. Micha Miller and I did this line nearly free in June 2003. We made a grueling, two hour, uphill approach, bivied and then woke up to do 17 pitches and the descent before bivying at the base again. This is a big climb. Here's the buttress from the approach:







A few hundred feet of lower angle climbing at the base lead straight up on to the face of the Buttress:










There is one "bolt ladder" aid pitch on the route. I led this, although I put "bolt Ladder" in quotes because the ladder basically went bolt, bat-hook hole, bolt, bat-hook hole, repeatedly for a huge length. Oh, and did I mention the fact that many of the aid bolts were 3/16ths inch diameter (for those of you who are math-challenged, that's smaller than a 1/4 inch bolt)?  I didn't even know they made 3/16ths inch bolts! The bolts on this pitch have since been replaced (I don't know if I feel good about this or not; since I did it when it was scary as hell, shouldn't everyone else who does the route do it in the same condition?).

Here's Micha, nearing the summit:

[F4?]

Yes Brad, Didn't Harding like to use those 3/16?? I recall them being on Leaning Tower. Heck they were on St Val's Massacre in the Pinns.

Cute little things.

[Brad Young]

Cute little things.

NOT what I was thinking when I was aiding on it and the next "placement" down was a hole and then another small bolt below that.

[F4?]

I'd be having light thoughts then!

[mynameismud]

Enjoying the back in the day posts.  Will have to enjoy while we can.

[Brad Young]

In July 2003 I flew up to Washington to meet Clint. We climbed for a week, starting with the very well know Liberty Crack route on Liberty Bell Mountain. This route is way up in northern Washington:







Although this is a mixed free and aid Grade V, we did the route in one long day. Here's Clint at the base:




I got to lead the famous Lithuanian Roof pitch:







Here's Clint higher on the route:




After this climb, we spent the rest of the week climbing in Leavenworth and then at Index Town Wall. One huge treat was being able to go with Clint to the Pashastin Pinnacles near Leavenworth. Clint did some of his very earliest climbing here and I got to repeat routes he'd done as a teenager (I didn't take photos here though - I don't know why).

We did a five pitch route on Snow Creek Wall that is one of the best in the state, the five pitch Outer Space. The route is well know for it's last 300 feet, a straight up, clean, number 2 Camalot-size crack (flawed though in my opinion because it has so many knobs and features next to it):







The route is well into the back country and ends fairly high up:

[Brad Young]

The next photos only show some cragging I did with my friend Luc the summer after he finished at the Air Force Academy. They are unusual only in that I'll never be able to climb with Luc again.

From Echo Lakes near Lake Tahoe, Luc on a 5.10c face called Hoser:




We did a few steep cracks that trip too, including one called The Trooper:




Luc never got to climb as much as he'd hoped to in the Sierra. When he was home most of his time went to his family and his wife's. We really enjoyed the time we did get to go out. It sounds like Vicki and the girls and I will be able to do some camping and backpacking with Luc's widow, and with his daughter Serene (although she's still only three months old - not quite ready yet).

[Brad Young]

In September, 2003 Dave Harden and I did the route Golden Bear on Bunnell Point, Sonora to Sonora in 23 hours. Bunnell Point is way up-river from Little Yosemite Valley; it's about 7 miles from Yosemite Valley to the base. The route itself is a 17 pitch slab climb, with lots of 5.9 and cruxes up to 5.10b.

We approached by headlamp. It was getting light as we crossed the Merced River to get to the base:




The many pitches on this route are long. They include lots of traversing as they follow the lines of least resistance:













If "the best climber" is the "one having the most fun," Harden has always been one of the greatest:




We summitted in late afternoon:

[Brad Young]

Both of my girls loved Luc. Hell, we all did. We didn't get much time with him after he left for the Air Force, but we always had a good time when we got together. Here's Luc spotting Katie while bouldering at Chipmunk Flat (Katie wasn't yet 8 years old):

[Brad Young]

These are of me leading Psycho Funky, a 5.11c crack up at Chipmunk Flat:

[JC w KC redux]

What a treat to come home to after a fun weekend at the Pinns.
Terrific Gunks shot.
Luc's upper body is seriously ripped in that Trooper shot!
I love the third shot of that huge wall in the 3rd pic of Golden Bear.
Psycho Funky doesn't even look humanly possible.

thanks for the share!!!

[Brad Young]

How was the AAC event John? I stayed home and climbed granite, including a clean lead of a 5.10a offwidth that used lots of muscles!

The next set are from an ascent that Jerome Chin and I did of the East Arete of Mount Humphries. This is only 5.4, but it is a fun and well known route with some nice exposure.

We bivied in the meadow below the peak:




Here's some of the exposure (not bad for a 5.4):







I got a little ahead of Jerome on some easy terrain:




On the summit:

[squiddo]

Thanks for sharing this Brad....so many years in this game and the memories are almost more important than the experiences.

[Brad Young]

Thanks for sharing this Brad....so many years in this game and the memories are almost more important than the experiences.

I'd modify that: the people have become more important than the experiences.

I've been climbing with Harden for nearly 30 years, and with Ron for 23. Robert and I passed our 20 year anniversary of climbing together last year. Dennis and I started climbing together in 1996, which is the same year I started climbing with Jim Lundeen.

Funny thing too; I passed the 30th anniversary of the first time I went climbing and I didn't notice it until a week later. I started on May 9th, 1983, and spent May 9th, 2013 climbing with Gavin at Pinns in what turned out to be a very rewarding and fun day.

Here's the next set. I met Jerome in 2002 when he and I and Dave and Bart (those last two have now been climbing together for 40 years!) did a 14 pitch 5.8 on Mount Winchell in the Palisades. He and I have tried to do one long High Sierra route every year since then. Jerome is 6' 4" inches tall; he's the only person I've ever hiked with who hikes faster than I do (on trail at least - off trail I leave him in the dust).

Our route for 2004 was "the Long and Twisting Rib" on Mount Williamson. Mount Williamson is the second highest peak in California, it's just north of Mount Whitney. The climbing on this route is third, fourth, and very easy fifth class, but there is a hell of a lot of it. In fact, when combined with the hellacious hike up to Shepherd Pass (hardest-to-hike-to pass that is reached from the east side), it is quite an undertaking.

We took a whole day to hike in and bivied near the pass. In the first shot, taken from the hike in, the route can be seen just to the right of me (it goes to the right-most of two pyramids of rock, neither of which is the summit - the summit it to the right). Even approaching the climb from Shepherd Pass took nearly two hours (and we lost hundreds of feet of elevation too):







Most of the climbing is like this:




Although there's some good exposure in a few places too:




The summit of Williamson is 10,000 feet higher than the Owens Valley to its east. And, unlike with Mount Whitney, there is one ridge of this mountain that extends from the summit plateau all the way to the valley floor (reputedly the longest climb in the Sierra Nevada). Here's the summit:




And here's Jerome with Mount Whitney visible just to the right of him, Mount Russell just above him, and Mount Langley just to the left (all three are 14,000 foot peaks):

[JC w KC redux]

How was the AAC event John?

It was fun. I'll work on a TR tomorrow.

[Brad Young]

In August, 2004 Dave Harden and I went in to the Minarets hoping to score the first ascent of the 1,000 foot high East Buttress of Rice Minaret. I say "hoping" because Dave and I had at that point a funny history of first ascents in the Minarets. In 1999 we'd hiked 16 miles round trip in a day to try a different first ascent there. We hiked in to the southeast face of Leonard Minaret hoping to be the first to climb that beautiful and, for the Minarets, fairly monolithic face. We did do five pitches of 5.9 on Leonard, and Secor's High Sierra guidebook credits us with the FA, but we may also have done only a first free ascent. On the second pitch of this 1999 climb, as I pulled around an exposed corner into a very thin crack, I found a fixed-in-place knifeblade piton. We suspected someone had done the route before us, or at least part of it. When an almost identical event happened as I led the fourth pitch we had even stronger suspicions that we weren't the first (we'll never know for sure, but Secor did give us the credit).

For Rice in 2004, we hiked in the day before and bivied well above Ediza Lake. Although this was a normal bivy by most standards, it was also the location of the first-ever rock climbing Dave had done back in 1970. He'd been in then to hike up Mount Ritter with his brother and friends. While they were camped, two experienced climbers also hiked up to stage for a climb they were going to do the next day. With extra time that evening, these experienced climbers broke out their ropes on a short cliff and toproped Dave and his crew on their very first rock climbs.

I was quite moved when Dave showed me these same cliffs 33 years later.

Knowing that the Minarets are tricky terrain and that we had a lot of ground to cover, we got an early start:




The Minarets are some of the most broken-up formations in the Sierra. We climbed carefully. Our first three pitches consisted of steep, blocky terrain of up to 5.8 climbing:







Although from a distance our buttress appeared to sweep to the summit at one continuous angle, it actually eased enough after the initial pitches that we coiled the ropes and gained a lot of ground by way of class three and four climbing:







We roped up again higher, winding over and around various gendarmes and towers:







After we summitted Rice we ate lunch and then we bagged the summits of nearby Bedayan and Eichorn Minarets. We then descended to the west and worked our way back through North Notch and returned to camp for one more night:






I've now summited 10 out of the 19 Minaret summits (Harden has summitted all of them). For anyone thinking of bagging a few of these, here's some closing words of advice: be ready for loose rock and blocks, and for hard route finding. Oh, and "class four" routes there? "Class four" only means that they didn't use a rope on the first ascent - I've been absolutely on route on class four climbs  there while doing sustained 5.6 moves.

It's great place.

[CruxLuv]

Damn you're old.

 

Those are real treasures - thanks for posting! 

[Brad Young]

Damn you're old.

Dear Spring Chicken: Yes, there's no doubt that that's true. I am old. But as I look back on life, marriage, family and climbing, I feel like I've made good use of the time. So I don't mind the creaking bones and sore muscles as much as I might otherwise.