Eric "This is sick, heh-heh" George
Eric "Captain Rumbo" Coomer
Brent "Call me Eric" Ware
From: Eric CoomerA head popped out from underneath the roof far below me.
To: Brent Ware
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998
Subject: okaySo, here's the deal. I just talked to the unknown one. He's really set on doing something new/fresh. He's not interested at all in doing Tribal Rite. He's talking either the new Warren route or maybe Tempest- it's over next to South Seas. I asked how he would feel about a third member for either route- he sounded up for it. I'm not sure if I'm going to go for this yet or not. I'll be thinking pretty hard tonight whether to do it or just bail and do something easier. Would you be at all interested in jumping on one of these routes?
I have this bad feeling that I may try and do one of these insane climbs...
Cheers,
EricFrom: Brent Ware
To: Eric Coomer
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: okayOh, man... Tempest looks sick. We looked at that one from SS. Just bits of tat fluttering off of rivets in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, I'd really like to do one of those routes, but I'm also not at all sure that I've paid my dues yet. Hard nailing I've done, but hard Cu-heading, not. Yes, you could talk me into it; is that wise? I dunno.
Well, if you feel like being a little less insane, I'm up for TR or SS or something comparable with you. I'm around until Monday night. Give me a call.
-bw
From: Eric Coomer
To: Brent Ware
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 09:22:15 -0700
Subject: Re: okayYup... And well, Disorderly is even sicker from the sounds of it. Like I said, these are no bullshit routes...
I'm not exactly trying to talk you in to it, but the fact is, cu heading is pretty damn easy. Expanding heading is a little more out there but heading is just bashing the crap out of metal and getting on it. Not a whole lot of skill involved. I think hard nailing is more of an art than heading is. I like heading though - kind of fun.
I'm really starting to think that real hard routes like these are best done as a party of three. It cuts down a lot on the mental stress of hard lead after hard lead... You get some down time from the suffering... :)
Yeah, this is my big dilemma. I know I'll ultimately be happy doing TR or SS, I'm not so sure whether I'll have such a good time on the sick stuff. But, if the sick stuff goes well, hey, you can't get much better than that.
I hate waffling around like this...
Cheers,
EricFrom: Eric Coomer
To: Brent Ware
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: well...Well, I think I'm really coming down to wanting to do one of the sicko routes. I figure, I know for a fact that Eric is probably one of the best aid climbers out there. We get along well, and the opportunity is there.
It'd be a nice way to move away from the valley- ticking a big one. Gotta admit, it's a lot of fun to do a fresh route- no scars, you know the rivets are good etc.
How do you feel about it?
Cheers,
EricFrom: Brent Ware
To: Eric D. Coomer
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: well...Shit. Well, my first answer is yes, of course. Maybe it's time for me to study under a couple of masters, instead of doing things the hard way. But I've gotten myself in over my head before, so I want to think about it, at least over lunch.
It all comes down to the head, doesn't it?
-bw
From: Eric Coomer
To: Brent Ware
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: well...Hell, think it over till dinner if you have to. I'm still going back and forth but more forth than back. When I make the decision, there's no turning back.
Cheers,
EricFrom: Brent Ware
To: Eric D. Coomer
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: well...Okay, what the hell. When and where.
Can you fax me the topo?
-bw
From: Brent Ware
To: Eric D. Coomer
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998
Subject: Re: a possibility to consider>Here's the latest from the unknown one.
>
>>From: Eric George
>>To: Eric Coomer
>>[...]Eric and Eric? Maybe I'll just change my name to Eric. Or Bruce.
>> As long as everyone is totally committed to getting the climb done.
Yup.
>I think we'll be hitting the valley on Monday or Tuesday.
I'll get there either Monday night or Tuesday morning. Blue 84 Honda CRX, Texas plates.
> I think I'm already sweating...
I refuse to think about it. Don't think, just do, that's my motto.
-bw
.
.
.
The head vanished again. As I returned to the immediacy of testing the offset, I distantly heard laughter. Disconcerting.
I had been all set to solo Mescalito, had my #4 BigBro in hand, so to speak, when Eric ``Loose Cannon'' Coomer started talking to me about Disorderly Conduct. Dammit. Me and my big mouth. I'm a sucker for challenges, for getting in over my head, for diving off the deep end. Which is perplexing, because if you put me on the high board and tell me to jump, I'm the biggest chicken in the world.
``Hell, think it over 'til dinner if you have to.''
Those words would come back to haunt me over the next two weeks.
``Quit whining, hell, I gave you until dinner.''
Sand drifted out from underneath the flake as I weighted the offset, like a broken hourglass had been overturned. A nice placement when I finally got up to look at it, albeit behind a bad flake. I got up in my tops, and started on yet another flaring copperhead placement in the kitty-litter diorite. Yee-haw.
Some unknown time later, the head reappeared. The helmet was still on, I
noticed with a sort of sick satisfaction.
``How's it going, Brent?''
``Couple more sick heads, then hooks, then I get the belay. Twenty
feet.''
The head went away again, without comment.
Eric's (didn't really matter which one) helmeted head was starting to remind me of a jack-in-the-box in the shimmering heat as it popped in and out of sight beneath the roof protecting them from my impending doom. Two more copperheads, one second-stepped on the overhanging loose flake, and another blind top-stepped copperhead, then perhaps I could reach the now-enticing hook placement that would get me to the safety of the rivet. Skating on a hook on a flat edge was looking pretty bomber right now. None of yer `enhanced' hook placements on this route.
The blind head placement didn't look so hot when I finally got a chance to look it in the face, but what the hell, it held a jump, so I unholstered what looked to be the right hook and topstepped. Big flat edge for the grappling hook, gotta love that baby, and there it is. Second step up to the rivet. A big Bob Wills Aahh-haaa! and a reach, and I get the beefy belay bolt.
And that was one of the easy pitches.
Thus continued my education into the world of sick aid. ``Thirty Days in the Hole,'' the topo said, lots of rivets curving up into virgin territory. For a rivet ladder, it sure had been interesting. 'Course, I only had enough hangers to clip every fourth rivet. They led off onto flaring copperheads, hooks, and loose flakes, just to keep things interesting.
I had started my schooling with ``The Morons Bat Loose,'' the first pitch off the Boot Flake. We had opted to make things more interesting (and get away from the Japanese who had nailed the Texas Flake!) and had gone up the Genesis variation instead. I learned to copperhead under the roof. Four or five circleheads, under the tutelage of Crazy Eric, while Rumbo Eric furiously hammered a beefy new belay bolt before I added a factor-two onto the questionable existing bolts along with the zillion pounds of food, water, and gear. Then Miles of Hooks to the belay. That isn't what it was named, but Eric had gotten some beta from Miles Smart, one of the FAs, and had written ``Miles, hooks'' on his topo, and my imagination went from there. Some bozo had added a chicken bolt right off a perfectly good hook near the end, taking the edge off what would have otherwise been an totally runout hooking section to the belay. I clipped it, having just watched a flake melt beneath my eyes, and my only pro for miles consisting of duct tape and a skyhook. Once again a weenie.
So I was getting the whole graduate course in sick aid: crumbly hooks, flaring blind heads, loose rock, lots of top-stepping.
All good practice for the sickness to come.
The climb had started out stiff, and we wasted no time fixing. Crazy Eric led the first two pitches between New Dawn and Mescalito, which got interesting fast, while Rumbo Eric hauled loads. I belayed. We blasted the next morning, eager to escape the high-gravity well that is the Meadow, the C4 parking lot, the 7am Caf coffeeklatsch, the Deli, the Mountain Room Bar, all weighing the prospective hardman down to earth.
There was a bit of trouble getting the bags up out of the alcove, all three of them, many hundreds of pounds. They kept getting hung up on a small flake. Luckily Chris Trudeau wandered by on his way to Space while the Erics were grunting and helped us out. And also added a little ballast to our bags, in the form of a large boulder. At least it sounded like a boulder when the Erics spaced it. Along with the curses hurled at Chris, the air was blue with rock chips and profanity. Perhaps he was trying to repay us for our previous reticence in stating the object of our desire. He was not the only one who had been answered with at best misleading and at worst deceptive grunts and platitudinous generalities when asked what we were racking up for. ``Oh, something on El Cap.'' ``Can't say.'' A combination of not wanting to get aced out of the second ascent, and not wanting to jinx the climb by saying its name, a strange submission to superstition for three physicists.
Then it was just a grunt up the right side of El Cap Tower to Lay Lady Ledge. Bivies don't get much better than Lay Lady; hauls don't get much worse. We sat at the edge of Lay Lady in the dark, unharnessed, unroped. Aware of the space beneath our feet, and the comfort of a house-sized ledge behind us. Except the walls on this house were 200 stories high. We passed the bottle of cheap tequila back and forth and sucked on limes. The battle of the climb was about to start. Then the climbing got hard, fast. `Sure Way to the John Muir Inn' was perhaps the mental crux, many marginal horizontal beak placements in a row traversing above Lay Lady, almost certainly decking if one blew. Crazy Eric cruised it in short order, laughing and loving it most of the way. I didn't know him at all before we started, and on the ground he was reticent and quiet. But when he got on a hard pitch, he came into his own.
Cleaning it was a breeze. Just a taste of the funk, my lovely. ``You really don't want to know how easily that beak came out, dude.''
On the next pitch, Rumbo Eric had to untie from the rope and solo up to the belay, rigging a multi-cordelette belay to get back down to where the 60m meter ropes would stretch. Warren was thoroughly slandered. (We found out later that WH had stretched his sponsored 65 meter rope when he could, making it awful hard on those of us with honest 60m ropes that we bought ourselves. To be fair, he thought his rope was 60m long. We slandered him anyway.) Then more sucky hauling to the top of El Cap Tower. We decided to do the Genesis variation to get back on the route, rather than the seemingly quicker Nose pitches marked on the topo, to get away from the clueless hordes (two Japanese guys were nailing the Texas Flake, rather than climb the 5.8 chimney), and also because we'd had our fill of hauling three haulbags, a full-on monster pin-rack, and 14 days worth of food and water up Boot Flakes and Texas Flakes.
14 days, you say? Well, all the planning had called for eight or nine. It's only 21 pitches, after all. But every time we talked to the FA party, listened to them recount the horrors of being stormbound, and their 13 original days, I think each of us secretly went back and added another can of ravioli, another bottle of water to our haulbag. With three corpulent pigs, one each, this was easy to do and not get called on it. 'Course, Warren and Miles had us carrying up 70 heads and 20 KBs, a bit excessive, as it turned out.
El Cap Tower was another blessing of a ledge. Lots of room, even after the Japanese joined us and clipped our anchors. Again, the tequila made the rounds. At some point, Rumbo Eric ended up with a bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade in one hand, and cheap tequila in the other. Inspiration is in general hard to come by, but here, Eric was in his element. ``Lemon-lime, tequila. What do margueritas contain? Lime juice, triple-sec, tequila. Close enough. Marguerade!'' ``No, dude, Gatoritas!.'' Woo-hoo! A new wall necessity was born. With a bit of experimentation, the correct proportions were arrived at, helped by constant testing during the process. Undoubtedly my perceptions were clouded by the location, if not the tequila, but sitting on El Cap Tower on a comfortable June evening made that 'rita as sweet as any I had ever overpaid $5 for.
But if we were now free of the hordes, we were also into the domain of
the funkness. The first Genesis pitch involved hooking past deadheads
and placing trust in Zemac rivets, accompanied by much slander of the
dogs who had done this pitch last and blown all the heads. The next
pitch started off on Genesis, then ran into `The Morons Bat Loose'
pitch of the DO. And my introduction to heading. And a fine
introduction it was. After the pleasant evening on El Cap Tower, we
jugged and hauled to the Genesis anchor, then Rumbo Eric took one look
at the belay, and one look at me, then dug out the bolt kit to beef up
the button-heads placed by the same button-heads who had left us the
deadheads and Zemacs. As he pounded the drill, I pounded #2
circleheads under the roof, and Crazy Eric, in his laconic way, tried
to pound some heading knowledge into my brain. The tattoo of hammers
filled the bright morning air.
``Oops, I can see the wires on that one.''
``Okay, that's bad. You probably shouldn't hit that one any more.''
``So how hard do you jump on these things anyway?'' I said, jumping.
``Probably not that hard.''
I stopped jumping. ``Oh. Okay.''
Rumbo Eric's heading tutorial had consisted of ``Just pound the hell
out of them. Then pound 'em a couple more times.''
I got out on the fourth of five, and it got a little exciting.
``Um, I think this one is moving.''
``Okay, that's bad. Maybe you better hurry up and get the next one
in.''
Rumbo Eric's rhythm on the drill quickened.
``Wait, wait, I'm almost done with this bolt!''
He finished it about the time I jumped the fifth one, on which I had to lean out and second-step to get a tied-off KB. Which felt pretty damn solid at that point.
The nice thing about a three-person ascent was that since we averaged two pitches per day, every third day, you'd get a day off. This was a restful break from the strain of being out on the pointy end. Nice opportunity to listen to the boom box, watch the peregrines go by, chat, sleep, shout slander and dire warnings to Evan Bigall on Mescalito. ``You're going to die, Evan!'' We found out later he didn't really appreciate our sense of humor. Go figure.
I can't say much about the Erics' pitches, except that they looked hard, and were easy to clean. Rumbo Eric drew the first tequila straw pitch, using a ten-foot tent pole with a hook duct-taped to the end of it to make completely blind hook placement far above him, then into bad placements behind an expando loose flake the size of a small car, a Hyundai, or Geo, perhaps. This caused some mental stress as the flake visibly moved about. I traded Crazy Eric the `Sweetness' pitch for `In Your Face,' a not quite even trade-off, as `The Sweetness' was probably the technical and mental crux and lived up to its name. But it was CE's idea to do this climb, so it was fair. And in return, `IYF' rewarded me with the hardest aid I had ever done, and a very sweet beak, head, and KB crack. Hard enough, as it turned out.
It started out innocently enough. Decent placements, but then the rock deteriorated, and got steep. 40' out, I couldn't get out of my third-steps, and the last four placements were sketch aliens and stacked and tied-off LAs in kitty litter. A few heads and beaks led around a corner, supposedly to a rivet. But all I could reach was a divot into which I supposed, with sufficient imagination, I might place a head. Balanced in my second-steps, feet stacked against each other to keep me upright, I placed a #3 head at the limit of my reach. Between hammering way over my head (in every sense), and the sun directly in my eyes, it's a wonder I didn't hit my thumbs more than I did. But the head held a jump, and I got on it. Still no rivet visible in that ocean of granite. I couldn't reach the next good placement, no matter how hard I tried to get up higher in my steps, so I was relegated to beaking behind a loose flake about 12 inches above the head I was on. Couldn't go too high, cause the flake would just expand out and blow a big chunk, and it overhung too much to head, no constrictions. I blew out a couple of placements with the funk before I got one to stick, and eased up on it. Aha, there she blows, the safe harbor of the rivet. One more beak, and I can get on something relatively solid. In my mind, I'm going down after I reach the rivet. I'm making deals with myself and a god I don't believe in. It's been a long time since I could remember what was the last piece that would catch me. Soon as I reach something solid enough to lower off of, I'm outta here. There's an awful grinding noise below me, and an ominous loss of maybe an eighth of an inch of altitude, a seismic precursor to the major earthquake coming. The beak I'm on is coming out. Little enough of it in the rock anyway, and the rock is busting out around it. I'm already having to get pretty high on it to reach the next placement, no way it'll take another step up.
So do you feel lucky, punk? Do you rip onto the blind head, and all the crap below that, but at least onto the rope, or do you try to get back down onto the head with your daisy, and take the chance that the resulting daisy fall will pop the head and you'll have to redo the awkward blind placement if and when you work up the courage to get back up here?
Oops, doesn't matter, you didn't clip the head cause you didn't want to have to redo it if you blew.
``Look out, boys, here I come!'' came a voice that didn't sound anything like my own. Who said that?
I managed to get back down on the head. My heart eventually found its normal location and stopped blocking my throat, which made it easier to breathe. A head never looked so good, especially one with no hammer marks on the top half of it. I took the beak out with my fingers.
And all that could be done was put it back. In the same place.
This time it held long enough to get the next beak, my movements being an interesting combination of quickness and balletic grace to avoid any sudden movements while spending as little elapsed time as possible on that sucker. The next beak seemed bombproof by comparison, and finally I got to the rivet. I stood there a long time trying to work up the courage to quit, to be light, to wimp out in front of my partners and beg one of them to jug up on a rivet and save my ass. The crack in front of me was incipient at best, and incipient for the next 40 feet. After which it disappeared. I made more dubious deals with myself and that doubtful deity. I'd put the next piece in, and if that didn't hold a jump, I'd be outta there. So I pulled out the head kit, got one in, and slowly eased onto it. It didn't pop. ``FUCK!'' I yelled. It held a bounce. ``FUCK!'' Looking for any excuse, I bounced it hard. ``FUCK!'' I had pins up around my ears on that one. ``FUCK!'' Under the terms I had been negotiating, I had to do at least one more. Another placement, another deal, another portion of my non-existent soul dealt out. If this one came out, I was outta there. Another head, another jump. ``FUCK!''
It doesn't take much of that to get past the point of no return. No going down on these placements, no point in making any more shady deals. I hadn't anticipated this development when I was making those deals. But I was way into the crack. Time to make a down payment. KBs, beaks, RURPs, heads, hooks, the whole enchilada. Halfway up, I got a tied-off KB, which made me feel pretty solid, then a little higher, I buried a long KB. Awesome. My shady dealings with my soul faded in my memory. I wouldn't look good in a tonsure anyway. I didn't think I was going to die anymore, but the feeling of being way out there didn't go away. More of the same, but with a screamer on the KBs and the rivet, I didn't think I was going to rip the whole pitch anymore, and damn, it turned out to be fun. Or so it seems now.
I took a long time on that pitch, and was as scared as I've ever been.
Rumbo Eric had to work for ten minutes to get that KB out; it was curved
like a politician's dong. He laughed loud and long. But the time he
lost cleaning that placement was made up on the heads and beaks.
He laughed at those too.
``You don't want to know how easy that beak came out.''
``How easily?''
``You really don't want to know!'' Eric yelled, laughing.
I apologized for taking so long, but the Erics were cool. ``No problem, dude. We figured that was the hardest thing you ever lead. And it was pretty hard.''
So what else can I tell you about hard aid? I could give you a blow-by-blow of every pitch, but that's just boring. When it's good, and you are focused, you just think about the placement in front of you. Or you don't think at all. When it isn't good, when the beak you are on shifts and wiggles, when the flake you are nutting behind literally groans and coughs out a cloud of sand, when the edge starts crumbling to kitty litter under the hook right before your eyes, that's when the whole pitch flashes in front of you. Not your whole life, no time for that just yet, just every single piece below you and how it went in, what it went in. What you might hit, what might hit the rope, all those junk placements below, what might you kid yourself would stop you before you factor-two onto the choss belay or slam into the dihedral with organ-churning force or just break your legs on the ledge below. Whether that edge is sharp enough to cut the rope and send you for the big ride. Plenty of time for your life to flash in front of your eyes then. No, when it's good, you just think about the placement. You don't curse that you are top-stepping on an overhanging pitch, you aren't aware of the coppery taste of fear in your mouth, the burning bile in your throat. When you can't even think about bailing because there's nothing to bail off of, nothing to back down to, nothing coming up that looks worth bailing off of, and even though you are a shameless craven wiggling coward and would do so without a second thought, nothing that anyone else could jug up on. No, when it's good, you just think about the placement in front of you. And it's good if the placement survived as much of a bounce as you could work up with your heart and half your digestive system trying to escape through your throat, the other half out your ass.
Climbing up under the Dawn Roof was amazing. One of the most notable features on El Cap, it draws the eye immediately. Someone once told me an apocryphal story. Bard, or Long, or Bridwell, doesn't really matter who, was racking up when he saw a familiar mug sitting in a bathrobe in a lawnchair in the Meadow, in front of a large telescope. He wandered over to say hi, and the muttering figure in front of him started telling him about a new line he was scoping out. ``It goes up the side of the Tower, then out that line, then up through the big roof...'' Finally Bard, or Long, or Bridwell broke in and told the figure, ``Warren, that's the Dawn Wall. You put that up 30 years ago.''
An amazing feature. From our route, there were two ways to get up to the roof proper, and the tequila straw cam-stuff. We of course chose the route with the Dangler of Death, a sharp loose diamond shaped flake poised to behead the belayer. My turn, eh? Rumbo Eric slung himself way off to the side. I didn't even bother putting my helmet on. After tenuous camming and nailing through the loose stuff and the thin roof, Crazy Eric got to tag the tequila straw up and tape a blue alien to the end of it. Flat on his back, thousands of feet above the ground, below the enormous roof, making a blind thin placement, he stuffed the cam back behind a flake, giggled, and got onto it.
Bomber placement, though. It took me a half-hour to get it out. Hell, I had to get it out, it was my alien. Rumbo Eric took the big swing when it was his turn to jug up and lead the next pitch, sailing far into space, a long way from anything solid, with a huge sickly grin on his face. ``Just give me my Swiss Army Knife, and I'll cut my throat now!''
While I was dangling there, cursing, I heard something whiz past my head, and looked down to see a water bottle arrowing for the slabs. Long after I thought it should have splashed, it was still receding in the distance. After countable seconds, it finally impacted silently below us. We were a long way up there. Not healthy to think about that for very long.
But that was pretty much the end of the climb. The rest of it was pretty straightforward, if onerous. We stayed one more night on the Reticent ledge, and thought about finishing on the crux pitch of El Cap, but decided that that would quench any desire to come back and do the whole route honestly.
After downing the remaining beers and Gatorita we had hoarded for the summit celebration, the trip down was horrendous, of course. Despite leaving many gallons of water for Scott Burke (embarrassing how much we had left over, especially when I thought back to all the times I had been thirsty), the pigs and the pig-iron must have weighed close to a hundred pounds. Each. We struggled through the manzanita, getting lost on game trails, cursing, falling, getting scraped up. I lost a lens on my glasses. I couldn't tell whether this made things better or worse. Until it got dark. Then worse, no doubt.
We finally made it down around midnight. Tempers that had been even and restrained on the wall finally flared under heavy loads, but were restored when the ground flattened out. We shook hands in the moonlight in the Manure Pile meadow, too tired to be jubilant, but achingly proud nonetheless.
Rumbo Eric went for the car while Crazy Eric and I collapsed on picnic tables. I was fast asleep almost instantly, until a yell woke me up, disoriented and confused. I checked my crotch for my tie-in, which wasn't there, the absence of its familiar heft disconcerting after ten days of its reassuring presence. Crazy Eric was somewhere in the darkness, I couldn't figure out where, saying something about a bear. I saw eyes in the moonlight, not sure whether they were his or the bear's. My headlamp dispelled the mystery. They were the bears'. Yogi had come up and given Eric a sniff and a pat-down to determine if he were a sack of touron groceries left behind. A smelly, stinky, stringy and disgruntled sack of groceries. Not worth eating, apparently.
I went back to sleep until Eric returned with the car.
We ran into Warren and Miles on our way back to the Meadow, completing the circle of this climb. Second ascent, Disorderly Conduct, VI 5.9 A3+, or PDH, RHU.
The rating on this route is definitely New Wave. Some might say it's sandbagged to hell and back. In deference to the FA party's wishes, individual pitches are not rated. for the standard definitions of NW aid ratings. Captain Rumbo has his own opinions. The only reliable rating is PDD - Pretty Damn Disorderly. Don't get on it unless you are prepared for bad rock, difficult nailing, stellar climbing, tenuous copperheading, amazing exposure, run-out hooking, incredible views, excessive shenanigans, and mind-bending stretches of marginal placements which you won't even be able to kid yourself will hold a fall, on nearly every pitch.
In short, everything you could ask for out of a wall.
Brent Ware <ware@ligo.caltech.edu
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