Outdoor Research Verticulture » First Ascent http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com Get Stoked! Outdoor Research Verticulture Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:31:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Zero to Hero http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2011/03/zero-to-hero/ http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2011/03/zero-to-hero/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 20:14:26 +0000 Jason Nelson http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/?p=6191 Zero to Hero -a new mixed climb- came together in a series of pieces. The first began about three years ago… Living in Ouray, with a population of 900, meant that climbing partners could be limited at times. I often filled that gap by establishing new routes. Bolting is something like climbing, but dirtier and different. I liken it to a sculptor removing the debris and unearthing a statue. With rock as loose as it is in Ouray, that means a lot of removing debris.

Zero to... HERO!

Inspired by stories of what was happening over in Europe and having climbed-out Ouray’s current “hard man’s mixed climbing” area, the Poser’s Lounge, I set my sights on finding something different. Why did I need to be limited to finding steep rock with ice on it for a mixed climb? While we all like to have ice on our mixed routes for aesthetic purposes, it really limits the options.

And so, I came across the Hall of Justice cave, but it was big and riddled with loose rock. The wall was four hundred feet tall so rap bolting wasn’t an option. The first route took me about three and a half days to bolt over the course of a couple weeks.  Solo-aiding and bolting up such a steep piece of rock was a slow going and brutal affair. The wall is so steep that my feet couldn’t touch the wall and I had to stem in the air with my aiders. Meanwhile, I’d lock off with one arm on the quickdraw I was hanging from, lean back and press the 10-15 lbs of battery powered hammer drill into the ceiling. The drill bit would start to rotate and shake as I tried to keep my shoulder engaged. Dirt poured out of the hole and onto my face, clothes and into my eyes. Each bolting session would send me home covered in dirt, my hips rashed and bruised, and my core muscles completely spent.

Once the route was bolted, I spent about 7 more days over the next several weeks cleaning the loose rock from the wall. The cleaning was accomplished by swinging a big hammer into the rock, much like what you see the chain gangs doing in the movies, except this is done while hanging in a harness.

I sent the route that same year and named it “Holy Girlpile Batman” (M12). It was quite a breakthrough for me as it was the most difficult route I could imagine yet I found myself clipping the chains after only about six tries. I bolted a shorter route in the back of the cave as well as a warm up. After those two, I was spent. The effort was expensive and exhausting. Plus I couldn’t find anyone to climb with me in the cave so I left it alone for a period.

A lot of inspiration comes from those you surround yourself with one way or another. I’ve known Marc Beverly for a number of years now, but we’ve only just started hanging out this year. Seems we have a lot in common; a taste for new routes and we are both “extra-large-size” climbers weighing in at over 200 lbs and both about 6’ 4”.

This winter, Marc came out to visit me and to climb “Holy Girlpile Batman!”. One thing led to another and out came the drill. Over the next couple days, the warm up in the back of the cave was extended out past the lip. It wasn’t completely without adventure. We established it during a multi-day blizzard and post-holing a hour or so each day up to the cave required a fair bit of motivation. One evening of bolting went into the dark and I took a fall when a bolt pulled out of the roof in some loose rock. Drill, aiders, a hammer were floating with me through the air until coming to a rest on the rope.

The route was brutally steep and there wasn’t a single rest on the 80-feet or so of climbing. I had to learn how to climb such a route. Using your feet when they don’t really touch the wall becomes a challenge. It didn’t take long though and my second day of trying to climb the route found me clipping the anchors.

Sending the route was a success, but as much so, I’ve set the spark for others and it looks as though I’ll have some help in establishing some future lines in this cave. I’m excited to see what the future will hold.

Marc and I decided to call the route “Zero to Hero” in a mocking fashion as the route’s difficulty goes from 0 to 60 almost instantly and once you’re at the top, you’re a hero, or at least feel like one for a moment. That is until you lower off and find yourself too pumped to untie the rope from your harness.

]]> http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2011/03/zero-to-hero/feed/ 0 Launching into the Unknown http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2010/02/launching-into-the-unknown/ http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2010/02/launching-into-the-unknown/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:44:45 +0000 Blake Herrington http://outdoorresearchverticulture.com/?p=2071 “I would like the experience at some point this year of launching up a wall and into the unknown…”

The above was written by my friend Rad Roberts last spring, acutely distilling an alpinist’s desire for exploration into one line of email. But desire is a foe ill-suited to stormy Northwest weather. So after a summer of missed chances, a forecasted few days of sun was all we needed to put plans into action.




We left Seattle at 5AM, en route to Sloan Peak (7,800′). The Southwest face was 1,500′ of solid-looking stone in an accessible location. It had never been climbed…

Rad so strongly wanted to launch into the unknown, so after a few miles of old-growth and alpine meadows, I let him take the first pitch. A mossy chimney leads to who-knows-where. From atop the chimney progress slows, but movement is interjected with whoops of joys and grunts of desperation. I prepare to get sandbagged. Instead of the vegetated corner, Rad’s following a line of previously-unseen –and overhanging– splitter cracks. Forty more feet and he’s off belay, 15 meters of slack pulled up, and I’m on.

I reacquaint myself with backpack-clad squirming, lean a right shoulder into the wall and pray the rubber on my comically blown-out shoes will adhere for a few more moves. The climbing is phenomenal, and well-protected. I trundle some blocks and barely hang on between desperate finger locks.

We trace a line up thin cracks and delicately-featured rock. Dodging left around a huge roof, Rad dances up a right-facing dihedral, belaying along a major ledge system 400′ up.

We survey our situation: time, water, location… and I’m off. With another steep unknown wall looming, it’s time for some speed.

The rock here is even cleaner. My pitch flows without hesitation. This is why we climb. Reach up for the jam, stem out to the knob, 3 more moves to a stance and gear…At 50 meters I ease onto a pedestal, and I’m staring at a rusty Lost Arrow Piton! We suspect someone had come across the long ledge which splits the face and also belayed atop the pillar.

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]]> http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2010/02/launching-into-the-unknown/feed/ 0 P-38 http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2009/12/p-38/ http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2009/12/p-38/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:40:57 +0000 Shingo Ohkawa http://outdoorresearchverticulture.com/?p=373 shingoohkawa_p38_combined

The P-38

Mid-fall, 2009

…for the past three weeks i’ve been a hermit in the wasatch alpine; my hope was to spend as much time in the high country before the snow started falling, to finish a few new routes–one, in particular, as a memorial-of-sorts to my friend mike brown.

well, it’s done–i finished it–oddly, in front of the camera–on saturday afternoon, just in time to get back to camp that evening, host a huge bacchanal-bbq, then race back down the mountain to make it on time for work–i open the shop each sunday!  i called the line the P-38; if you’re not already familiar, the P-38 is, of course, a WWII plane, but it is also the US military’s name for the standard-issue can opener, a marvel of modern design:  if you’ve ever used one, the P-38 is light, compact, easy-to-use, and reliable as hell.  whoever designed it must have been a genius–it is elegant in its simplicity, the process involved in stamping them out was probably as streamlined as manufacturing can be, fast and cheap.  all of these qualities–lightweight, compact, easy-going, reliable, cheap, fast and elegant–describe the sort of character mike brown was.  i would have never had the courage to visit some of the places i’ve been, or to take some of the chances–against all better judgment–in life that i did if it were not for his influence.  and like the P-38, mikey was classic, timeless.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-38_can_opener

Shingo, Lone Peak in the Wasatch Mountains

Shingo, Lone Peak in the Wasatch Mountains

]]> http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2009/12/p-38/feed/ 0 Mendenhall Towers Expedition, Juneau, AK http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2009/12/mendenhall-towers/ http://www.outdoorresearchverticulture.com/2009/12/mendenhall-towers/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:43:01 +0000 Blake Herrington http://outdoorresearchverticulture.com/?p=347

What sticks with us after a climbing trip? For me, it’s seldom the climbing. Sure there are pitches I try to remember, and scary moments I want to forget, but that’s not what I remember most. Instead, I can remember laughing with Jason about the too-close-for-comfort crevasses, certain that these gaping chasms were slowly easing their way nearer to our tents. I remember being encouraged on the hike out, as bushwhacking and mosquitoes took a backseat to talking about how much pizza we’d consume back in Juneau. And apart from the amazing views and careful cross-word rationing, I remember some culinary adventures around camp. Anything (coffee, Oreos, PB&J) is better with the inclusion of butter. Larabars make great coasters and a convertible chair/sleeping pad is worth every ounce on the hike out.

One evening, after surveying our depressing pile of half-buried food (“the fridge” section of camp) I decided to make falafel. I skeptically eyed the powdered contents of a Zip-Loc bag that Jason had brought from his “camping food” box in Colorado, before heating our oil and mixing the dough. The consistency felt a little “off” but I chalked it up to age, and dropped a couple of the doughly lumps into the hot oil. Falling seracs and cornices provided entertainment as my culinary experiment set to cooking. Oddly, the lumps absorbed most of the oil and took on a consistency of Play-Doh. Woops… falafel, this was not. Jason and I tried the lumpy batter balls, and couldn’t really decide if it was some sort of spackle, drywall, or breading. As a native Washingtonian, I wanted to show off the taste of a few Walla Walla sweet onions we had, and decided it must be breading for onion rings.

Sliced onions were mixed with the powder and then dropped in yet another batch of hot oil. This time, the batter fell off the onions, turned brown, and the oil developed a slick, scummy coating. The onions bobbed around in the hot murk, and Jason just kept laughing. I strained the onions, pouring all the hot oil and mystery dough into our nearby expanding crevasse, and settled on making burritos, extremely onion-intensive and free from all traces of the mystery powder.




**This video was produced by Jason Nelson. Check out more stories of adventure from Jason and his family on their blog, Visual Adventures. Blake Herrington, author of this article, shares his adventures on his blog Blake Climbs. Both Jason and Blake provided the photos for this story.

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