Photo: Climbing Photography
If there's anything that will stop climbers in their tracks, it's booty.
I don't mean the shake-your-booty kind of booty (though that does the trick as well) -- I mean loot booty. The kind of booty that someone else paid good money for and left behind, whether stuck in a crack, dropped to the ground or otherwise left behind.
Sure, climbers can be the cheapest bastards you'll ever meet. But the allure of booty -- the booty call -- is more often about the thrill of the chase (another parallel with the other kind of booty) than the value of the treasure.
To wit, I now have more wired nuts (lead protection, about $10 apiece) than I could possibly use. About 10 percent of them complement my rack (about as many as I actually bought), while the rest -- finagled triumphantly out of cracks where others abandoned them -- collect dust in my basement. Still, I never leave the car without a nut tool, just in case I can get more booty.
Sometimes, the booty sirens call from the most unexpected places.
My friend Bruce Miller was unloading scrap metal at the Boulder Recycling Center last month when he received a most unusual booty call. Inside the Dumpster, from underneath a heap of twisted metal, a glimmer of shiny aluminum caught his eye.
Bear in mind that Bruce is more accomplished than many professional climbers; he hasn't paid retail for climbing gear in decades. He gets a discount at Neptune Mountaineering just for being Bruce Miller.
Bruce looked both ways, gripped the Dumpster's edge, then dove inside. Digging carefully toward the booty, through metal fragments and old appliances, he uncovered the mother lode: a brand new rack of nuts and cams, plus dozens of carabiners.
Just then, Bruce recalled, "I felt the whole Dumpster lurch."
He seized what he could -- some biners and a few nuts -- then leapt out of the container, just in time. He watched, heartbroken, as the
Dumpster was carried off and overturned, the bulk of the booty hopelessly buried beneath a ton of metal.
Often, it's the rare booty calls that make the most outrageous conquest. In 1977, "Friends," the original cams, were newly invented mechanical devices that revolutionized lead protection. But they were only available in British climbing shops that year.
One morning, a climber strolled into Yosemite's Camp 4 jabbering about a No. 1 Friend stuck on a route called Nutcracker. Valley bum and world-class alpinist Terrence "Mugs" Stump immediately readied his tool kit (back then Friends had a simple nuts-and-bolts design). He climbed up to the cam, hung from a couple of pitons and delicately dismantled it, careful to keep every piece.
He was, perhaps, the first American to booty a Friend.
A year later, after making the first ascent of Mount Robson's Emperor Face with Boulder's Jim Logan, Mugs left the Friend with Jim in exchange for a place to stay between climbing expeditions. After many seasons of use, Logan replaced the Friend's tattered sling with a new yellow one and eventually passed the piece on to his son, Michael.
Years passed.
One autumn a few years back, Michael and his fiancée went climbing in Yosemite, beginning their trip on the classic Nutcracker. On the first pitch, Michael found a perfect placement for Mugs's old No. 1 Friend.
Only it got stuck. Irretrievably stuck.
In 2008, Jim Logan was back in Yosemite. He climbed Nutcracker for the sole purpose of revisiting that No. 1 Friend, for Mugs was Jim's No. 1 friend for many years, before he died in Alaska in 1992. Sure enough, the cam with the yellow sling was still there, 50 feet up Nutcracker, in the exact spot that Mugs had bootied it 30 years earlier.
Some booty, like that Friend, seems predestined to get around. Other booty beckons from unexpected places.
But most booty calls from just out of reach, stopping climbers in their tracks.
Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com.
Boulder Daily CameraI don't mean the shake-your-booty kind of booty (though that does the trick as well) -- I mean loot booty. The kind of booty that someone else paid good money for and left behind, whether stuck in a crack, dropped to the ground or otherwise left behind.
Sure, climbers can be the cheapest bastards you'll ever meet. But the allure of booty -- the booty call -- is more often about the thrill of the chase (another parallel with the other kind of booty) than the value of the treasure.
To wit, I now have more wired nuts (lead protection, about $10 apiece) than I could possibly use. About 10 percent of them complement my rack (about as many as I actually bought), while the rest -- finagled triumphantly out of cracks where others abandoned them -- collect dust in my basement. Still, I never leave the car without a nut tool, just in case I can get more booty.
Sometimes, the booty sirens call from the most unexpected places.
My friend Bruce Miller was unloading scrap metal at the Boulder Recycling Center last month when he received a most unusual booty call. Inside the Dumpster, from underneath a heap of twisted metal, a glimmer of shiny aluminum caught his eye.
Bear in mind that Bruce is more accomplished than many professional climbers; he hasn't paid retail for climbing gear in decades. He gets a discount at Neptune Mountaineering just for being Bruce Miller.
Bruce looked both ways, gripped the Dumpster's edge, then dove inside. Digging carefully toward the booty, through metal fragments and old appliances, he uncovered the mother lode: a brand new rack of nuts and cams, plus dozens of carabiners.
Just then, Bruce recalled, "I felt the whole Dumpster lurch."
He seized what he could -- some biners and a few nuts -- then leapt out of the container, just in time. He watched, heartbroken, as the
Dumpster was carried off and overturned, the bulk of the booty hopelessly buried beneath a ton of metal.
Often, it's the rare booty calls that make the most outrageous conquest. In 1977, "Friends," the original cams, were newly invented mechanical devices that revolutionized lead protection. But they were only available in British climbing shops that year.
One morning, a climber strolled into Yosemite's Camp 4 jabbering about a No. 1 Friend stuck on a route called Nutcracker. Valley bum and world-class alpinist Terrence "Mugs" Stump immediately readied his tool kit (back then Friends had a simple nuts-and-bolts design). He climbed up to the cam, hung from a couple of pitons and delicately dismantled it, careful to keep every piece.
He was, perhaps, the first American to booty a Friend.
A year later, after making the first ascent of Mount Robson's Emperor Face with Boulder's Jim Logan, Mugs left the Friend with Jim in exchange for a place to stay between climbing expeditions. After many seasons of use, Logan replaced the Friend's tattered sling with a new yellow one and eventually passed the piece on to his son, Michael.
Years passed.
One autumn a few years back, Michael and his fiancée went climbing in Yosemite, beginning their trip on the classic Nutcracker. On the first pitch, Michael found a perfect placement for Mugs's old No. 1 Friend.
Only it got stuck. Irretrievably stuck.
In 2008, Jim Logan was back in Yosemite. He climbed Nutcracker for the sole purpose of revisiting that No. 1 Friend, for Mugs was Jim's No. 1 friend for many years, before he died in Alaska in 1992. Sure enough, the cam with the yellow sling was still there, 50 feet up Nutcracker, in the exact spot that Mugs had bootied it 30 years earlier.
Some booty, like that Friend, seems predestined to get around. Other booty beckons from unexpected places.
But most booty calls from just out of reach, stopping climbers in their tracks.
Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com.
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