Just Another Weekend at Idyllwild

Ced, Sue, Carl, Christine and Hans Bohmann (visiting from Germany) met Patsy and I at Patsy's parents house in Rancho Bernardo at 7 am Saturday morning and we set off to Idyllwild in three cars.

Upon our arrival in Idyllwild, we tried to find some bathrooms. At the "Fort", the bathrooms were still locked. The Forest Service ranger station people won't let you use their bathrooms. At the State Park campground, they charge $5 for "day use" and have the SP troopers patrolling in converted, turbo-charged, golf carts waiting to write you a ticket. At Humber Park, all the "Porta Potties" were gone. As of July 1, 1996 they have now been replaced.

What's a poor hiker/climber to do when there's no porta potties at one of the busiest trailheads in Southern California? If you're good, you dig a hole in the ground far, but not too far, from the parking lot. If you're bad (and there are plenty of them) you leave white "prayer ribbons" everywhere. I really can't "dump" on the town of Idyllwild and the National Forest Service enough for not always providing public toilet facilities at the Humber Park trailhead.

At the Suicide Rock trailhead we met up with Glenn Sager and relieved ourselves in the bushes.

Patsy and I split up our rack. Carl and I led Hans, a vacationing policeman who was "afraid of nothing" up Tabby's Treat, 5.1, just to see how he would feel about exposure. He seemed quite comfortable but shortly thereafter, he and Christine decided to leave for Palm Springs.

Meanwhile, Patsy led Ced up Cat's Meow, 5.8, then they went over to Flake Out, 5.7, where Patsy led the first pitch and then left a rope hanging all day over a heinous 5.10c crack.

When Patsy returned, I collected the pro and led Carl up Cat's Meow and then the Thin Man, 5.9. Carl found a booty stopper, a #10 BD on Cat's Meow, that Patsy dropped on the next day from high up on Piton Pooper. Carl led Breakout, 5.6, and I top roped the 5.10a/b face immediately below that offered only two poorly spaced bolts for lead protection.

While Carl and I were on Breakout, an old RCS (Rock Climbing Section of the Sierra Club) friend of Carl's, Rob ?, was leading his two sons, age 9 and 11 up Tabby's Treat. Somehow Rob managed to overcam a Friend in the super easy crack on the second pitch. While he was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to free his stuck Friend, his nine year old son, waiting at the first belay, noticed that he wasn't tied in. Fearing he was going to fall and die, he (naturally enough) started wailing uncontrollably. The 11 year old didn't know what to do.

The 11 year old didn't know how to console his brother and he also didn't know how to tie him in. It was an awful scene. Imagine ... father's yelling down at his sons. One son's balling his eyes out. The other son is pleading with his father, "PLEASE come down". It turned out that the kid had been clipped into the rope with a carabiner(s) instead of tied in and the two boys thought that that carabiner was just part of the mess that must have been their anchor.

It was sickening to listen to the fear in those kids' voices.

Carl and I were just about to go to the rescue when Superman, Clark (Jacobs) Kent appeared from nowhere, and flew up the climb to their rescue. That same day, one guy broke one or both ankles on the North face of Tahquitz. Unfortunately for him, not even Superman can be in two places at once.

After all the excitement had died down, we asked Patsy et al. if they'd like to TR Thin Man. They said "yes", so Carl and I set up a TR before coming down.

Around 6 pm I had to reverse lead the first pitch Flake Out in order to retrieve the rope and gear that Patsy had left, while she climbed the Thin Man and took down that anchor.

We went over to Pyro's house for pot-luck dinner and spent the night there, camped out on his floor and veranda. We never did see Jean, Frank, Stacy, Dorraine et al. but Jessica, Peter, Paul and Tracy showed up. Pyro went dancing and met Jean and Frank, who hadn't come down from Tahquitz until 11 pm. Kevin Powell was also there, along with some other locals.

On Sunday we went to Tahquitz. Patsy I split up our gear again and borrowed an extra 8 'biners from Glenn. Somehow we managed to leave half of the slings in the Bronco. We all went over to the base of Dave's Deviation where Carl pointed out a variation to the Frightful Variation of The Trough. Carl said that he worked out this "5.6" variation years ago with his son, Frank, but being the unpretentious sort that he is, he never gave it a name and it's not listed in the guidebook. Carl started leading up. He went up and down, up and down. "I don't remember it being this hard years ago". I placed a tiny RP up the crack to protect at least the initial move. I guess it gave him the pshychological boost that he needed because he made it to safe ground above. Ced and I were toying with the idea of following this climb as a separate rope team but as we watched Carl struggling to find a way over an overhang that was guarded by a scrub oak, we thought better of it and headed off looking for an easy romp. Patsy later said that the pitch was more like a good 5.8. To commemorate Carl Van Herreweghe's 30+ years of climbing at Tahquitz, I suggest that this pitch should henceforth be called the Hairy Way to the Trough.

Patsy and Carl switched leads on Piton Pooper, 5.7, while I led Ced up Fingertip Traverse, 5.3. I was thinking of doing Sahara Terror, 5.7, but that would have been a bad mistake because Ced didn't really have a clue how to belay a leader. My fault, though, for not checking her out more carefully. On the only other climb we have done together on Tahquitz, Patsy and I swung leads with Ced in the middle.

Ced kept me tight like I was on a top rope. I swapped belay devices with her; I couldn't figure out what the deal was but when we got to the top, the friction romp up the final face, I thought for sure I wouldn't be able to make it with all the rope drag. I belayed at the tiny bush at its base, figuring that if Ced pulled me off at least she'd break my fall :-).

This in itself was quite a thrill, much more so than the Fingertip Traverse. At the end of the Fingertip Traverse there were a couple of stoppers jammed into the cracks. I guess a lot of terrified beginners lead this climb! Ced managed to retrieve one of these, which by sheer coincidence turned out to be a #10 BD.

Aside from the bush, all I had that I could fit in the crack was a #1 tricam. I belayed Ced up to the bush and shored up the anchor with another tricam and a flex Friend. But it was no problem. Fingertip Traverse is a fun romp but I wouldn't give it more than one star. I met Jeff Brown at the top. He and his friend had just soloed Fingertrip then Left Ski Track. They were the guys who bolted the routes at Otay.

Ced and I reached the top at 5 pm, lazed around, watching Paul and Tracy on Bat Flake, headed down and reached Lunch rock at about 6 pm. We could see Carl and Patsy way up there. I called to Patsy and she shouted down, "Hey Bub, we dropped a nut from up here (3 pitches up) and we think it landed in "the bush" down there." I shouted up, "So what do you want me to do, go looking for it?" Another woman standing close by said, "I think she does". And she did too! She shouted down, "It's Carl's nut", like that was some kind of incentive to waste the remaining few hours of daylight foraging in the bushes. Now if it was one of Lynn Hill's nuts, that might be an incentive. But Ced and I knew that the only nut Carl had was the one he'd found the day before, the famous appearing and disappearing #10 BD stopper, and besides, we had other plans.

Ced and I figured poetic justice had been served on the #10 stopper and headed back down to split the remaining three quarters of a bottle of Muscat and munch on Carl's brownies while we were waiting for Patsy and Carl. They reached the cars at 8.30 pm and we went to Señor Rubens for dinner. Pyro, Diane and Jill joined us there about 9.30 pm. No wonder we call ourselves "Lost Alpinistas" !