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Lucky Streaks, or How Not To Climb Epinephrine

Dr Stone, June 2001

When I was working in California, in the mid 1990s, I spent a lot of time trying to find a climbing partner who was as good as myself, i.e. crap. I never managed it, but I did find someone who was only about six letter grades better than me on trad routes, and we teamed up. Erik dragged me up some stellar routes at Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and Red Rocks, and I repaid the favour by doing the driving. Back in the 1970s, before his ‘untimely’ death in a road accident, British climbing reprobate Al Harris used to strap passengers wrapped in mattresses into his Mini Cooper and drive down twisty Welsh lanes at remarkable speeds. On our high speed dashes down I-5 and Highway 120, Erik would sit in the rear seat of my car, keep his helmet on, and bury himself in the rucksacks and ropes while Scott and I, in the front, shared a bottle of Jim Beam and looked out for cops.

Most of our trips were dogged by ill luck. There was the time I broke a finger on the first move of the first route of a two-week road trip. And the time we filled the car with butane gas from a leaking canister. That was after the time Erik prepared us an evening meal generously seasoned with e. coli. The ensuing food poisoning wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had (that’s another story), but it did see Erik carted off to hospital to be placed on an I.V. for several hours. When we arranged to meet in Las Vegas in June 2001, with the aim of doing the 18-pitch classic, Epinephrine, we both anticipated problems. Sure enough, two days before I was due to fly out from London, Erik called to say his girlfriend had caught Chickenpox and needed nursing. We pushed the trip back two weeks, smack into a Nevada heat wave, as it turned out.

^{Venice at twilight, or Las Vegas at midnight?
Clue: the gondolas have electric thrusters underneath.}

We eventually met in the baggage claim area of Las Vega airport. Erik was playing the slots. No he wasn’t, I made that up, Erik has four centuries of Calvinism behind him. He greeted me with the words “Stone, we have a problem. My knee is out. Reckon I can climb, but the walk-ins will be slow." Because of sins committed in a previous life, Erik competes in events called triathlons. The winner of a triathlon is the person who can swim, run and bicycle their way to the most soft tissue injuries. He is very good. Anyway, we drove out to Red Rocks and after a timed walk to the crag nearest to the parking lot, we estimated the Epinephrine walk-in to be about a day and a half. Plus it was 107 degrees Fahrenheit and the route was in the sun most of the day. Plan B had been to head up into the cooler mountains of the Needles, but here the walk-ins are even longer. We decided to drive up to the healing zone of Tuolumne.

_{Heading up the Owens Valley}

At the best of times Tuolumne means ‘fear’ to me, but when we got there, the sky was leaden and the sense of dread was even greater than usual. I was hoping that we could warm up on something nice and easy, but Erik wanted to jump straight on Lucky Streaks “in case the weather breaks, man.” We assembled a thinned out Erik rack (triples of everything up to Camelot 5/Hex 13) and began the walk-in. I thought I was saved when we got to the base and saw a thirty-foot high snow bank, plus bergschrund, guarding the start, but Erik just said “Wow, almost no snow bank!” and started up in his sandals

Lucky Streaks is 6 pitches long and we planned for Erik to lead the first block of 3, me the last. He sped off up the first 60 feet of rock and then stopped for a while at an easy looking little wall. After placing a piece he moved shakily up and across the straightforward region, shouting for me to watch the rope. I was pleased to see that the knee was knocking his performance back, and that for once I would be able to impress him with my own graceful climbing. The rope came tight and I started up with a sly grin. At the section that had slowed Erik up I looked at the moves and prepared to ‘style it’. Next thing, I had all four points of contact out of sequence and was starting to slip off. Sketching wildly, I was forced to bring out the inverted thumb sprag, the reverse buttock smear, and the flailing lurch from my repertoire of graceful moves. The usual respect for Erik, and Tuolumne 5.9, was back in place. Down at the base another team had arrived, and they were doing their best not to laugh at my effort.

_{Erik at the crux of pitch 1}

Erik raced up the next pitch, but again, only some sort of elbow jam, and a nose hook over a crystal, got me through without a rest on the rope. I began trying to think of excuses. “Aha, it’s the altitude!” I thought, but Erik lives at sea level, so it should have been the same for him. Too much beer last night? Nope, two bottles. Jet lag? I claim not to get it, so that was out, too. I felt nervous at the belay, even though we were attached to four solid anchors. It just wasn’t my day. I looked down at the party behind us; the leader was paused before the hard section of the first pitch. I hoped they wouldn’t catch us up. Erik set off on the 5.10d start of pitch 3. He moved up, placed a couple of pieces then stepped back down. Then he moved back up, got some finger locks, placed his left foot really high and lurched upwards. A few grunts, another piece in, lots more grunting and he was moving up fast. I couldn’t see him but I could hear he was at the flat-topped spike clipping slings for pro. The rope ran out again and I heard him shout, “Oh, it’s a layback!” (it clearly says this on the topo, but neither of us are what you would call ‘sharp’). The rope kept moving and eventually I heard a faint “off belay” and the rope came tight. I set off just as the leader of the next team, a pleasant, laid-back guy, arrived.

_{Erik sets off on Pitch 3}

I moved up to the thin left leaning finger crack. I got the first piece out easily but the second was awkward and took a while. Then I placed my left foot really high, like Erik, and lurched up. I couldn’t find anything good to hold onto, and there was a piece of pro in the best part of the crack. I got a poor lock and snatched the piece out but at the same time I lost the hold and dropped off the rock. There was about a hundred and forty feet of Erik’s new Beal (“stretchiest rope made, man!”) out so I dropped a few feet down and left of the crack, almost onto the startled head of the second party leader on the belay. I couldn’t lower down the belay now, as the laid-back guy and his ropes occupied it, so I began trying to climb back to the crack. After numerous tries, pointless calls for tension, appeals to the rock spirits, and tears of frustration, I was about to give up, drop down on laid-back guy, and rappel off. I’d had it and I was exhausted. But Erik was too far up to rappel on the lead rope and I was too far up to rap on the 9mm in my backpack.

I thought about asking the laid-back guy to lower me off so I could run away, but then I remembered that Erik had the car keys. I just wanted to get off the route, but I had to get up to Erik first. I tried another flailing lurch, and got the good finger slot. A curse assisted pull on this got me within reach of the next piece and suddenly it was A0 to the slings on the flat spike. I held on to these and waited for my hyperventilating to stop, repeating my mantra: “Get up to Erik, rappel.” I moved up left into the 5.10b layback and finger jammed up it from the left for a few feet before remembering it was a layback. Then I wobbled up the 5.10a ramp and realised I’d not pulled on any gear since the slings and thus my grounds for bailing from the route were fading. The final few moves were all in Erik’s direct view, and gear-pulling here would have been blatant spiritual weakness. I arrived at the belay exhausted, humiliated and scared, but worst of all I couldn't think of an excuse to bail. I felt dismal.

After a couple of minutes I was able to speak again and I asked Erik if he’d mind leading the next pitch while I tried to recover on water and Powerbar. “Sure, man.” he said, and in a trice he was off up the 5.9 crack. As I stood there feeding out the rope it started to dawn on me that we were on a totally brilliant route. The three pitches we’d done (including my A0 variation) were all three star, and the way up looked superb. Then the sun came out and the rope went tight and I started up. The climbing was straightforward and I was soon up with Erik. After a pause during which we talked about databases, numerical analysis, and the Microsoft hegemony, Erik said: “You know, you’d probably feel a lot better about the whole thing if you led the next pitch.” Probably I was hypoxic, because I said: “Yeah, you’re right.” and took the rack.

_{Third belay. Erik is smiling. Stone is not.}

The left-hand variation to pitch five leaves the first crack system and traverses just underneath an ‘eyebrow’ of rock to a second crack line. The pitch starts on good footholds and where the eyebrow meets the face I was able to get a couple of aliens in. As you go further left the footholds become smaller and the gear starts to look distant. I made a couple of moves by reaching up for nubbins above the eyebrow and suddenly I was committed.

At this point I remembered a conversation we’d had the night before with two lads who’d just come down off Lucky Streaks. “Man, that traverse pitch! You keep goin’ left, and the footholds get smaller and the rock gets smoother, and then you get to the end, and, dude, it’s like... butter dish!!!” I tried to put this thought to the back of my mind, but it escaped down my spinal cord and emerged out of my arms and legs, in the form of a small but definite vibration. There was no time to lose before Elvis paid a visit, so I shuddered left again, balanced on two poor smears, and stretched out for a layaway hold at the end of the eyebrow. I latched this, pulled up to a standing position, and slotted a perfect handjam into the corner-crack, which soared up into the sky. I looked at the loop of rope going back to the aliens but thought I better move up a few feet before placing gear, so that Erik wouldn’t be looking at such a swing in the unlikely event that he came off. The jams were solid, so this wasn’t much of an issue.

I carried on and on up this sensational crack. Occasionally the jams would run out, but then a nubbin or two would appear on the face to the right, allowing progress. Eventually, I reached an old bolt and just above this there were good gear placements. I placed about fifteen pieces, equalised them all off with Erik’s cordelettes, and hung there, about six hundred feet up, warm in the sun. Erik came up and said “What a pitch. Stellar lead.”

_{Halfway across the traverse. The vibrating limbs don't show up
in this photograph}

The next pitch carries on up the crack, easing a little, and it’s solid three star. You have to pass some precarious flakes, but you can run a 200 foot rope out all the way to the change of angle at the top. I topped out not far from the descent line and soon we were walking down the low angle south shoulder of Fairview. Retrieving the gear we’d left at the base, we could see the laid-back guy and his partner way up on the top pitch. There was just one thing on my mind as we walked back to the car: refreshments. I had made sure there was plenty of Red Hook on ice back at camp and we hit it. I had eight bottles. Erik drank four, which for his finely tuned athlete’s body was the equivalent of me drinking twenty or thirty. He was a strange colour the next day and has now forsworn beer for ever, or at least until we finally get to do Epinephrine.

_{Pitch 6. 180 feet of pure quality}