RRC Archives

Ill give you another, this one has nothing to do with climbing. Im a SKYWARN spoter up hear in chicago, and try to stay active. Last spring I was at a frinds house when I got the page. I checked radar and split. to me the fastest way to get out where the storm was was to jump on 88. 88 runs E-W accross Illinoise and hooks up with 80 at the boradar. This was probobly the dummist thing Iv ever done. there are no exits for a good 22 Mi, if you want to change directions its an illigal u turn. as I got about 10 mi from the exet my cell went off. one of the people I work with was calling for an update. I told him that we were getting hit by hevey rain and hail. then he told me hhaat the doppler had indicated a tornado moving east on 88! I told him to give me 10 min so I gould get a visual confermation. I gunned it for the exit. Then I saw it. The rain died off just enough to one large funnal acout 1/4mi wide with a secondary funnal rotating around the larger one. I saw the dead man walking. then as soon as I saw it it wraped in rain. I saw people leaving there cars and heading for the underpass of the exit I was about to take. the wind picked up and despite me going almost 90 I wasnt moving fast. I got to the toll plaza and there was a person trying to hide in his car under the plaza. It took him almost a minute to move and I did the craziest race for my life. I made it, but when your engen is redlined and you feel like your going 25 you think your fucked. Good storm no one was hurt to bad and the warnings got out. oh I almost forgot, I had a frind who had never been close to a tornado before, he thought he was about to die. contrary to popular belefe if you have a mile head start, punch it!! you can go 100mph, the tornado will go 60, tops. just make shure you have a clear pathe and you know which direction its going.

Were you Tony Reynaldo in a former life? You have the same spelling problems. Er, typing problems.

I was wondering that too. Looks like usccabum should spend more time in the books, and less time getting high.

It's stream of consciousness content and typing.

Have you seen all of the posts....that boy must be flying high.

Oh yeah, I've see the others. I know I misssspel thnigs on ocaziun, but thats outuf contrl.

Funny how the epics or near epics make the best memories and stories, afterall we climb to talk about it later.

One of my favorite 'survived' stories involves an old friend who used to be a local, Ethan Cumbler. He taught me how to climb while Steve glared in my newbie direction. Anyway Ethan had a good imagination so good that he believed I could hand jam long before I could. This error in judgement lead to a very long afternoon on the third pitch of Shockley's Ceiling. If you've ever done the route you know it requires at least minimal jamming abilities. Long afternoon and by far the most experience I've had with anysort of self rescue/ get yourself our of a fix climbing and a great memory.

Alan Evil wrote:The stupidest thing I've done climbing so far is to thread a grisgris backwards which is not necessarily fatal but still really stupid.

Super easy to do - I've done it a few times, but it was caught through double-checking before climbing. Not double-checking is the stupid thing, and I've lowered off climbs with 'problems' like only being tied into the leg loops (or similar) a few times. Especially at the gym, I feel kinda stupid checking my belayer and 'showing off' my harness and knot, but it's got to be done.

Long day climbing, decided to do an easy 5.8 to finish out the day, got about 25 ' off the deck when the rope from my harness dropped back to the ground. I then realized that I hadn't tied in, I had rigged on my belay device instead. Downclimb soloing a 5.8 makes it 5.10 in my opinion.

Moral: always double check before you start to climb.

linustgl, i did the same thing a couple months ago on Tuna Town, except my belayer realized when i got to the first bolt so it was quite as bad.

when i broke my knee it was minorly epic but my most epic experience wasn't on rocks, it was int he water. in November i was whitewater paddling with some friends from wisconsin on the Chatooga river in South Carolina/Georgia. they'd driven through the night, picked me up in Louisville and kept driving (thru rain) until we got there around 11:00 am. we got all our gear together, ran shuttle and put on the river by 12:30 pm.
we made pretty quick movement down the river w/o much play time and only a couple swims and one stop to fix my boat. nature got the best of us though and as we got out to scout Painted Rock rapid (i think its a class 3+ rapid) the night closed in on us and we realized that we were not paddling anymore that night. we hauled our boats up to a secure spot and tied them up and proceded to walk for 4 hours back to the cars.
we had two mini-maglites for 11 people and one of them died around hour 3. we never made it back to the car. we weren't sure if we were on the right path and decided to turn back until we found a decent place to spend the night. we found a wide, flat spot in the trail and started to gather wood for the fire. we collected all our food together in one big pile and split it up so everyone had at least a little bit. the fire took a while to start because all the wood was wet from the rain so we had to peel the bark off everything.
like i had said, it was the second weekend of november so temps were like 40-45 degrees overnight and damp. we were freezing and i was wet from the river. we'd sleep for 20-30 minutes before waking up freezing cold and have to rebuild the fire up. it was one loooonng night. the next morning we made it back to the boats in 1 1/4 hours, its amazing the difference that daylight can make. we got back to the car exhausted and drove to get food.
it was one of the longest and certainly most uncomfortable nights of my life. sorry it wasn't about climbing..
phil