Trip Report
All this for 800 bucks!
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Sunday August 13, 2006 6:39pm
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Dave looking a little nervous.
Still nervous. Can't say that I blame him.
Suiting up and wigging out.
Straighten that wig up.
Action!
Yahoo!
Still alive.
Ken
Chicken Skinner
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About the Author
Chicken Skinner is a trad climber from Yosemite. |
Comments
john hansen
climber
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Aug 13, 2006 - 06:44pm PT
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Was that for Cliffhanger?
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Aug 13, 2006 - 06:51pm PT
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No. Cliffhanger would have paid a lot better.
Ken
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Aug 13, 2006 - 07:05pm PT
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NUTEEEE
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Blitzo
Social climber
Earth
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Aug 14, 2006 - 02:44am PT
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That was Ian Stobie's movie, wasn't it?
Stobie also made "On The Rocks".
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Ultrabiker
Ice climber
Eastside
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Aug 14, 2006 - 09:09am PT
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"Now, the Yellow Bellied Sapsucker!"
"Ahhhhh....Water's for Whimp's"!
"...but in that sleep of Death, what dreams may come!"
"Looks likes it's gonna rain today...Not a cloud in the sky."
"AHHHHHHHHHHH....Am I still alive...I could of crater'd there!"
"You whimp'n out on me...looks that way, at least I tried!"
"Hey, way to goooo, Sammy....Piece of Cake!"
"Pheeew...crazy guy!"
"Porter! Will you help me with my luggage please?"
"Over the Edge!"
Starring Randy and Jack!
The Best Climb'n flick ever made!
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Aug 14, 2006 - 10:47am PT
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I remeber when Ian came to the Valley, 1985 or so, looking for someone to take the whipper for his film. Walt, Scotty Burke, Schultz and I went into a bidding war for the job. I thought Schultz took the job for a few hundred bucks, was it really $800? That's good money!
It also got us started in bridge jumping to train for the big whippers. First Schultz and Burke went out to the Perris Ferry bridge, then I went back the next day with Burke.
That's when Burke jumped and got caught by one of his aiders on a bolt on the bridge. We almost got busted by the cops.
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john hansen
climber
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Aug 14, 2006 - 10:54pm PT
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Deuce, Didn't you jump with Osman a few times?
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Aug 15, 2006 - 01:42am PT
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Deuce,
I think it was $800 could of been $600. Either way it was not enough for that stunt. They wanted me to do it because I had dark hair. I told them I was only hired to set up the fall as technical advisor and I might do it for $10,000. I got out of that one, I am glad too. I did end up doing the filming as well for no extra pay because they did not like going over the dge and getting to the right spot for the shot. I was almost as terrified as Dave because if it didn't work (because I set the fall up and I had only just had a crash lesson on how to work the 16mm camera). It would have ruined my life if Dave had gotten hurt(hitting the wall) or worse. I did not get paid enough either. It amazes me what we would do back then for a little bit of cash. Part of my pay was supposed to be ten copies of the movie which I never received and to this day I have never seen it. If anyone has a copy I would love to see it.
Ken
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Aug 15, 2006 - 09:35am PT
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The valley boy "invention" of rope jumping, circa 1984 or 1985.
Well, of course we had all heard of Charlie Fowler jumping the Diving Board in Eldorado, a 80 footer by all accounts, somethime in the late 70's, and a few other stories here and there of people intentionally jumping on climbing ropes.
But in Yosemite, we hadn't yet figured out the art of rope jumping. After Ian came and enticed us all with cash for falling for his movie, Schultz and Burke went out to the Perris Ferry bridge to experiment.
The next day, Burke, jazzed about rope jumping, brought me, the Swiss Miss, and her friend back there to try advancing the art of rope jumping.
First we set up pure 150 foot rope swings, with the rope anchored on some beams near the middle of the bridge. We then walked out, and with the rope held tight between us and the anchor, jumped. Even though it is mostly a swing, you still fall the first 30 or 40 feet, it seems.
All of us, including the Swiss Miss and her friend, did a bunch of swing-jumps. After each jump, we used jumars and aiders to unweight our tie-in, then dropped into the water 10 or so feet below, and swam to shore.
Then Burke told me about the "loop jumps" he and Schultz had been experimenting with the day before: by walking toward the anchor, you began with a loop between you and the anchor for additional freefall. After a few tentative loop jumps, Burke told me that Schultz had done a loop jump starting only 50 feet from the anchor. In competitive mode, I walked 20 feet closer to the anchor, so the starting loop was even bigger, essentially a pure freefall with a bit of a swing at the end.
At this time we were generally using two ropes (bad idea) and no chest harness (really bad idea). I jumped. When the rope came tight for the final swing, my back hyperextended, I could hear it pop and crack, and when I stopped swinging, I had thought I broke my back. It was numb and I was terrified, so I jumared back up the rope slowly to the bridge, hobbled to the car, and waited for Burke to finish so we could go home.
(I later figured that using two ropes doubles the impact force)
So Burke then decides to do just one more swing jump. He sets up, leaps out, then all I hear agonizing screaming from right below the edge. "DEUCEY DEUCEY!!!" he screamed. I hobbled over with my back in severe pain, from the end of the bridge to find Burke five feet below the surface of the bridge, hanging from his harness's rear clip in loop by his aiders, one of which had been caught by a protruding bolt on the bridge.
"Cut me Loose, Cut me Loose!!!, Bruke was crying. When I got there, the Swiss Miss and her friend were trying to do just that, but they couldn't lift him on their own. Burke couldn't move because of the way he was suspended upsdie down from the back of his harness. The rope he was tied to dropped 150 feet away to the mid-bridge anchor.
Part 2 of story coming soon.... Gotta go for my morning walk.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
sawatch choss
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Aug 15, 2006 - 09:46am PT
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John, the suspension is killing me! Cut that deuce loose like a runner with a knife and finish the story!
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Aug 15, 2006 - 11:56am PT
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Ok, back...
When I finished hobbling over to Burke, I saw him hanging there, in an awkward upside down position, screaming at the top of his lungs, "DOOOOOO_CEY, CUT ME LOOSE!" like he was about to die or something. I got the Swiss Miss and her friend to all "pull together on 3", in order to pull the aider loop off the bolt, and send Burke for the big whipper swing.
As we were one-two-threeing, a man and his family were driving by on the bridge, heard the commotion, and jumped out of his car to see what waht going on. Just then, as he came to the edge to see what was going on, we let Burke go, who screamed as he fell.
As Burke's screams trailed off and the quiet of the moment returned, I looked at the man who had pulled up. With big eyes and an ashen face, he asked me, tentatively,
"Is he,...is he dead?"
"Nah", I told him, "we're just out here having fun, swinging on ropes and stuff." I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, as if this kind of stuff happened every day.
The man suddenly got extremely angry, and started screaming at us, calling us hoodlum names, and got back into his car, yelling, "I'm calling the police on you guys!" and sped off in the same direction from whence he came.
I ran to the rope's anchor, and with Burke directly below, yelled, "Hey, Scotty, are you all right?"
Silence and then only moans from below.
"Hey Scotty, the police are going to be here in about 12 minutes. Do you need us to haul you up?"
Burke, weakly: "I think I broke my back." Exactly how I felt. It turned out later he had bruised a rib, but had no other problems, whereas my back injury was one that was to remain with me to this day.
I directed the Swiss Miss and her friend to help set up a haul system so we could get Burke up before the cops came, but then Burke told us he could jumar, and began coming up.
We brought the car over to the bridge, got everything poised. As soon as Burke got up to the edge, we helped him over and quickly into the car. Frantically, we untied the remaining part of the anchor, threw it all in the car, and began driving off.
The car hadn't even left the bridge when we saw the State Patrol car ripping from around the corner, lights flashing. We looked ahead and nonchalant as we drove by the cop, and soon were celebrating our clean getaway!
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Aug 15, 2006 - 10:08pm PT
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That was all in the mid-80's. Then, in 1998, I jumped a bunch with Osman, who had taken rope jumping to new levels. We set up a crane in San Francisco, jumped (many times) the bridge on 280 between San Fran and Palo Alto, the bridge dividing Hurricane with La Verkin in Utah, and finally a 400 footer on the Navajo Bridge on the Grand Canyon. We also set up the Auburn bridge a couple times, but kept getting busted by cops.
After the 400 footer over the Colorado River, I swore off rope jumping for good.
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Aug 16, 2006 - 01:24am PT
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Rad Deuce,
I was plenty frightened after taking 60 footers, all on rock and never joined you guys during those days of bridge jumping. I remember when Burke had hurt his ribs but didn't realize you were hurt too.
I have invested a lifetime of doing my best not to fall that I don't think I could do it intentionally. I guess that may be why I haven't tried parachuting yet, I might try it when I am older, you never know. I might need a new thrill then.
I only got to really know Dano toward the end of his life though we had many friends in common. He knew all about the fall that Schultz took and surprisingly knew that I had set it up. He wanted to know how it was set up and kept insistng(generously) that Schultz and I were the pioneers and the ones that had inspired him to do what he was doing. Very flattering but, I doubt it was the true reason.
If you are interested in how it was set up let me know and I will keep on rambling. I did use two ropes and it worked well.
Ken
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Clayman
Trad climber
CA, now Flagstaff
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Aug 19, 2006 - 03:22am PT
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Keep rambaling! this stuff is totally interesting, at least to me.
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Richard Large
climber
sneaking up behind you...
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Aug 19, 2006 - 02:00pm PT
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" I might need a new thrill then."...
try alligator wrestling.
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Aug 19, 2006 - 07:29pm PT
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Emmett the alligator wrestler? Or was it Rustler that wrestled plastic alligators found in his sleeping bag?
Ken
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chollapete
Trad climber
tucson, az
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Great story, thanks. Keep 'em coming, please.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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A friend took a big fall for a television commercial in 1980. Dave Harris, later co-editor of Ascent. It was a government commercial for national unity, so predictably using climbing as a metaphor for team building and unity and such. Dave took a 20 metre or more rigged fall on a small cliff near Squamish. My brother helped with the rigging. I believe Dave got paid C$1,000.
They didn't use the footage of the fall - instead, they used a "we're on the summit and we're all friends and we're waving and smiling" shot.
Anders
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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In the late '70s, Adam Grosowsky, Alan Carrier, and a few others were doing full rope length "king swings" and walking the wing and top wires of this gas pipeling bridge over the Mississippi at Grand Tower, Il. They had to time it between barges as the river is pretty damn busy through there. And my memory is a bit hazy but I believe they also did a couple of straight ankle dives as well trying to touch the water.
[ P.S. Adam and Scott Balcom will apparently be slacking on NBC's Today Show tomorrow morning early. ]
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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So how far was Shultz's ride? It's hard to tell from the pics, foreshortening and all.
"Over the Edge," is that the film? Never heard of it. Anybody have any copies around?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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deuce4:
Well, of course we had all heard of Charlie Fowler jumping the Diving Board in Eldorado, a 80 footer by all accounts, somethime in the late 70's,
My recollection gives credit to Mike Munger for the Diving Board jump, done way before its time. Might have been more than 80 feet. But who was his partner?
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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There's a climber named Mike Munger?
Too funny.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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I thought Charlie Fowler and Mike Munger each jumped and that it was a full rope length. -maybe kinda like a fishing story.
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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Chicken Skinner,
Did you, or your friends, really drill a bolted anchor on the Captain just for this rope stunt?
How do you feel about that now?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Melissa:
There's a climber named Mike Munger?
Good climber, good guy. A few years later he climbed the Eiger Nordwand. Think he's still active around Boulder.
Digging into my archive of blackmail photos: Mike on Hallett Peak with the weather closing in, ca. 1971:
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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some Dano jump analysis posted here:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=207592&msg=262387#msg262387
The key here is to look at the distance our from the anchor verses the length of the jump. This is where Dano really pushed the science of rope jumping to new levels. He was a spatial master (even though his math wasn't the greatest).
An example of Dano's ability to visualize multi-dimensionally: once he designed a light box for building Jay Smith's rock climbing walls. Instead of figuring out all the angles and dimensions on paper, he built a cardboard box model and punched holes in it at key locations. Then he put a bright light in the box, put it in the exact center of Jay's gym. After turning the overhead lights out, where the light shone from the model gave him the marks to build the complex curves and angles of his design.
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sandstone and sky
Trad climber
AK
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"There's a climber named Mike Munger?
Too funny."
You guys are showing your age if you haven't heard of Mike Munger.
Think that's a good one, how about Mugs Stump? He was well known around the same time.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
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Chiloe,
What a flashback, I haven't seen a waterbottle like that since the 70's.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
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Somehow the thought of a 30 year old waterbottle doesn't make me thirsty...
They always developed a leak at the base of one of the side ridges. Kids these days will never know the joy of a pack full of soggy clothes...
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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elcapfool...I always figgered you for a younger guy...too young to have memories of water bottles from the 70's anyway.
As for myself, I'm not that young, but am too young in my climbing (and probably not enough of a mountaineer) to have heard stories about Mike Munger. Unfortunately I only know of Mugs Stump as a figure of the past.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
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It's a Peter Pan thing I guess. Or immaturity, depending on who you ask...
As I always say: it's not the years, it's the miles. (from Raiders of the lost Ark)
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Landgolier
climber
the flatness
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Hell, I bought bottles like that in '95 or so. Got sick of them leaking, got 3 quarts of gatorade for like $5, and used those until I piled up enough freebie nalgenes. Thinking of moving to siggs, I'm getting tired of drinking plastic.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
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Hell, I can remember when you could drink out of streams.
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Maysho
climber
Soda Springs, CA
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Seems totally nuts, but for our El Cap adventures in early 1981, we filled all our bottles right out of the Merced at Devils Elbow. Yikes! Then by the end of that summer the first giardia warnings were posted in the Sierra.
Peter
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Elcapfool:
Hell, I can remember when you could drink out of streams.
Made me laugh out loud. In a rueful way.
My early days in the Rockies, I carried a collapsing cup to dip into the streams. For summits, you'd fill a quart bottle and mix in the Wylers. We probably had to watch out for 'dactyls.
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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Dec 11, 2006 - 06:13pm PT
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I haven't drunk out of a stream in months now, unless I did at
the start of November--can't recall exactly.
Seriously, in most of the Sierra the problems are highly
exaggerated.
Sorry about the discontinuity. I scrolled back a couple days
and saw this thread with a last posting listed as Dec 8.
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Calvin
Trad climber
CO
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Dec 18, 2006 - 12:26am PT
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I dont know how old this thread is, but i thought i would chime in and let you guys know about my team. I own a LLC called 'SINE Innovations'. 3 of my crew and I have been climbing and rope jumping for 6 years.
We build fairly complex rope jump systems, and have been to get 100 meters of freefall.
here are some pictures of our most recent set up.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006365&l=e1034&id=203002032
I am new to this forum, obviously. but if you want to talk to me, I would enjoy it.
I am also looking for more original notes from Dan Osmond. While i never had the pleasure of meeting him, and i think his systems are sketchy, i would like to share and gather information to furthur our systems.
we do not keep up to well in climbing, when we started BASE and Rope jumping, our priorities changed.
I also have films about out rope jumping history, if anyone is interested.
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Jordan Ramey
Big Wall climber
Calgary, Alberta
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Oct 19, 2008 - 09:06pm PT
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This is a great thread to resurface.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Feb 25, 2009 - 02:31pm PT
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BUMP!
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Russ Walling
Social climber
from Poofters Froth, Wyoming
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Oct 15, 2011 - 12:58am PT
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Iron Monkey bump!
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:18am PT
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Chiloe
I'm pretty sure Charlie and Mike both did it on 150' ropes.
Charlie is supposed to have walked off the Diving Board calmly,
and Mike is supposed to have run off screaming 'fly or die'. . .
that's the way I heard it. . . way back then!
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zip
Trad climber
pacific beach, ca
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:05am PT
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Wow, something climbing related that I can comment on that I had a little part of.
Dave never saw his jump on the big or little screen.
I ran in to him in C4, and told him I had the video with me in my RV.
He was living in those dorms across from the gas station.
We went to his room, popped the tape in the VCR, and he just said Whoa, and laughed when he saw himself.
I still have the tape.
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Oct 15, 2011 - 03:06am PT
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Hey Zip,
I still haven't seen it and would love to get a copy. Part of my pay was supposed to have been ten copies.
Ken
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zip
Trad climber
pacific beach, ca
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:36am PT
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Ken,
i'll dig it up.
do you have a beta vcr?
blair
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Author's Reply
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:45am PT
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Blair,
I think so. Thank you.
Ken
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Oct 15, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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I remember a friend telling me about the Diving Board jumpers. He was a climber, was going to school at CU, and was somewhat horrified by the jumps.
He asked one of the jumpers what those big falls might do to a new rope's durability.
The reply was something like: "Dude! We only use old ropes for this sort of stuff."
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 15, 2011 - 12:48pm PT
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Thanks Ken, was that take one or two?
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