Confining myself to this decade, and with recent events in mind, I’m nominating Ueli Steck and Alex Honnold gatecrashing my 50th birthday party.
Quote from: duncan on May 05, 2017, 01:30:47 pmConfining myself to this decade, and with recent events in mind, I’m nominating Ueli Steck and Alex Honnold gatecrashing my 50th birthday party.Not similarly confining myself, I hope they were suitably impressed at encountering a former NIAD record holder.
Quote from: Muenchener on May 05, 2017, 03:30:38 pmQuote from: duncan on May 05, 2017, 01:30:47 pmConfining myself to this decade, and with recent events in mind, I’m nominating Ueli Steck and Alex Honnold gatecrashing my 50th birthday party.Not similarly confining myself, I hope they were suitably impressed at encountering a former NIAD record holder.Honnold said "you'll be mentioned in my book". More name-dropping, from 1984:I belayed Alan Watts on an early ascent of The Phoenix. The deal was he would lend me 40 'biners for a wall rack in exchange for a day holding his ropes. The route was supposedly the hardest crack in Yosemite (and therefore the world). He'd tried it the previous year, struggled, and expected a prolonged siege.Watts was a prime-mover in introducing top-down bolting and redpointing to the US against considerable opposition. Watching him climb was an eye-opener, I'd never come across such professionalism before. At that time climbers, particularly Brits., liked to see themselves as above that sort of thing. To be cool you had to succeed without really trying. Alan had a topo of the route with every gear placement and jam individually described ("left hand, middle two fingers, thumb down") and he double-checked them all on the abseil down. It turned out to be a great deal for me: he fired it first go.If I had had any sense all I'd have learned from this and immediately embraced redpointing. Of course I didn’t.
Jim Perrin just liked a post of mine on Facebook! (I've never Jim, strangely, which is why this feels slightly amazing)
along with Mina, Hazel, Maddy and Michaela I dressed in a lycra onesy as part of a mermaid-themed flashmob for a wedding. On reflection maybe that isn't the sort of thing to readily admit to....
He singled me out of the audience at a talk he gave at the Lescar and asked that I stand up then asked that I apologise for assuming that Joe Brown had placed the chockstone on Right Eliminate. Given everybody assumed that, he should have asked the whole audience to stand up and do the same.
Who did place it then?
(he is a BMC patron ising wanker).