Hangdog Days by Jeff Smoot

Author:Jeff Smoot
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680512335
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

24MONKEY OFF MY BACK

When I returned to Smith Rock in the summer of 1985 to rendezvous with Alan Watts for a trip to the High Sierra and Yosemite, the Aussies were gone and the place was insufferably hot and back to its usual neglected state. Alan wanted to try a new hard route Hidetaka Suzuki had just climbed at Donner Summit, then swing down to the Valley for a go at The Stigma.

I don’t remember the first time I met Alan Watts. He had been in Joshua Tree in 1983 when I was there, and probably climbed with me and Todd Skinner then, but I don’t remember him. His name didn’t ring a bell when Mike Barbitta mentioned him later that year as the author of the new hardest route at Smith Rock. I definitely met Alan in Joshua Tree in the spring of 1985, though. Todd and I had gone out to toprope Baby Apes again and found Alan working on Moonbeam Crack, a 5.13a thin crack first toproped by John Bachar that Alan was able to climb and we were not. That summer, during one of several visits to Smith Rock, Alan and I did a couple of routes together, and he asked me if I’d accompany him on a trip to Yosemite. Having temporarily dropped out of college and with no job, I agreed to go along.

I arrived in the early afternoon and found the park vacant as usual—not a soul in sight except a tourist family huddled in the shade of a tree in the picnic area, two resident magpies picking food scraps out of a garbage can, and a trio of vultures circling in the thermals. While waiting for Alan, I lurked around Mike Volk’s trailer, the locals-only hangout across the street from the park, and leafed through the latest issue of Climbing, reading the write-up about The Stigma and my Jerry Moffatt interview for the umpteenth time. Alan showed up a while later in his rusty yellow Datsun pickup, complaining about soreness in his fingers but still wanting to climb something.

“What, in this heat?” I asked.

“Sure, why not? Let me take some ibuprofen first.” He opened the bottle, shook out four pills, downed them with a gulp of water. “There. Let’s go.”

We hiked down into the gorge and into the shade of Picnic Lunch Wall, which was pleasant despite the oppressive heat. We contoured the base of the cliffs to the Christian Brothers formation, where Alan dropped his pack at the base of Golgotha, a 5.11 face route with no bolts, a rarity at Smith Rock. Alan threw five pieces of gear on his rack and flew up it like it was 5.6. I managed it well enough but took a short fall when a foothold broke off.

“That’s the great thing about climbing at Smith Rock,” Alan said, smirking down at me from the belay. “You think you’re something special and then, pow! You’re hanging at the end of your rope, wondering what happened.”

He pointed to the base of the climb.

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