Food stories...
Guillaume Dargaud
bad and the ugly), and I was a little disapointed when no one posted their
own stories. So I'll ask it more directly this time since it's also related
to the 'what constitutes an epic' thread:
Do you have good stories involving food and climbing ?
Besides the usual: "we ran out of power bars and had to eat grass to make it
back to the car"...
Like hauling a huge pack to the refuge only to discover that your partners
have put inside 48 oysters and 2 bottles of champagne for the New Year's eve
(they said it was a bunch of extra ice screws !).
Or cooking a 7 course meal (including steaks) out of abandoned food caches
on Denali ?
Or eating rats as previously stated... Or having rats eat everything you
have, including the pack and the helmet slings.
Or having your stove explode in your tent in a storm 10 days from the
road...
Or having an entire container of food confiscated and destroyed before your
eyes by the f*g australian gov while on the way to Antarctica.
Or climbing some nice Andean mountains while the rest of the team eat each
other in the remains of the plane...
Or going to Yosemite only to eat hamburgers gawking at climbers from the
tour bus (Oooops, no, too many stories...)
Well, not all of the above are true... And here's a few related quotes as an
extra...
"- I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
- Huh... It _was_ my MSR..."
"Once, I was lost in the wilderness, and I was forced to eat a dog to
survive ! Later I realized I was just in the back yard, but boy, was my mom
pissed !" - C. Rostan.
"If Everest is the cake, Trango is the topping."
"I climb way too badly to worry about cholesterol..." - Brad B.
"Q: What's the difference between a large pizza and a mountain guide ?
A: A pizza can feed a family of four !"
"Gorp /interj./ mealtime sound made by a hungry alpinist.
Rurp /interj./ sound made by a climber after downing a hasty lunch."
"In 1961 I led this chimney in a state of metabolic uproar. At the base of
the pitch I smoked several cigarettes (the first and last ones of my life).
This was to calm me. Then I spooned half a jar of honey. This was to ensure
superhuman strength. Mort Hempel, my partner, watched this silly ritual with
mouth agape and eyes exploding with fear." - Steve Roper about the 3rd
pitch of the Worst Error.
"He was skinning a bear. I was terrified at first, because the corpse
resembled a naked man quartered between two trees. He'd created a deadfall
trap over some big talus blocks and the bear had fallen in. He used the skin
for something and jerked the meat. If it wasn't astonishing enough behavior
in a national park, the next day he made doughnuts, using bear fat for
grease ! Surely, by now, he's created an empire somewhere in the
ld..." - Dave Cook.
--
Guillaume Dargaud
Colorado State University
http://rome.atmos.colostate.edu/Climbing/MountainCuisine.html
"Il bouldering e un puo il coit interroto dell'arrampicata..." - Jennifer
M.
A. Cairns
> Do you have good stories involving food and climbing ?
Maybe this climber does:
http://www.teatro-rest.com/pages/michael.html
Michael was born in South Africa. All climbing involves food.
Here's a story from SA. We were in Montagu and decided to
climb at a place called Orlog's Kloof. The guide said to drive
along the main road until you came to an old tennis court, then
take a right turn and go and greet the farmer. Then re-cross the
main road, drive to the end of the gravel, and walk 300 metres
to the campsite.
When we got to the farmhouse a woman came out and spoke in
Afrikaans with my friends. I could only imagine the delicate
negotiations that might be taking place. Then my friends told me
that she had welcomed us, wished us a good stay, and apologized
for not having a basket of peaches to give us.
The campsite was a flat grassy area. 'Flat grassy area' is music
when you have been trying to sleep on tilting rock ledges.
There was a river a short walk from the campsite.
Walls of white, pink, and red sandstone rose over us in strange
shapes. At night we could have a fire (the weather was cool) and
no lights from town or house could be seen nor could any noises
from a road be heard. No other climbers or people of any
description encroached on us.
The pictures tell a slightly different story: empty port bottles, rumpled
musty sleeping bags, grimy faces, and festoons of 2-minute noodles.
But we look happy.
At the end of the stay we returned to thank the farmer and were
presented with a large basket of peaches.
Andy Cairns
indigo_nite
very gourmet w/ the Coleman two-burner. Salmon, pasta, salad. He also
does scrambled eggs with spam (I think this was in a Vegas hotel
though, on a Red Rocks trip).
Another friend does backpacking gourmet with dried tomatoes and garlic
paste (in a tube).
I do cup-o-noodles with vienna sausages. NO power bars. Lemon pepper
makes canned salmon/tuna pretty nice. An industrial size bag of Famous
Amos cookies makes for happy campfire fare. And Fierce Melon Gatorade
(mmm).
"A. Cairns" <lek...@intergate.ca> wrote in message news:<3C702655...@intergate.ca>...
Will Niccolls
One Friday night, long ago, a climber who will remain anonymous consumed
many, many beers, a giant burrito, more beers. Stumbles home. Saturday
morning, his alarm pierces the early morning darkness. The climber chokes
down a thirty grain superfiber muffin. He leaves with his partner, whose
impatience is obvious, and in the bleary fog left from the previous evenings
festivities, the climber neglects his morning "constitutional".
His partner provides a giant thermos of excellent and much needed strong
coffee for the drive up to Mt. Evans. Cup after cup serves to revive the
climber, and by the time they've finished the drive and shuffled along the
approach, the climber can appreciate the sublime surrounds, and is amused by
the antics of the mountain goats and thier young, jumping crazily from ledge
to ledge with hundreds of feet of exposure.
The climber and partner execute four rappels down the granite cliffs. Now
they are committed to climbing back up as the easiest way back to the car.
The route is unfamiliar, but should be well within the pair's limits. The
partner takes the first lead. With the parner 70 feet up, the climber
watches as something falls from the partner, as it comes close, he reaches
out, and BAM, he catches the car keys. A good luck omen, definitely, he
thought, for if he hadn't caught them, they would have been irretrievably
lost in the talus far below, protected from the current position by a
hundred feet of 4th class rock.
The climber's amusement continues as he starts the first pitch, climbing
smoothly and marvelling at the beautiful terrain, he arrives at the tiny
belay ledge. Soon, though, the climber's amusement turned to discomfort,
and his stomach rumbled. Something was wrong. Something needed to give.
Soon. The climber's discomfort soon turned to dismay mixed with pain as he
realizes the implications of his predicament. Pounds of foodstuff, probably
poorly digested, still resided within him. Bloated by beer, topped off with
Mexican food, lubricated by bran, accelerated by coffee. He felt like an
overfilled sausage skin, with someone squeezing the middle. His harness
will not allow for removal and proper relief, in any case, there's no proper
place for such relief...
In a cramped vioce, he hands the lead to his partner again. "I'm feeling a
bit queesy, yes, you should do this lead also.."
With his partner halfway up, the pain of holding back grew greater than the
shame of letting loose. With a groan, a teary eye, and clenched teeth, he
opened the valve and let it go. And go it did. It kept going and going,
filling his pants with a loose and smelly stew. At home this would've been
a multi flush monster. Here, the squishy mud spooged down his legs,
squashed by his legloops, and settled near his ankles, trapped only by the
elastic bands, which were failing anyway. Still the smelly mud was coming,
and like a chocolate icing out of a tube, it started dropping from his pants
legs, falling like brown hail down to the rocks below.
With a few last shudders, the brown gusher stopped, leaving a disgusting and
foul smelling mess smeared along the inside of his pants, and a goodly
collection still trapped by the legloops of his harness, turning his
underwear into a defective sort of overfull diaper.
His partner, by now arrived safely at the belay, had no clue what had
happened. The climb must go on, so our stinky hero worked his way up, and
with a few meters to go before reaching his partner, started explaining. A
frown, a sigh, and a strong motivation to finish quickly passed over the
partner. Too smelly to share the intimate belay, the climber stayed below
the stance, tied in out of arms reach, but within the nose's, from his
partner.
Of course leading was now out of the question for the muddied climber--any
fall might have dislodged brown hail from his ankle openings upon his
hapless partner. Content to slump against the wall, he belayed his partner
without incident to the top. Blessed was the feeling when he reached the
backpacks, despite the now cold temperatures, he stripped naked, and
attempted a cleanup operation using a liter of water (thirst was strong, but
disgust stronger). With only small success, he now faced a walk of several
miles back to the car, on a popular trail. His sole clothing was an old
cheap plastic tarp, originally used for a convenient ground cover when
gearing up or having lunch. Now it was a smelly and ill fitting skirt.
For the drive home he kept the tarp on, shivering in the bed of the pickup
truck for the ride back to Boulder. In the following years, he never rushed
out of the house without a proper visit to the holiest of shrines, the
toilet.
Dingus Milktoast
> Code Brown: An Epic? Or Food Story?
>
<snip>
>
> For the drive home he kept the tarp on, shivering in the bed of the pickup
> truck for the ride back to Boulder. In the following years, he never rushed
> out of the house without a proper visit to the holiest of shrines, the
> toilet.
Damn Will, that was some funny shit! Right up there on the inspirational plateau
with Bob H.'s dog barfing human shit in his truck coming back from the
Buttermilk.
Did you salvage any of the climbing gear?
DMT
Will Niccolls
"Dingus Milktoast" <crha...@midtown.net> wrote in message
news:3C741988...@midtown.net...
> Will Niccolls wrote:
>
> > Code Brown: An Epic? Or Food Story?
> Did you salvage any of the climbing gear?
>
> DMT
>
Me? Um, don't you mean the "anonymous" climber?
If memory serves, the following items were disposed of:
1 Chalkbag (sad, it was my all time fave chalk bag)
1 JRAT Harness (needed replacing)
1 Pair JCPenney Underwear
1 Pair (prevoiusly white!) Verve Tights (a fitting end, though they were won
in a competition in Sante Fe, marginal sentimental value)
1 Pair JRAT Climbing Pants (belonging to "his" girlfriend (now "former"))
1 Pair Sportiva something or others. (old, smelly, little value)
Will
Tim Stich
>
> > Code Brown: An Epic? Or Food Story?
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> >
> > For the drive home he kept the tarp on, shivering in the bed of the pickup
> > truck for the ride back to Boulder. In the following years, he never rushed
> > out of the house without a proper visit to the holiest of shrines, the
> > toilet.
>
> Damn Will, that was some funny shit!
I was trying like mad to stiffle a belly laugh while I was reading
that here at the office. Thanks for the much needed respite from the
figurative shit I'm up to my ears in today.
Right up there on the inspirational plateau
> with Bob H.'s dog barfing human shit in his truck coming back from the
> Buttermilk.
Ah, any chance you could provide more clues as to the whereabouts of
that tale? What's Bob's last name?
-Tim
Dingus Milktoast
Harrington. I thought I saw it again in the best of stuff on Dawn's site.
DMT
Tim Stich
In article <3741CB3A...@midtown.net>,
Dingus Milktoast <crha...@midtown.net> wrote:
> Bouldering is good clean fun and that much is fact.
Sometimes, sometimes not. I was having a nice session this evening, doing
a circuit, working a few, musing and analogizing between bouldering, love,
chess, etc. Found a key and solved a mystery or two to some problems I've
been working. Stayed late.
Nice sunset, and only two other people bouldering in the Buttermilk. Chatted
with one of them, but bouldered by myself. Shrubs are blooming, plus, they
bladed the road.
So I'm heading home, when it is revealed to me that my dog (Angus) had
spent the session happily and successfully hunting down, digging up, and
devouring human feces. He revealed this by retching on the front seat and
floor of my truck. I gagged, stopped the Chevy and started to get out,
but before I could I administer a solid beating to the literal son of a
bitch, he ate the vomit and bolted out the door.
The stench was unbelieveable -- dog bile and semidigested excrement -- the
whole being substantially greater than the sum of its parts. Fast ride
home, head out the window, dog in the back. I am presently consumed with
the fear that he will later re-regurgitate the mess tonight in this very
spot where I now sit reading rec.climbing.
Bob
PS -- Mick, your flyers for Croft's slide show don't say what time.
John Lawrence
stuck in a fiveday blizzard/whiteout, at somewhere around 72* 50' 166* 10'
brewing up stews in our pressure cookers in our two tents....my tent-mate
inhaled his powder meth, and got deathly sick, threw up everywhere, and the
only place to put it all was in the pressure cooker. When he had finished, I
threw it out the sleeve entrance into the snow, where it froze solid in the
pot.
The other tent folks came out for a sojourn and a wander in the horizontal
snow, happened upon our pressure cooker lying in the snow, all full of
goodies. They seized it happily, figuring they wouldnt have to open any more
packages. When they heated it up, looking forward to trying our culinary
offerings, and the scent filled the tent... we could hear their screams
above the storm. They didnt talk to us for a while.
Guillaume Dargaud <dar...@sung3.ifsi.rm.cnr.it> wrote in message
news:25nb8.64653$fK1.4178932@rwcrnsc54...