Excerpted from Living Dangerously, by Joe Simpson

“Do you think it’s safe?”

“Sure, solid as rock,” Ian said confidently. “I gave it a few good kicks and it didn’t move.”

“Suppose you’re right.” I could see nothing suspicious about the pedestal. We had climbed past dozens of them all day.

An hour later, as Ian was preparing to do something smelly off his end of the ledge and I was zipped into my bivouac bag, there was a sickening lurch accompanied by the grinding sound of splintered granite plunging into the abyss. I had my arms outside the bivy bag as I fell and flailed blindly, trying to grab something. The drop must have taken only a fraction of a second but it seemed to last forever.

I heard a cry of alarm and pain above the roar as tons of granite went thundering down the pillar, echoed and then died to silence. The rope brushed my arms and I clamped them down by my sides as the falling stopped and I bounced on the springy stretch of the rope. The handrail had held and for a confused moment I desperately tried to remember whether I had clipped myself on to it. I was momentarily disorientated. Where was Ian? I remembered that sudden yelp during the fall. Had he gone with it?

“By ‘eck!” i heard close by in gruff Lancastrian. I struggled to get out of the tightly squeezed bag. Close beside me Ian’s head lolled down on to his shoulder and his torch reflected a sodium yellow light off the surrounding rock walls. There was blood on his neck.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Banged me ‘ead.” He groaned and then lifted his head.

“It’s okay,” I said, inspecting his matted hair, “It’s only a small hole.”

It took a while to realize that the whole pedestal had detached itself and dropped straight off the mountain face. There was a good deal of swearing before we became aware of the seriousness of our position. We hung side by side on the tightly stretched V of the handrail rope. Shining our torches down, we were horrified to see the remains of our two ropes, cut to pieces by the falling rocks. All our equipment, including our boots, had gone with the ledge.

We looked at each other and giggled nervously. No ropes. Two thousand feet up and no ropes!

The handrail shifted suddenly, causing us both to squeak with fright, hearts hammering at the thought of falling again. I turned and shone my torch on it. There was something wrong. I twisted round, grabbed the rope and hauled myself up towards the ring peg. The rope shifted again and the ring peg moved. I lowered myself gingerly back on to the rope.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“What?”

“The peg’s knackered. It’s coming out.”

“Christ! Where’s the gear, let’s put something in.”

“It’s gone. The hardware, boots, everything. We can’t do anything.”

Ian was silent. I looked at the flake above him to which the handrail had been tied off. Tiny pebbles trickled from the sheared off base of the flake where it had been attached to the pedestal. We were suspended against a smooth vertical rockwall. There were no handholds or small foot ledges and both attachment points could break at any moment. If either one went we would be hurled into the abyss.

“I think we had better stay very, very still.”

“Aye.” Ian muttered, taking a last swig from his water bottle and then flicking it into space. The tinny clangs of the metal bottle rang up from below in decreasing volume. There was nothing we could do.

Here is an example of what Adam will do for you. These images are even more impressive at full size where you can better see the wear and tear.

From his email: “All but impossible, really … I’m thinking you floated it out there just to see if I’d try. Well I did, and it’s better, but I had to take a fair bit of license, and I also had to stop lest I alter too much. Better some fingerprint texture remain than I concoct a complete stranger, I figured …”

Here is an example of what Adam will do for you. These images are even more impressive at full size where you can better see the wear and tear.

From his email: “All but impossible, really … I’m thinking you floated it out there just to see if I’d try. Well I did, and it’s better, but I had to take a fair bit of license, and I also had to stop lest I alter too much. Better some fingerprint texture remain than I concoct a complete stranger, I figured …”

Found this during my morning visit here, and then I checked my email and up popped this .

******************

Brian’s arrriving at 4 tomorrow morning and together we’re driving to Evansville. We should arrive around 10 PM, and then Saturday, at noon, I’ll pick up Matt and Diane who have the sense to fly. This is our annual spring trip.

******************

My father’s mother.

With Adam’s help, I’ve been busy printing and framing family photos. I’ll send him images which look like I’ve sprinkled talcum powder on the surface of the scanner, and/or have embedded water stains, wrinkles, age spots, etc., and he’ll return them in near perfect condition.

******************

Surely there are others out there with hair raising adventure stories? A canoe they tried to turn into triple masted schooner for a quick spin across hypothermic waters, for instance. A double back flip into shallow pointed-rock infested waters in northern Maine? A Dodge skating merrily on its top toward a frozen stream with hitch hikers on board? Cowering under a roaring jet landing at Michael Manley (how great a name is that?) airport in Jamaica? Hitting a black iced curve in the road at sixty with (also unbuckled) girl friend along side?

Dave says that his foot was caught briefly under a thwart as the canoe rolled over, but he twisted his body and pulled away. I didn’t see either of them at the time. It was like being caught under a wave at the Huntington Beach pier. High white foam and overpowering currents drove me down for an instant. Then I bobbed up, and the canoe was there within arm’s reach. I grabbed for it, pulled on the keel for support, and the canoe rolled upright. I caught the gunnel, and then I glimpsed Dave grabbing for the cliff rocks at water level! The rocks! We had been swept by a cross current across the river to the Dihedrals! I abandoned the canoe, and swam for the cliff, which was sweeping by at a mighty rate.

But why was I mostly under water? What had happened to my life vest? It was still around my left arm, but not my right. Then I realized that in the excitement of the launch, I had not tied my life vest stings. No wonder I was nearly submerged. I grabbed onto the vest and tried to swim at the same time.Then Bill bobbed up out of the green deeps nearby, and I saw him grabbing for a hold on the rocks, and the current swept me past. Bill said afterwards that he had gone down seven times, and fought for the surface as many times. I noticed as I weakly stroked toward him that he didn’t seem to have his life jacket on. He had made the same mistake as I had. I called out to him for a hand when I saw that he had gotten a grip on the rocks, but my voice was too weak to be heard over the roar of the rapids. His first hold seemed to be solid, and he thought that his 350-lb bench press strength would keep him on, but the current toyed with him like a cat with a mouse, and pulled him right off. Meanwhile I kept swimming as hard as I could, life jacket in tow. When I reached the rocks I grabbed a slippery edge. “Not very good climbing holds”, I recall thinking.

Then I glimpsed the mostly submerged canoe hovering nearby—maybe I could keep it from being swept downstream. We seemed to be in an eddy, so I released my hold on the rock, and felt for the bow line. But in seconds, the main torrent pulled the canoe away, and I reached back for the rocks. A few fumbles, and I was secure. Then I noticed how cold the water was. Now I had to concentrate on getting up and out onto dry land.

As I worked my way up onto the gravel shelf a few feet above water level, I caught sight of Bill’s blue shirt behind a projecting rock. He was out! I called for him, and then saw Dave. He still had his baseball cap on. Mine was long gone. Bill’s life jacket was dangling from his waist. He, at least, had tied the waist string of his jacket. His pockets had been stripped clean along with his hat and glasses during the bobbing and dunking towards shore. The currents had nearly beaten him, but he was a survivor. Gasping, we congratulated ourselves. A tourist came up to us, and remarked, “Boy, I wish I had taken some videos of that!” We smiled deleriously.

Then we took stock of ourselves. I recognized the spot we had come aground. It was the climbing spot where Katie and I had climbed the year before. Because of some misplaced carabiners, I had had to make a poorly-executed body rappel down to Katie, and rope-burned my shoulder. As it turned out, that experience would be useful later that day.

Plan A had failed. It was time for Plan B. Did we have a plan? We agreed that it might be a good idea to look for the canoe. So we followed the river trail above the cliffs, every now and then looking for signs of debris— paddles, pieces of aluminum, turkey sandwiches, whatever might have been caught in an eddy. We hiked about a mile downstream, and encountered two friendly girls from Oregon. They seemed interested in our plight, and we milked it to the hilt. Their names were Karen and Roochi. Bill was shivering, and they lent him a sweat shirt.

Then Dave sighted something on a ledge at the base of the cliffs on the other side of the river. The canoe! It seemed curiously flat, maybe even bent, but it was high and dry, with its bow only slightly submerged. The girls pulled out binoculars, and we checked out the contents of the canoe: lunch box, waterprooof bag, kneepads, and Bill’s pack. But there didn’t seem to be any paddles. Well, there were other pressing matters: How to get to the other side of the river? How to get to the point above the canoe? How to get down to the canoe? Was Bill’s missing car key in his pack that we could see in the canoe?
Karen offered to give us a ride to our car on the other side. We gladly accepted, and settled in to an enjoyable walk with them back to the parking lot upstream past The Dihedrals to the Visitors Center. We made a few phone calls, and I went upstairs to tell the rangers that when someone reported a canoe beached on a ledge, that they needn’t run down the river looking for bodies. We were all ashore and more or less intact.

About half an hour later we were on the other side of the river waiting in a line of cars to enter Great Falls Park, MD. A ranger came up to the car, and Karen showed her receipt for the Virginia side, and asked, “Do you want to hear our canoe story?” The ranger replied, “Oh, so it’s you; we heard all about you, go on ahead.” So we were having our 15 minutes of fame, courtesy of the cross-river park radio system. When we reached our car, we thanked Karen and Roochi profusely and said goodbye. They let Bill keep the sweatshirt, and we piled into the car. Dave and I put on our dry clothes, but Bill’s were in the canoe, so he stayed wet.

The hurricane had wiped out the C&O tow path and access to the Billy Goat trail. It was nothing but rubble gullies now and was fenced off by the park service. So we were forced to drive down to the Old Angler’s Inn a few miles downstream, where we could hike back up the trail to the canoe. The trail was twisty and rocky, with quite a few detours around deadfall and washouts. By the time we came to the right point on the cliff top, the sun was setting below the Virginia cliffs . We couldn’t tell exactly where the canoe was without crawling over the cliff edge. I was a little ahead of Dave and Bill, and located the right place to come out of the woods to the river by sighting a favorite climber’s route—the “Armbuster” climb, which I had noticed earlier was directly opposite the canoe. Dave, following a few minutes behind, having reached the approximate location, called across to the climbers on Armbuster, and they told him where the canoe was.

We clambered down to the edge of the precipice, looked straight down about 60 feet, and, yep, there it was. Now, we had to figure out how to descend. I had carried along the old German climbing rope that I use for tying the canoe on my car, and we uncoiled it as I tried to refresh my memory about body rappels.

Back in the old days before rappelling biners, body rappels were second nature, but that was some time ago. I had been burned once, literally, when I did a body rappell, so I racked my memory and figured the right way to wrap the rope around my body—through the legs, around the back, under the arm, then over the shoulder. I tied one end to a solid tree and backed off over the cliff.

Well, I made it down to the canoe, and found Bill’s car key (whew!), but then what? I wasn’t going to paddle anywhere, and we were in no shape to haul it up the cliff and tote it back to the car. Suddenly a guardian angel spoke to me from the river. One of the ever-present kayakers had pulled up to the shore. (Maybe he was the one who had tied the canoe off when it came careening down the river by itself?) Without any prompting from me, he offered to ride it down to the take-out point by Old Angler’s Inn, where we could pick it up. I gladly accepted, and I hauled my weary ass up the cliff.

Sure enough, when we tottered in to the Old Angler’s boatramp, there was the canoe waiting for us. We dragged it over to the car, tied it on, piled ourselves in, and drove over to the Inn. At the bar we sat down for a beer or three. We vowed to each other that one day, maybe soon, maybe later, we’d paddle Mather Gorge again. But two decades later we still haven’t tried it, scared off by those death waves, and since then my old Grumman canoe has only seen placid rivers and lakes.

• rakkity

rakkity

About a month before hurricane Flora hit the Chesapeake, Dave Berman and I had laid plans to run Mather Gorge in Great Falls Park, and there was always the concern in the back of our minds that the remnants of Flora were still flowing down from the VA and WV highlands, keeping the Potomac too high to run. For 3 weekends in a row, I checked out the river from various vantage points upstream and down, and the level seemed to be falling fast, even though a half inch of rain fell one day. But what the heck, the rocks were all covered, so it was only white water, right? Maybe it would be too easy.

On Sunday, October 13, I loaded my canoe on my station wagon, then picked up Dave at his home, and we headed off to meet his friend Bill Calhoun. The weather was fine—a great October morning with blue skies and the promise of a warm afternoon. We met Bill near the take-out point on the Virginia side of the river, and stashed his car at the head of a Potomac Appalachian Club trail that winds down through the suburban woods to the bottom of the American Legion Bridge.

We discussed the possible difficulties of cadging the canoe through the trees up the steep trail on our way out. But I had no worries. Dave looked like a ex-college football linebacker. Bill was smaller, but was a fitness consultant who could bench press 2 1/2 times his own weight. On the carryout, I’d lead the way out, and they could do the carrying. Naturally, such power guys are also power eaters, so I had packed a big cooler full of ham, cheese and turkey sandwiches for the trip.

As we drove across the bridge again, and up the Maryland side towards our put-in at Great Falls, we discussed the estimated time of arrival, possible stopping points, and the condition of the river. At Great Falls, we trekked the canoe and lunches down the C&O Canal towpath. We were shocked by the destruction caused by the hurricane. A few hundred yards along, we turned down a trail into the woods, and set the canoe down in a small lagoon near the beginning of Mather Gorge.

Just for practice, we paddled around in a few circles in the lagoon, Dave in the bow, Bill in the middle, and me in the stern. Our plan was to paddle on out of the lagoon through a narrow inlet into the main channel of the river, but this plan wasn’t so simple as we had expected. I could swear that the last time I paddled this inlet, the flow in the inlet channel had been in the opposite direction. At that time, it was really low water, so there was only a gentle downhill flow into the river. But now, the current was into the lagoon from the river, and it was too powerful for us to paddle against. So we docked in an eddy next to the inlet and climbed up on the rocks for a view of Mather Gorge and the main stream.

The river over there looked pretty darn powerful, and it was really ripping along. No rocks, but lots of roaring white waves splashing at high speed. We finally worked out a strategy for getting out into the current using eddies and Bill’s hauling strength, first on the bow line from one set of inlet rocks, and then on the stern line from another set of rocks. Now we were poised like a javelin above the current, and our plan was to paddle like crazy right into the main tongue of the flow, and just keep on going.

We glanced over at the climbers on the dihedrals of the cliffs across the river. The hikers and fisherman behind us and a few tourists the other side may have been watching us, but we sure weren’t studying them. Our attention was on the white waves off the foward bow. Over the roar of the rapids I shouted, “Let’s go!” and we were off. In seconds, we were in mid current, paddling like demons on the surf. Then we saw those giant standing waves ahead of us, and we went over the first crest. The canoe pointed obediently down the wave into the green boil below the crest. It all seemed very familiar to me. Flashbacks of such boils played in my mind’s eye from our family raft trip on the Snake river two months earlier. But this was no raft—this was an open canoe.

In a fraction of a second, we plowed into the downstream wave and the canoe filled with water. I saw Bill leaning right, and the canoe leaned that way. In that quarter second I thought maybe I should lean left to rebalance the canoe, but by then we were all in the soup.

During the Vietnam war, Bill had been in the Gulf of Tonkin on a boat that got blown out of the water. He and several other guys flew through the air, each of them laden down with 70 lbs of ammunition, backpacks and weapons. He’s a great swimmer, or he’d never have made it out alive. He says that his reaction in the Potomac now was similar to his reaction then: “Survive!”

(Continued in tomorrow’s edition of the blog)

Goose (aka, Chris) could be pitching to

himself,

but he’s not. It’s the first home game of the season – against Weston – and I left with Acton Boxborough trailing four to three.

(editor’s note: Potomac Death Wave arrived on my desk today, as promised. I’ve decided to hold it off until tomorrow and instead finish with France)

Hi Mike,

The French do seem to have a “thing” about towers. From the bottom, Meudon solar Tower looks like a flying saucer balaced on a stick–an anomalous structure in the midst of traditional domes. It was built high to get above the ground turbulence so the solar astronomers could take good pictures of the sun. And it does provide a place to take good pictures, but it’s no longer-state of-the-art. 

A few of us at the Meudon meeting wanted to go up there for the view, and the organizers obliged. After looking at the spectrograph at the bottom of the tower, we took the elevator up to the top to see where the mirrors reflect sunlight downwards.

The top is a flat disk with a blindingly white roof. In the middle of it are two mirrors (a heliostat or siderostat) that rotate to catch the sunlight and reflect it downward to the spectrograph, where the light is split up into its colors, so that images showing two spatial dimensions and one color dimension can be made.

I took a picture of the group studying the mirrors, then spotted myself in the double reflection.

–rakkity

Cher Mainecourse,

Yesterday a few of us solaire guys braved the heights of Meudon’s (100-m) solar tower to get an unparalleled view of Paris. In one of the pictures you can see a tethered balloon near the Tour Eiffel that goes up and down every hour or two. (As if the blinking lights on Le Tour, IM Pei’s tetrahedron, and the Pompideu Center weren’t tacky enough.)

Later in the day, we rode a bus down to the Seine, where we boarded le Metamorphosis for a champagne dinner and magic show.

The boat couldn’t go anywhere because of the high water, but we rocked back and forth like we were really under way. The magic was really well done. Several levitations, disappearances, and reappearances of two shapely twin jeune filles got us all wondering what had happened to the laws of physics. Having made several bottles of wine disappear ourselves, we totter/toddled home afterwards happy with the indoor and outdoor magic of Paris

–rakkity

The president of American Laundry Machinery (a company in Norwood, Ohio) ran his Studebaker through the front door of our house in Indian Hill, a village outside of Cincinnati. Helen, who was seven months pregnant with Peter, was pretty sure the man was drunk. Mack had been sitting in the the chair near the door but five minutes earlier and would have been killed. Now, that would’ve altered our family some. Not a child, and there were three of us, woke up.

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, “be happy Henry!”
and she was right: it’s better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn’t
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?”

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled

Charles Bukowski

Still hard at work, and enjoying every minute of it.
–rakkity

View of the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero.

E.T from under

Art Deco Brasserie at Saint Michel

Our meeting location–an observatoire of the 18th c.

April daffodils outside the cafeteria.