Message-Id: <v01540b0baf99b03ed302@[192.174.2.173]>
Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 20:56:13 -0800
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
From: pauld@exploratorium.edu (Paul Doherty)
Subject: ancient climb
Subject: World's oldest climb? [rec.climbing #118354]
------ Forwarded Article <henry-0505971503330001@ewmac39.ethz.ch>
------ From henry@erdw.ethz.ch (Henry)
The line of bolts I had started up turned out to be a line of only
two, and here I was running it out on a slab still damp from the recent
rain shower. We had just finished climbing the Arete Speciale, a superb
line and one of the classics in the Swiss Jura, so why was I now climbing
this dull slab in the rain? Well, because it is not quite your ordinary
slab. A low angle slab, not totally featureless, but with the usual
slopers, smears and crimps. Also however a line of large depressions which
provide easy stances, and even hand holds, but man you've got to have the
arm-span of a brontosaurus to reach from one to the next. Quite literally
because these depressions are the footprints of these beasts that walked
across the slab in the Jurassic. It probably wasn't much of a climb back
then, and it's not destined to become a classic in the next few million
years either. But nevertheless the first recorded 'ascent' of this route
was 155 million years ago. I thought it was a kind of neat way to finish
the day.
-- Henry Lickorish ETH-Zurich henry@erdw.ethz.ch