An old hand-drill story... Long and O.T...
Jonathan Kaplan (OR)
>The stories of using hand-drills for concrete brings to mind the stories about some of the earlier days of rock climbing, when people were using hand-drills to put bolts into granite walls... The following story appears in a number of places, I think I got it from a book by John Long, but I can't recall... So anyway...
Back in 1975, Tobin Sorenson was one of the best, and boldest, rock climbers in California... At Tahquitz Rock, in Idlywild, he and his mates were putting up some of the hardest routes yet done... Even where there were no cracks to use for protection gear, they put the climbs up "on lead" -- starting from the ground, they'd climb until they found a no-hands stance, and they'd hand-drill a hole for a small bolt to be used for protection...
There was, the story goes, a line that Tobin and his friends had been admiring for some time. Beautiful rock, but it didn't seem to have any cracks to place protection gear in, and no good stances to drill. Eventually, they managed to convince themselves that there was a small ledge one could drill from about halfway up...
So, one fine day, Tobin starts up this climb. It is steep, and sustained, and there is no place to put in gear and no place to stop and drill until he gets to that little ledge, about 40 feet from the belay. The ledge is much smaller and slope-ier than it looked from the ground. He can *just* about let go with both hands, but as soon as he hits the drill (similar in style to the aforementioned Star drills), he has to grab on again to keep from falling off. If he falls, he looking at an 80 footer... So, he settles in, hits the drill, drops it (he's got it tied to his harness, so it doesn't go for) and grabs the rock. Settled back in, hits the drill again, etc.
Half an hour later, he's been reduced to near-tears. His leg-muscles are burning from standing on that little ledge for so long, and the hole isn't finished yet. He's considering just climbing through without placing the bolt at all, or just jumping and hoping he doesn't hit very much in the 80+ feet before the rope catches him... His friends encourage him to finish the hole...
An hour later, more or less, he finishes the hole, taps in and tightens the bolt, clips into it, and, without weighting the bolt at all, finishes the climb (another 40+ feet of very hard, very delicate climbing...).
Even today, with rock climbing standards so much higher than they used to be, only the very skilled and very bold will try "The Edge" (as the climb is called). The little 1/4" bolt Tobin got in has been replaced by a beefier 1/2" bolt, put in on rappel, but the 40' runouts still keep most people away.
Looking up at the climb, and seeing that tiny little edge on which Tobin stood to drill that hole, well, the fact that someone with just a hand drill managed to put a bolt in there is just mind boggling...
jk
