The Classic - A Rock Climbing Poem

THE CLASSIC - by Jesse James

(dedicated to the Columbia Buttress, Revelstoke)

The guidebook marked it ‘classic’
The FA called it ‘boss’
Above me on the starting pitch –
One hundred feet of choss.

My parter froze with mouth agape
The looseness gave him pause
Handing him the rack I grinned
‘Ain’t nothing but some moss.’

Halfway up that awful pitch
He pulled a piece of choss
Tumbling down the rotten face
His words were at a loss.

The guidebook marked it ‘classic’
The FA called it ‘boss’
Above me on the second pitch –
One hundred feet of choss.

I grabbed the rack and charged that crack
And hollared down to Ross
‘Watch me, dude, this block moves’ Then BAM!
Down went man and rope and choss.

We talked about retreating as our hearts were wildly beating
Bad luck is one of Murphy’s laws.
I thought ‘maybe it gets better’ as I crawled up to the station
with trembling hands and chattering jaws.

The guidebook marked it ‘classic’
The FA called it ‘boss’
Above me on the final pitch –
Two hundred feet of choss.

Suddenly I felt a shaking as of something smartly breaking
Pulling on a flake nearly fifteen feet across
Flying backwards in the air I screamed
‘This route has been my albatross.’

(for more climbing poems, humor, trip reports, beta and pictures visit WhippersAndTears.com)

So this is why I'm lukewarm about climbing in Canada - ! No offense, folks; hell, I live in Minnesota, eh?

If you're into climbing poems, songs, humor and satire, you have to check into Tom Patey's work. For those of you so unfortunate as not to know his name: he was one of the very early Scottish hardmen on ice, snow, or deranged combinations thereof. Never graced with, uh, grace in movement, still, he was one of those guys who could climb any damn thing there was, in whatever condition.

Many British climbers of the 1960s and '70s sometimes didn't regard themselves as having really "arrived" until they'd been satirized by Tom. He died in 1975 (I believe) in a rappel accident.

Much of his work is in the excellent "Tom Patey: One Man's Mountains," which is kind of an autobiography.