Alpinist 20 - Profile on Bob Scarpelli

Jun 9, 04:39 PM | Vedauwoo

The latest issue of Alpinist has hit the stands. Click Here to see my article on Bob Scarpelli.

“Erosion, giving the landscape its appearance, is said to be the work of water, ice, and wind; but wind is, almost everywhere, a minimal or negligible fact, with exceptional exceptions like Wyoming… Looking back across the interstate—north up the crest of the range—among ponderosas, aspens, and limber pines we could see the granites of Vedauwoo Glen, which had weathered out… as granite does, along intersecting planes of weakness, while wind-borne grit had rounded off the corners… flying so close above the ground.”
—John McPhee, Rising From The Plains

Summer, 1993
On a brilliant sunny day I impatiently rack up at the base of a route called Horn’s Mother. At 5.11a, the two-pitch line of ever widening granite splitter bisects the aptly-named Coke Bottle formation—the curvaceous center-piece crag in Vedauwoo, Wyoming. I’m on a sport climbing hiatus, a deviation from three seasons of bolt-clipping that’s recently seen me redpoint my first 8a+ and flash 7c. I don’t know it yet, but that year I would drift from sport climbing forever and plunge into a world of ice, alpine climbing, and big mountains. And little do I know that a decade later, my path will eventually come full circle, back to Vedauwoo.

Once imperfectly called, “the lost brother of Joshua Tree,” Vedauwoo’s clumpy jumble of blobs, fins, and chock-a-block lumps indeed spread Josh-like over the rambling hills, though through very un-Josh-like aspen and pine glades. Sitting picking through my sparse selection of cams, the backwater stillness is far different from the clamor of my accustomed venues—Yosemite and Rifle. It’s my first visit here and it seems like a nice place to relax and do some 5.11’s.

I almost jump straight on Horn’s Mother a line so striking as to be visible from the highway—thinking, “How hard can it be when I climb 5.13?” I fortunately hop on a warmup to the left, a less than vertical corner rated 5.8, cruiser for a Valley veteran, right? It starts fun, plugger fingers, then hands, in a low angle, semi layback. The trouble starts when the crack opens up to fist size, rapidly gaping wider. The edge is too rounded to layback and my only “big” piece—a #3 Camalot—is soon a few body lengths below. I’m having trouble with my feet. The smears and edges feel insecure and my pinchy down toed slippers, great for overhanging limestone, hurt so much I can’t stuff them into the flare. I end up edging the crystals embedded on the face, a godsend for the feet, but hell on the hands. I still dwell under the convention that taping is aid and compensation for lack of technique. Thus the crystal lined crack tears the unprotected flesh of my bare hands. I suffer the first gobis I’ve had in years. I can’t get my hand deep enough into my pinner fingertip chalkbag to absorb the blood so the red ooze begins lubing my jams. I quake over the final awkward bulge sticking through willpower and a huffing mantra of, “It’s only 5.8.”

The flesh is weak, and obliges, if only barely and I’m glad to start the two raps to the base. By now, other climbers have filtered into the area and at the second rap station—a flat shelf 30 feet off the ground—stands a stocky guy with pale blue eyes, veiny ham-hock forearms and fists taped with the tidy professionalism of a pre-fight heavyweight. The man presides over a milling and worshipful throng below, including a petite young thing with a dirty–blond ponytail. Her fawning over Mr. Tape Job borders on nauseating. Apparently his name is Bob, because she repetitively refers to him in the third person, miming arcane beta for an adjacent 5.12 with chalky taped hands mimicking finger stacks and fist jams accompanied by, “Bob does that,” and “Bob goes like this, when he gets there….” and so on. “Bob” finds my fresh gobies, unlaced slippers, and shaken confidence amusing. “Having fun?” he smiles. It’s a Cheshire cat grin and one that invites a smart-ass retort. “Yeah sure,” I reply, tempted to add, “Your climbing area sucks.” But somehow even then, I know this just isn’t true. For all my experience I’m missing some technique and knowledge that, for the time anyway, a bruised ego won’t admit.

5.11 must feel horrendous in this place, so it’s a good thing I didn’t get on Horn’s Mother. That clean unbroken fracture soars up to my left, arcing through polished red granite dappled with canary yellow lichen and a band of diorite blackheads. Horn’s parallel neighbor Fourth of July Crack, a full grade harder, sweeps overhead in an equally pleasing line. The alcove’s symmetry of crack and sculpted stone lends the architectural ambiance of a cathedral. I wonder, what it would take to merely climb those routes? What would it take to climb them without the ugly thrashing I just experienced? The reverie breaks as I rap to the ground and one canvas-clad local nudges another smirking, “Check out those nice pink slippers.”

As I toss my rack in the pack and drive off in a huff, I don’t know it, but sandbagging is the norm at Vedauwoo. A few days later I read a stinging Todd Skinner quote in an old issue of Climbing. According to Skinner, Vedauwoo, “filter(s) out the weak, the soft and the spineless, which leaves better company for you.” Later I’ll find out that the place backhands even the greats among us—you just seldom hear about it. Verifiable fact has it that, “one of the hot young Boulder Rock Club climbers,” a few years ago did Maxilash (another notorious 5.11a, often given 5.10d) and “declared it as hard as Vogue.” Vogue, which the young uber-youth had fired in record time, is Tommy Caldwell’s 14b on Boulder’s finest sport crag, The Industrial Wall. As recently as 2005, the usually taciturn Lynn Hill paid Vedauwoo an oblique kudo saying, “If you can master these cracks, you can handle just about any crack!” Why does even climbing’s Grand Dame pay such homage? The story behind that is hundreds of millions of years old.

Vedauwoo reluctantly bulges from the flat Wyoming plains in gruff humps of Precambrian granite dyed a pinkish hue from an unusually high iron content. Being a billion and a half years old, the rock—some of the oldest in the world—rose from the earth’s molten basement from six miles under crust. That long journey allowed slow cooling and the liquid mineral solutions in the hot magma coalesced as the eons passed, forming in author John McPhee’s words, “quartz and feldspar crystals of exceptional size.”

The millennia of blasting by Wyoming’s notorious winds finished sculpting what plate tectonics started (Wyoming ranks number one in America for annual average wind speed and Vedauwoo has some of the highest recorded in the state). That and the absurd annual climate swings—the state is basically a desert, freeze dried by arctic winters and scorched in summer (Wyoming’s temperature span between its highest and lowest readings is an outrageous and seldom equaled 180-plus degrees fahrenheit). The result is sharp grit-pitted stone with a surface studded by big bloodthirsty crystals. The cracks are very flared, extremely tricky and hard to read.

Spring, 2006
Twelve years later, I’m meeting the locals. The ensuing era has mellowed my brash temperament. It’s a sunny day in early May as I pull into a horseshoe loop of deeply rutted dirt. It is bordered on one side by the unpaved washboard of the main road, and on the other by a rude A-framed fence, the type common on the plains and composed of peeling aspen logs and graying pine. The bare dirt semi-circle is Vedauwoo’s humble answer to Yosemite’s Camp 4 lot—without the crowds, ranger patrols and slack-line cognoscenti—thus peculiarly charming and backward ass in a single quarter acre patch. There are few vehicles present: another Subaru besides mine and a beat up 4runner with Colorado plates denoting “Greenies,” who like myself, very likely came in from Boulder, 140 highway miles south and a world apart.

Opposite the Subarus is an oversized white Dodge Ram Quad-Cab turbo diesel, as typical to Wyoming as the bullet holes in the brown toilet kiosk standing on the far side of the lot. Around the truck’s open tailgate are clustered some thick looking dudes—my partners for the day. It’s an intimidating group. They’re of varying heights and age but all have the hallmark Vedauwoo mutation—fingers clustered like bananas sprouting from ham-like hands with thumbs the size and shape of turkey drumsticks. The thick shoulders suggest more the steel worker or longshoreman than modern climber. Jeff— a tall guy with close-cropped blond hair and the build of a free-safety who I’d met a few years back at the annual “Fat Crack Festival,” hovers with a standoffish, almost shy affect, incongruous for such an imposing guy.

Bob Scarpelli stands at the center of the group—the same guy I met on the rap ledge near Horn’s Mother so many years past. He’s telling a story, his right arm held overhead, elbow pointed to the sky and palm laid flat on the crown of a graying, crewcut head. The crowd is attentive as he gestures with his left hand. As I pull into earshot I hear, “…so I go in, and the nurse takes all my information down. She finishes, stops writing and takes a look at me and says, ‘Honey, you can put your arm down now.’” The “honey,” is delivered with a soft, drawn out lilt. As I draw closer, Bob pauses for effect, scanning an audience including his black pitbull Rowdy Joe, before adding, “So I says to her, ‘Ma’am, if I could, I wouldn’t be here now would I?’” The guys burst into laughter.

Apparently the injury occurred during a ground fall while soloing for Jeff asks,
“What route was that Bob?”
Bob replies, “Bloodsport, between Knee Grinder and Hemoglobin.”
I later look up Bloodsport. It’s an 11c, so one might expect solid 5.12 climbing. And it is described as “engage(ing) in bull fighting without a cape.”

Like his dog, Bob exudes a blue-collar DonWhillan’s-esque pugnacity. Around five feet six inches, he is short (like his best routes) and fierce (like his best routes). Some of his first ascents glower on the nearby Nautilus, the most popular crag in the area, stacked with cracks of all grades. Bob “seems” physically bigger than his true stature. At 56, he bears the regality of a living legend, the most influential and prolific climber in Vedauwoo’s technical climbing history. Though rock climbers have plied their craft here since World War II, it was Scarpelli who almost single-handedly consolidated the 5.12 grade by ushering in modern offwidth techniques to a place where offwidths are the defining art form. Says Bob Needles of Laramie’s climbing shop, All Terrain Sports, “Bob is not a man of many words. He doesn’t sit around and listen to people spray. If someone wants Bob’s resume, hand them any guide book on Vedauwoo.” Though the area’s modern cast of climbers includes the famous and lesser known—Rick Horn, Jeff Heath, Steve Matous, Mark Hesse, Doug Cairns, Paul Piana, Todd Skinner, Jay Anderson, Layne Kopishka, and Steve Bechtel, it was Scarpelli, often partnered with Hidetaka Suzuki in the 1980’s, who has left the most lasting, and profound impact on Vedauwoo climbing.

But on this day there will be no historic redefinition of the sport. Our climbing foursome is frankly a sad fucking crew. I’m a rookie, politely milking everyone for basics, like taping beta, technique and footwear selection. My decades of experience count for nothing or worse yet tempt hubris, for Vedauwoo’s flared and toothy cracks, just dare you to tangle with them and beg you to underestimate them. Generally shorter than a half rope in length, the first impression of a haughty newby is, “How hard can that be?” I’m avoiding that attitude because I know from traumatic experience that hidden in the often imperceptible flares and micro-width variations of these cracks, lie the notoriously physical—puke inducing—character of Vedauwoo climbing. If you don’t grow to love the peculiar creativity the routes demand, you might as well stay home.

Bob is just starting climbing again after a near death bout with booze—one that finally led him to quit drinking, seek counseling, start a regimen of anti-psychotic (not to be confused with anti-depressant) medication—and in his words, “finally choose life over a slow death.”

The day’s entrée is When You’re Strange, a short roof followed by a sketchy flared crux that finally eases off before entering a fist section that in turn finishes with a squeeze chimney topped by yet another roof. Bob looks shaky, repeatedly whipping. He’s pissed, but not entirely bummed because he did the first ascent over 20 years prior. When You’re Strange was once part of Bob’s extensive solo circuit that included lower end 5.12s.

Jeff also has little luck as he’s qeasing through the start of the climbing season after a long Wyoming winter of studying and binge drinking. He’s in his late 30’s, getting a master’s degree in electrical engineering after having lost years in the miasma of meth addiction that ended up with a prison stint that paradoxically saved his life.

Our fourth, Tom Parchman, who mixes the physique and dark good-looks of Franco Colombo and a PhD intellect, is wracked from long months of swivel chaired, fluorescent-lit thesis research on evolutionary biology. He fares better than the rest of us maybe because doctoral academia provides a stronger rudder, steering him clear of the worst excesses of what Jeff calls, “Laramie’s six month drinking season.”

At day’s end we are bloody and sore, frontrunners for the “Most Obnoxious Team At Vedauwoo” award. When Scarpelli takes a whipper on fairly modest terrain, his rage bellows across the crag and the earth itself shakes. With each passing hour, Jeff becomes more accustomed to the stranger in their midst—me—and lightens up, first with a litany of off color monologues emphasizing potty humor and crude sexual innuendo. He pings me with a few comments to gauge whether or not I’m the stereotypical uptight self-entitled, politically correct, Boulder climber. As I bloody myself in a brutal fist crack he yells, “Try not to get so much of that yellow blood in the crack.” I am nonplussed, having grown up in Idaho.

Jeff’s mouth gushes so foul and profane that at one point Bob snarls a grumpy, “If you climbed half as good as you talk, then you’d be a half decent climber!” But the adolescent wisecracks—live performance cringe comedy, loud enough to be heard in Nebraska—continues unabated, evolving into jokes at everyone’s expense. A self-avowed ladies man, Jeff’s parting shot, delivered with the subtlety of a bullhorn (in his meth dealing days he actually used a bullhorn in quiet Sunday morning suburbs to collect debts from otherwise upright middle-class clientele) ends with a comparison of the girth and carriage of his genitalia with my entire body mass—tilted naturally in his favor. A friend later says, “This girl told me that she thought Jeff was one of the most handsome men she’d ever met.” When I asked what happened next, she said, “Well, then he opened his mouth and she found him the most revolting person she’d ever met.”

It’s enough fun for me to return and return as soon as possible. There was something about the brush with those mega technical cracks that tapped the reasons that I started climbing in the first place. Like a novice, I had to forget that I was good at anything to even begin to understand Vedauwoo climbing. This beginner’s enthusiasm was not shared by any of my regular climbing partners, in part because of the two hour drive to Vedauwoo, and in part because as Bob pointed out with a low “huh, huh, huh” chuckle, “It’s a long way to drive, just to feel sick.” But as spring turned to summer, I began climbing in Vedauwoo a couple times a week, sometimes for half-day climbing sessions.

One early June morning, I pick up Bob at The Ranger, a Lysol scented motel on Laramie’s main drag with weekly discount rates built to attract the extended occupancy crowd. Teetering perilously a notch or two above the description “seedy,” The Ranger caters to a mix of seasonal roughnecks, pipeline workers, or the odd homeless guy seeking the temporary comfort of a warm room. Bob’s room is neat, spartan in both decor and possessions. There’s a pack of climbing gear, rolls of tape, a cell phone with charger and a stack of books. The books include an academic looking text on petroglyphs, Unforgiveable Blackness (the story of the rise and fall of Jack Johnson, boxing’s stubborn, unapologetic, and controversial first black heavyweight champ), and something by a poet named Mary Oliver. It’s fairly high-brow stuff, the type of books you’d find adorning the living rooms of doctors or college professors.

The Johnson bio is no surprise given Bob’s reputation as a brawler. His barroom fisticuffs are legendary. He was once nearly beat a man to death after being struck in the face with a thrown 8-ball. Apparently the 8-ball didn’t have the desired effect as Scarpelli, merely stunned, preceded his onslaught with a matter of fact and almost good-natured, “You shouldn’t ought to have done that.”

The Oliver book however, seems out of place. The now-deceased Pulitzer Prize winner is known as a nature poet. Blue-collar brawler and wide crack specialist Bob Scarpelli reading poetry? Later, someone familiar with Oliver’s work points out that, “the real business of her writing is about her abusive father,” and that, “She stabs a knife right through it.”

If true, then it’s fitting. According to one close friend, Bob had his own abusive childhood including a father who, “beat the shit out of him.” It’s no shocker that Scarpelli developed his own legendary mean streak, and that, combined with the genes of a pro boxer led him to the countless altercations and, intermittent bouts of crack and meth addiction. On the dark end of the spectrum, one climber described Bob as, “The worst white-trash motherfucker in the world,” quickly adding, “Especially when he’s drinking.” On the other hand, Bob’s ex-girlfriend, a cute spunky lawyer named Jen, who herself uses language that would make a sailor blush and loves wrestling with wide cracks says, “I’ve seen Bob one step out of the gutter and I’ve seen him climb 5.12 day in and day out. For all his fuck-ups, Bob has many sides, deeper sides he’ll never show most people. And,” she adds, “he is a physical genius.”

The past still haunts Bob and as we head to the crag, “Yeah, I still have to duck my head when I drive through Larimer County (just south of the Wyoming border in Colorado),” he notes, adding, “I still have a warrant out and some day when it gets really cold, I’ll go down, turn myself in and stand in the corner for a month.” He adds with his trademark chuckle, “At least it will be warm. Huh, huh, huh.”

Bob’s life has embraced polar opposites—from Mormon youth group leader to once living in a seedy Vegas motel called The Regency while crack addicted prostitutes plied their trade—in the same room. Just a year prior to our meeting at The Ranger, Bob was pissing blood from liver damage. As we drive, Bob asks, “You know what it’s like to reach rock bottom?”
I’m not sure. So I answer with a non-committal, “Maybe, maybe not.”
“I know,” Bob says.
His eyes squint with amusement as he recounts, “I knew I’d hit bottom when I was walkin’ around on streets of Vegas one Christmas Eve in the bad part of town—the old Strip. There were these gangsters cruising the streets handing out blankets to the homeless. You know, holiday cheer from crack dealers who think they’re fucking Robin Hood.”
Bob pauses. He has a way of smacking his lips as he talks, usually where there would be a pause between sentences, like he’s savoring the memory a story. Continuing, “One guy asked me, ‘Do you need a blanket?’ I told him ‘No. But thanks.’ Later, a panhandler asked if I had a buck. I looked at him and said ‘Does it look like I have a buck? Fuck you.’”

I glance over at Bob who wears a thrift store ensemble of baggy parachute pants emblazoned with Miami Ink logos and a torn windbreaker whose peeling pink and blue letters announce Pass On Direct TV. By all appearances, I might have just picked up a vagrant with a dog. The cab of the car bears the faint smell of disinfectant mixed with Rowdy’s canine musk.

“I’m sure glad you made it back from rock bottom Bob,” I say. There’s a moment of dead silence. Then we both burst into laughter.

The day begins and nearly ends with Horn’s Mother—the same route I avoided on my first Vedauwoo visit and one that I’ve managed to avoid over the ensuing 12 years. I’m feeling pretty cocky—something Bob notices when he hears me talk of the odd Vedauwoo 5.12’s and hard crack boulders I’ve recently dispatched. He looks at me with his pale blue eyes and chuckles that low, “Huh, huh, huh,” adding, “Sounds like you are ready for Horn’s Mother.”

In Vedauwoo, or at least on Horn’s Mother,” size matters. Bob readily cruises the first overhanging pitch. The wider things get, the more at ease he looks. The route is rated 5.11a—a huge red sandbag flag. The crack is tight fists for Bob, who, back in the day soloed the two-pitch classic after hearing a false rumor that Derek Heresy had done it ropeless. As it turns out, the legendary Brit, who traditionally eschewed tape as once did, came around to hunt Bob down for taping beta after mangling his hands on the uniquely savage Vedauwoo cracks.

Following the first pitch, I notice the beautiful burnished patina coats the stone, including the interior of the crack itself. While pretty, it’s also slick and the crack—just wider than a teacup fist jam also won’t allow me to get a secure fist, nor a knee in. It’s the classic fucked size—I could double hand stack. That would leave me secure yet unable to move up, for stacks require a solid jam with another body part, knee, ankle, calf, etc. Eight feet into the crux I’m pumped, tweaking, and making weird faces.
My struggle is not lost on Bob who speaks from above, “All that grimacing won’t make those jams any better.”
That said, I conjure up all the trust I can muster and pull. The next thing I know, I’m falling. Bob is silent and stands at the belay, smiling a knowing smile.

I lead the next pitch, a half rope length of pure Vedauwoo cheesegrater. At 5.10a, it suits the sandbag criteria of, “give it the lowest grade you can say out loud with a straight face.” It’s long by Vedauwoo standards and after 45 minutes of hip scumming and heel-toe opposition, I’ve worn through the tape ankle wrap and left a bloody trail for Bob to follow. I’ve done Grade V’s in a day with less effort. The experience gives credence to the words of a self-effacing Fort Collins climber and Vedauwoo badass Andy Johnson, “If Vedauwoo routes were as long as the climbs in Yosemite and Indian Creek, they’d be the hardest crack climbs in the world.”

Later that day we up the ante and go to Squat. Squat is an eight-foot roof crack perched above the plains at an unfrequented outlying area called The Roof Ranch. As we hop a barbed wire fence and stroll through the aspens to the crag, I can’t help but notice how the roof, whose rounded flared lip crux garners the 5.12 grade, literally looks like Scarpelli’s ass. The butt-like appearance along with the track record of aspirant climbers being expelled from the point where the anus would theoretically reside might very well be the inspiration behind the name.

I’ve always held the theory that you’ll really know a climber by repeating their first ascents. It’s the climbing equivalent of say holding Van Gogh’s ear or sleeping with Sylvia Plath. That theory seems especially true as I ooze up a squeeze slot, left side knee/heeling and arm barring with the right foot pressing on a series of barely discernable dimples. It’s dainty and thuggish all at once —vintage Scarpelli. Squat, the first modern Leavitation-type offwidth at Vedauwoo was first climbed by Bob in 1983. It was 15 years before the route saw a repeat. The business is at the lip and it’s uniformly slightly wider than double fists, but sporting two slight constrictions that will barely accommodate a hand/fist combination.

Back in the day, Bob ran laps on Squat, using an opening sequence of double fist stacks to gain the inversion, but today he’s still shedding winter pounds and is having trouble fitting his ass through the lower offwidth. He’s angry and yells in frustration. He tries a few times more, then lowers off. Rowdy Joe turns his back with disdain and stares off across the plains.

As if to justify his outburst Bob says, “There’s nothing like some anger, especially when everything is going against you and you are just about to fall.” Indeed, the full-body wracking, anaerobic struggle of Squat feels more like wrestling with a waterbed than executing the effete ballet of face and finger crack climbing.

We sit at Squat’s base, an enforced break as our bodies slowly purge lactic acid. With no prompting Bob reflects, “We don’t really create anything and I don’ think I’ve ever created anything—even I the routes I’ve climbed.” I chalk that up to modesty but then Bob adds, ”Our character flaws are like the cracks in our souls that somehow let the universe through. It’s like real sobriety—you can’t create it. It is an undeserved gift.”

“In my 40’s,” Bob continues, “I’d regularly drink a bottle of vodka (which he pronounces, voh ka). The whole bottle,” he emphasizes, “and climb 5.12’s all the next day.” As he speaks, Bob gestures out across the expanse of hilly aspen glades and heaps of granite that jam the ridges as far as the eye can see—as if daring the land itself to refute his words.

Back on Squat I lock a left heel toe and lever out almost horizontal, release both hands, and strain for a double fist stack. I can’t stick it solid enough to release the feet, drop into a hang and kip into the completely upside-down double heel-toe inversion required to get to the lip.

It’s a bummer because over the last decade I’d nurtured a secret—as yet unspoken—desire to climb this. It ‘s one of a half dozen iconic offwidths in the world and to do this would mean more right now than any of the 5.13 sport routes I’d done in the past.

Out right are some face holds my friend Andy used to gain the lip on an earlier visit. I apply a little body English, inverting off an edge and walking both feet into the roof. I gain the lip and soon find myself baffled by the options. A knee bar, a crimp, a hand/fist stack, a palming layaway, all tested from a gut-busting bat hang.

It’s sickening in more than just a physical sense—it’s the geometry and dizzying possibilities, the variations of vectors, combinations of stacks, correlation of stacks to toe jams, ankles, knees, calves, hips and quads, direction and which side goes in, etc.
But it’s compelling and as I lower I feel I’ve made progress.
“Nice work,” says Bob, adding, “If you stick with it you could do the first Asian ascent, huh, huh, huh.”
“Didn’t Suzuki do this with you?” I ask.
Bob smiles, “It’s the only route we tried together that I could do and he never did.”
There’s an odd pride in his voice as he remembers his best and favorite climbing partner.

I drop Bob off at the Ranger. We sit and chat. There’s only a single climbing mag in the room. It’s the 2005 Climbing cover story on Vedauwoo written by offwidth superstar Craig Leubben and featuring current activists like young hotshots Justin Edl, Jeremy Medley and Andy Johnson. Rowdy Joe gazes blankly out of an appliance sized cardboard box that’s been torn open and filled with old t-shirts, socks, and dirty motel towels. I can picture Bob trolling the alley and dragging the box in as a bed for Rowdy. Man and dog are kindred spirits in both physique and temperment. Pitbulls as the encyclopedia states, “are extremely muscular, known for confidence, intelligence… and have an extremely high pain threshold and a high degree of gameness.” Bob see me examining Rowdy’s makeshift bed and says, as if by way of explanation, “I’m used to living outside.” True enough, though in Bob’s case that might include idyllic summers on the open range within a stone’s throw of The Roof Ranch, or bleak nights in a defunct ’84 Cadillac spooning with Rowdy in a 20 below blizzard.

The next week I go sport climbing at a local crag to appease my girlfriend, who feels neglected by my weekly disappearances to a climbing area she passionately dislikes. She’s climbed 12d at Rifle and sums up my obsession with a sharp, “You just climb up there because you are washed up and can’t climb anything hard.” There might be some truth in that, but frankly I can’t begin to conjure up enough psyche to give a damn about sport climbing. “I can’t help it if you can’t toprope 5.9’s in Vedauwoo,” I retort, adding, “I suppose it’s always great to go somewhere where you can climb the grade you truly deserve,” gesturing at the adjacent grid bolted face. As if to prove my point, I flash a few routes in annoyed haste, including a 12b.

But my true love lies not in Boulder Canyon or on any other bolted crag. Two days later I’m hanging on an 11b. I’m back in Vedauwoo, climbing with Scarpelli, who chuckles as I bloody myself trying to unlock the crux of Big Pink. The route itself is more deceptive than imposing. About 40 feet high, it’s the wider twin to an immaculate splitter called Plumb Line, just to the right. Around the corner is a 5.12 seam climbed by Suzuki. It’s unknown whether Suzuki’s route, though of high quality, has ever had a redpoint repeat. That fact underlines the notion that you come to Vedauwoo to at least climb some wide cracks, or you are missing out on the best the area has to offer. It’s not that the off vertical face routes—with their intermittent smears and odd barnacled crystals—or often seamy and flared thin cracks, aren’t any good. It’s just that the wide stuff offers the most aesthetic features on all the dozen or so crags scattered over the plains. And nowhere in America offers such a concentration of flared wide stuff—whether fist, offwidth or chimneys. Going to Vedauwoo intent on skipping the wider stuff is like going to the Himalayas for bouldering.

Big Pink, yet another of his first ascents, was Bob’s idea. A description states, “It’s moderate grade keeps it from getting much press, but anyone familiar with Scarpelli .11b’s will have some idea of what to expect. Rest assured, this is probably one of the hardest offwidths at Vedauwoo.”

Of course we don’t bother with a Plumb Line warmup. Bob methodically shuffles through the crux, systematically ratcheting through double fist stacks and subtle heel toe jams, which are hidden in the deep recesses of the chimney. I can see the occasional tremor of exertion but Bob plugs on, topping out after a ten-minute battle—an interval that, in the offwidth world is like a four minute mile. I take it all in, remount the crack again and find myself still unable to unlock the crux—too wide for me to fist stack and too narrow to get my hip in. Bob watches in mute amusement as I throw myself at the crack once, twice, three times. The hours pass as I sort out a sequence of front levering left heel and toe, with palm grating arm barring, combined at the critical barely-in-there-and-about-fall-moment with a dynamic right foot pop to a BB-sized dimple. But any chance of climbing the 11b that day is shot, as I’ve pulled both sides of my groin.

Bob is one of the best motivators when he’s on the belaying end of the rope. He doesn’t care whether you do the route or not, but he wants you to try, and really try hard. The effect can be galvanic, but not this day. The minute I lower and collapse in a retching heap, he begins to hum a mournful Cat Stevens tune. He finally breaks into an unexpected and disarmingly sonorous, “Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world It’s hard to get by just upon a smile…” He’s amused and in a good mood and as if reminiscing he suddenly says, “I treat women like offwidths.” That might explain the succession of groupies and four failed marriages.

On the way out, Bob shows me a hidden stash of brilliant yellow and green lichen streaked cracks lurking in hidden corridors amongst some cadillac-finned granite. They present the unique geometry and complex convergence of flare, angle, width, and offset that makes Vedauwoo such a baffling puzzle. We stare at one potential route and Bob ponders whether it’s left or right side in, hand, fist or double hand, 5.9 or 5.12. Even to the master, a look is anything but definitive. Bob pays me a compliment when he asks, “Do you think it’s left or right side in?”

Even in his sixth decade, Scarpelli’s body of work—his first ascents—isn’t finished. With no children, his routes are an important legacy. He’s still got the burn to be the first and the decades spent trolling through the Vedauwoo backcountry, his “spiritual base,” have amassed a mental file of unclimbed cracks he doles out to himself and a few lucky others—provided those others earn his approval.

Later, Bob will show me some unclimbed routes. Some we’ll send on the first try and some we’ll take turns on, sorting out the sequences with jumbo cams and tube-like Big Bros hanging and clanking like umbrellas and mini bazookas, as we strive like brothers to find an answer to the puzzle.

Fall, 2006
The season wanes as I spend days climbing with Bob, Jeff, Tom, Justin, and Jen. The obsession is eroding my home life and I‘m broke. My car is paying the price for the thousands of miles as smoke wafts from an under the hood from a worn oil pan gasket. My two rear tires have sprung slow leaks. Gas is $2.85 a gallon and each trip costs $30.

But it’s worth it, for something in the capricious unforgiving folds and flares of Vedauwoo keeps me coming back. Unlike other forms of rock climbing something at Vedauwoo shapes the experience. If you can adapt, an odd pleasure emerges from each climb. I’m adapting and there’s a deliberate pacing and less thrashing to my movements, even while buried in the depths of some claustrophobic squeeze slot. At some point I realize that I’m no longer an outsider looking in.

By the end of the season it’s back to Squat. Bob wants to repeat the route this year and over the phone we plan on getting together the following Saturday for a rematch. He’s tired and frustrated, working hard without rest days at a job site where he speaks of the joys of pouring cement, framing, and what he describes “unscrewing a roof.” None of it sounds fun nor particularly restful, but the old dog has a new trick, “I’m gonna reduce my medication,” he says, referring to his anti-psychotic prescription. Over the phone I can almost picture his eyes twinkling, “I’ll start halving the dose on Thursday and by Saturday, I’ll be angry enough to get up the thing.”

On that day, my third day of redpoint attempts—I scrape over Squat’s crux and much to my surprise, clip the anchor. It’s almost a quarter century since Bob first turned the lip and made Vedauwoo history—and it’s Bob who’s holding my rope that day. He’s as happy as me. I lower and offer Bob the rope, but he doesn’t bother trying the route. And why should he—he only feigned interest—including a bet on who would do it first with dinner of choice to the winner, just to get me motivated.

On Squat, the trick turned out to be a getting a subtle knee lock while releasing the trailing foot, thereby aligning your body with a crack that’s changing angle, flare and tilt all at the same time. I know that makes no sense—the only way to really understand is to feel it for yourself.

All I can say is that for an instant at the crux, something clicked that had never clicked before. At the roof’s lip, my left knee—bulwarked with a custom kneepad—slid into place. As I released the right leg, my body dropped. My hands, pawing at a set of razor crimps popped free and again, I was falling. To my utter disbelief, the left knee held and body swung upright, left foot locked under the roof, and left hand punching in a slow arc to the only fist jam on the entire route. In that fleeting moment the months of ugly thrashing became something elegant, rhythmic, and oddly effortless. And in that brief moment, I felt something close to being weightless.

Note: I missed out on the coveted First Asian Ascent of Squat because word in the parking lot has it that a Japanese couple came all the way from Tokyo just to climb offwidths, It sounds like they did a half-dozen of the well publicized Scarpelli testpeices—Squat, Trip Master Monkey, Worm Drive, Big Pink, and Bad Girls Dream.

I say well publicized because there are a host of unrecorded Scarpelli routes including the hardest things he’s done. There’s been no photos published and virtually no written record of their existence. Even with my newfound experience I have no idea if I can climb any of those routes and I’ve gazed, spellbound at a few with my own eyes and they are beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen.

Postscipt from someone who knows:

Last year on Scarp’s birthday. I was sitting in the Buckhorn with him and he says to me, “I just had the best birthday. I went up to Vedauwoo and soloed seven routes, then came back down to town and checked the Safeway dumpster and found shrimp and lobster. It doesn’t get any better than that.” I think he ended up giving some of the shrimp or lobster to Bob Needles, probably as a “gift” (by which I mean he made Needles his food poisoning test subject).

Yah . . . true story. It wasn’t last year, but previous year. Bob’s bd is in October, I believe. Ask him about the incident . . . he’ll remember. I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard. He was bristling with excitement, like finding discarded fish products was about the best finish a day could have. I don’t think he was drinking at the time, but he may have still been living out of the Caddy. I don’t think he was in the Ranger room yet . . . can’t remember though. I was definitely drinking, so I am at a disadvantage.

The Buckhorn Bar, you really should poke your head in the place. It’s the dive to end all dives. A dark foreboding place haunted by a group of Laramie local regulars who hunker over their alcohol like grungy ghosts, the dead eyes of countless mounted trophy deer and elk heads staring down at them. Also along the walls are two beaver (the best looking beaver the buckhorn ever saw), a wolverine (cockeyed bastard was always staring me down), and even a two-headed mutant calf (one of the most disgusting things ever to come out of a taxidermist’s hands, not to mention a cow). All the hair on these mounted stiff beasties has that tell-tale disgusting fuzz build-up from ten thousand cigarettes smoked in the place.

The Buckhorn is the kind of place where if you drop your bagel, there is no such thing as the five second rule. If it touches the floor, don’t bother. There’s a bullet hole in the mirror over the bar from a shooting in the 70’s, and the payphone handset is also shot in half from a shooting about five years ago. It’s a nice place with the smell of urine, vomit, and lingering death. I’ve always gravitated to the worst bar in town . . . the Buckhorn is a bottomdweller’s paradise.