Leg of Dog
Exploring the Laramie Range
"On belay, ya bastard."
He'd stolen another fine line in this choice canyon. Nobody could have done this one before. Glenn stood to one side, watching Jeb's lead as I belayed.
"Watch me. Delicate start."
"Okay." Foreshortened, it didn't look that bad or that desperate, but on virgin rock, the first guy gets to test for loose rocks. Jeb floated up a face of expanding flakes and crunchy, red granite to gain the devious slot where the hand crack started. He inserted a camming device above and clipped the rope.
"Real protection," he breathed.
"Awright," we chorused. Glenn now stared intently up at Jeb. This would only be Glenn's second rock climb ever.
"Do you think I can climb this in these hiking boots?" he asked me, still watching Jeb.
"Should be okay with a top-rope. Pretty thin at the bottom here," I said. Jeb was working his way steadily upward, pausing every so often to place pro. Hand crack must be a good one, I thought to myself.
We watched him until he disappeared over a bulge some seventy feet up. The rope continued to pay out. Glenn stepped back down the hillside, away from the wall, until he could see Jeb moving carefully along a featureless slab. Jeb yelled down something about rope drag, and a jumble of English sounds of which I could only decipher one phrase:
"...so don't pull me off!..."
"It looks delicate up there, too," observed Glenn. "He's going left."
"Is he past the Hanging Block of Death?" I asked, refering to the immense, balanced boulder at the top which we'd named from the floor of the canyon.
"Almost." After a few more minutes, the rope stopped moving. Then Jeb hollered that he was safe.
"Belay's off, ya lucky dog!" I yelled back. Soon I was following the route, trying to show Glenn as I climbed the necessary techniques. He catalogued the lesson mentally, his arms folded, his eyes narrow with concentration. When I'd exited the hand crack, I balanced onto the miniscule sloping ledge that rimmed the traverse slab. Below me, the entire canyon fell away beneath my feet. Ignoring the potentially kinetic power of the Hanging Block of Death, I followed a substantial ripple all the way across the slab, until I was directly below Jeb. There he sat, taking in the rope as I climbed, the picture of a gentleman of leisure.
"What 'jdo, climb this seam, or those little nubbins?"
"Both," he smiled. "Come on up."
Glenn followed, a little heavy on the rope because of his floppy boots, but he never whined for a tug. We gathered our stuff together once we were united on top, and set about finding a way back to the canyon floor. Glenn, who is a wildlife biologist, came across a pile of what looked to me like deer pellets. He and Jeb tried to guess what kind of game left them there. I figured Glenn would know, because that's his job. What I didn't know about his job, is how he knows:
He bent down, picked up a small handful of the scat in question, raised it to his nose, and took a hearty whiff. Yucch, I thought to myself.
Then he put some of it into his mouth, and chewed on it!! I felt violently ill. I could hardly speak as he spit out the half-chewed poop.
"Deer," he concluded. Jeb and I looked at each other. I don't know if he'd ever seen anyone do this before either.
"I worry about you, Glenn," I said.
"I'm just glad Glenn's sharing your water bottle," Jeb laughed.
