No character in this story was under 18 when they had sex.
I will leave it to the reader to decide what is true and what is fiction. I have been around long enough to know that each person decides what is true or not based on their own experiences, and NOT based on what is actually true.
Chapter 41 -- Tammy
I had a really heavy load of classes going into my final year at BYU. There wouldn't be much extra time for extracurricular activities ... at least not activities that required a lot of time for planning. I would still have time for the occasional rock climb or spending time with whatever special girls I came across. Then again, it is sometimes time-consuming finding a special girl, but not always. Sometimes things just fall into your lap. Those are often the best.
I was up in Rock Canyon doing a little bit of climbing when she literally fell into my lap. When I arrived at the canyon, I was alone, so I was just doing a traverse across the lower part of the Ed &Terry quartzite slab (so named for a route right up the middle of the slab. As I picked my way through tiny holds, a girl I had never seen before came up to watch me. The next thing I knew, she was following me across the slab using holds that I hadn't even seen.
"You're good," I said. "We don't get that many girls climbing up here."
"Thank you," she replied. "I just started climbing this last school year. I came up here to Rock Canyon hoping to find a climbing partner because there are some routes I want to try."
"OK," I said. "I'm Pete, and I would climb with you, if you want."
"My name is Tammy," she replied, "And I would love to climb with you. Do you have much experience here in Rock Canyon?"
"Yeah," I answered. "I have climbed most of the routes in the canyon. What route are you interested in?"
"I want to lead The Flakes (a route on the left side of the Ed &Terry slab)."
"You want to lead it?" I asked. "Do you have any experience leading?"
"No," she said, "But I have climbed The Flakes once before, and it seems like leading it is the next logical step."
I replied, "Leading would be a logical next step, but I would recommend that you try an easier route, such as Ed & Terry, for your first lead. The Flakes is a tricky route with questionable placements. It would be easy to get messed up."
"Nevertheless," she continued, "That is the route I want to try. Will you belay me?"
"Yes," I answered. "I will belay you."
I had my rope and climbing gear with me, so I set up a belay at the start of the Flakes route. As Tammy studied the rock face, I anchored myself by placing a couple of chocks in a crack and tying myself to them, Chocks are angled pieces of metal attached to short slings. At the base of the climb, there was a sharp pinnacle of rock sticking up out of the ground. "Not a real good place for that to be," I thought to myself. "It would be bad if you fell on it."
A belay is used to keep climbers from falling to the ground if they slip. The principle behind the belay is that, if the leader periodically places protection on the way up the cliff, and then slips, the leader will only fall twice the distance the he or she has climbed above the highest piece of protection...plus about ten percent for rope stretch when the rope becomes tight. Therefore, if the leader slips ten feet above a piton or chock (assuming it holds), they will fall ten feet past it plus two more feet before the rope stops him ... a total of twenty-two feet.
"Belay on," Tammy said as she started up the rock face. One final check of her equipment and she was on her way.
"On belay," I returned to signify that I was now belaying her. She climbed steadily up the face, picking her hand holds and footholds with care. Twenty feet from the base, a previous climber had placed a permanent bolt in the rock and attached a hanger to it. This was the most secure placement a climber could get. Tammy clipped into it with a carabiner and ran the rope through the carabiner. Ten more feet of steady climbing brought her to the bottom of the flake, a large slab of rock with a crack running behind it from the right.
Tammy placed a small, wired wedge chock into the crack, tested it for downward pull, and clipped the rope into it with another carabiner. Now she had two pieces of protection. Again, she climbed, walking up the almost vertical wall to the right of the fake as she worked her hands up along the edge. Upward, ever upward, Tammy went, using the opposition between her hands and feet to keep her on the rock. Ten more feet and she arrived at the top of the flake. Here, the crack had thinned dramatically, and Tammy chose a knife-blade piton to drive into the crack. She attached another carabiner to the piton and clipped the rope into the carabiner.
"Pete, I'm getting a little tired," she said. "I'm going to rest for a second." She stood on a small knob, breathing deeply and shaking her arms and legs one at a time. Tammy was trying to increase circulation to bring much needed oxygen to her muscles. Then, after a short break, she was climbing again. Using small holds in the rock, Tammy worked her way up toward a narrow ledge until she could reach up and put her hands on it. The face on either side of the ledge was smooth and devoid of holds; but she thought she saw an easier route to the right.
"I'm too tired to mantle up onto the ledge, Pete," she said. "I think I'll try to go around it to the right."
"Don't do it, Tammy," I yelled back at her. "There's nothing there, and you'll just wear yourself out further."
Unfortunately, she was determined to try. Tammy ventured out onto the right face, trying to find a small hold that nobody had ever seen before...one that would allow her to avoid the difficult move onto the ledge. Carefully, she gripped tiny irregularities on the surface, searching for the hold that she could use to pull herself up...but there wasn't one. After several minutes of frustrating exertion, hanging on with her fingertips, she moved back to the base of the ledge. She had been tired before...now she was exhausted.
Tammy had now placed herself in real danger. There she was...fifty feet up, at the most difficult move of the climb, and she was almost too tired to move. Tammy placed her hands on the ledge in front of her face on the narrow ledge, fingers touching, and began to pull herself up. From somewhere, it looked like she was finding the strength. Tammy was pushing downward with her arms, trying to bring her foot up onto the ledge, when she lost her balance and peeled off backwards. "I'm falling!" she screamed.
I watched in horror as Tammy hurled backwards into space. "Clink!" "Ping!" Her piton and chock had pulled out of the cracks because of the outward pull created by her back flip. The only remaining piece of protection was the bolt...barely twenty feet off the ground.
Using the principle of belay, it didn't take a mathematician to realize that since Tammy was falling from thirty feet above her only remaining piece of protection, she had sixty-six feet to fall with only fifty feet to the ground. She was falling to her death.
Then, something quite amazing happened. I can't explain it really, except that it was like a hand had reached out and was supporting her. Time ceased to exist. Tammy seemed to float down...doing three, slow back flips as she came toward me. I was pulling in rope as fast as I could to shorten the distance she would fall. With the way she was floating down, I thought there might be enough time. I continued to pull, using both hands to pull rope in, but still holding the rope securely at my waist in a belay.
She passed the bolt. There was still too much rope. She was going to hit. Despite everything I was doing, she was going to hit. Closer and closer to the ground she came, as I continued to pull in rope as fast as I could. Then, the rope started to tighten, and I flung my hand across my waist to stop her. The rope started to stretch...was there still too much rope? Oh, please no.
Tammy came to rest right above me. She was hanging there, suspended in her harness and hanging from the rope, her back less than six inches above the sharp pinnacle at the base of the route. The rope had stopped her. Tammy was safe.
She turned to me, her eyes wide with wonder and amazement and said, "You know, Pete, the world really does spin around when you're falling. It seemed like it took forever to come down." I knew just what she meant. Slowly...still holding the rope tightly around my waist...I lowered her down to the ground, taking care to miss the sharp pinnacle as I lowered her. She was badly shaken, so I gave her my canteen and let her lay there taking small sips of water.
Two young men had been sitting about forty feet away watching us climb. Now they came running over to see if Tammy was hurt. "Wow," one of them exclaimed. "I've never seen anyone fall as fast as she did. I was sure she was going to hit the ground."
"I was watching you," the other youth said to me. "Your hands were moving so fast, they were blurred." Funny. I hadn't noticed that. Adrenaline does amazing things to you during an emergency.
It took a while before Tammy recovered from the shock of falling. While she recovered, I retrieved the carabiner from the bolt, coiled my rope and put my climbing gear in its proper places on my equipment sling. With that complete, and my gear stashed on my body, I helped Tammy back to the entrance of the canyon. When I realized that she had walked up to the canyon from BYU, I put her in the passenger side seat of my car. I told her, "You are probably still in shock. There is no way that I will let you walk back to campus by yourself."
I put my rope and climbing gear in the back seat and got in. The drive back to BYU was uneventful, but we talked along the way. When she said there wouldn't be anybody to watch her when she got back to her dorm room, I told her I would take her to my apartment. I didn't want her going into shock alone.
When we got to my apartment, I parked right in front of my apartment, so we wouldn't have too far to walk. I got her up into my apartment, took off her shoes, and had her lay on my bed while I brought up my climbing gear from the car. When I returned, Tammy was asleep. I checked her and then went to make up some high-energy drink (made of Hershey's chocolate sauce, chunky peanut butter, bananas, vanilla ice cream, milk and almonds) in my blender. Yes, I know it was just a milk shake, but it provided a lot of energy.
When I was blending it, the blender made enough noise to wake her. At first, she didn't know where she was, but when I brought her a glass of the energy drink, she quickly settled down and drank it. Of course, I made enough for me as well, so we sat next to each other on the bed drinking our drinks.
