Most unusual clouds around Half Dome. (webcam photo)

[spike jones]

9. I stayed a month in the valley in October 1969, after a four-month backpack all over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I got to know Jim Bridwell and partied with him a lot. I was a fair climber, but a very good partier and was one of the few guys there that had access to money and the party goods that could buy. Jim was working on a route up El Captain that he said he was going to name Tangerine Trip after the color of acid he was taking. It was my acid.

Years later I looked up the climbing routes on it and there are several route variations with the word Tangerine, but Jim was not noted as putting any up, so perhaps he did not finish it. I just now looked and there is a route called Tangerine Trip, but no first ascent info. I am sure that all those Tangerine routes refer to Jim’s intended route and the acid. (My lasting contribution to rock climbing in Yosemite Valley.)

Spike Jones is a “forest name” I chose during the War of The Woods here in the pacific northwest in the 1980’s and 1990’s. As a teenager I memorized Spike Jones songs and sung them to myself as I cut grass in the summer. I still know all the words to “Pal-Yat-Chee.”