In our early twenties and full of energetic zeal, my climbing partner and I often planned (or revised) last second goals for the weekend adventure outing, be it mountaineering, or local rock climbing, depending on the weather condition updates.
Late Friday night we committed to a day at Beacon Rock west of Stevenson, Washington for a day of rock climbing.
In those days our low budget life style living habits tended to keep our refrigerator in a near barren state. On this journey I had a hand full of granola bars that I stuffed into my lunch bag. My climbing friend had even fewer options...and when he opened the fridge, he spotted the day old 1/4 large slice of pepperoni pizza that was left over from yesterdays dinner, so he grabbed it, wrapped it in cellophane, and stuffed the pizza into his lunch bag.
Later that day, after several long busy hot hours of rock climbing various lengthy quality routes on the South Face of Beacon Rock, we stopped for a respite high up on Grassy Ledge, quite near the vertical cliff edge, at the Borderline route belay station. Grassy Ledges is, of course, several hundred feet above ground level, and the south face of the cliff is a steeply vertical cliff scarp with a near constant supply of easterly or westerly breeze. The views are superb from atop those midway ledges, and it provides a unique zone to sit and relax upon after a busy session of rock climbing.
I always prefer carrying some kind of small day pack (stuffed with quick items like water and snacks), so, as a rule, whoever was following the pitch got the wear the small daypack.
There at Grassy Ledges, lazily encamped at the very edge of the vertical cliff precipice, and quite fatigued from doing a solid half-day of classy rock climbing leads, both of us eagerly pulled our lunch bags out of the daypack. I got to nibble on a collection of 5-6 granola bars, while my partner snatched ahold of his pizza.
But...he doesn't like the slices of pepperoni (and never has), so he casually gripped each slice between a finger and thumb, and flicked each pepperoni slice outward away from the vertical cliff's edge, into an updraft of light breeze. One by one each thin slice of pepperoni was flicked away and each slice drifted away with the gentle breeze, en route somewhere down the vertical cliff scarp. Some hunger forest critter sure will be happy about the free meal, we thought to ourselves.
An hour later, after lunch and water were all consumed, we opted to descend by rappelling down the common rappel route near the SE Face route, and soon we arrived at the base of the South Face near where we had stashed our larger backpacks near the short hole-in-the-rock tunnel #1.
Another climbing team was actively doing a few routes at the base of the South Face near the SE Face route that afternoon as well, and we quickly struck up a brief conversation with them.
Then one of those two climbers asked....
"Gee, did either of you happen to have pepperoni pizza for lunch?"
The ears of my climbing partner perked up instantly.
"Well...no, not exactly — I had tossed the pepperoni slices away 'cause I don't like pepperoni...but yeah we ate PIZZA for lunch."
The other guy in that other team replied.
"Your slice of pepperoni landed on my shoulder!"
