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James
climber
My twin brother's laundry room
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 24, 2009 - 08:02pm PT
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"So you want to go bouldering?" I shivered. The sun still hadn't hit Yosemite's Birdalveil parking lot. Sweeney smoked a cigarette by his pick up and shook his head.
I shouldered a pack full of ropes and gear and trudged towards the Wall of Ages, the yellow expanse of granite to the right of Bridalveil falls. Sweat dripped down my shirt, and the cotton stuck to my chest when we got to the base.
"You never sweat like this when you're bouldering." I told Sweeney.
Sweeney nodded. He rolled a cigarette, ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then rolled another coffin nail. From the base, the 5.12 bombay chimney pitch loomed over us. The route looked wide, dirty, and heinous.
"Lucho onisghted the route. Then said it was awesome. You know what that means?" I asked. Sweeney coughed a cloud of smoke and peanut butter. "It means its totally scrappy, covered in lichen, and not worth doing. So you want to go bouldering?" I didn't wait for an answer. I shouldered my pack and stared heading back down to the car.
"Lucas!" Sweeney shouted. His eyes were wide, and his body coiled, ready to spring and tackle me to keep me from leaving. "I'll link the first two pitches. You won't have to lead the offwidth."
I dropped my pack, and set up to belay. Sweeney quickly dispatched the first pitch, which the topo claimed as solid 5.10 but felt more like 5.9. I followed, arriving at the belay to find that Sweeney hadn't linked the pitches.
"I thought there might be too much rope drag," he handed me a dozen over sized cams. "Looks wet too."
I climbed into the maw of the 5.10+ offwidth and thrashed inside of the eight inch crack for ten then twenty then thirty minutes. The sharp calcite deposits on the side of the granite wore enormous holes in the knees of my best pants. Strawberries sprung up around my kneecaps, and my skin shined a bright pink. I'd progressed five feet off the belay when I decided to retreat.
"You wanna go bouldering?" I handed Sweeney the rack, praying that he would get stuck inside the beast of the crack and want to retreat to an afternoon of cranking hard moves close to the ground. I had visions of sending V sickness and while working on tanning.
Instead Sweeney grunted up the outside of the crack, stacking his fists and pulling through the bulge of the wide crack. Fifteen minutes later, I followed him up, repeating the fist stack, and making the holes in my pants a little bit bigger.
I led the next pitch, which follows a crack, into a roof, and then encounters a difficult lip boulder problem. I chimneyed and stemmed up the crack. At the lip, I jammed my hand in a small constriction, skated my feet on the lichen, and tried to pull through five or six times. Finally I pulled harder, and then fell. I slammed in a cam and french freed through, then headed to the anchor. Sweeney followed the pitch, claiming that the 12c crux felt more like easy 5.12. I shrugged. Could be.
Sweeney headed up into the bombay chimney of the next pitch. His feet pedaled on the dirty rock and granite flakes showered on my head. He jammed his hands vertically in the crack, traversed, then pulled over the roof, continuing to the belay. I followed. The 5.12 felt more like easy 5.11.
The next pitch found me wandering up a thin crack covered in bushes and flakey granite. The 5.11+ rating felt easier but I was wandering into no man's land, wondering what the topo said, and hoping I went the right way.
"Where do I go?" I shouted down to Sweeney but I couldn't hear his directions over the roar of the falls. I stared at him while he pointed up then left and then right.
"We could still go bouldering," I screamed.
Sweeney lead the next two pitches, linking the two short bits with a lot of rope drag. Surprisingly, these two 5.11 pitches were hard. They had difficult boulder problems protected by bolts.
We summitted and rappelled the route. The topo we had said to leave the tag line anchored to the belay at the second pitch and rap from the fourth to it. We barely made the rap to the fourth pitch, employing some shenanigans.
The pitches on the route were short. The climbing was dirty and a little bit easier than the rating Jones had. A couple days later Honnold and Gleason made the fourth ascent. Alex said the route was probably 11+. That sounds about right.
At the base, I rubbed my worn knees, and brushed off the gray flakes of granite. This was adventure climbing. "We could have gone bouldering," I told Sweeney.
He lit another cigarette, smoked it. Then rolled and lit another one. He'd onsighted the route, climbing it casually.
"Yeah," he blew out a ring of smoke as a mass of dirt fell out of his hair, "we should have gone bouldering."
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mucci
Trad climber
sf ca
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May 24, 2009 - 08:23pm PT
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Nice one! Early ascents are the sure way to find adventure, sounds like it was full value.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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May 24, 2009 - 11:05pm PT
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Thanks James.
That photo of Sean is such an archetype I forget there's a route attached, and it needs some scraping and so do our fantasies of what it's like up there.
The pants sound goners but the knees will heal.
Edit: And, yeah, Word on the writing!
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murcy
climber
San Fran Cisco
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May 24, 2009 - 11:21pm PT
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It's like Dashiel Hammett goes climbing. And the slung horns popped off, like so many nuns in the street.
Well done.
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tinker b
Gym climber
my mom
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May 25, 2009 - 07:26am PT
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nice post young james.
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J. Werlin
climber
Cedaredge
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May 25, 2009 - 09:16am PT
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bump for the iPod generation's Bard of the Ditch.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 25, 2009 - 09:33am PT
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Well written as usual.
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bob
climber
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May 25, 2009 - 11:02am PT
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Nice James! Go do Gates of Delirium in Ribbon Falls now. I got about eight or so pitches up in disgusting heat and it was still fun!
Bob J.
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Sean Jones
climber
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May 25, 2009 - 09:34pm PT
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Funny, I was just saying to someone the other day that I wish more people would go do that route.
Even funnier is to hear it called 11+. Man, I must really be getting old and weak these days.
It's somewhat normal to be off a letter or 2 but I have never come up a whole number shy.
That would mean that 1/2 dome probly wieghs in at 12a and Gates of Delerium will be a whopping 11a ?
If it seems like my panties are in a bunch over the #'s.... they're not. Who cares about the #'s anyway. Fun is fun.
Hey, Someone REALLY should go do "Ressurection" on Hetch Hetchy dome. Killer line. And I think the 12c will wiegh in fine there. Hurry before the heat comes and post up about your experience. Look forward to hearing about it.
Also, the route is "Mama"
Gotta run....gotta go work all night....ahhhhhh
Sean.
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James
climber
My twin brother's laundry room
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Topic Author's Reply - May 26, 2009 - 03:41am PT
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Sean,
The route was an old aid line by Josh Thompson right? Did you add a lot of bolts? Just curious.
I'm surprised you didn't head out the 5.11 crack on the third pitch. I suppose it was pretty dirty but man it looked good. Probably worth cleaning.
We had this hand drawn topo that said to tie the tag line from the top of the second pitch to the fourth. We ended up being able to double rope rap from the fourth to the first.
Growing Up definitely sounds like a cool route and I hear Resurrection's pretty good. Ketron's said as much and Lucho's been up there a little.
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wildone
climber
GHOST TOWN
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May 26, 2009 - 10:35am PT
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Go do Growing up with the squeege-puff-I miss that guy a lot. Do it.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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May 26, 2009 - 04:45pm PT
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James,
Great stuff! Great writing. And the adventure on Mama sounds like big fun, too.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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May 26, 2009 - 06:50pm PT
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Excellent! what great entertainment!
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Nate Ricklin
climber
San Diego
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May 27, 2009 - 03:29pm PT
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bump
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scuffy b
climber
Sinatra to Singapore
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May 27, 2009 - 04:16pm PT
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Nice story. Sounds like Humans.
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lucho
Gym climber
San Franpsycho
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May 27, 2009 - 08:43pm PT
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I had completely blocked out the O.W. pitch down low. Ha , that was kinda hard. I thought the "crux" pitch was 12- and the pitch after that was more like 5.11. The hardest pitch on the route for me was the last pitch, it was balancy and tricky but no harder than 11c. I lost the topo Sean gave me and cant find it online. Someone should post up a copy, I think its a great route.
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Sean Jones
climber
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May 30, 2009 - 04:18am PT
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We didn't add a bunch of bolts to the line. On the first pitch we did a slight var where 2 bolts connect cracks but not on thier line, then no more bolts till the 6th pitch. Again, a var off to the right of thier line. The 6th pitch climbs off to the right at first but 1/2 way up crosses over thier line and finishes with a free var out left. So here we used new bolts down low then when we crossed over the original line and used bolts to finish. But we left a huge gap in our bolts where the lines crossed so if you were doing the original, no way in hell would you ever have the option to clip our bolts. We did tr the 5.11 pitch on the 3rd but the scaly rock would just never stop pealing away. A great pitch for sure but nowhere near as clean as the 5,12 to the left. Surprised noone has mentioned the last pitch. This is the craziest pitch on the route. The one where you go out under the roof dangling from that huge block the size of a house. Looking at this block, it's hard to even figure out what in the hell is keeping it hanging there. Why isn't this thing getting bouldered on down in the Bridalviel parkinglot below ? We did rearrange the anchors on the route a bit as the originals in some cases kind of sucked and were in wierd spots but no bolts added to the aidline at all.
Sean.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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May 30, 2009 - 02:38pm PT
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good read
thanks for the story
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| Messages 1 - 18 of total 18 in this topic |
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