Solid Gold/My Laundry @ JT - The Birds Have Apparently Won!

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Gunkswest

climber

Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 19, 2009 - 11:05am PT

Did Such a Savage on Saturday and rapped down Solid Gold/My Laundry for the first time in eons. The amount of bird poop on the first pitch of Solid Gold and at the belay was astounding!!!

All of the ledges toward the top of the first pitch of Solid Gold/My Laundry were covered with nearly a foot of poop from birds (presumably swallows) nesting in the huge flake above. Additionally, the first ten feet of the second pitches of My Laundry and Solid Gold were equally covered.

There have always been a few birds nesting in the giant flake, but I had never seen the amount of poop that there is now. There was a bail carabiner at the last bolt on the first pitch of Solid Gold. To get to it, you'd have to clean holds on the face below and then clean off the infamous mantle just before the belay...

Mungeclimber

Trad climber

sorry, just posting out loud.

Oct 19, 2009 - 12:45pm PT

i think I threw up just a little

Chaz

Trad climber

greater Boss Angeles area

Oct 19, 2009 - 01:33pm PT

That stuff's powerful fertilizer.

You should have cracked off a few chunks and carried it home in your chalkbag.

nutjob

Trad climber

Berkeley, CA

Oct 19, 2009 - 01:39pm PT

I did Solid Gold in spring of 1996, and it was pretty clean at that point. I coveted it because it was in some climbing calendar. I left some blood at the belay yanking on some nut that was stuck then ripping my knuckles across the rock when it came loose?

Heh, that was soon after I started climbing, and I still can't climb much beyond that! But in those days, having no mentors or friends to "show me the ropes," I just treated each bolt like a pitch... somehow get there, clip, hang and regroup for the next section to another bolt :)