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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 3, 2004 - 11:27pm PT
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Anybody got good beta or stories from thier climb of this route? I noticed the 5.9 "crux" in the current guide book was rated 5.7 in the 1987 guide book. What happened? rockfall? What's the best of the three options to take as the pitch before the notch? Pro to 3". Is that right? How many 3" pieces? Is it wet in early season?
Can I climb it with just one arm?
Can I dry tool the whole thing?
Zander
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bubble boy
Big Wall climber
T100
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I don't know, but you've got a partner for next spring!
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macgyver
Social climber
Oregon
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jefferson--
I absolutely love your 5.13c for Donny comment... I love Donny's enthuisasm but he can sometimes embody 95% of the gym rats... I will say this...the Donnys of the world make me boulder harder.
I will now use that for climbs for all my gym rat friends....
"Like how did Snake Hike feel...oh...one or two moves of friction at 5.7 and then fun romping for the rest."
"So the friction wasnt too bad"
"5.6 feeling for most and 5.11 for Donny"
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yo
climber
NOT Fresno
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Just one arm? What, you cut one off in a slot canyon or sumthin?
You'll need two Chuck Pratt arms for this route, Gimli-like Chouinard legs, top of the line kletter boots, and super solid ass friction. Seems hard to believe but people get to the last pitch and freak at the Hole.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Chuck Pratt and Frank Sacherer did the first free ascent in the early 60's, when they were both very honed. Sacherer thought it was the hardest thing he had had to do... If you have climbed routes FFA'd and FA'd by Chuck and Frank then you know what you are in for on the LA Chimney...
good luck and please right a TR...
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Brutus of Wyde
climber
Old Climbers' Home, Oakland CA
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If you're speaking of the Safety Valve, yah 5.7 at the most.
As for the three options at the top, I would take anything BUT the Harding Hole. the 15 horizontal feet of the HH took me 45 minutes, and I exited from it minus all the buttons on my shirt, sans harness, with my pants coming off and the rope tied around my ankle.
Dug out an old TR:
Doesn't tell much that we don't already know...
Lost Arrow Chimney
16 July 1988
Early July. Alex Schmauss (of Hairline fame) gets a call on the telephone.
"In shape?? Interested in a little chimney climb two weeks from now?
Let's go CLIMBING!!"
Unable to synchronize our days off, ( I with Friday/Saturday, Alex with Saturday/Sunday) I will hike in on Friday and fix ropes to the Notch. Meet Alex at 7:30 pm. Fire the next day.
Rappelling into Lost Arrow Notch alone has to be one of the Gawd-Awfullest spooky experiences a person can ever have. Memories of the first Arrow fatality, Irving Smith, haunt me in this lonely place. Smith had hoped to become the youngest person to climb Lost Arrow Tip.
Instead, before he ever set foot on the climb itself, he somehow lost it at Lost Arrow Notch and set a record of another kind. Lost Arrow Chimney was closed to climbing for a year as Smiths body lay on a chockstone
somewhere in its lonely depths. Such thoughts are close to the surface as a loose rock bounces into the hazy nothingness surrounding me.
Rather than descend entirely to the notch, I lower a pack on the end of the second rope. In it are our descent shoes, jumars, 1.5 gallons of water, a bit of food, and headlamps. We want to climb the Chimney, in as much as possible, unencumbered. Next, out come my prussiks, poor-man's ascenders, and I slowly hoist myself back up to the rim. Behind
schedule, I fairly run down the Falls trail after a very busy afternoon.
I'm late meeting Alex by 15 minutes.
16 July: 4:30 am. We hurriedly stash our bivy gear, having slept directly in the center of the trail. I try to choke down a few bites while Alex cheerfully wolfs down a huge breakfast of cataloupe, sweet
rolls, tea.
I puke as we start the approach in excruciatingly tight climbing shoes.
The stench of fear saturates the air around me. Horrible Talus scramble. Wild stream leaping, sketching across verglassed slabs below
Yosemite Falls, impassible bru, pursued by dark thoughts, racing toward my nightmare, chased by the ghost of Irving Smith. The approach was
uneventful.
The first pitch is wet. WET! On a midsummer climb where we expect HEAT to be our primary concern, the entry to the climb is a slimy mess. I mean, the belay at the base of the pitch is in the middle of a BOG.
We fairly fly up the first six pitches of the route. Casual. Vacation climb. But as we fly toward the Rim, almost imperceptibly, the rock slowly steepens. By pitch 8 (5.10 chimney!?) the route is a gently overhanging, rotten, flared groove. As I haul our tiny pack, it never touches the rock.
Pitch 9: 150 feet, (count 'em... 150... count 'em 3 inches at a time, 'cause that's how much you move per series of squirms in this type of...) yes, boys and girls, the grand prize goes to Off Body, flared, 5.9 SQUeeeeEZE Chimney!
Sounds drift down to Alex as I lead this
"Oh yes!!! MMMmmm Unnnhhhh! Make me cry! Hurt me! Hurt me like that! I LOVE it when you mmmake mme cr... cr... CRY!!"
Rubble on a ledge. As I belay on this tiered pile of teetering skull-splitters, one thought is the focus of my being - Don't knock anything off. Don't kill Alex.
Suckered. Enigmatic, beckoning slot. Desperation in the darkness. Caving 1200 feet up. Harding Hole. I'm stuck.
I can't turn my head (The chimney is too narrow)
I don't have a harness on, the rope is tied around my ankle. (The chimney is
too narrow) I just lost all the
buttons off my
shirt
(The chimney is too narrow)
I can't take a full breath of air
(The chimney is...)
I can't move forward
(the CHIMney)
I can't move backwards
(Chimn... Chimn... oh goh.. uh....uhhh...
uhh)
10 feet. Straight-jacketed, mummified alive, horrendous power moves unable to even thrash effectively; emptying the lungs scared IF I move I WON'T BE ABLE TO BREATHE scraping my body through lubricated by my own blood I suddenly slide forward a quarter inch of progress toward the beckoning light 10 feet away... 10 feet and 45 minutes of hell.
Notch, 2:30 pm. Alex pops through like a carnival freak thin man. Jug to the rim. Someone hid beer in the stream above the falls. Wonder who that could be ?
Ahhhh... Sapporo. Long, foot-bruising down Falls Trail, horrible loads from camp to the Valley floor.
We're DONE!
hth, Brutus
P.S. If you've done Steck Salathe', be aware that the Harding Hole is MUCH tighter than the Narrows of SS. If you've done Astroman, be aware that the Harding Hole is MUCH tighter than Harding Slot on the 'Stro.
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Mick K
climber
Northern Sierra
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Great TR.
Nice change from th political BS
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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"If you've done Steck Salathe', be aware that the Harding Hole is "MUCH tighter than the Narrows of SS. If you've done Astroman, be aware that the Harding Hole is MUCH tighter than Harding Slot on the 'Stro."
My own .02$-also (MUCH) tighter than the tube on the Dunn route on moses.
I (5'10", 150 lbs) could not fit through the Harding hole, even after I took off my harness and rack and passed them through the narrowest spot and placed them on the ledge on the other side. I had to reverse and solo the other side, in approach shoes (lava domes) (Fires had been passed through the sphincter with harness) my partner (somewhat bigger than me) cracked his pelvis following the wider, alternative pitch. He didn't know it at the time, though wondered why he was pissing blood.
Jay
Re: Lost Arrow Chimney Beta?
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Roger Breedlove
Trad climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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...and what do we do for fun: Why, we climb horrific, wet chimneys with loose belay rocks and fables of loose bones and jackets that don't fit, so that we can write really evocative trip reports for everyone else to read.
Now, I can scratch LAC off my list--vicarious living.
Brutus' trip report may be the best description of an old, old school classic I have ever read.
So Zander, now you know why the climbing community invented hard thin crack climbing on short cliffs away from water falls in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Best, Roger
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I'm not ready to scratch it yet... but I will definitely find some otherway at the Hole pitch... unless something seriously happens in the "bulk" department... then again it might be worth seeing the Doc's face when you explain why the radical lippo...
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Demented
climber
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yea Jay i remember reading your TR where you describe pulling your pard on TR as hard as you can through the squeeze and he is hearing popping sounds inside? busting your hips to get up the route is almost as good as chewing your arm off when it gets stuck..
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poop*ghost
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Haven't done anything quite so miserable as that... but I did get thouroughly wedged in the Spelunker's Variation on the end of Shazam in the Needles. I got to the point where I was becoming a mentally unhinged... helmet off, gear off, shoving it up onto a ledge - then I could only move by cursing and grunting and yarding as hard as I could on the ledge.
Every inch was a solid reminder that I was sporting a belly. There was no coming out once I was wedged in... if it wasn't for the ledge to pull on, I would still be there today.
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yo
climber
NOT Fresno
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Anybody done Liquid Sky in the desert? I hear that shit's mondo tight too.
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