Tales of RunOut and Treacherous Fall Potential

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Vitaliy M.

Mountain climber
San Francisco
Dec 30, 2014 - 12:58pm PT
Ooooh. Adding bolts to routes on Moro rock should be added to a list of things to do in 2015!
jgill

Boulder climber
Colorado
Dec 30, 2014 - 02:50pm PT
McGregor Slab on Lumpy Ridge,RMNP (from 2008 post)

I remember climbing something called "McGregor" above a commercial campground on the highway into the Park from Estes Park. Is this the one? Not on Lumpy Ridge I didn't think. Maybe there are two such slabs.

Boy, I haven't thought of that slab in many years. In the early 1960s I decided to load up - for retreat if necessary - with a couple of pitons, hammer, and light rappel line and pick a (free) solo route up the center of the slab, never having been on it before.

It was exciting, and had me quivering a bit. Seems like there were a few small overhangs to negotiate, but I recall no further details. Nice rock, though!
BillL

Trad climber
NM
Dec 30, 2014 - 03:28pm PT
It was my second trip to Tuolumne Meadows in about as many years, a week-long each. It was also one of my best-ever weeks of climbing / leading ... including good fun on My Favorite Things and Excellent Smithers. Nearing the last day, my sister and I had mostly finish off the book-guide routes in our desired range of difficulty / protection ... and were feeling quite accomplished.

"Let's look again at the ones I found on Mountain Project that weren't in the book guide." Back home before this trip, I'd found 3 or 4 such reasonable-difficulty routes and printed them with their comments out on both sides of about six sheets of paper.

Hmmm, here's one. It gets an 'R' and has a rating higher than any other 'R' we've led at Tuolumne ... and I really didn't like the last 'R' I led ... but we've been climbing well.

A "Tuolumne R" can be an "X" elsewhere. But is it really a Tuolumne R at the crux? On the back of the sheet are comments like "Plenty of pro" ... "bring a 4 inch cam for the crack in the buldge" ... etc.. So the next morning we start up with a heavier rack than normal. My sister gets the P1 lead and I get crux P2.

Long first pitch with difficult-for-us moves 15 or 20 feet above small gear. As I second, I'm hoping against reasonable hope that the second pitch is somehow not so hard. But it's not to be. First bolt at 20 feet after non-trivial moves for me - would have been an ugly pendulum fall onto the belay. After the bolt, I go scores of more feet while watching for the advertised second bolt, realizing I might climb right past it in this sea of knobs - and then I finally see it right in front of me at chest level. Good lord.

We make it up the route without a fall. And I'm certain the majority of pieces on our big rack were NEVER placed.

Back at camp, we're wondering how we got so misled about the route. I put all six sheets back together and realize the comments we'd been reading were for some 5.7 'G' route. Reviewing the comments for OUR route, one of the earliest comments is a tirade by someone claiming to have about "shat" themselves and that the route ought to have an 'X' rating!

Fueled by an end-of-the-day beer or two, the word that came to mind was hysterical: absolutely funny and absolutely scare-y at the same time.

Magical Mystery Tour; Tobin Sorensen and Mike Graham; July 1973
Ksolem

Trad climber
Monrovia, California
Dec 30, 2014 - 03:57pm PT
We were at The Meadows. I think it was Grigsby who put me up to doing Miss Adventure. It's not a high grade, is 10+ about right? I think it was the second bolt on the first pitch, way run out with a cruxy move up to the drilling/clipping stance. It looked okay though. Get the thin rounded stance in my fingers, step up on a knob, the rest should fall together well enough.
I stepped up and latched the stance and casually stepped up on the knob. Cool. Then the knob broke. I dropped a foot or so and heard my belayer, a fine gal from New Zealand, let out something between a squeal and a scream and in a moment of mind over reality I held the lip. Collecting myself I saw that the knob was indeed gone, but the remaining feature was still usable and not going to break. Step up right, step left up onto the stance. Oh my God this is balancy. A cruel joke after I saved my ass once already. It’s amazing what you can pull off in a “full on must do” situation.
Vitaliy M.

Mountain climber
San Francisco
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:29pm PT
Last two stories are quite good, thank you for sharing.
Jaybro

Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:39pm PT
If you haven't run it out fifty feet on something that scares you.... Have you lived?
snowhazed

Trad climber
Oaksterdam, CA
Dec 30, 2014 - 10:45pm PT
Heart of Stone, this year. Pitches 7, 8, and 9 in particular. Phenomenal experience.

The worst, in over my head experience was attempting snake dike for the first time. My partner and i left at noon, sprinted in, but I did not identify the start correctly because I barely even looked a ta topo. So eager to cast off I didn't think about it and headed up over a bulge expecting the terrain to ease.

Instead I find myself in blank friction territory, with no downclimb option, my belayer up on a ledge which was way off the ground I would have hit were I to pitch not anchored in.

All i could think was, "Man, I really did not plan on dying on f#cking Half Dome today."

I had one of the prouder leads of my life, nothing too hard, probably sustained 5.7-5.8 pure friction, but off into an expanse, not knowing if i was going anywhere useful. After 100 feet or so I hit an anchor, or a rap station of some kind and could then see that snake dike was 50 feet to my left. The traverse over was tenuous, but at least I had somethin! I rejoined in the 2nd or 3rd pitch of snake dike, then watched my partner peel ff on the traverse and pendulum huge. We finished the climb and ran on home, lucky to have gotten away with it all.
mongrel

Trad climber
Truckee, CA
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:09pm PT
Ho, man, it is great to see this one wake up again. Ferretlegger gets Post of the Thread for the Whitney tale. Good to see North Carolina represented, though where is Stone Mtn.? Total runout Mecca, that place. Pileated woodpeckers, gorgeous in fall, not to be missed. Anyone who's never been to Looking Glass wouldn't know that all those little eyebrows you see in that photo are UPSIDE DOWN, flared, bottomed, and rounded. Not worth sheet for either climbing or pro.

My contribution comes from the west side of Hammer (Lo-Cal) Dome, across from Calaveras, mid 80s. We had no guide except that Harlin book with a photo and a line for Set the Controls. Some rumor that it was only 11a, well protected first pitch, a bit runout but only 10b for the second, then a 5.8 stroll for the third. What could go wrong? There's just the one line of bolts on the whole face, no way could we miss it. We arrive and find that there are at least three lines of bolts and since we didn't need the photo - only one route there - we hadn't brought the book. So I pick the right hand one of the routes up the best looking part of the face. I still have no idea what route it was. Trouble starts immediately when it is not the least bit well protected, and also way harder than expected, sketching from one 1/2-inch spot of 200-grit sandpaper to a single microcrystal to a pea-sized divot, with very dicey moves far above the bolt. But there are these super-promising little tiny black knobs visible here and there, albeit separated by long stretches of glassy rock. Still, there is always the promise that when you get to the next one, the terror will end, all will be well, and you'll cruise to the belay. Only the part about somehow getting to the belay actually happens. The bad part about making it up this pitch is that it creates total confidence that, though the 11a seemed awfully desperate, next up is only 10b, so it will surely be comparatively easy.

But it isn't. And it seems even way more runout, if that is possible! So much so that after two or maybe three bolts in 100 feet, I wander way off line and become marooned with a total of two or three fingers on a slippery little black knob, and feet on nothing at all. When you are about to fall on a steep route, the duration of anticipation is not very prolonged; you either work something out or (relatively) quickly pump out and fall. But when you become shipwrecked in an untenable spot on a slab, you can prolong the agony for ages, trying this or that, rejecting the idea of downclimbing because it is over 30 feet to the last bolt, with no reasonable stance above that, not to mention the impossibility of reversing moves you could hardly do going up. And the curse of having a hold is that, having found after many tries that there was no makeable move using it, you still cannot abandon your little island and put out to glassy sea again.

Inevitably, the last resort of trying to mantle the knob fails, because it is too small and slippery, and I am released to the joys of a 70+ foot buttslide down the slab. That part, at least, goes just fine. I've never been back, but that slab is high on my list of places I'm determined to return someday.

Edit to add: Somewhere on the taco is a thread about Burning Down the House on Fairview. I tried the search function but didn't find the one I remember. Killer narrative by shipoopi about an attempt or the FA or something. I only remember it was hilarious and a real sweaty-palms read. If someone can find and link that one, it should be here too.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:31pm PT
^^^ http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=968796&msg=969256#msg969256
mongrel

Trad climber
Truckee, CA
Dec 30, 2014 - 11:49pm PT
Thanks, Ed, but that's not the one. I supposed I fried a couple neurons. It's not Burning at all, it's the FA of Coup de Gras [sic], and this is the link: http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/970622/Coup-de-Gras-on-Fairview-FA-Story

Great post.
ß Î Ø T Ç H

Boulder climber
extraordinaire
Dec 31, 2014 - 09:42pm PT
Two words: Darrel Hensel.
ß Î Ø T Ç H

Boulder climber
ne'er–do–well
Apr 10, 2019 - 12:13am PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
ec

climber
ca
Apr 10, 2019 - 10:50am PT
Ooooh. Adding bolts to routes on Moro rock should be added to a list of things to do in 2015! - Vitaliy

Lichen is not always liking. Did a seldom done route on Moro Rock. I blame EC Joe. - johntp

I woulda if I coulda on most all of the f.a.'s I did on Moro. Sometimes adequate hand-drilling stances are extremely limited on those big ground-up ascents; Pressure Sensitive, Moro Oro & Piece de Reniassance are good examples of being very run out. Looking back, I think that adding bolts would alter the challenge of routes like those (these routes had been repeated with the original hardware). However, by this date, those old bolts should be at least replaced. Moro has environmental conditions like over at Tollhouse where non-stainless hangers and bolts end-up corroding and breaking like potato chips.

On PdR, when I got to easier ground, it seemed like a moot point to even bother drilling after making thru the sh!t below. One of those pitches there was one token bolt mid-way out. We named the pitch, "This Bolt's for You."

I can see that the super-difficult stuff that more recently had been done on the west face could only been done by pre-placing bolts on rappel. I recall seeing that stuff out there, wow!




 ec
tolman_paul

Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
Apr 10, 2019 - 11:13am PT
Most of my runout and treacherous fall routes resulted in my bailing. Times when I've been solid at grade, runouts aren't an issue. But when you're at your limit, totally different story. There also seems to be recurring theme for me of those bails being related to getting off route, or on a completely different route than I'd planned. Case in point:


I'm pretty sure this was a trifecta for me. Likely my very first lead, first time to the pinnacles, and the guide book I had was text only with descriptions such as "follow faint animal trails to the formation" I'd have to look at a guide book to figure out what I'd planned to climb vs. what I was climbing, needless to say I ended up at the wrong formation and started up a route well over my ability. I'd taught my partner how to belay and I think we'd been out toproping a few times before this trip. I do recall what I wanted to climb was a 5.7 or 5.8, and I ended up on a 5.9R which given the quality or lack thereof of Pinnacles rock, and rusty star drive bolts that were only ~20 years old and a questionable rusty pin at the time resulted in a level of commitment I wasn't ready for.


I arrived at the point of, man I don't see any more bolts above me, I'm gonna bail. The good thing is I was using twin ropes so I set up a rap with one rope and had my partner belay me as I worked my way down unclipping as I went.

We did figure out how to make it to the monolith and I did manage to top out on one of the easier routes, so still a successful first time at the pinnacles which resulted in many more trips over the years. Beat the heck out of selling my gear and figuring climbing wasn't for me.
ec

climber
ca
Apr 10, 2019 - 11:18am PT
A 1st ascent account of a not-recommended route on Voodoo Dome, from Kris' Needles Guide:
"There's a big open slab left of the White Punks alcove that tops out at a ledge about two pitches up. Near the right edge, I climbed up a short distance and placed a quarter-incher. The crux moves went left, then back right where I drilled a second quarter-incher. I do recall that it was a ground fall potential by the second stance, as I told Steve to hold the rope and run downhill if I pitched-off." - ec
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