| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2006-10-10 12:20:38 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Rock Climbing, Columbus Style
Polly Anikeeva, Christiaan Adams, Dan Walker 10.8-9.06 Dude: I don't think I've ever seen that climbed before. Us: Do you know what climb this is? Dude: The book just says 'dirty gully'. We weren't that far off. Columbus was about 15000 miles off. at least the way he was trying to go. We had rolled up to Cathedral for some fun moderate climbing. We figured Thin Air would be full, and I had already climbed that, so the plan was to start on the left side with Lower Refuse and head right until we found an open climb. So we head up to the left slabs, to a sort of corner that has some of the same features as Christiaan's sweet 1970's guidebook he got from his mom's neighbor. We head farther left, and there are some old dudes climbing something that should be on our left. rite on! (they were super-lost) I head up, its a bit of a dirty blank offwidth/chimney; dirty. hmmm. I pull through and get up to another section. this one with even less pro. ok, detour. I traverse around a bit and get to some nice clean rock. The rope drag is nasty, after 25m. I bring the others up, since they were kind enough to belay me up. It looks even crappier ahead, so we rap down, and get some advice on the actual location of the climb. more wandering. we head over and end up at Thin Air - too far. You can tell its thin air because of the line of people. we eventually find the climb. well as it turns out, the nice 5.5 is now 5.8 because of lack of tree. that's ok. we get some good beta from an old couple toproping it. There is a nice climb to the left of lower refuse, he says. It doesn't look too bad, so we make Polly lead it. She gets up about half way, then decides its my turn to lead it. So I head up and finish it off. Nice exciting traverse under a roof, from a stance on a massively hollow flake (5.8ish). Small TCUs are super handy. A guide type raps down on us, and tells us that there are about 10 parties in line for upper refuse. sweet. I head up the next pitch, another roof traverse, but this one without any solid feet, or solid hands for that matter. I work out on it, but its a bit stiff and I turn into an aid route that would kill Polly cleaning. Hardly sporting I think, so I climb back and we rap down. THen Polly leads the first pitch of lower refuse, a chimney with some face holds. First trad lead? Nice work! Christiaan cleans just as it gets dark. Then a drive up to the overlook for a nice full moon. Next day, we head up to Pinkham for some Huntington Ravine action. the weather was nice and cooperative. We make it up to the base of the ravine and check out the route on Pinnacle. It looks pretty sweet, but Christiaan isn't convinced. He thinks Central Butress looks easier, so we head up and check it out. I spot a couple lines that might work. Agreed, we'll do it. I start up on the right side a bit, where there is a 3rd class ramp up and left. I head straight up, the follow a weakness right into a corner. up some more face climbing directly under a spike. Fixed pin (I guess we weren't first) Under the spike. Up some cracks and blocks, then a traverse right and up onto a ledge. Now we're on the front of the buttress. Head up and left-ish through some tiered slabs (half ropes are nice, as the pro is scattered). Up under a triangular wall, then a hand traverse left under this into a corner ledge with good pro for an anchor. I bring the others up. Next pitch is back out left and around the triangular wall. It looks pretty easy. Some nice high-steps to get over small overhangs, then up an increasingly steep mossy corner. Then an overhang after the corner eases a bit. Climb up and step right to avoid pulling the overhang. Out right onto some tiered face climbing. About this point I had some gnarly rope drag and was running low on slings and gear. Continuing up on the right edge of the buttress to a short overhang. Good hands left in a crack just underneath. Traverse left to a well protected finger crack above the overhang. you can put in a piece from below, making the layback-ish highstep a bit less exciting, and helps with rope drag. Up the finger crack to a horizontal crack at a belay ledge. Mid size tricam belay, but other things could fit. The other guys came up, and also through it was exciting. I'd rate it as two pitches of good 5.6 fun, the second a bit tougher than the first. then Christiaan asks if we should rap now or keep heading up. It looks like super easy brush scrambling up to the top. Well, it started easy, and got steep. There were all these sections of overhanging rock that looked tiny from below, but were anywhere from 3 to 15 feet tall once you got up and in them. And the plants weren't very solid to pull on on top. Its super scratcht, sketchy, and basically sucks. I get up to a big overhang - looks like the last one before we're done. I try left, but its wet, sloping, and with two big loose blocks. The rope drag is bad too. I bring the others up. It is geting a bit dark. I head out to the right side, and it looks sorf of like easier stuff we had climbed at the bottom. Could have been a easy scramble, but not in the dark. So we rig a rap anchor on some (relatively) stront shrubs. It looks super scary, because all you can see are the trees 5-10 feet down. Once you get out and over, you can see that the land slopes off sort of gently. No where near as bad as I expected. Down to the last rock belay. I start setting up an anchor as the others come down. We decide to rap over the edge in to the gulley, instead of down the climbing route, since it should get us to the bottom in one rap. (It should be the route those other guys made up with a pitch). We make a super anchor and back it up. I head down first, with the prospect of climbing all the way back up if the rope doesn't reach. sweet! I swing around onto a little ledge on the drop side, and see a ledge below -- ok, at least we'll get that far. There is also a rap station on the wall nearby -- that means we are probably where we think we are. I rap down. Definately nothing like the relief of actually rapping vs. about to be rapping. something like making peace with your fate. Anyway, down I go. I pass that ledge, and it looks pretty darn far down to the bottom. I can't really see, because it is so dark. Down to another mini ledge with a rap anchor. OK, at least we can pull the rope and rap again from there. Or, at least I only have to climb back up to there. I'm not sure if this is a mandatory station or not. I conside stopping and bringing the others down, but the ledge is about a foot wide and wet, so I continue down. Still looks like a long way to go. Finally I get far enough down to see that we'll be able to reach downclimbable terrain. whew! I run out of white rope, so I unclip and down climb. I give the rope a test pull -- we'll definately have to make sure the knot is over all the edges, or we'll be in lots of trouble. Polly comes down next. Polly isn't heavy enough for the two 10mm ropes to feed, so she has to force it through! As a bonus, I stole her headlight and gave her a hand flashlight. It was bright enough, but not very useful when you need both hands to force the rope through. She makes it down. Christiaan's turn. He does some exciting manipulation of the lines to get the knotted end over the edges while rapelling on them. Finally he's down. whew! now just a few hours of moonlight hiking out to the cars. out driving by 1am, back home at 3:45, with a 15 min stop for coffee. -dw |