| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-06-13 00:08:12 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Polly Anikeeva Woody Hoburg Castleton Tower, Castle Valley, Moab, UT North Chimney 5.9 A lot to say about this one, but I'll keep it as short and informative as possible. Went up to check out the North Face, unsure of whether I belonged on it. Spent a long time debating whether to try it, basically by being slow (pace back and forth a few times, pull some gear out, drink some water, chalk up, switch some gear, pace some more, eat a granola bar, stare up at the climb, look at the guidebook, etc). I finally climbed half the first pitch but wasn't feeling confident and I was getting pumped. Decided to do the classic North Chimney instead. 5.9 for 4 pitches -- don't need to bring much, right? Ran up the beautiful route fairly fast. Some scary loose rock at the top, but we were careful and didn't dislodge anything. 4 total great pitches; relax on the summit for an hour or so. Time to start down: it's 3 double rope rappels down the north face to the ground. It's approx. 8:10 PM. First rap goes without incident for me; Polly notices the rope is twisting on her quite a bit, but she pushes the twists below her belay device and raps to me (and 2 bolt anchor) I begin to pull the rope, and notice increasing friction as I pull. After 20 feet of pulling, I'm hanging on the rope and can't get it to move. It's a strange feeling, and I get that worried look on my face. The knot is 20 feet below the anchor (130' above us). Above the knot, the rope has roughly 50 to 100 twists -- the strands are twisted around one another like braided hair. I attempt to untwist the ropes by crossing them back over one another and flicking up the rope. But from the bolt anchor I can only insert twists below the knot -- no luck getting the ropes untwisted. So, I prussik to the knot -- no problem cause we still have both rope ends. Hanging on prussiks below the knot, I manually spin around (with Polly keeping the ropes untwisted from below) until all twists are removed. Ropes now run straight. I clip an anchor and confirm that the ropes are running smoothly, then rap back to Polly. It's about 9 PM now. I again pull the ropes, but they do the same thing -- they get harder and harder to pull, and hopeless numbers of twists appear above the knots. I'm weighting with everything I've got and they don't budge. We have no headlamp. I'm physically exhausted, and there's not much light. We decide it's safer/easier to bivvy than for me to try to prussik up again tired and at night. We bivvy on an approx. 3X8 ledge, staying in our harnesses. Polly is wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a rain jacket; I'm wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a fleece. Temps are maybe 60? Polly? We are not in danger, but I'm pretty uncomfortable (or grumpy?). We get creative with ropes, shoes, chalkbags, and helmets to create our best stab at a tempur-pedic. Once the full moon rises, we have more light, but decide to hang out until morning before attempting to deal with the ropes again. Polly and I trade positions a few times throughout the night; I accept that we're hanging out and become less grumpy about not being able to fix the ropes. 5 am or so - enough light to work. I manage to see which way the ropes are twisted. I add twists to Polly's rope, instead of twisting the ropes around one another. By adding anough twists, all twists above clear, and we sucessfully pull the ropes without prussiking. We flake Polly's rope about a bajillion times to remove all twists, then rap to the ground, get rehydrated, and walk out. Lessons: bring headlamps even when the chance of needing them appears to be zero. windpants make summer bivvies much more comfortable, if it's possible to bring them. bring a granola bar even if you know you won't be hungry. if ropes are twisting bad, you have to add twists to a single rope instead of the pair. DUH. Polly's commets: Before the trip Woody promiced that we will have a date on top of Castleton...and instead we end up bivvying on the ledge... worst date ever On Saturday before my flight to Pittsburg I took my lab-mate climbing, and he in his best intentions wanted to coil the rope... and mountaineer's-coiled it. I was too busy writing a paper for my advisor which I had to submit to him before leaving, so I didn't untwist the rope. And since we didn't have any problems on Ancient Art, we kinda forgot about this. When I was in the middle of the rappel, the rope was twisting like crazy, but i tried to untwist it below the reverso and hoped that it would be OK. When Woody went up and rotated himself around the other strand, I actually didn't have all that much hope, since my rope has been really twisted, so in I kinda thought that we will have to go back up and flake the ropes on top. The bivvy was not that bad except for being super thirsty, hungry and cold. We took turns sleeping (or being a little more comfortable). I really wanted to keep Woody warm since he was pretty tired from climbing a rope. In the morning we just twisted the rope arounf its axis, trying to keep the twists below. After we finally pulled it down, we were relieved that we didn't need to climb the rope back up. Strawberry milkshake at Denny's and shower felt really good :-) |