While you poor suckers were at work on Thursday Otto and I went climbing. We laughed at the south bound backup on 522, poor suckers! On the way up I cleared the trail of recent blow down and Otto sawed some logs. He got most of the small ones. We wanted to check out the climbs off of Tombstone Ledge so at Otto’s insistence we headed up the 3rd class munge to the left of On Line. Don’t go this way! After some bushwhacking and Tarzan moves we couldn’t go much higher so we went back right and found a tree with a sling and rapped back down. We then climbed 5 pitches of On Line and rapped over to Tombstone Ledge. The ledge is a great place to hang out and take a break. To save weight Otto left the guide book behind. I went up the corner route, it turned into a piton seam with no bolt in sight so I backed off. Otto then went up what he thought was a 5.8 after a few pieces and some run out he got to the first bolt and bailed. I gave it a try on lead and didn’t feel good about it. As I hadn’t reached the bolt I had to do a tricky down climbing with ground fall potential. We then rapped back down to the packs and took a nice long break in the shade. We decided we had enough energy to do the first 2 pitches of Off Line. After some more chillin’ at the packs we headed down to the car picking up some bubba trash along the way. At the car we had a beer and a stretch and headed back to town. A great day for my first time out this year. Of course we were the only ones there, with the road to Darrington closed I expect to see more people there this year.
Otto hard at work.
Onsight runout.
Heading into the munge.