slindsay

Awesome -- thanks for the information, Colin. Looks like sacking up for a long push is probably the right way to do it. My half dome time is a couple of hours longer (12 hours for the route, not counting the approach/descent), but we weren't really hammering it or anything. 24-36 hours on route seems reasonable and fairly sane. Mind if I PM you for more route info?

We were actually planning on setting up a camp on the west side, doing the Beckey-Chouinard first, resting a day or two (or waiting for the weather), then trying All Along the Watchtower. The B-C looks pretty awesome as well, more big alpine crag route than big alpine wall route. Flying in would be a pretty choice way to travel. We have about two weeks, not a huge amount of time, so it would probably be best to arrange the flight-sharing before hand. Any other groups feel like splitting a flight? It would be nice to set up camp with a bunch of booze and good food -- kind of cheating, but I'm not proud.

Heh, yeah, realized that after I posted it -- was looking through the guidebooks late last night and my slow, reptilian brain was evidently confused. Minus ten points for me. I corrected the original post. It is now sans-dumbassitude.

A friend of mine and I are planning on climbing in the Bugaboos for two weeks in August. Looking through the guide books and digging through tubes of the interweb for route information, the west face of the howsers kind of jumped out at me. Of the west faces routes, All along the watchtower looks like the most reasonable choice since it seems to have less aid climbing (in fact goes free at 12-, supposedly). How feasible is this route to do in a push? I'd prefer not to slog pigs/ledge back there -- I imagine the approach is brutal enough without full wall gear -- but if it's necessary, so be it. So, has anyone here done the route? If so, how much time did it take and how much were you freeing? Actually, any beta is welcome: approach, route, descent, etc. Is it as awesome as it looks? How does it stack up against something like Half Dome's Regular NW Face? *edited because I don't know north from south*

I was out at Bat Wall yesterday to get my perennial beatdown from Dracula and noticed two unpleasant issues: Stingy, flying insects have re-colonized Bloodline More run-off dirt than usual? For the first, how was the bee's nest removed originally? Assuming the park service has no issues with removing the nest again, are there any anaphilacticly-immune volunteers willing to relocate our flying friends? Anybody party to the original beehive removal have any input? Second, I haven't been climbing at Broughton's for long (second season here) -- is Bat Wall usually covered with dirt in the early season? I climbed there a bit last fall and it seemed a bit dirty, but not unreasonably so. Yesterday, however, it was dirty enough to dissuade me from finishing Dracula (well, that plus a sub-optimal power-to-weight ratio). Does that side of the wall clean up naturally over the course of the season or should I think about buying a very large brush (pressure washer? mop and bucket? Clean thoughts and hope?)