keenwesh

Trip: Index - Date: 6/5/2011 Trip Report: On saturday my buddy and I hatched a half baked plan to go climbing the next day. he's graduated and I'm a senior who said fuck that to prom, wayy too much money that could be spent on climbing trips, plus you're not even allowed to dance when you get there, bullshit. anyway we didn't get the go ahead to borrow a car until around 6.30 that night (parents are notoriously hard to persuade) so we quickly threw as much of our shit in the car as we could and also picked up another kid whos friends bailed on him for that night. we blasted up to index, arriving around 11. the temps were perfect so we decided to do a quick run up GNS in the dark. it was sweet. night climbing is real nice. we crashed out by the river around 12.30 and woke up way late. in the parking lot we proceeded to look like idiots by my half assed parking job (hey I can't really drive a stick) and since we packed everything up in 15 minutes we had no food, just some PBR. so we were having beers for breakfast. it's just how she goes. we took a quick run up the GM route. I want to go back for the heart of the country. The squeeze was kinda in the shade so I went for that. we rapped off and headed over to a clusterfuck on tarus, eventually I managed to set up a TR on terminal preppie and gave that a (pathetic) go. someone shit on the ledge and my friend stepped in it in his flip flops. so whoever left that there fuck you. seriously man, come on. Gear Notes: food would've been nice Approach Notes: all of 150 feet

burl, good work!

west country on stately pleasure is great. pretty much the only route in tuolumne that i've climbed though.

and just in case you don't already know, you will be slow as fuck when you first start aiding. budget at least 3 hours a pitch, even on A1. with all of 5 or 6 aid pitches under my belt I'm a speedy 2 hours or so per pitch. take it slow at first and get your aid sequence dialed so you don't even have to think about it and you will get faster. be wary of moving above pieces with your daisy still clipped in. static falls are no fun. oh, and have fun!

green dragon, bring 2 ropes and you can fix up to 4 pitches, but 3 is probably more feasible. it's 60m from the top of P3 to the top of P1, then you can drop your tagline from there to the ground. a portaledge makes it more fun though.

a large cliff

pressure chamber sounds kinda unpleasant... we decided against it after talking to curt and reading about it online. the iconoclast pitch was absolutely stellar, I want to go back to lead it.

we started on remorse. first pitch is 4th class, 2nd is a 5.8 traverse to the psychopath ledge. I remember what you told me about the traverse pitch onto the shield, man that is wild!

Trip: Snow Creek Wall - Iconoclast Date: 5/13/2011 Trip Report: With both my parents gone in the grand canyon, leaving me home for a week, I decided to jump at the opportunity and skip a complete week of school to go climbing. Marc Leclerc came down from Canada to join me. We planned to climb at index cause he wanted to try city park, but alas, the weather turned to shit. We still managed to climb Sloe Children (hardest 10d I've ever climbed, but sooo good!) and Marc got one short TR session on CP. We fled to leavenworth to escape the rain, spending our first day climbing at rattlesnake rock and when it started to rain we headed for peshastin. Damn that rock is sketch! marc went up some harrowing 10d "sport" climb on orchard rock, throwing down chunks of rock and skeptically clipping bolts. when the route disappeared into even more lose choss with no bolts in sight he backed off and I ran up the tunnel to retrieve the gear. I gave Curt Haire a call to see if he was home for a visit and he fed us dinner and offered to let us stay for the rest of our trip. He and Karen his wife are truly some of the nicest people I know. Thanks guys! The next day we just bouldered and kicked it around leavenworth, our rest day before SCW. Friday morning we woke up, late, goddamn cellphone alarms never work, and headed out. a huge section of forest at the creek crossing below the wall has fallen down all willy nilly and it took us a good half hour to thrutch around it up to the wall. as soon as we sat down at the base to eat breakfast we were surrounded by goats. They squabbled over my offering of urine and we took that chance to escape up the wall. Mawin' on some food Marc running from goats I headed off on the P2 traverse, this is a muchbetter pitch thn the normal BS to start OS Marc headed up Psychopath, the crux was tricky! he spent a while figuring out the moves. really a great pitch We then screwed up and broke the next section down into our own pitches. I took a easy ramp up a full 35 meters to the recent rockfall. marc led up a fun and not too hard steep corner another hundred feet or so to the base of the overhanging 5.11 face pitch. this belay was really uncomfortable. he fired off the strenuous and very powerful face, which protected really well. It was a nice contrast with psychopath, which is more techy and delicate. The 2nd to last pitch was my favorite, tricky but not desperate 5.10 face pulls around onto the shield. incredible runout knob climbing (~5.8) leads up to a single bolt after which a few good and bomber slingable knobs show up every 20 feet. the handcrack in the corner is fantastic too. it's really airy Marc originally wanted to give edge of space a go but we were cold and ready to get down. I took a handful of cams and headed up the last OS pitch. We chilled out on top, coiling the rope and looking out over the valley before starting the trudge out. we were kinda freaking out about ticks and I kept having to check myself. I found a couple and crushed them under rocks. I hate those things. Gear Notes: doubles up to #2, I forgot the 3 in the car but luckily it's not needed. possibly a few extras in the finger sizes. Approach Notes: trudge trudge trudge, check for ticks, repeat

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look at the picture in the TR. thats it. it's marks hook and he bought it used. I'll be in index or leavenworth all next week depending on the weather. I'd send mark a PM though. rocketparrolet

red piece of webbing. http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/226047_2043626328726_1186393944_32554984_778785_n.jpg

the aiders I have are hand tied ladders and I made the top step too high. I can get into the 2nd highest step pretty easily but on the actual top step I can't really stand up as the line clipping my waist to the piece is right around my knees. I just deal with it.

well I'm 6'6", haha I guess you must be a better nutter than me. heres a video I threw together. I filmed all this with a class project in mind so thats why I'm talking to myself like a bumbling idiot.

after the 2nd one blew I figured as much. P1 and P5 had sections of shitty rock, I didn't lead P3 or 4 but I think they're pretty solid. P2 would be almost impossible to cleanly aid without camhooks however.

we climbed the real first pitch. actually did it twice. we tried to do the whole route in a day a little over a month ago and only managed 2 pitches in 6+ hours. after that we rethought our strategy and went back with overnight gear and loads of shit. I did take two aid falls on the first pitch though. I wanted to try placing camhooks and the rock isn't very high quality, the first one popped a big chunk of rock out that almost nailed mark in the head. it was where the crack does a little jog to the left. the 2nd one was above that jog 2 placements, the hook was good, I stepped up on it, and I had time to see the rock around it start to fracture and say oh fuck before ping! and I took a 15-20 footer. (the cam in the crappy rock below it blew too) P2 being 12a looks like a total sandbag. that upper semioverhanging corner is THIN and you'd have to be placing micro RP's and shit blind. the flare right below it is super thin too. I do want to do the P4 roof. incredible air and position. jugging it was fun, climbing it would be off the hook.

yeah shiny bolts on top of each pitch. bomber. I hope to get on it next week if the weather doesn't go to shit like it's forecasted to.

does this mean you can drive in to 3 o'clock rock again?

Trip: Upper Town Wall - Green Dragon Date: 4/30/2011 Trip Report: Mark and I spent last weekend slowly plodding up our first real aid route. I think I'd done 2 aid pitches before this, mark had similar experience. I owe a big thanks to ScottP who was generous enough to lend me his ledge for the weekend. it made the night on the wall downright cozy. I packed up all my shit after school friday and hit the road by 4. Major traffic and other bullshit slowed my progress but managed to pick up the ledge and mark and still reach Index before dark. cooked up a quick dinner and passed out. The hike up was pretty shitty. Carrying tons of crap in a old river drybag with no hipbelt hurt. I flopped down at the base and threw Mark on belay. I'm taking a film lit class (2nd semester senior, really don't give a fuck about any form of academic rigor) And our current assignment is to make a documentary of some kind, I'm not sure I didn't really read the assignment sheet. anyway I figured I'd do some filming and narrating during the climb, so periodically I would pull out the cmaera and mumble some shit about how the piece I was on was scaring me, or how beautiful the weather was. Mark climbed the first pitch as it rained and hauled our shit up to the P1 ledge with the basic "haul system" I had devised, a pulley and a prussik. I jugged and cleaned the pitch as the sun came out and then wasted more time eating and filming. Eventually I got my stuff together and headed up P2. man those fixed pins in the seeping crack flex! I slowly trudged upward, soaking and covering the left side of my body in slime all the while. this skyhook was fun! it only took me 2 hours to get here! I continued on up the slime free and wider flake until forced to head back left, got a few bomber pieces and just went for it. 2 hook moves and many small RP's later I reached high and got a bomber 1/2 offset TCU in the pinscar right at the lip of the corner. I had fumbled the skyhook into the dirt at the base by this pint so I had to bathook the flake to reach the bolt just before the anchors. whooooo!!! No pics for this section, just lots of video. I'll post it after I put together my "documentary". Mark said I moved way faster through the thin section at the top then I did lower down. I guess I was too scared to mess around much. I hauled up my gear and set up the ledge while mark jugged, then threw him on belay for him to fire up the last pitch in only an hour and a half or so! he fixed the lead line and rapped past me down to spend the night on top of pitch one. I gave him the stove to cook up some hot food while I decided to just eat a can of pineapple and watch the sun set. I called both our mothers to let them know that we were alive. As mark was too far away for conversation I tried to impress a girl texting her about my big wall climbing prowess. she wasn't that into it, chicks don't dig climbing. I gave up on that conversation and zipped up my bivisack to get away from the drips. all tucked and ready for bed! the sun hit Index first mark got up and jugged past me, then i dismantled the ledge (with some difficulty) and followed up. Hanging belays are clusterfucks, especially with tons of aid gear. I was feeling like a pussy so I offered the P4 roof to mark, he jumped on the offer and headed off with much cursing from both of us, as was were kinda hanging together under a constant drip with all our shit tangled together. I hung out for a few hours while mark steadily but slowly cruised on up. Mark took a break from cruising for a photo We seem to be around the same speed aiding but he doesn't whimper as much on sketchy gear. He did a great job and I had fun jugging up the steep corner with considerable air under my ass. kneepads were key for me we had a short cluster at the hanging belay and I was off! The end of the bolt ladder is a fixed circlehead that scared the shit out of me cause like i said I'm a big puss. I bounce tested it for a while before gingerly stepping up. it's good I guess and even if it did blow theres a big old bolt 4 feet down. after the ladder it got wet and grovelly. some free climbing up wet stuff with aiders and shit getting caught on gear, a 15 or so foot mossy traverse that I stupidly let cause a ton of drag (maybe this is why it's the green drag-on?) then a wet 20 foot crack to the belay. mark jugged up and I ran up to the top of the wall. we topped out at 4 and quickly packed up and headed down Lovin' Arms and D/H. The last pitch of Lovin' Arms looks sketch! has anyone blown it going to the bolt? is it really not that hard? anyway we made 6 raps down to the ground packed up our shit and trudged down. Gear Notes: the kitchen sink, lots of small nuts and cams, doubles up to BD #2 and a #3. camhooks and a skyhook. maybe a bathook too? I'm sure mark will chime in on what he used. Approach Notes: not too bad. only took us 40 minutes. I was delirious from malnutrition and dehydration on the way down so I have no idea how long it took to deproach, but faster.

finish the route!

another question: how long does it take for the wall to dry?

I'm pretty sure it was repaired last fall, whether or not they fixed the taylor river bridge I have no idea. my guess is that it's snow free. the snow is almost gone on mt Si, should be dry!

quarry daze!!!!

great, thats what i like to hear. thanks dane!

I'm reading your blog right now and realized you've already put up a very good and comprehensive review of the batura. sounds like you dig them, I realized though that the boot I tried on is the first gen boot is there a fit difference between this and the new boot?