dberdinka

Trip: Zion - Various Date: 4/14/11 Trip Report: Another whirlwind spring trip to somewhere (hopefully) warm and sunny with an old friend. Last year was Yosemite, year before that Moab, this year we head to Zion. Presuming we can keep up the pace maybe that will become the rotation. With some careful flight selection we manage to eke out 3 full days and 2 half days of climbing on a 5 day roundtrip. The weather gods smile, no small feat for what has apparently been a rough winter and spring throughout the west. After scoring a sweet campsite in the park, the morning is spent shopping for mementoes for the children and getting postcards in the mail (which still don’t arrive until after I return ). With half a day to climb we head to Riddlers Delight, a six pitch supposedly good 5.10 route above the lodge at mid-canyon. Four pitches up the camera departs it’s carabiner bouncing off into the void, rendering an already forgettable experience that much more so. While there are no doubt many classic routes in Zion this is not one of them. The Watchman from camp Desert Shield Owen and I are no longer particularly well paired climbing partners. He’s a strong free climber while in the last year or so I’ve immersed myself in the seemingly obsolete practice of aid climbing and can now barely climb a ladder. So we choose a couple walls that split the difference. The mornings are cold and our supposedly early start becomes 8 am. Owen fires off the first 5 pitches of excellent freeclimbing to 5.11a in three hours. I jug with a pack full of aiders, water and umpteen sets of offset micronuts. After straightening out the inevitable clusterfuck of gear I’m off, short-fixing our way up the impeccable 450’ tall and slightly overhung headwall split by a single seam that ends with a perfect top out onto a flat ledge. Nine hours after starting we’re both on top, now all that’s left is to rap the route… The headwall looms above Bolt Ladder pitch Crux seams Great Topout The Temple of Sinawava Down Canyon to Angels Landing Iron Messiah A route I’ve always wanted to climb and excellent to boot! Long pitch after long pitch of awesome crack and face climbing with a short and mild 5.10 crux. Very similar too and every bit as high quality as the famous Epinephrine but maybe half as long. Definitely worth a visit. For once we get back to camp before dusk and actually get to putter around and relax along the banks of the river. Looking up into the main corner Crack in the Cosmic Egg A spectacular looking line that cleaves the center of the East Face of Mount Moroni. It starts with five pitches of aid up a slightly overhung 500’ wall split by a long, ridiculously thin seam followed by another five pitches of mostly free climbing. After burning up through the first three pitches our pace mellows and I manage to throw one of our rock shoes off the wall, once again relegating myself to jugging the once again high quality free pitches. A party above, that had fixed the first half the wall, decides they need to haul their daypack up a variation pitch of 5.7 described as having “loose blocks” in the guidebook with predicable results. Crack! A block suddenly appears on the skyline. Boom! It hits a corner exploding into pieces amid a cloud of dirt. Shhwoooop! Shrapnel the size of bread loaves screams down the wall. I’m fairly hidden on a ledge, Owen is exposed on the face. Everyone is ok. Just thinking about it still makes me feel sick. Is this just the risk we accept when climbing below others? Or is it too much to expect other parties to not haul a pack they could carry across a stretch of rock strewn with loose stacked blocks when there are people below? Regardless of who’s wrong or right the lesson is learned, don’t assume another party is going to have any consideration for your safety. We catch them at the last pitch were they’ve gone to great lengths marking some loose blocks they don’t want us to touch while they rap the route below us. Gee thanks guys, some of us actually figure that stuff out on our own…. Mount Moroni The Lower Wall The 300’ seam Another hanging belay Climbing through “The Wormhole” The Headache and Ashtar Command Already it’s time to leave but we have the morning. The Headache has to be one of the finest multipitch 5.10 trad climbs in existence. Three pitches of steep, perfect handcracks in a spectacular setting. Afterwards we have time to run up the “easiest” climb in the park, the two pitch 5.9 Ashtar Command Tower. Again fun climbing on great rock. Then roll across the desert to Vegas, sit at the airport well into the night when the plane forgets to show up, home at 1 am, work at 8 am. It’s over. Thanks Owen, I can’t wait till next spring…. The Headache Ashtar Command Good Times! Approach Notes: Cheap flight to Vegass and a 3 hr drive across the desert

As if anyone has aided that thing in the last 30 years......

I was down there over a week ago after some pretty nasty weather. Wet in the morning, by afternoon plenty of dryness. Seems like it should be good to go this week if you sleep in.

Just got done using an Imlay 6mm pull cord for climbing in Zion. We hauled (with a minitrax) a light bag a total of about 12 pitches and did about 25+ raps with it and it's held up admirably. It's not nylon rather polyester I think which makes it much more static and hence much easier to pull. It's wirey for sure and we used ropebags throughout to manage it at belays and on rappel. Relatively cheap at $75 for 200'.

That is A LOT of really nice looking rock.

Following link details out the various enviromental riders currently holding up budget negotiations. Eye opening to say the least. ...Sociopaths incapable of tieing their own shoes... Anti-EPA Riders

I actually sometimes feel obligated to climb with people Sol. Between the rain and my new "promotion" at work I'll be happy to get on Axtar Tower.

I'm headed to Zion next Wednesday.... Red Rocks is BLM land that will definitely close as well. A good part of climbing around Moab is federal land too. If everything does get shut down it will be curious to see how it's enforced. Whether it be soft in that you can still walk in or hard in that it gets you arrested. I'd think that in Zion you could still climb on The Watchman, the Three Marys or West Temple unmolested as they sit on the perifery of the park and are approached from town. Supposedly the road through the tunnel would be kept open which is where a lot of cragging is found. Though I could see them enforcing a closure there by not allowing any parking. Lots of sport climbing around St George as well including a sort of mini-"Red Rocks" at Snow Creek Canyon State Park that might entertain for a day or two. Best of luck.

If you plan on doing it anytime soon your pants will be wet though hopefully not from pee. FWIW I've always faced left?

I have not seen any 5/16" buttonheads in Squamish. Those are 1/4"s of which there are plenty as well as more than a few 3/16" buttonheads scattered about. Of the half-dozen 1/4"ers I've removed everyone has either come off with ridiculous ease (couple taps to a tuning fork) or quickly snapped off at the head. I would highly recommend not trusting rusty 1/4" buttonheads if you can help it. Greg Barnes at the ASCA claims (like you) that 5/16" are next to impossible to remove and are generally quite strong, not so much for the smaller sizes.

I had a 5mm but it was far to prone to tangles. Much happier with 6mm. I heard of some guys who essentially used a ball of twine as pull line for full rope raps in the Bugaboos, so I guess you could go far skinnier.

As is ... whatever the fuck...kind of gear that is you have wedged in that crack on bottom right.

Nice photos peeps. Here some original buttonheads from a belay on Humpty Dumpty. What those guys use to trust..... Placed in 1977 and removed 33 years later.

Amber

Wait! What? I thought it was determined that that was natural?

The wind was howling and the skys were threatening but the UTW was as dry as you could hope for on the last day of winter. By afternoon the LTW was pretty much dry as well. Very few people around...

Anyone been up there...today? Last year it good to go in March, this year seems like lots of snow in the foothills. Condition report much appreciated!

I can't read Chek either but I'm pretty sure I saw the words Smokin Hot in there. Cool photos.

Not to mention this TR either!

The "Selected Climbs in the Cascades" series has a venerable tradition of front and back cover shots that make no sense...

Hola amigos. Que pasa with you? So whats the best knot for tieing a static 6mm pull cord to a 10mm dynamic rope? Also.... Can anyone see any negatives to a 6mm Polyester Pull Cord? Imlay 6mm Pull Cord Absorbs way less water and polyester is more static than nylon. 4lb 1oz and $75.

Hey Sol. No doubt those guys are fully bad-ass and seem to make a greater effort than many to minimize the addition of bolts, but read that TR again while clearly brutally hard and runout... they still aided an existing route first they still bolted a free face variation (albeit a single bolt) they still scoped the top of the route by rapping in they still worked many pitches to get the redpoint You freed TRL last summer. If David Lama is proposing the same style as was used to establish the free-TRL why is one OK but the other isn't? Being that my bigwall experiences are relegated to standing to aiders I'm pretty luke warm to the whole bolted-face variation. My point is that David Lamas current plan is not outside what seem to be accepted norms for bigwall free climbing, yet he's being held to a different standard than everyone else.

Good points. One point I did not clearly make is that in the realm of bigwall free climbing, particularly in the alpine, there is no such thing as a ground-up free climbing ethic. No ones pulling their ropes and starting over everytime they whip and no ones onsighting 5.13 (well consistently at least). Rather they are rapping in or if thats not an option aiding climbs then working them for the redpoint (sometimes out of sequence). As Drew points out Kurt Albert and company put up numerous hard routes including Eternal Flame on Nameless Tower where they partially bolted cracks. Presumably those bolts when in before they freed the pitches which means on rappel. Todd Skinner also established a free line on Nameless Tower using similar tactics, aiding to the top first, adding bolts as needed then freeing the line.

What the Red Bull team did last year pissed off the locals due to what they perceive as local ethics being violated. I can't speak to what abortion they might be or might not be planning this year. Do you recall a couple years back when some Americans went down with the intention of chopping the Compressor Route? It also created a big shitstorm because the locals demanded that the route remain. Which way do they want it? Not to mention it's a bunch of north americans ranting about it right now....

Seems to me that if your ethical standard is dependant on some sort of aesthetic quality of the mountain you're standard has become highly subjective, i.e. meaningless. What David Lama did last year, convenience bolting an existing route, can no doubt be considered wrong based North American climbing ethics. What he plans on doing this year, presuming he was straight up with Haley and company, is considerable different and I'd argue long accepted by the climbing community in general. That is rap-bolting free variations to an existing aid route. That horse is long out of the barn with hardly a whimper. If you look at modern bigwall freeclimbing a majority of standard setting rock climbers have choosen to minimize uncertainty in exchange for maximum technical difficulty. The ground up ethic as applied to high end free climbs is dead if it ever existed in the first place. Look at El Capitan. Almost all (if not all) the free-routes have required bolted variations to go free; The Muir Wall, Dihedral Wall, Zodiac, Lurking Fear, The Nose, and now Mescalito. My understanding is that very little of this has been done on lead. The accepted style for freeing these routes is to rap in and work them on TR. Closer to home consider Thin Red Line on Liberty Bell. Certainly Liberty Bell is a mountain. A big, beautiful, well known maybe even famous mountain. Freeing this route required the addition of a well bolted variation to P4. Maybe someone with more intimate knowledge than I can chime in, but based on its appearance it certainly looked rap-bolted to me and furthermore rap bolting it with a power-drill would have been well within the accepted norms of route development at Washington Pass, at least over the last 15-20 years. The Bugaboos, another beautiful and iconic set of mountains, has seen the significant convienience bolting of rap anchors at the very least. The peaks around Banff have had their share of rap-bolted routes established. No one seems to mind that (at least any longer), yet it's exactly what Lama is proposing to do on Cerro Torre. Sure CT is one of the most iconic peaks in the world, but when we gladly accept rap-bolting on our own mountains I don't see how we can apply a different set of ethics to peaks elsewhere in the world. IMO: A plan that involves climbing a 30 pitch route on Cerro Torre without fixed lines and then have an adequate weather window to suss out, hand drill and then free what sounds like a 4+ pitch variation sounds ridiculousy optimistic or not the plan at all.