[TR] Prusik- S Face, not quite 8/8/2004

[Gary_Yngve]

Climb: Prusik-S Face, not quite

 

Date of Climb: 8/8/2004

 

Trip Report:

We got off-route on the rightward-traversing pitch that leads to the base of the chimney system. Instead, we ended up at the base of a beautiful left-facing corner with a handcrack in the back of it. The crack fizzled at times, requiring insecure face moves above pro. We ended up on a ledge at the base of the final headwall of the SW face. Apparently we ended up on the 1984 S Face route, with the climbing above looking really damn hard. We bailed, discovering brand-new belay bolts going down the SW face... except they were 35 meters apart! After various hijinks and downleading the bottom pitch, we were on the ground again.

 

We definitely want to go back and do the route (Burger-Stanley) for real... the advice we'd give is:

 

1) Nelson's description is a little misleading -- he describes pitch 3 (which is really pitch 2 with a 60m rope) as going up, tending slightly to the right. We went more than slightly to the right and thought that we overshot the going-right part.

 

2) If you look carefully from the ridge between Temple Lake and Lake Vivian, you can make out the ramp of trees that's the start of the traverse pitch, and you can make out the chockstone of the chimney. Keep that in mind to guide yourself on the route.

 

Gear Notes:

We cleaned the following off the mountain (we weren't the only ones to get lost up there):

 

a stuck rope that we had to cut from a crack

 

several biners

half a dozen nuts

bunch of slings

 

There's a fixed 3.5 Camalot 20 feet off the ground in the 5.8 crack... we worked on it for a minute or two, but couldn't make any progress.

 

Approach Notes:

good swimming in Lake Vivian

[Szyjakowski]

the 1984 route is probably the offroute section you climbed....that area is hard to distinguish between what is what...could be part of Lady Godiva too. anyone know how to get in touch with kearney please PM me.

Thanks.

[John Frieh]

Good work!

 

S: Michael Layton is one person that has Kearney's info.

[Alex]

Maybe this will help

 

http://www.mountainwerks.org/alexk/art/prusiksfaceroute.jpg

[eric8]

i thought Lady Godiva was to the left of burgner stanley? not to the right because you can make out the lady siloutted on the west ridge which you won't be able to do if it was to the right of it

 

sorry i don't have easy access to caj at this time

[Alpinfox]

Gary,

You got lost on the SF of Prusik!?!?!? BWAHAHAHA!

 

 

You should have made sure your partner didn't leave this in the car:

 

 

And here is Alex's version (to save you the trouble of clicking back and forth):

[texplorer]

If I would have known there was that much booty up there I would have done that variation.

 

A couple of years ago I soloed the west ridge and was downclimbing more on the north side and found a cool old chouinard nut. A prized booty piece!

[Alpinfox]

Actually, we only found three nuts, 5 biners (two of which we left behind on rappels), the rope (which was non-usable but I carried out), and four (usable) sewn slings. One of the belays had four spectra slings that were totally decayed. I'd never seen spectra slings that old/sunbleached. A couple were almost completely unravelled and looked like hair.

 

I have attached a version of the above picture showing our (MY) poor route finding.

 

Also, here is Marcel Duchamp's painting of the South Face:

[Szyjakowski]

i thought Lady Godiva was to the left of burgner stanley?

it is to the left...gary and pax did not go right like they should have when following the S/B route..

 

Hey LAYTON hook me up with Kearney's Info..thanks.

 

BTW: Gary/Pax- that 3.5 has been in the 5.8 crack for a number of years now...not mine but a few of those nuts and biners are from the rapel off the pedestal.

Edited August 14, 2004 by Szyjakowski

[pope]

 

Where do you think you guys were on this photo?

[Dru]

...and is that big red stain on the right blood???

[Gary_Yngve]

Where do you think you guys were on this photo?

 

Hey Pope, check out Pax's attachment in one of the previous posts. It shows our route overlayed with the B-S route.

 

Here are some more pics:

 

The beautiful LFC with the stuck rope:

 

 

 

Pax on the second rappel.

 

[Szyjakowski]

how high up were the rap stations and where on main photo?

 

where on main photo is the beautiful lFC you mention?

 

thanks.

[Mr._Natural]

looks like a rfc to me.

[Alpinfox]

Sizzy,

 

See attachment.

 

LFC = Left Facing Corner

 

GAoBA = General Area of Bad-Assedness. The GAoBA is visible as the very steep (overhanging) white headwall above me in the rappelling picture ("Pax on second rappel").

 

End of Rap = Guess.

[Szyjakowski]

thanks pax.

so you guys ended up rapping down the main SB route after the yellow dots ended?

or did you continue down the west face?

[Alpinfox]

From the highest yellow dot we rappelled pretty much straight down the large "Super-dihedral" on the western side of the south face. We were too far west to be on the SB route.

 

I edited the above attachment to show where our rappel ended. Take a look.

Edited August 16, 2004 by Alpinfox

[Szyjakowski]

do you mean the shadowed area?

where are the bolted stations (yellow dots?)

thanks.

[Alpinfox]

Jeez!!! You are makin' me work here!

 

The yellow dots are our off-route belay spots on the way UP. We rappeled further to climber's left in the large corner/dihedral system; the "shadowy area". The highest yellow dot was a bunch of slings around a horn. I backed this up with a piece of the stuck rope we took from the crack. It's a bombproof belay/rap station. One biner left there. 35m below this and off to the climber's right was the first bolted rap station. Two new 3/8" bolts with Fixe hangers and rings. About 10m below that was a single bolt. About 10m below the single bolt was another single bolt. We rapped off of that single bolt leaving a biner (backed it up with gear in the crack for first rappeler). 35m below that single bolt was another two bolt rap anchor. A 30m rap from there got us to a ledge about 15-20m above the ground marked "End of Rap" in my picture. I found a rusty, bent, 1/4 spinner there.

 

WHEW!

 

BTW: For some reason the changes I made to the above attachment weren't showing up on the upload, so I changed the file name and re-attached it to the post above. It seems to be working now. I'll attach it to this post as well for convenience, but they are the same thing.

 

Edited August 16, 2004 by Alpinfox

[Gary_Yngve]

some more shots of the SW face:

 

 

[Szyjakowski]

hey, hows if feel to be working?

i am working too. can't you tell?

thanks for the info pax...that helps a ton.

i wonder who put those rapel stations in??? anyone know the answer to that question? tia

[larrythellama]

i think it was the cool guys on from the cover of the metolius catalog from last summer?

[Szyjakowski]

give me my book back!

[mattp]

If anybody is going there in the near future, take my TOPO for a test ride, and shoot me some comments (I'm particularly interested in trying to show the start of the climb and the right-trending pitch where Gary went astray).

 

web page

[pope]

I don't know about upgrading to 5.10a on the last pitch. Sure it's a hard and sustained pitch, especially after grunting up the previous pitch (which I thought was harder) and after the long hike in. Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I think that if the last pitch of Burgner-Stanley existed right off the ground, right next to Godzilla, it would probably be considered the easier between the two. I think the last pitch on the Burgner-Stanley has multiple 5.9 moves with adequate rests in between. For another comparison, think about classic 5.10- pitches such as Davis Holland (pitch 2) and Caboose at the Malamute.