[TR] Minute Man & Lexington Tower- Minuteman & East Face of Lexington 8/7/2005

[Kyle_Flick]

Climb: Minute Man & Lexington Tower-East Faces of Minuteman & Lexington

 

Date of Climb: 8/7/2005

 

Trip Report:

Due to the Teanaway Fire, NOLSe, Jason and I aborted our plans on Stuart and instead headed up the next day to WA Pass. At 7:30 a.m. we started up Minute Man and except for the oatmeal, runout gully pitch that leads to the stellar short 5.10(b) crack, the rock was clean and solid. The catwalk at the top that approaches the Concord Tower for the 1st rap was awesome.

Once we rapped down to the base, we had ample time to do Lexington as it was only 1:30 p.m. Here too the rock is solid and clean. Since NOLSe had done the route the year before, we wasted little time on route finding and tried to combine pitches with his 70m ropes. I experienced hopeless rope drag trying to combine pitches 4 and the traversing pitch 5--while I could pull the 5.9 move, I had to set up a hanging belay about 25' below the regular belay that starts the offwidth/chimney pitches. NOLSe did a nice job combining the two nasty upper chimney pitches (harder than the chimney pitch on CBR IMHO). We topped out at 7:30 p.m. and had a nice walk off descent back to the car before dark.

 

Gear Notes:

Brought big gear up to #5 BD Cam (but didn't use) The 2x6 in the offwidth is solid.

 

Approach Notes:

No snow. Easy approach and descent--nice to have two cars.

Edited August 9, 2005 by Kyle_Flick

[telemarker]

Nice going Flick. It's nice to see an aging climber keep up with the youth and pull his share of the load ...but shouldn't you be taking a break sometime here? Take a weekend off for Gawdssake. Work on the landscaping around your office, it looks neglected.

[Illini]

It's nice to see an aging climber keep up with the youth and pull his share of the load.

 

Ha! It was Kyle who said yes to NOLSe's idea of running the trail out not I.

It was good climbig with ya, Kyle. After a 14 hour day it was 6 hours from WA Pass to my girlfriends bed in Portland. Here's to NOLSe's coffee addiction (yea yea I know you can quit when ever you want, NOLSe).

[thelawgoddess]

hanging belays ... ugh.

[John Frieh]

Take a weekend off for Gawdssake. Work on the landscaping around your office, it looks neglected.

 

 

Good times alpine cragging!

[Illini]

Pitches 3 (runout oatmeal) 4 (short 5.10) and start of 5 (nice 5.8)

 

Kyle starting Pitch 5

 

 

Kyle starting Pitch 5 (detail)

 

Thanks to fgw for taking these and then sending them to us.

[rolla]

Kyle, would you describe how you got down? I just did this climb on Monday (8/22/05). I highly recommend the way up. I thought I would die on the way down (rapping off of dead and too small trees strewn with dirty old slings) and (accidentally pulling truck wheel sized boulders down to where i was standing).

[fgw]

We were a party of 2 behind Kyle and the others. The way we got down was as follows (all raps were double rope):

 

1. rap off "far" end of catwalk into a loose class 3 gully (that's to the right as you're facing the formation from base). Lotta crap fell on us while pulling ropes here.

2. scramble down about 100 feet (loose and a bit exposed class 3) to a good tree on a large ledge (this is right and level with start of the .10 crack pitch).

3. 3 (maybe 2??) double rope raps off of good fixed rap stations to the base. We were roughly following the right side of buttress (near gully separating MM from LB).

[rolla]

 

Hmmm. We must have ventured too far right (from the perspective of looking at the rock from the base). This was our experience:

 

rap 1. Off the back down to the gully that is right of the climb if facing the base. I think we rapped only 1/2 rope length.

 

rap 2. After nearly pulling a boulder onto myself, having said boulder smash into one of our ropes (fortunately not destroyed) and scrambling maybe 20~30 feet down and 60~70 feet further right (if facing base), we found a decent sized tree with slings and rapped off of that. we left an additional sling and two biners.

 

rap 3. this one sucked. after some more sketchy downclimbing we ended up rapping off of a 4-inch diameter dead tree with old slings attached and backed up by a loose boulder.

 

rap 4. full double rope rap off a 3-inch diameter horizontal tree with some more old slings.

 

So I guess in retrospect, the things that bothered me about the descent were: we weren't sure if we were on-route and so had uncertainty until the end, we had to rap off of less than bomb-proof anchors, and we were deep in a boulder strewn gully where everything wanted to come down.

 

I would appreciate any more detail you might have on how you got down and where we could have gone wrong.

[Kyle_Flick]

Rolla,

I think fgw's description mirrors what we did. Looking at your description, it seems that after the first rap you'd want to go down left (climber's left facing the route) instead of right as you did. This places you about 20' from the base of the 5.10 pitch. With double ropes we did two more raps to get to the base.

[rolla]

thanks Kyle and fgw,

 

Mystery solved. Let my experience be a warning to future climbers of this route. Based on my experience and reading what you both had to say... I recommend bringing some extra webbing in case existing webbing is trashed and avoiding at all costs veering too far to the right (when looking up) into the trashy gully where you would also be rapping off of trash and praying to your god that the dead tree will not fail killing you and/or your partner.

 

p.s. i don't think the 10b was 10b. j-tree 9 at best. the 8 above was similar to the 8 on outer space but w/o the friendly chicken heads available to folks not comfortable with a splitter crack.