Index, Index, Index

[Gary_Yngve]

I've been to Index three times in the past two weeks:

 

trip 1:

 

Tom Lewis (tomtom) and I drove up Thurs afternoon. First on our agenda was a new route to the top of the left upper wall that Darryl had told me about a month earlier (DGS, 5.9, 3p)*.

 

We then headed down to Godzilla and got up to the base of Sloe Children when we decided that it getting too late for me to attempt leading it... clearly I would not have wimped out had we not "wasted" time eating so many blackberries!

 

trip 2:

 

Baldwin Goodell and I headed up Saturday morning to do DH/LA. We got to the base of the route and the Mounties Bigwall students were aiding the first pitch on the way to the second pitch of Town Crier. Instead of being the quintessential cascadewhiner.commer and cursing them out and threatening to kick their asses, we climbed DGS and returned to an empty route. It was a hot day, and it definitely made things harder for us.

 

Baldwin had done the route once before, and I was a DH/LA virgin. On the crux of pitch 3, where folks recommend offset nuts, I finagled two small regular nuts (somehow the offsets got left in our pack) in there but didn't like their chances of ripping with an outward pull (I had a green alien in five feet below, but there was a small ledge 12 feet below), so I did a point of aid. On the start of pitch 4, Baldwin had to hang on a piece (he onsighted the pitch the first time). High on pitch 5, I took a short whipper when I greased off while downclimbing to a better stance to rest. We all followed fine -- I think the heat just sapped us and made our fingers sweaty.

 

The crazy thing about this day were how many folks I knew. In addition to the Mounties, I bumped into Alasdair Turner and Mountain Madness Chris (thanks for the beeers!), Eric Gratz (eric8) and Scott Whittomb, and Emily Lang's gang (Dave Burdick, Pax, and Olyclimber were nearby). Turns out Tom Lewis and Eva were there as well, though I didn't see them.

 

trip 3:

 

Jesse Heineman and I went up to Index Thursday morning for a few hours. We warmed up on some stuff on GNS and then went over to Thin Fingers. Jesse led it in fine style. I followed up and completely flailed at the bouldery start to the 2nd pitch. I did the right-side bypass and followed the rest of the way without incident. Then we went over to Saggitarius. I had never done it before -- just heard it's scary reputation -- so Jesse set me off on the route up to just below the 11b roof. It was pretty burly, more liebacking than I'm used to, but it seemed that whenever things got really hard/scary, some magical hold appeared. Jesse then cranked the 11b roof, and I flailed helplessly on it. Clearly I need to boulder and sportclimb more to get stronger at trad.

 

 

 

*

DGS starts at a big tree just to the right of Biology of Small Appliances. The first pitch (5.8) is short, traversing right for ten feet and going up a crack to a big ledge. Second pitch (5.9) is close to 50m, going up the right of neighboring cracks for 15-20 ft, and crossing to the left one for the remainder of the way. Third pitch (5.7) is short. Two ropes to rap. Doubles of 2.5" to 3.5" aren't truly necessary (there's some smaller cracks to the side while climbing the wide crack) but may be recommended for peace of mind.

[Gary_Yngve]

I should add that there's a pretty mangled .75 C4 2/3 up Godzilla that's been there for at least two weeks.