[TR] Smith- Trezlar & Tale of Two Shitties 9/10/2005

[fgw]

Climb: Smith-Trezlar & Tale of Two Shitties

 

Date of Climb: 9/10/2005

 

Trip Report:

With the crappy weather forecast for the Cascades for last weekend (and Sawtooths and Nor. Cal. and pretty much all directions we could think of), my wife and I headed to Smith for a day cragging. Wanted to try two lines on Mesa Verde Wall: Trezlar (a 4-star dihedral) and Tale Of Two Shitties (a 3-star 3-pitch route just next door).

 

The weather was a bit shakey with drizzle dropping clouds rolling thru. Started off with Trezlar. The original 1st pitch is not great - it's 5.7 but the rock is a little bit chossy (not that bad) and the pro is not inspiring. Cosmos (a 10a sport climb just right of the original start provides a better option IMHO). Pitch 2 however was stellar! 80+ feet of clean and beautiful dihedral climbing! 2/3rds of the way up there is a hollow-sounding block on the right that could make for a very bad day should it ever come loose. Dihedral starts with a great hand crack and when the crack narrows down to fingers, plenty of nubbins appear for the feet (quite reasonable at 10a). We rapped off the bolted anchor on top with two 60 meter ropes (probably a 160+ foot rappel).

 

 

Decided to try Tale of Two Shitties next door as the sky showed some blue for a moment. The first pitch (5.7) crosses some shakey (nothing bad though) rock just before you reach the base of the dihedral of pitch 2. An uncomfortable gear belay follows. Pitch two is great! It starts with a 5.8-ish dihedral (nice hands) which gets progressively thinner/harder higher up. The crux is a short, right trending crack through a bulge (10a) near top of pitch. Bolt belay on a good ledge follows. The last pitch starts with a balancy .9 face in a small dihedral and climbs past two bolts. There's some terrain above the 2nd bolt but the going gets progressively easier. Bolt bleay atop a huge ledge follows. As my wife was topping out on the pitch, full-on rain started. One single rope (back to top of P2) and one double rope raps brought us down.

 

 

On Sunday, we wanted to squeeze in one more route before heading home. Wanted to try Paper Tiger (10a) on the Red Wall. Got kind of spooked when I pulled off a chunk of rock low on pitch one and backed off. In retrospect, the rock thru. the difficult sections looks OK from below. Will try it again next time.

 

Gear Notes:

Cams up to #3 Camalot (optional #3.5 for a pocket on pitch 1) + nuts (small to med.) for Trezlar.

 

More of the same for Tale.

 

Approach Notes:

 

Edited September 12, 2005 by fgw

[Cobra_Commander]

A TR for Trezlar, now I've seen it all. Another option for the start is to climb the 10ish sporto route to the left of Trezlar and rap over to the start of the nice second pitch.

[jlag]

Nice work Radek, ignore the banter. I would love to meet up with you guys again for some craggin. Drop Josh a line.