[TR] Smiffistani Rawks - A Space-Monkey's Solo-Creep on the Monkey Face 3/30/2009

[ivan]

Trip: Smiffistani Rawks - A Space-Monkey's Solo-Creep on the Monkey Face

 

Date: 3/30/2009

 

Trip Report:

so, with several days to myself aid-soloing round der monkey wand, starting on the west face i had occasion to compile the following:

 

WHY CLIMBING ALONE IS BETTER THAN WITH A PARTNER

1. you get to climb with your favorite partner, the one you can't hear snore

2. you never have to turn off your mp3 player

3. you don't have to share any of the 3 liters of merlot you brought

4. no one casts greedy glances at your smokes or your goddamn ham and bacon and chicken and black olives and peppers and dijon sammy

5. you don't end up your trip with a 1000 pictures of your ass (or of anything else for that matter )

6. you get to lead all the fun pitches

7. you can gut-sing toto n' phil collins songs w/o fear of being buried in a dumpster shortly thereafter

8. you can turn the part of the west face cave that would normally hold your partner into a fire-pit

9. you can get pissed and pass out at first dark, only to wake up feeling totally refreshed at 230 a.m., light up a giant fire, howl at the moon and generally just Get Wierd

 

and finally...

10. when you get to the top of your jug line, just underneath the bivy cave, only to discover the entire kermantle or the rope has been cut and several of the inner strands already ground through, the girlish shrieks of surprise and horror you emit in a machine-gun stacatto rhythm don't get remembered

 

and why not a #11? you don't have to worry about totally man-showing it when attempting to shit into a plastic bag

 

lessons i learned:

- when solo-aiding in strong wind, divide each lead/haul rope into 5 sections, clove hithc them to a biner, then clip them to your harness, one rope per side, stacked with the end of the rope the furtherst back (this also works well in strong wind when trying to do a giant double-rope rappel)

- as you get higher up a pitch in strong wind, periodically clove hitch the haul line to gear in the wall (leave slack in the system so that you can rap the climbing line later, undoing hte clove hitches as you descend)

- for christ's sake, find some way to protect jagged edges from cutting the rope and killing you!

- carrying emergency prusiks alwasy a good idea - upon seeing the horror show that was my jug line i put a bachman knot on the swinging haul-line so that it would catch me if the jug line failed suddenly

- rappel w/ the pig on runner girth-hitched to your harness and dangling between your leg

- when clipping in on overhanging bits, use a long runner instead of a quickdraw so that its easier to clean

- using a swivel on the haul bag is nice!

- a traxion device makes hauling a breeze

- hanging your shit-sack off the bottom of the haulbag when lowering doesn't work (donny doesn't like to recall what happened afterwards - it made donny sad, very sad)

 

fun memories of the trip:

- strooong wind and sharp cold - i felt guilty of shirking the alpine this spring break, until i found myself in a deep, steely gray place, blustery and grim, remote-feeling and scared

- catching the mouse i shared the cave with on 3 occasions, picking him up by the tail and gibbering at him in russian, only for the little bastard to come right back again after i set him down

- watchign the farmers across the river burn their fields - wherever they walked, sheets of fire would spring up beside them

- a coyote chorus at 3 in the morning

- hooooot, hoooooot owls

- finding a single wedge of well seasoned fire wood left by some previous party, then warming myself up in the morning by reducing the whole thing into kindling with a nut tool and a hammer

- reading the exciting conclusion of "the 13 gun salute" which ends w/ an apocolyptic pirate battle between jolly-tars and godless malays and dayks

- listening to this tune over and over while gearing up in the roaring gale to get off the monkey with all my shit - kinda gloomy, eh?

[video:youtube]

- screeching sea-shanties like these:

[video:youtube]

[video:youtube]

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ5Lupkvgfs

- miracoulsy driving 100 miles on an 1/8 of a tank of gas after spacing on the refill before entering The Wilderness

 

 

Gear Notes:

volume 4 of patrick obrian's aubrey/maturin series (which it is pages 4143 to 5353 of "the 13 gun salute" "the nutmeg of consolation" "the truelove" and "the wine-dark sea") - incidentally, this large, sturdy book held up well to being crushed and made a most excellent platform for setting boiling hot cans of ravioli on

1.5 lt of water

3 lt of merlot

a pouch of drum tobacco

a gaint sammy

2 cans of chicken n' corn chowder

2 cans of kung fu panda style spaghetti-o's

2 cans of mandarin orange slices in syrup

2 dozen homemade chocholate chip cookies

 

Approach Notes:

using asterik pass with a 100 lbs of shit on my back was essentially a failed suicide attempt

Edited April 1, 2009 by ivan

[geoff]

Nice job yo. Easy on them ropes.

[ivan]

also useful - leaving 3-4 meters of extra rope below the tie-point for the haul bag to use to lower the pig out with - the image of the bag swinging out into space was fantastic one - like releasign haley's fucking comet! this giant, bright thing, totally at the whim of newton, whipping aroudn in great predictable arcs through the vacoum of cold, dark space

[corvallisclimb]

it was sweet watching you, nice work dude!

[pink]

it was sweet watching you, nice work dude!

 

was he naked?

 

 

[ivan]

it was sweet watching you, nice work dude!

 

was he naked?

 

emotionally? deeeeeeeeeply.

[wayne]

I thought there was no man showing?

Great TR I, May I link it from my solo page?

[ivan]

I thought there was no man showing?

Great TR I, May I link it from my solo page?

no man showing in the company of a partner fo'so - then it's eyes right motherfucker!

 

feel free to link it wayne, though it's a trifle lame w/o pix? maybe the moby dick links (which if you skipped, you made a serious mistake) will serve? i particularily like howling the first shanty while hauling!

[ivan]

the impetus for my tr title, incidentally, came from my freshly shorn head and framed-out look on life from late, so well rendered here (and goddammit, i can't decide if only being able to find a kraut version of it on the 'tube is annoying or really kinda cool - lord knows the nazi's oughta be able to dig on "fight club" big time, eh?)

[video:youtube]

[JosephH]

1: "Using asterik pass with a 100 lbs of shit on my back was essentially a failed suicide attempt"

 

Been there, hated that.

 

2 : "rappel w/ the pig on runner girth-hitched to your harness and dangling between your leg."

 

This is where the much maligned, misunderstood, and / or ignored Petzl Shunt totally shines. Shunt on the belay loop, rap device up a trad draw's height above it attached to the belay loop above the Shunt, bag hangs off the rap device - not any part of you; never touch the rap device when rapping, only the Shunt.

 

3 : "for christ's sake, find some way to protect jagged edges from cutting the rope and killing you!"

 

 

 

[underworld]

for christ's sake, find some way to protect jagged edges from cutting the rope and killing you!

 

the cool thing with soloing is you get the luxury of omitting the sharp edges from the system. or should i say, isolating them. take along with you some long skinny prussiks and below sharp edges - hang the prussik off a good piece of gear and pull up the slack (if any) in your lead line. this will also take up some of the deadweight of the rope and preventing it from feeding too much penalty slack thru your grigri (or whatever solo device you're using). what this does is make a new point that is holding your lead line while you jug and clean while keeping the rope loose over the sharp edge above.

 

see: artwork

Edited April 2, 2009 by underworld

[billcoe]

 

Last week, now known as the "Holy Mammut Day". (spelling holey?)

 

Nice story Ivan. PS, I believe you would have gotten bonus points for mouse tossage.

[kevbone]

Pictures?

[ivan]

Pictures?

clearly you didn't read #5?

[ivan]

good ideas too joe - i already figured i could go cheap-skate and use chopped up sections of garden hose as rope protector - i actually had ducktape and used that on subsequent pitches where it seemed right

 

underworld - thanks too - i did in fact notice the appalling tendency the higher i went for my gri-gri to pay out huge amounts of slack - i'm intrigued about the prusik system you describe and need to go find somewhere to put it to the test as i'm generally too retarded to understand anything simply by description

 

bill - wtf? how did you shred your rope at the anchor? did it have anythign to do w/ how shit-faced you look in your pic: was that the farside?

[Ishmael]

one thing I have used in a pinch to protect the rope is one or both of my gloves. Your hands will take a bit more of a beating but it is way better then trashing your rope...

[JosephH]

Ivan rebelaying periodically on the way up will keep the slack from running through your self-belay device. Heavy rubberbands girth hitched will do it the trick quite well or use longer skinny slings so they can ride up clean in a fall.

 

Basically the same sort of rebelaying underworld is talking about to isolate around sharp edges, but for a different purpose.

[alexbaker]

Nice dude!

[kevbone]

Pictures?

clearly you didn't read #5?

 

 

No I did not read #5. I don’t usually read any trip report. Way too fucking boring. Pictures are where it’s at. IMO

[billcoe]

Nah, this was just a "shit happens" thing I'm sure. It was there, with Kyle @ a week plus or so ago. The shitfaced this is just the look I'm going for these days I think. No substances at all unless you count Heed energy drink.

 

I've always wondered if a piece of tubular webbing with a small tab of tape to hold it would work as a protector. Never tried it. I will say that I use the orange spiral protectors routinely and they can and do move. I'd moved this over the the previous route, "The Trembling" as you can see, lots of loose rocks and blocks to chop a rope. The block I'm on there looks ready to pitch. Slim Pickins short version.

 

 

Jim had started shoveling with me on this new one.

Here's what the protected speciaes dormant Himalayan Blackberry bushes look like.

Scott (seen here with the lil dawg) Jim and I had put in the anchor once we could see what was what, great location for a rap point, straight to the dirt, no edges as it's on the end of a ledge.

 

Kyle and I put in a couple of temporary jingus cams so we could move over and clean this ledge.

 

 

From this picture I think that we can surmise that Kyle did this.

[billcoe]

Since this is an Ivan thread, here's a pic I snuck of "Ivan the Amazing" out there Feb 2009.

 

 

 

Blue Sky!

[ivan]

No I did not read #5. I dont usually read any trip report. Way too fucking boring. Pictures are where its at. IMO

well, check out the moby dick videos if nothing else - you like music at any rate...

 

i like the pic bill! at that distance you can't tell i'm frenching the gear too bad

[ivan]

Ivan rebelaying periodically on the way up will keep the slack from running through your self-belay device. Heavy rubberbands girth hitched will do it the trick quite well or use longer skinny slings so they can ride up clean in a fall.

 

Basically the same sort of rebelaying underworld is talking about to isolate around sharp edges, but for a different purpose.

would clove-hitching the lead line into a good piece in route work just as well? or would it be somehow more difficult to clean the pitch later on?

[billcoe]

LOL, I had that pic as well but didn't want to say anything.

[underworld]

bad idea... all of a sudden you just skyrocketed your fall factor. assuming that that piece can take an upward pull, that is. either way, it's not good. i've hear/read stories of people falling on the next placement and welding that clovehitch to the biner.

 

 

And, a key to the prussik thing is that you use a long one such that if you fall anywhere above it... the rope stretch does not pull the prussik up to and pull out that piece.

 

oh yeah.. and btw - nice job on the send...

Edited April 2, 2009 by underworld