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[TR] Yosylum - Mideast Crisis V 5.7 A2 5/25/2009


ivan

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Trip: Yosylum - Mideast Crisis V 5.7 A2

 

Date: 5/25/2009

 

Trip Report:

my valley cherry! after many hibernal hijinx i fancied meself fit to duck down to the Big Ditch (which i dug, bitch!)

 

the tale contained forewith, to borrow from the Bard, is that told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing - you have been warned- it features the misanthropic machinations of your friend and humble narrator, the wise ivan, and his godless, guilless, heathenishly pidgin-tongued coolie, seann (moof) - it may be summarized into the following chapters:

 

acte 1 - thursday:

- spastic stuporous 12 hour drive from p-town ends at 5 a.m. at harden flat, just outside the yosylum gate, where we sleep for 3 hours until the sun demands we get going

- we climb the first 3 pitches of washington column's mideast crisis (actually it was only 2 pitches - we skipped the bullshit, sloughing 2&3 original pitches in favor of the surreal option: planck's constant roof)

- fix 2 ropes to above the PC roof

- descend and immediately hump up 160 lbs of bullshit to the base of the route, including 90 some odd pounds of water and gatorade

- miss pizza due to the late hour (bitches!) and drive back to harden in a dejected state to sleep in the dirt w/ the ants

 

acte 2 - friday:

- sleep later than wished due to being sleep-stupid as a result of the last 36 hours

- stash food in curry village, where a demented 'coon is frightening the tourists and feverishly try to get himself locked into a bear-box

- eat canuckistani bacon at the yos-village store

- somehow manage to still have to hike up a shit-ton of weight to the base, our 3rd trip up the trail which we contrive to do a different way each time

- jug to the top of pitch 3

- nightmare haul takes forever, even w/ the help of some kind folks down on the ground (fraternity of smokers rawks!)

- i climb pitch 4, highlighted by almost squashing myself w/ a 1000 lb pillar that shifted an inch when i tried putting a cam behind it :)

- portaledge bivy by a tree at the top of pitch 4, getting into camp just as it gets dark

 

acte 3 – saturday:

- moof climbs pitch 5

- i climb pitch 6, my first seriously steep lead of the route which also features a fun bit of rottenness

- moof epics on pitch 7 – we’d hoped to complete it and get out of harnesses at déjà vu ledge, but “terrible aid” fucks him hard and puts him away wet – he ends up having to lower down in the dark and we do an unplanned p’ledge bivy at the top of pitch 6, a slightly odd location

 

acte 4 – sunday:

- seann finishes his awful pitch

- i free-climb most of pitch 8

- nightmare hauling on the rough slab

- i link pitches 9 & 10, insane ground, to a hanging portaledge bivy inside a truly immense cave

 

acte 5 – memorial day:

- seann climbs pitch 11 (wild!) and replaces a mank bolt at the belay below 12

- i climb an equally ludicrously steep pitch 12

- seann climbs the original finish to mideast crisis (instead of last pitch of astroman as the supertaco showed)

- i follow as it gets dark

- total epic nightmare of hauling on low angle, loose horseshit in the dark, ending at the summit at 2 a.m.

- pimptacular fire and party down at the top until the sun threatened

 

acte 6 – tuesday:

- wake late, hide in haul-bag shade, drinking wine n’ guinness

- pimp and pack till near noon

- leave 18 goddamn liters of water at the summit!

- attempt a single haul down the trail, but only get about a 100 yards before it becomes obvious we’re dangerously overloaded for terrain that will require some care on if we’re to not become the objects of sweet, sweet snuff porn

- resort and descend w/ about 70 lbs each – still have to lower bags in one spot up high and do the rap (I nearly snap my wrist in half hauling my bag over to the anchor when it starts rolling)

- storm and half each of a gaint everythign pizza preclude a return trip to the summit to get the rest of our shit

- pimp and primp in el cap meadow and sneer (“dude, i GOT that”), then ghetto-euro-bathe in a rainy, ‘skeeter infested swath of the river

- early turn-in at harden flat

 

acte 7 – wednesday:

- 420 a.m. wakeup (gotta be home in time for work at 630 a.m. tomorrow beyotch!)

- hike back up to the summit and retrieve our gear and an unclaimed guiness

- on the descent, on the final move shuffling down the huge boulders above the shitter and the hardtop trail, i have to do a final rockmove – as I go to take my right hand off the rock at the bottom, an intense feeling of sadness comes over me, and my fingers linger on the cool, smooth granite – i wonder just how long it will be again until i feel this remarkable yosemite stone again?

- sort gear and play endless “who the fuck’s wire-gate is this?” games in el cap meadow

- the looooooooong return (punctuated by a fine dining experience near the or/ca border)

 

personal lessons:

- seann an awesome partner and good person to learn a lot from

- wall harness essential (but can i please find one not 6 sizes too big?)

- adjustable daisies w/ giant buckles are worth their weight in crack whores!

- how to tie a munter mule hitch

- alpine butterfly instructions (with appropriate hand-gestures!): “dude, it’s just like violating a 12 year old: first you get her all twisted around, then you bend her over, then you poke her through the hole” :)

- belay seat’s absolutely essential for this sorta nightmare

- single portaledges = much kewler than double

- use separate hanging cords for ledges/belay seat to the master connection

- old coke bottles make good rope protectors

- haul w/ giant pulley and basic petzl ascender on a 6 inch runner – each climber gets a 4 foot draw and a cordellette

- FAH Q $3 walmart hat and “crip-blue” bandanna under helmet = pimptacular

- routes mostly in the shade demand wearing pants not shorts! fuck, never thought i was gonna be cold so much!

- 1 anchor for hauling, 1 for jugging

- etrier loops work great for flaking ropes through

- be careful not to pass the haul line through an etrier loop! kinda makes it hard to recover the etrier once the bag’s weighted :)

- shitting on a portaledge – it can be done! doublebag it! sorta helps to not crap for 2 days prior

- $10 exterior speakers for your mp3 player :rawk: !

 

and now, having skipped all the above prose b/c you’re actually a latent homosexual, the climbing pRon (and maybe seann will make some contributions too?)

 

annoyingly, the route is hard to appreciate from any decent distant vantage (though sitting on half dome w/ a telephoto would work well :) ) - the sweetest part of the route is visible here though, busting through the giantist cave in center frame

m1.jpg

top of pitch 1 – totally fucked meself here by daisying to a brassie in a pin scar, pulling the desperate grassy, slimy, shitacular move, then discovering i couldn’t for the life of me unclip the daisy!

m3.jpg

seann shuffling over to planck’s constant roof

m4.jpg

starting up planck’s

m5.jpg

holy shit, a place you can actually use not 1, but 2 6 inch cams?!?

m6.jpg

still going, and going, and going…

m7.jpg

following this pitch is more fun than leading it, since you have to re-aid the giant traverse, but can enjoy a potential fall that will be wildly exhilarating instead of mortally wounding :P

m8.jpg

2 giant goddamn haulbags

m9.jpg

fixed lines on the first 2 pitches – note the tree 1 pitch above that which we slept at on night 1

m10.jpg

we enjoyed perfect weather on all days except on day 6, but purple clouds seemed to threaten nearly every day

m11.jpg

lookign down mid-pitch 3 – note the large orange pillar marked as loose in the topo – my red camalot budged it half an inch from the wall, whereupon I made lemonade in my pants and leaped off before it could go screaming down the wall, taking my ropes with it

m12.jpg

camp 1 on the tree at the top of p3

m13.jpg

starting up p4 in the morning

m14.jpg

me hauling from the top of pitch 5 while seann cleans

m15.jpg

seann smiling, ignorant of the fact that a giant monkey-cock is about to be crammed in his delicate derrière as he moves past me and leads out on pitch 7

m16.jpg

The start of pitch 7 – innocently overhanging, it moves right of the wide crack into a deathly 5.8 flare that worked, worked, worked my boy – both of us think in hindsight that staying on the crack left would probably have saved a world of heart-ache and actually allowed us to reach the déjà vu ledge before dark

m17.jpg

twilight on half dome as the implications of a full-on epic settle in

m18.jpg

the bottom of pitch 7 wasn’t the easiest of places to p-ledge it, but we made it work

m19.jpg

Midway up the free climbing on pitch 8, the g-fucking-normous cave above revealing where we’d bivy (just below the smaller roof, center frame) after linking 9/10 - outrageous climbing on p9/10, as well as pitchs 11/12, which exit the bivy by traversing under the dark roof, turning the corner, then zig-zag upside down to the v-notch on the skyline

m20.jpg

seann following on pitch 8 – full on hauling nightmare below – probably woulda been better if we’d hauled to/from the bivy site at déjà vu ledge, but seann says the anchors there sucked (i didn’t notice)

m21.jpg

the 3rd morning – seann traverses out on the heady 11th pitch – he’ll go around the corner in the background, then perform community service on the bad bolt there – one of only a handful of lead bolts on this route is right at the corner

m22.jpg

turning the corner just before the p11 anchor – a bolt it right by his left knee

m23.jpg

lowering out the bags while hauling from the top of p11 – why did we use a clear dry-bag for the shit again? :)

m24.jpg

early on lead on pitch 12 – seann’s newly updated anchor below, but on very poor ground for ledges or hanging out – many fixed pins w/ loops for lowering out on on this pitch – i placed no pins despite the topo, but you might need some if they disappeared – a large lowe-ball or a black alien was critical for getting past the crux here – a wild pitch! Near the top is the ancient belay chair left by the good folks of “quantum mechanic” fame

m25.jpg

back to the wall, slowly spinning in space

m26.jpg

would you believe this hat was brand new a week ago? :)

m27.jpg

seann starting up p13, the original finish – not a bad belay here if you have a belay seat

m28.jpg

as another epic announced itself, the sun went down on half dome, backlighting brewing clouds behind it

m29.jpg

when you know you’re haul’s going shitty….

m30.jpg

pimpstation 4 – note the sweet fire pit I built a giant fire in after becoming despondent during the 2 a.m. hauling session, as well as the wealth of extra water we lugged up!

m31.jpg

back in the land of grandmas, boy-scouts, and titties! :)

m32.jpg

just another phreak in the phreak kingdom

m33.jpg

having told donny to shut the fuck up time w/o count, i thought it only proper to let him stop at the in'n'out on the way home :) fucking animal style!

m34.jpg

 

 

Gear Notes:

if you see anything still in your garage after packing, you've probably fucked up

 

some essential items:

- 2 #6 and #5 cams for planck's constant (you can leave both 6's and 1 5 on the ground afterwards)

- a handful of long-dong lost arrows for the bitter pill of pitch 7

- 2 fat birdbeaks

- bolt kit (we used it once, but all other anchors appear in great shape and there are practically no lead bolts on route to even worry about)

- 4 cams total in the 3 to 4 inch range

- 4-5 cams each from blue alien to #2

- 1 black alien or large loweball critical

- 1 set of offset aliens useful

 

the topo called for, but we never needed:

- hooks

- heads (nor were there any fixed on route to worry about having to replace)

 

Approach Notes:

luckily my north cascade hardman skills had acclimatized myself for this brutal bastard of a 1 hour walk :)

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Joseph, there there, I was taking a whack at a hybrid approach as suggested by a couple other Russkie users. You walk up the lower rungs normal style, then hook the top step or grab loop (depending on the angle), you get the best of both worlds, though you still sadly end up with the larger cluster of aiders. Word has it that Fish's alpine aid ladders are the absolute shit with russkie cuffs.

 

I'll be posting my pics up here shortly too. But for now, kickass TR Ivan! It was a god damned pleasure to climb with you!

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Moof, sorry for not looking closer at the photos - sure enough. I just saw all those traditional aiders and wondered what was that all about. Thanks for setting me straight. Hybrid - an interesting idea, but doesn't that turn into an incredible cluster fuck given the aid trees would tend to tangle with the aiders?

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acte 2 - friday:

- sleep later than wished due to being sleep-stupid as a result of the last 36 hours

- stash food in curry village, where a demented 'coon is frightening the tourists and feverishly try to get himself locked into a bear-box

- eat canuckistani bacon at the yos-village store

 

Canuckistani bacon...is there any other sort? kinda like geese, huh?

great trip report (esp considering it was a marginally intelligible shit fest). way to "send."

 

P.S. muenter mule overhand? you should use the muenter slippery overhand...way more reliable (and takes a little less rope.)

Edited by rocky_joe
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some of seann's shots

 

me on p4 (our 3rd) above plancks

P3ish_1.jpg

above the flake i nearly cast down

P3ish_2.jpg

at the penji over to the bivi tree

P3ish_3.jpg

funtastic steepness on pitch 6

p6_1.jpg

at deja vu ledge (well, right next to it...)

p7_1.jpg

hey, free-climbing! me on p9/10

p9_10_1.jpg

p9_10_2.jpg

me just below our 3rd bivy

p9_10_3.jpg

looking back at me and our bivy site atop p10

p11_1.jpg

enjoy the steepness of p12!

p12_1.jpg

p12_2.jpg

me = pissed n' passed out :)

cap.jpg

 

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