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[TR] Squire Creek Wall - Slab Daddy 7/17/2010


Terry

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Trip: Squire Creek Wall - Slab Daddy

 

Date: 7/17/2010

 

Trip Report:

Eric, Jim and I made a trip to Darrington last fall, did Silent Running on Saturday and checked out Slab Daddy on Sunday. We ran into David W. and Chris G. doing some maintenance on their baby. We ended up doing the first seven pitches, loved it and started scheming our next visit. It’s actually a great place to go and just climb until you run out of time. All the belay anchors are bomber and make simul-rapping pretty easy. Well, the open weekend came around and I voted for the Index Traverse after seeing Tom S' great trip report. Jim was occupied on Rainier and Eric wasn’t too inclined to bash brush, and he won. We got a casual start Saturday morning with small rack (you only need quick draws on first 7 pitches), bivy gear and a gallon of water. Since we hadn’t seen any rain in awhile we decided to cross the issue of more water when we crossed the creek.

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Poles and tevas are handy for creek crossing. We also opted to add 2 more gallons of water to our load, and based on the depleted water reservoirs on the route it was a good decision for us and the tadpoles living in em.

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Eric on Pitch 2

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Terry following Pitch 2

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Pitch 3 I think. In general the first half of the climb is pretty casual with a couple of 5.10 moves. Pitch 11 is the start of the steeper more consistent pitches.

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Pitch 5. You can see the umbrella tree, our goal

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Dinner time at the bivy ledge.

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A boy (old guy)and his Huecos. He can’t find em anymore and had to do some repair to keep the soles attached to the uppers. He could have led it in his flipflops.

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Coffee and oatmeal

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Ants having a caterpillar breakfast.

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Top of pitch 13

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These things must be 10 years old. I guess it shows that shoes don’t make the climber. Eric led all the hard slab pitches…

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Fun stemming at top of Pitch 15 or 16…

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Umbrella tree is getting closer

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Quartz crystals on route

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Stinkbuggin

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Pitch 19

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Eric on Pitch 19

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5.8 Undercling/layback. We found one number 4 Camalot to be adequate.

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Pitch 22 with umbrella tree to the left. While I wouldn’t call the upper two pitches dirty, they are lichen-covered and a little less pleasant than the first 20 pitches. David could you please bring the crew up to make this a bit more pleasant? Please David…

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Required summit shot with umbrella tree, Eric and Terry

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Back side of Whitehorse

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22 rappels at 15 minutes per rappel finds us on the ground 4.5 hours later…

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What a great climb! David alluded to the reservoirs scattered about the route and the necessity of ‘clean climbing’ and I’ll add that if you think you’re going to bivy, take Wag bags and pack IT out. There are no convenient outhouses on the route. Thanks to David and Company for the vision and hard work to make it happen!!

 

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Best trip report on "the daddy" so far! You did the climg in perfect style! I propose that anyone who climbs to the top of "Slab Daddy" is an honorary member of the D.E.A.,(Darrington Enhancement Assocciation)and all the resposibilities that go with that. Contact D. Whitelaw for more info.

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Thanks Rainman. We had a great time but didn't do a great job with the estimating the time required to get down. I was a bit later than predicted... Packing 3 gallons of water was a major pain but one that was worth it - we still had a quart when we hit the ground. We had one 50m and one 60m rope and would have preferred two 50s, but that was well worth the price of the bivy alone. Also, there is a lot of loose rock on the ledges so minor rockfall is possible.

 

Rad, Eric gave the aid section (steep, blank stemming) a go but didn't put a lot of effort into it. I haven;t seen any other reports of freeing it.

 

Terry

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