[TR] Mt. Hardy- Disappearing Floor 7/5/2005

[jshamster]

Climb: Mt. Hardy-Disappearing Floor

 

Date of Climb: 7/5/2005

 

Trip Report:

Frostytradman & I climbed the NEB of Mt. Hardy on Tuesday. From the only description we had, Nelson's Selected I, this climb looked right up our alley. Multipitch, alpine, 5.10 range & doable car-to-car. Cool.

 

We left the car at 4:45am, wanting light for the entire approach. The approach is very chill. An easy two hours to a col, another 1.5 hours to the base.

The bottom few pitches are moderate, and we simul-climbed the first few hundred feet left of a large gully. From this point until the upper headwall pitches I am not really sure if we were on route. I think we found the 'obvious chockstone,' but who knows?

Anyway, we definately missed the 'improbable traverse,' and the 4th class traverse of p.9. Instead, first I, and then frosty, wrestled with a series of chossy, loose mantels. Frosty finally pulled through only to face 35' of unprotected face climbing to a mantel onto a ledge covered in 6 inches of kitty litter! I'll let frosty go into more detail, but it was fucking nuts.

This did put us directly under the 5.10a corner of p.10. Now we knew we were on route at least!

The next few pithces consisted of the meat of the technical climbing, and we hoped to eliminate the aid used on the first ascent. Alas, the cracks are still filled with mud, and required much cleansing to hold both pro & body parts. The 5" offwidth pitch is by far the most solid rock on the route, and great fun. Given more time I would have liked to take a crack at the 8" crack above.

 

By the time we reached the top of the butress we were both mentally fried from route finding & constant loose rock. Weather was threatening at this point, and we hurridly simuled across the knife edged ridge to the summit. The exposure on either side of the ridge didn't even register, it was just time to be done.

A quick tag of the summit, a pic, and we were out.

An easy traverse back to the col, and the rest of our gear, and we finally felt like we could let our gaurd down a bit. Yeah, right.

We lost daylight about halfway down the wooded rib leading to the road. After that we lost the ridge, ended up in a draingage, and took 3 hours to reach Hwy. 20, the car, and beers.

 

In the end we found all of the adventure we were looking for, and then some. Character building is a great description. We found absolutely no trace of anyone else on the face, and left only one fixed nut.

 

Gear Notes:

Large alpine rack to 5". Used #5 camalot often.

One rope. If you wanna bail you probably want two.

 

Approach Notes:

Easy offtrail approach.

Don't loose the rigeline on the decent.

[wayne]

Nice work! You cant have to much character!

[John Frieh]

 

Large alpine rack to 5". Used #5 camalot often.

 

old or new style? did you take doubles? wished you took doubles?

[Gary_Yngve]

Very cool. I wonder how many parties have done the route since Forrest and Dan put it up.

[jshamster]

Set of hybrid aliens

#00 & #0 TCU

Green to Orange + clear? aliens

#.5 to #5 camalot + 'nother #2

Purple 4CU

One set HB offset nuts #6 & up

Nine shoulder length runners w/wiregates

6 or 8 quickdraws

one double shoulder length + one cordolette

one 60m 9.6mm rope

 

Oh yeah, nice job Forrest & Dan on the first ascent.

[forrest_m]

jsh - driving home from wa pass just yesterday, i was wondering if anyone was ever going to climb our route...

 

so it sounds like you came straight up below the corner pitches? it sounds like you were off to the right of where we climbed. the start of the "improbable traverse" was reached via a big chimney just left of the crest. the traverse itself starts right on the buttress crest and traverses up and left. we were aiming for the big offiwidth above... we got to the base of the .10 corner by traversing about 80' straight sideways on a big ledge.

 

here's the topo , not that it helps you now...

 

anyway, congrats, that's likely the 2nd ascent. glad the route gave you the adventure you were looking for!

[dberdinka]

Green to Orange + clear? aliens

 

Frosty's Clear Alien is a damn handy piece. Nice work, that's a big face!

 

Any luck over the weekend Forrest?

[jshamster]

Yeah, we were off to the right.

The buttress crest likely has better rock.

 

Because of all of the loose rock we encountered, I am having a hard time saying, "Go do this route!"

But, it may be much better sticking to the line of first ascent.

Anyway, it was still a grand adventure that I'm stoked we did.

[tyree]

WERD!!!

[daylward]

Hey, just saw this thread, I've been in Peru. Great job guys! It's always a great feeling to see your route get repeated. I'm hoping with more ascents the loose rock will be removed and the quality will improve, but yeah, it sounds like it was better where we went on the lower part.

 

So, from the S-shaped gully, when you got to the chockstone (I know that's vague... I think there were several chockstones), did you then go up onto the face to the right, toward the ridge crest? That face had some small trees growing out of cracks, but mostly it was pretty good rock and not too steep. I seem to remember sticking pretty much to the "crest" from there, and it naturally led us in the line on the topo - where we had to bypass features, we did so on the left, but then cut back to the crest as soon as possible. I don't remember anything too run-out before the upper headwall, and there was some loose rock, but not too bad. Now I want to go do it again to see if I remember right...

 

Dan

[Sol]

So, from the S-shaped gully, when you got to the chockstone (I know that's vague... I think there were several chockstones), did you then go up onto the face to the right, toward the ridge crest? That face had some small trees growing out of cracks, but mostly it was pretty good rock and not too steep. I seem to remember sticking pretty much to the "crest" from there, and it naturally led us in the line on the topo - where we had to bypass features, we did so on the left, but then cut back to the crest as soon as possible. I don't remember anything too run-out before the upper headwall, and there was some loose rock, but not too bad. Now I want to go do it again to see if I remember right...

 

Dan

hey, from the chockstone we climbed on decent rock not quite on the crest until a couple a pitches later. once we made it onto the crest we moved left around a couple of roofs to a good ledge at the most proabable beginning of the eigth pitch. from here i think we went right, instead of straight up and left (is that where it goes?). either way, from there we climbed one pitch of overhanging choss blocks and runout face climbing directly to the base of pitch 10.

[daylward]

Jim Nelson sent me this picture that John Scurlock took a few days ago (I hope it's OK that I posted it John; don't hesitate to let me know if you want me to take it down!)

 

It's sort of hard to see the line from this angle, but I traced the line I thought we did in red, then sent it to Forrest who traced his interpretation in white (with letters that theoretically match up to the same letters he has on his web page about the route: http://www.saarch.com/forrest/hardyfull.htm ). Maybe our actual line is somewehre in between...?

 

[Sol]

what no 3rd ascent this summer? c'mon choss dogs. just kidding, its a pretty serious route. i finally figured out how to post pics from my gallery. here's a few from last summer's climb.

 

now that a big ass face:

 

jimbo on the first attempt of the Litter Box Direct var. 5.9+X:

 

the 5.10 belayer slayer pitch:

 

trying to get rid of that dirty feeling the next morning:

[layton]

i absolutely love that last picture...did the same thing with a few SW BC select pages

[fourteenfour]

looks like a sick route!