Well, lots has happened in the last week. I’ve totally restocked on water, as I was going through much more than the allocated amount per day, due to the blazing heat. So, that necessitated a trip into town to get water and larger-diameter bolts to use as rivets. I’ve found that the larger the diameter is, the faster a hole drills. So, I’ve abandoned the 1/4-inch diameter Zamacs, because I can drill 5/16 and 3/8 holes much faster, even with those bolts being longer.
After a couple of long, heavy trips to get all the stuff up to the camp, I then started working on the third pitch (their fourth and fifth). As of today, that pitch is up and cleaned, and I’ll be starting the next pitch tomorrow morning. The third pitch got me up about another 160 vertical feet, so I’m up about 500 vertical feet from the ground now. The next pitch will be fairly short, about 100 feet, but that will put me on supposedly a good ledge for a nice, new camp spot.
The wind has been pretty amazing! Sudden gusts will come out of nowhere and almost blow me out of my aiders. I mean, I’m standing there in second-loops to get the highest possible reach, which is fairly precarious balance-wise, and… wham! A quick gust of, oh, I don’t know, 40 mph will just blast into me. And at night it’s sometimes hard to sleep with the wind howling and jerking my portaledge all over the place. It’s pretty impressive, because with me, all my personal effects, some food and water, the weight of the ledge itself (not insignificant), etc., there’s gotta be pushing 350 pounds here. And the wind just dances it all around!
Speaking of the portaledge, you’ll see some pics of it below, but we call it the “wallahwanee,” named after the Ahwanee Hotel in Yosemite (very high-priced, deluxe hotel). This thing weighs about 45 pounds, which is obscene for a portaledge, but the trade-off is in how bombproof and deluxe it is.
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Pictures (click them to enlarge in a new window/tab) —
Some pics of me. In some of them I look pretty bad. lol You can see the wallahwanee down below. Believe it or not, that’s up about 350 feet from the ground.
I’m “bad” in this one. lol
And this one. lol
This is a good pic showing how the rope runs through a placement for protection (one of their “mini-bolts) and to my harness, secured with a clove-hitch.
Here you can see the whole system. The lower end of the rope is secured to the lower anchor (note the wallahwanee). I then feed rope through that clove hitch on my harness, giving myself rope as I move up. If I fall, the clove hitch will hold the rope, and hopefully a lower placement will catch me. The clove hitch will “run” at about 1600 pounds, so in a really hard fall, the clove hitch provides a bit of a dynamic belay.
Here’s another shot looking down at camp and the wondrous wallahwanee!
And another. Notice how the rope runs through all the placements, providing protection as I make upward progress by moving from placement to placement.
A pic of one of the FA team’s “mini-bolts.” I have NO idea what these are, so it’s somewhat exciting standing on these. NO clue how strong they are, how deep the go into the compacted sand… nothing! It would have been nice for those guys to have specified what they were using, when they made their topo.
Here’s how MY “mini-bolts” work. First I drill the correct-diameter hole. Often I have to clear away layers of loose crud until I reach solid stuff that will hold a well-formed hole. This one wasn’t too bad.
Then I select a sleeve anchor. I use 5/16 and 3/8 diameter sizes. The smaller ones are 1 1/2 inches long, and the larger ones are 1 7/8 inches long. I’ve found that the larger-diameter holes drill much faster in this “rock,” so I’m using mostly 3/8 inch now.
Next I put a rivet loop (3/32-inch cable) around the thing, and then tap it into the hole.
Finally, I tighten the nut, which pulls a wedge into the inner sleeve in the bottom of the hole, which makes the thing about impossible to pull out. To “clean” this later, after the lead is done, I loosen the nut enough to get the cable loop off, then finger-tighten the nut back to keep it secure for the next ascent team to use.
The goofballs were employing some VERY strange tactics. They make a big deal on their topo about there only being 31 “mini-bolts” on the route, so that’s their “hole count.” But they were drilling bashies, like this one, into blank rock all over the place. Virtually EVERY one of their placements is something drilled. They were using “mini-bolts” in purely blank rock lower on the route, but by this point, they are just drilling bashies, like this, into featureless rock to keep the “hole count” low! That’s the only reason they would not have used a bolt here. Just another of the hundreds of drilled bashies!
And if drilled bashies weren’t enough strangeness, I started finding that they were making upward progress by drilling holes and pounding wooden pegs into them. When they were finished with them, they sawed the pegs off flush with the rock, so they are useless for anybody else! They never intended this route to be repeatable!
This is a smaller one. This one was finger-removable.
So, they would pound these in, loop a small sling around the thing to hang on, and then basically destroy it when they were up the lead and cleaning the pitch.
The hole is PERFECTLY drilled to accept this thing.
Here’s a bigger one, and you can even see the marks all over the rock from their sawing it off flush when they were done with it. Ridiculous in the extreme!!! NOBODY does this!!!
This is looking over at their fifth anchor from my third. You can just see two drilled bashies connected with some cord. If they were just going to drill out an anchor, why not drill more than a couple of bashies? Why not a bunch? Better yet, why not some real bolts??? This is pure, contrived, artificial difficulty!
A closer view of their two-bashie anchor.
Now THIS is more like it… multiple bolts for a drilled anchor. My third anchor is what a drilled anchor should be. If you’re gonna drill, don’t fake it!
Rapping down from my third anchor, showing it all ready to go for tomorrow… all organized, with ropes lap-coiled.
Looking down at camp from my third anchor.
And each of my anchors is designed so that the rope-run from anchor to anchor makes a great rappel route down. Two bolts have rings on them to make a rap station.
Finally, just for jollies, this is a pecker tip I used to surmount this five-foot overhang. It turned out that it was in only about 1/4 inch, and proved to be hand-removable. I thought it had been better when I stood on it!
Well, to bed. Tomorrow is a big push.