Yesterday I got up about 60 feet on the first pitch before it just became too brutally hot. I’ll say more about what I’m finding in today’s notes.
May 16….
I got to within about 30 feet of where the infamous hook anchor is supposed to be (first belay). And I’ve got a nice cloud cover today, so it’s not too terribly hot. But I had to come down at about 2pm because I reached an impasse and need to consult the “topo” (such as it is) along with walking back away from the wall enough to try to make sense of where that last 30 feet goes.
I’m under a big roof, and if I stay left, it’s very straightforward to the horizontal seams above, which is where I think the anchor is supposed to be. The problem is that I could also go right, and that would get me to the right end of those seams. It’s just not clear which end of the seams the anchor is supposed to be, and if I make the wrong choice, I’ll be 30 feet horizontally from where the anchor is. Then I’ll have to figure something out to get over there.
Furthermore, these utter goofballs have NO idea how to put up a repeatable, sustainable route, and that’s making it a real struggle to repeat this thing in decent style.
For example, this thing is totally manufactured. I mean, there are almost no natural placements. What these guys did is drill trenches for bashies, then yank them out when they cleaned, and this blew open the fragile (sandy) edges, leaving almost worthless holes. I’m having to “touch up” these holes with a nail punch just to get my own aluma-heads to work.
Worse, they have repeatedly drilled big holes (over 1 inch in diameter) straight into blank rock, and for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what they were doing with these. Quite a few of their holes and trenches I could get past using peckers in the muddy seams. But I finally realized that these straight-in holes were supposed to contain something, although I didn’t know what. Whatever… when they cleaned their pitch, they yanked whatever it was out of there, leaving even more worthless holes! They never thought about what they were leaving behind.
So, I thought about trying to drive angle-tips straight into these holes, but they are too shallow and flared for that. Finally I realized that they were using some sort of euro-bashies in these holes, and they had drilled the holes to fit! And they were using this tactic to avoid drilling what they call “mini-bolts” (rivets) so that they could keep the “drilled placement” count low. On the topo, David brags, “Only 33 mini bolts for progression on pitches,” as though all these MANY drilled holes for euro-bashies don’t count as holes!
So, I finally got sick of fighting it and started drilling decent rivets to get past these worthless holes. After a few rivets, I finally got to a wire hanging out of blank rock, and, sure enough… a big blob of aluminum punched into one of those big holes told the story. For some reason they didn’t clean that one, although the cable was partly broken. So, my guess is that it was so buried that they were breaking the cable trying to get it out, and they left it in.
Now, seeing the story for sure, I just decided to bypass every one of their euro-bashie holes and drill sustainable rivets instead. Within a few more years, those holes will have filled in with mud-flow, and nobody else will have to waste their time trying to “sculpt” something usable out of those blown-out, worthless, left-behind holes.
But this means that I’m going through a LOT of work just to “follow” this ridiculous, contrived, utterly manufactured route! I’m having to do at least as much work as they did, and I don’t have the advantage of just drilling anywhere it seems good to me! I have to try to “follow” their “route,” such as it is, and that’s really hard almost three years after the first ascent, because mud flows down this wall like you can’t believe!
Again and again I’m having to reach up as far as I can and scrape sheets of mud from the wall to try to locate their euro-bashie holes, because that’s the only way I can “follow” where they went. The topo is basically useless, because it shows NO details and give NO account of pitch-tactics. All you see is a line with a distance and a rating. NO help, like, “hooking,” or, “angle tips,” or “heads,” or anything you would expect from a decent topo. So, the whole game is try to unearth euro-bashie holes and thereby stay “on route” as best I can.
And that leads me to the impasse.
The euro-bashie holes lead up to under this roof, but suddenly they end. I could go left, I could go right, but I can’t find any evidence of their passage. I have excavated about 100 pounds of mud as far as I can reach, but it’s just not clear what’s next. And, if I make the wrong choice, I’ll be forced to do even more drilling (there are no natural placements at this point!) in order to get to their hook belay. And if I end up to the side of it, I’ll have to do more drilling at the belay, because the hooks won’t be good for a sideways pull. So it will be impossible to clean the pitch pulling to the side on the hooks. So, it really matters what angle you come in from as you reach the anchor!
This is such a critical point, and it is so central to the repeatability of a route famous for this very hook anchor, that I cannot believe HOW useless the “topo” is. Basically the attitude I get from these guys is: “Hey, we did it, now you figure it out.” But the problem is that THEY had the option to do whatever they wanted, it being first ascent and all. But if I go up there and miss the anchor and have to do additional drilling to correct the mistake, then I’m the “botch job.” So, these goofballs had a responsibility to leave clear evidence of where they went, OR provide a detailed topo to enable subsequent ascent parties to stay on route, particularly in places where being on route is so critical.
Yanking out those euro-bashies was unconscionable! Oh, but they couldn’t just leave them in because then you would have a totally “fixed,” clip-up route. AND these guys were drilling placements about every 18 inches! I mean, they utilized NO reach. Forget seconds steps in the aiders! I don’t think they were in third steps! At one point I drilled two rivets and got far more distance than three of their euro-bashie holes. I mean, my first rivet was level with one of their holes, and my second rivet was above their third hole!
It’s ridiculous that they rate this first pitch A5! It’s maybe A3, and that’s primarily due to the sheer difficulty of manufacturing something to work. You simply can’t plant a giant euro-bashie every 18 inches and call that A5! This thing just isn’t fall-distance hard. It’s just a giant pain trying to play their manufacturing game!
So, I’m trying to figure out whether to go right or left now, and we’ll see if I lucked out with the correct choice. The topo is totally useless, and when I get access to a scanner again after the climb, I’ll scan and post this topo so everybody can see how pathetic and worthless it is.
I have never seen or even imagined such a contrived and drilled-up climb before! What an utter botch-job, and ridiculously overrated as well (so far). I’m so disgusted by what I’m finding that I’m literally losing my motivation to continue this heap. It’s not like I can’t do it. It’s all about whether I want to play the endless games necessary to “follow” this stupidity. For as grandiose as the hype, the reality is at the other end of the spectrum. There is absolutely nothing to recommend this route thus far. It’s radically-overdrilled, terribly overrated, and utterly contrived. The thought of pitch after pitch of this nonsense is just galling, and I would just quit if it were not the case that so many people have supported this effort. But what a joke this route is.