'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 8, 2005 - 02:00am PT
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This is Page 6 of a ten-part post which is a photo essay of my recent ascent of Tribal Rite on El Capitan. If you have somehow arrived at this point without quite knowing how, please click here to return to the beginning.
As per the instructions linked above, may I request that you please do not reply to this post! Instead, would you please leave all your replies and comments here. Like thanks, eh?
We moved up to climb the next pitch or two, and then return to camp. There was another ledge at the top of P7, and we figured we’d fix to 6 and then climb to 7 and move our camp there. While we were away climbing – yes, we do actually climb rocks from time to time – we had to secure our ledges so they wouldn’t get blown all over the place, because you can see that Wee-Wee has a mind of his own. Our fragrant little “wallflower” has grown quite a few “petals” after twelve days on the wall.
Here Tom jugs up past The Carrot. Check out the redundancy in his jugging system – he has his two Jumars duct-taped together, along with the Petzl Basic he uses in his Frog system. The more I think about it, the better I like a Basic instead of a Croll when using a regular climbing harness – the Basic sits flat against you when turned sideways. The Croll is designed to be used with a D-shaped maillon rapide on an Avanti-like harness, and his setup is pretty sweet. I think I’ll try it on the next wall.
You can see climbers on the west end of El Cap Towers.
Now that we’re higher, we’re getting superb views of Half Dome. Gotta love the purple alpenglow. About this time on the wall, you start figuring out how close you are to the top. The pine trees are at the finish to Zed-Em and Lost In America, and a bit closer, the bush on the ledge [barely visible as the dark splotch] is the top of Tangerine Trip. We’re well above the finishes of all, yet we still have a darn long way to climb to reach the summit.
Here’s a final look up The Carrot to the belay at the top of 5. You can see the lead rack and stuff up and right at 6, a very cool situation out on an arête with a commanding view of the South-East Face.
We are using a hauling technique that Tom and I call the Remote Simul Space Haul. [RSSH] This is a technique Tom came up with, and I am wondering if anyone else uses it? It was probably invented around the time of the construction of the Pyramids, just like the 2:1 Hauling Ratchet. It works really well for a team of at least two climbers [not applicable for soloists] who are hauling at least two very heavy loads [not applicable for single loads or lighter weight loads].
You connect the two haul lines into one continuous loop – the knot is protected by the knot protector which you can see on the right haul line. You put the haul line through the compound pulley hauling device [I prefer the Kong Roll-Block] and then space haul simultaneously. Tom hauls from the top belay, and I haul from the bottom belay a pitch lower. You really need static ropes for this to work best. This permits the two of us to space haul the one load all the way to the anchor, dock the pig [if re-using the hauling device] to switch the ropes over, and then haul the next load. The key is that it allows the lower guy to release the second load.
I really like this method of hauling as it is fast and easy. It’s always faster to make two 1:1 hauls than one 2:1 haul, though I did use the Hauling Ratchet down lower. If you’ve ever tried the RSSH, I’d like to hear from you. But it is a fairly specialized application, so you’d never need it unless you had two or more really heavy loads. We found we could get those two pigs up there lickity-split. Tom Evans probably got a good look at us doing this both on Tribal Rite, and last fall on Son of Heart.
Here Tom lowers out from 5 to begin the long, free-hanging and really quite airy jug up to 6! You can see the sunlight just beginning to hit the Northwest Face of Half Dome, thus proving that we didn’t begin any earlier than noon.
Tom led the seventh pitch up a shallow dihedral rated A2 on the topo, but probably more like A3. He used a bunch of manky nuts and placed three heads before finally reaching the rivet ladder that traverses up and left to the penji onto our next bivi ledge at the top of 7.
The clouds moved in on us and gave us a beautiful sunset view of Half Dome. Firmly ensconced on our little 2’ x 7’ bivi ledge at the top of 7, we settled in for what we figured would be a relaxing night. How wrong we were!
If you’re smarter than me, you’d have taken notice of the clouds and you’ll grab your portaledge fly and clip your ledge beneath it in quick-deploy mode. If you do as I say, and not as I do, then you’ll also have figured out how to get your portaledge inside your fly, and will click here to set up your ledge and fly and move to Page 7 of this ten-page photo essay.
If you have somehow arrived at this point without quite knowing how, please click here to return to the beginning. Please put all your replies at the beginning post as well to further reduce the Co-efficient of Wank. Cheers, eh?
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