'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 5 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?
Here’s another look at our stellar ledge at the top of P4 of Tribal Rite. Beneath us you will recognize the concavity of the South-East Face of El Cap. The wooded area is below the Trip, and the open area extends from between Lost In America and Zed-Em across to Zodiac and the scary bits beyond. I fear I may find myself alone on Born Under A Bad Sign in about a week. Watch for my ledge….. As you can see, Tom stuck a Merrican flag on the bottom of his ledge.
This pitch scared the livin’ bejeepers out of me. I just don’t get how anyone can rate full-on expando as being only A3. To me, it feels so much harder! This is a view down The Carrot from halfway up P5, while Tom remains on the ledge belaying me from the top of 4.
The A3 heads up to The Carrot didn’t seem too bad, and once I reached the thing, I whacked a couple pins up underneath it to open it up. Then I was able to move right around the overhang which you can see. The crux seems to be at the bottom – I made one of those “hammer the pin in as fast as you can while clipped to it with your daisy” tricks and sure enough, the piece I was on – a head – popped out. Frig. Creeps the hell out of me. The damn Carrot is fifteen or twenty stories high and the whole thing freakin’ moves for cryin’ out loud. [Lawsy, lawsy, lawsy…. Why do I climb? Oh yeah, it’s fun. I think. At least it’s fun when you quit….] Once I got a bit higher and relaxed a bit, I gave Tom the OK to replace one of the rusty old bolts above the ledge with a shiny new 3/8-incher.
I tried to finesse my way up, using nuts and heads and long skinny knifeblades in order to not open it any more than absolutely necessary. After completing the pitch, I partially cleaned it on rappel – we fixed back to camp – by removing the un-hammered gear like nuts and Aliens. Removing pins from expanding flakes starting at the bottom and moving up creates a real nightmare for your partner, because as you remove each successive pin, the flake closes in on your cams. In order to remove them, you need to place a pin next to each cam to re-open the flake. Removing the clean gear on rappel made for a much easier cleaning job the next day.
Note the judicious use of Screamers and Scream-Aids. The new Scream-Aid design that Johnny Yates has come up with has four passes of webbing now instead of two, making them twice as absorbent as the old ones. There is a long sling on each that allows you to girth-hitch it directly onto a head, which is handy and saves you a crab. Buy Yates Scream-Aids! You will grow bigger balls [or ovaries] while using them.
Back on our ledge before sunset, we’ve got time to enjoy our beers and the view. I might not appear to get up big walls very fast, but that’s cuz I don’t spend a lot of time actually climbing, either. You won’t see me starting before noon, and it’s very rare to see me climbing by headlamp.
Like, do ya think maybe we’ve been up there on the wall a bit too long? Oh yeah, that’s Tom’s sleeping bag about to be packed into its orange backpack that you see right in front of him, and is the last known photo of the backpack on the wall. Using the binoculars, we later spotted the pack lying at the base of the slab, right where we began. Seems Tom had accidentally left it soloing on his ledge, and “if it ain’t clipped, it’s gone.” It stayed there a few days, was eventually recovered by someone [anybody know who?] and was returned to the Lost & Found. Tom was thrilled to retrieve it down in El Portal after the wall – he was more concerned about his old friend the backpack than the sleeping bag.
And did I mention it was a bit chilly up there on the wall?
Gosh, that’s a lovely sleeping bag, isn’t it? Check out the water still remaining in El Cap Meadow.
The afternoon winds caused by the solar convection are about to whip up, so click here to fasten down your portaledge and move to Page 6 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.
Look, some people get it, and some people don’t. And some people get it a lot more than others. I could even be one of them. [Then again, I might not be] But if you get it, then don’t reply to this post, and instead write something here, K?
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