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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 26, 2015 - 10:14pm PT
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and it's my mecca.
it's a little bit of a drive, obscure and in places quite rough
there are these massive landforms of Jurassic rock on the horizon everywhere.
and not a body about.
the car-camping is alright, I guess, in this place
the dayhiking is ok
the objective seemed awful daunting that first morning, being alone in BFE ootah and having allowed inaccurate topos, piss-poor aerial imagery and arm-chair bravado to inflate my confidence from afar
but this is what we came here for:
after circumnavigating the base of the formation, I find my line
I muster supplies.
We check out the pool.
and I start making sh#t happen late in the day
I bail at 100' as it gets dark and the loose, fractured, poorly-protected topout above and right begs other than hasty action.
the hike out is, well, you can see, turrrible.
that night and that morning, very cold.
the dog hogs all the warm gear.
But Zap makes up for it when the sun hits, quells the growing pall of snail-eye with his "I am Pierre, I make pee - in - zee - aire" routine. Gets me every time.
we hike in another rope and some iron. the fish still aren't rising.
after some alcohol absorption to absolve me of impending rock abuse, I jug and pound a pin out left to protect a rotten face traverse that I free, only to do the delicate salsa dance of chimney-with-a-chockstone-at-your-chest to the ledge. note the textbook upside-down big green WC. bomber.
from here I charge up off the ledge, turn a corner and improbably blast up a 4 ft wide chimney festooned with great piled finblades of sandstone death daggers. I establish atop these and find the narrowing above to require removal of all non-essential equipment. down to the wooly longsleeve I plug a bullshit .75 and squeeze myself, all jokes aside, into the tightest space I've entered since becoming a man. scary narrow cold stone cut turns me horizontal, wiggling, knot and grigri getting me down worse than alcoholic testosterone OD.
breathe, arm-bar, breathe, hell-toe, breathe, squirm. do not think.
repeat.
out up past more piles of flakeyplate chockstones, rotten and looking Newtonian, I achieve a ledge, haul my kit and C1 the f*#k out of a gorgeous new 30' 5.10 .5" corner crack, freeing the final 10' of overhanging perfect hands
my seventy meter rope does not do me any favors in that this is a 72 meter pitch. this part is fun.
And then I am out into sunshine and plants and soil of a sort. Then a good (enough) anchor appears.
I explore this tier of my terraced paradise.
This shoulder is another of those rarified clean places of birdshit and owl pellet, stout proud lone stunted juniper, piled loose stone free of prior human meddling, just another piece of my heart. Less fleeting perhaps? Or more?
one cannot help fixate on that next level though.
the final tier is kayenta, and intermarries mud and sandstone, induces big unstable-looking overhanging hundred-ton blockies between which the wind whispers and the sun shines. but the fluvial kayenta also gives more, and regular, horizontal breaks. in places mudchips ripped up and re-deposited in sandstone have eroded away before the sand giving up the sweetest, deep sharp-edged pockets a scared man has ever touched. I walk around and survey all the options, N, E, S. The W lacks a ledge and appeared to offer no easy conduit when viewed from the base.
And so I rap, feeling certain and bold, fix a line for tomorrow. the weather calls for maybe snow and rain, and this could trap me here in mecca, but I am in it to win it now, and feeling good.
Dog kept good watch over my food and beer stash.
once again, things seem right in the world
and then the wind hits. it howls through the night, shaking the automobile and driving plants and sand through the air, tearing at any obstruction it meets.
it whips and it does not cease to whip. through the warm night to the morning's dawn the wind whips. it sucks away moisture, replacing it with gulps of sere, overpressure atmosphere.
The wind kills my mojo hard during the night. Thoughts of wind-blown rock-cut ropes make it hard to choke down my calorie-dense breakfast of ramen-egg-drop soup sopped up in bagel. Or maybe it was just the gnar food.
I charge through the approach and jug up, uncertain as to the bail vs charge dilemma.
On the shoulder, I want to leave some goodies and a register for the next folks to venture this way, hoping some human in the future will do the deed, that I don't need to do it.
I find myself at the base of the summit tier, the wind pushing me about. My gut feels rotten with fear. the lizard brain says: AVOID THIS. I start tossing my gear about, halfheartedly, uncertain what motives are speaking, unclear what I really want.
And then imperceptibly as the decision is made, the fiddle-f*#k-foreplay goes diving savage deep into the act. The casual, impermanent backseat necking becomes defilement, new and dirty and proud/not proud, for me at least. I'd like to think that the tower has spoken her piece by way of letting this little gopher skitter through.
There seems to be no natural anchor about, so my old pal deadman stands in for Dog. Neither one is gym-certified, but I trust them both.
A fúcked-up unprotected start on the NE end of the summit tier leads to an off-balance awkward LA placement, my first ever. It rings clear and perfect and drives me up a juggy/fractured portable hold lottery ledge-pull, creeping under suspended Sword-of-Damocles blocks, out a really clean R-leaning overhanging .75 crack. The topout on this 30' section involves some very delicate rotten jug hauling under the most perfectly rope-chopping man-mangling 2-ton guillotine of stone I've enjoyed the pleasure of intimately knowing.
The wind screams around to me on the N end, pelts me with pebble and buffets me when I stand bare to it. This is not fun. This is no-fun, and I feel sick and wanna go home.
All this time I am thinking the same thing I did when I did my first tower/roped/multi climb, Independence Monument, on a day of 60 mph wind: "This f*#king thing is going to fall over." And the classic "I do not enjoy this."
Somehow a shade of Immortan Joe's halflife warboy, Nux, somehow his breathy drugged-out "Oh what a lovely day!" as he throttles into the firestorm haboub, somehow I was Nux for a second there, pissing in the face of obvious doom and throttling straight forward. Minus Furiosa, and well, other people. But yeah the feeling, to the hilt and all.
Up and up on a yellow and then a red and then a purple micro cam, up, tip-toeing across more perched rotten behemoths tilting out over the abyss, aiming always for the center-tower blocks, those least prone to breakdown and auto-disambiguation.
A couple exploding holds here, a couple bread loaves heaved into space there, and I'm beneath what will be the route's eventual free-climbing crux, a 4-6" overhanging 20' piece of magic.
Fat cams save my C1 day and I crawl up onto the highest N-end ledge. Traverse time, east and then south over scree-piled mud-chip covered sloping ledges with sparse protection and a ledge below asking for in-kind ankle donations.
It somehow all comes together and finally I am beneath the last 20' of real climbing on a boulder-strewn, yucca garden with two big cams behind some very wobbly looking rocks. No decent pro behind me for some distance laterally and big, cold, windy air between me and the desert floor some 500 m distant.
It is now 3:30 and I can see it snowing on the mountains upwind, snowing hard. I am not prepared to dick around up here, nor will my truck make the road home if I am not awheel before the white covers that one steep, steep creaky uphill U road.
I start diddling about with the bolt-bit and prepare to drill just a measly few meters off the deck, afraid. Thinking of drilling more fúcking gear up top to rap and clean this stupid fúcking traverse in the fúcking wind all fúcking alone. Fúck, fúck, fúck.
And then something happens - something like scratching a vital itch or eating or lovemaking, but better, somehow better (sorry DF, you know I kidd): I found the correct, the right, the ideal, the fore-ordained and forever-to-be-hallowed tool. That tool is short fat LA pin that I found in the dust beneath some nothing mud tower, forgotten by some aid-freak in days past. Never did have much use for it before but I placed and sank it in proud and high off a stem over junk rock, sunk it in the placement it was made for, no time-wasting with more permanent anchors or slapdicking around with some useless 0000000000 micro-offset-invert chocks.
I trotted up to the summit free and easy, left a register, confirmed lack of obvious prior activity and got outta there. Thanks to that perfect little pin. And a hammered hex or two.
thanks for sharing in my mecca and my experience. now get off the internet and go climbing. seriously.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 26, 2015 - 10:17pm PT
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hey there say, thebravecowboy (and to your pupdog, too) ...
thanks for sharing, this, this eve...
and, happy thanksgiving, too!
this was a nice quiet share, to end the eve, :)
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Nov 26, 2015 - 10:18pm PT
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Looks beautiful. Well worth the effort. The remote camping is priceless.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Nov 26, 2015 - 10:49pm PT
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looks outrageous!
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Nov 27, 2015 - 04:42am PT
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desert solitearin' up and down. glad to have you back. and your little dog.
seriously, you been long since doing this place up right. long may you gallivant
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jonnyrig
climber
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Nov 27, 2015 - 06:56am PT
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Sublime.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Nov 27, 2015 - 07:07am PT
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No simple highway?
Looks like fun...
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Nov 27, 2015 - 07:18am PT
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Dare I say anything?
your Dog Rocks
And so the hell do you!
Poisoned rapport, not that I do not deserve it
Given, my tasteless jibes
I now Eat Humble pie
day-break , noon and night
Thanx for posting
Your shares are a Delight,
Your approaches and hike outs not so much;-0
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Nov 27, 2015 - 07:22am PT
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A very beautiful report.
Susan
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Nov 27, 2015 - 07:25am PT
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Looks & sounds like a "big" adventure. Thanks for sharing it. Much appreciated over coffee, on a snowy 10 degree f. Idaho morning.
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Tung Gwok
Mountain climber
South Bend, Indiana
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Nov 27, 2015 - 08:02am PT
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Yes. Just yes.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Nov 27, 2015 - 08:10am PT
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The brave cowboy, is.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Nov 27, 2015 - 08:16am PT
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Cajones!
I liked your style.
Brave indeed!!
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BigB
Mountain climber
Sin City
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Nov 27, 2015 - 08:41am PT
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Love red heelers... best dogs evarrrrr
Tfpu that was a cool TR!!!
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couchmaster
climber
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Nov 27, 2015 - 08:44am PT
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Awesomeness fer sure, beautiful cracks and rock. The beauty of desert cliffs is top of the pile. Sweet stuff, I'm envious.
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Nov 27, 2015 - 09:04am PT
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Killer.
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Nov 27, 2015 - 11:01am PT
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Pure Supertopo Gold.
Thank you for sharing adventure with us.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Nov 27, 2015 - 12:23pm PT
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Way ta go max!
Thanks for the share.
Ps
Good job not putting it in TR form.
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Leggs
Sport climber
Made in California
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Nov 27, 2015 - 04:13pm PT
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Beautiful ...
great photos...great read.
Thanks for sharing!!
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Nov 27, 2015 - 04:45pm PT
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Great stuff, BC! Could identify with your feelings.
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