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marty(r)
climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
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Mar 10, 2012 - 02:47pm PT
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From Rock and Ice Number 7, March 1985
Does Neal Kaptain lurk here? I only met him once, bouldering at the Joe Brown Boulder at Roubidoux, maybe 1989 or 90. He must've had fun with this. Too bad Galen isn't around to chime in.
Side note, could the caption be right for that image of Harding on the Moose's Tooth? That doesn't seem like a climate that'd be forgiving of Daisy Dukes. Then again, Batso was harder than most.
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Zander
climber
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Mar 10, 2012 - 10:31pm PT
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Nice Mart(y)
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 11, 2012 - 02:00pm PT
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Nice, the thread is growing!
Eric--about the yellow lines: I'm sure that Harding didn't climb those cracks because higher on the route there were bathooks next to a clean 3" crack, as they must not of had the bigger gear. And they left evidence of their passing everywhere, so it is impossible that they didn't even drill a belay bolt or something on that crack section. The splitter crack Bryan's yellow line follows is mostly #3-#5 camalot size, some bigger too.
The route you and Walt took would allow you to climb nearly the whole first part of the wall with no bolts, but even in this extreme drought time those pitches were still running with water, so we looked for a more direct line to those splitters which did involve one pitch of mostly bolts. Still, The first seven pitches of the Direct(the 'new' part though not all new because Eric had climbed a couple, the second half being the Harding route) are very natural: five pitches have no lead bolts, one pitch has half a pitch of bolt ladder, and one pitch has a lot of bolts. No harder than A3 though there is still some looseness. After that you're on the Harding route and Warren wasn't kidding about the blankness of the upper wall.
Dave Turner gave me his notes to make a HOC topo. I've made a draft but haven't been able to get ahold of Dave to edit it(and his partner told me I'm missing the last three pitches,hahahha). So it's coming.
best,
erik
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Darnell
Big Wall climber
Sequoia Ntl. Pk.
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Mar 11, 2012 - 05:22pm PT
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Yeah that wall is pretty rad. We got lucky with the weather this winter, we never would have been able to do it last winter. The approach was quite engaging, pretty hefty "buy in" on that wall. There were long blank sections but there were also more features on our route than I thought there would be. Some VERY loose pitches up there, kind of blew my mind a couple of times, was really worried about crushing Nanook while he was belaying right below me. Can't remember which pitch but I also thought at one point I was going to pull off a huge block and cut my rope. We fixed a few pitches and Erik went back up by himself during a break and lead a pitch or two by himself, I was really impressed by his solo lead from the trees (pitch 5?)
he really hung it out on that one, way up there on that cold, north facing wall above a ledge, he finally put a bolt in. Proud!
I was really inspired by how tough Harding and his crew were, up there in 1971 suffering and getting it done. Hard men for sure. I did get one of Hardings old biners, and one of Walt's with his initials stamped on it. I wanted to get a couple of Hardings Rivets and home made aluminum hangers, there were only a few on the whole route as they had chopped everything else. But we would have destroyed them trying to pull them. The aluminum hangers were so soft that after I clipped them and weighted them (thought they were going to fail) I had a real hard time getting the biners off the hangers cause they bent and molded around the biner.
gota go back to work, more later
richie
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N0_ONE
Social climber
Utah
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Mar 12, 2012 - 11:03am PT
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Right on! Thanks guys! Finally something worth reading on ST!
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Zander
climber
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Mar 13, 2012 - 10:37am PT
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This thread could really use a few more photos of this outrageous wall!
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 13, 2012 - 12:14pm PT
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Sorry Klaus, what I was saying was if you climb the upper section of the Harding route you will find broken off bolts and bathooks all over, like literally every 12-14 inches in places, some bolts remain which you saw that have homemade plumber's tape hangers. So I was just saying if they had climbed the middle pitches of the Direct(where Bryan's yellow line is drawn), which features a 200'+ section of 2"-8" crack, I find it impossible to believe that they wouldn't have left some indication of their passage--a bathook, a broken off bolt, or a bolt. We found nothing like that till we hit your and Walt's bail slings at the headwall.
Also, because from Warren's account this was a mega-siege(though I'm sure we got em beat, having spent 4 months to climb the Direct!) it would make more sense that they stayed right of those middle-ledge-trees and fixed straight up to the ledges beneath headwall. I call that place the cemetary, or the 'million trundle bivy'
where's Bryan? SIF topo?
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mucci
Trad climber
The pitch of Bagalaar above you
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Mar 13, 2012 - 12:42pm PT
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The yellow line is not where the p wall route goes. Warren did not climb the wide cracks mentioned above.
Talk about obscure. There are pictures of the team at the ledge where the purple and yellow meet.
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 13, 2012 - 04:09pm PT
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Yeah, considering we know where the Porcelain wall starts for three pitches because Klaus reclimbed two of them on WHWIS(and you can see rap stations from the base) and we know that they got to the ledges beneath the headwall and that Richie and I followed their route to the top. It is just three pitches of pretty thin climbing and rivets that separates those two places. Seems logical considering they had more thin gear than wide.
Enough about climbing though, how bout this old photo from when we were kids:
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mucci
Trad climber
The pitch of Bagalaar above you
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Mar 13, 2012 - 09:20pm PT
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sweet pix.
That bivy at the base has the mark of a killing field.
Was the intent of the route ever really a question?
Sounds like nobody knows how/where they got up to the ledge.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 13, 2012 - 09:25pm PT
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Sounds like nobody knows how/where they got up to the ledge.
That ain't true.
Use your brain and you'll figure it out.
Modern climbers?
Can't do anything without a topo, cell phone, iPad, GPS, Satellite uplink, or drooling into a stupid beer .....
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Mar 14, 2012 - 02:38am PT
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Nanook,
Are there a couple of slings left around the tree from when you climbed it?
Those will kill it when it grows a little larger diameter....
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 14, 2012 - 03:44am PT
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Good story here.
Yeah Clint, pieces of 11mm rope I cut to use as long slings because the tree is so big that you would have to have two or three runners girthed the whole time. Don't worry, I left them a foot loose to account for growth.....though this year there might not be too much growth,hahahha.
Klaus, I don't know what it was like in '76 but the Planaria and above follow pretty big brown water streaks. We were glad to be to the left of that as there was water falling over there kinda like the Southeast face of EC the whole winter. We could have avoided the upper headwall with some pretty natural traversing and a one pitch bolt ladder to the top of the Planaria, but I was worried about the weather making that area really wet and we didn't believe for a minute that Warren and crew would really chop all their bolts.
Climb it!
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bringmedeath
climber
la la land
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Mar 14, 2012 - 12:27pm PT
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Warren must have thought Robbins was a total prick, hell I did too when I met him.
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 15, 2012 - 05:28pm PT
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Thanks for posting the photo with the Harding line more accurately drawn, Erik. The photo of the lines on the Porcelain that I posted earlier in this thread was based on a color photocopy of the same image that I had drawn on several years ago. Klaus and I discussed the routes on the Porcelain back then (way before I started this thread) and the lines that I drew were based on those discussions. Without Klaus’ input, I would have had no idea where to draw the lower portion of the Harding route, and would have had a tough time figuring out exactly where the lower portion of The Luminescent Wall goes.
Ok, the Harding route was climbed in ’76. I don’t know where I came up with 1971… or 1978… Hmmmmmm… Oh, well. The ’87 Meyers/Reid guide lists the FA as 1975 and the ’93 Reid guide lists it as mid-‘70s. (First post of this thread now edited to correct this date error.)
That’s interesting that Harding pretty much drilled up the lower slab of the wall as well as the headwall. Eric George and I were joking about doing a more direct start to Strange World (right up the lower slab) when we started the route and we made sarcastic references to Wings of Steel.
You must have seen where Klaus and I joined the Harding route on the upper headwall for about half a pitch. I led that pitch and as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I was bat-hooking the empty holes where rivets had been chopped. It was kind of sketchy, considering that the holes were not drilled at the right angle for hooking. I got frustrated with hooking the holes and finally decided to put machine bolt rivets into the old holes towards the end of the pitch. Well, Harding et al were using drill bits that were slightly smaller in diameter than the 17/64” bits that we were using and so when I tried to drill the empty holes deeper to accommodate our rivets, I had a lot of problems with the bit binding. The holes were still too small in diameter for machine head rivets and so when I placed them, the rivets didn’t go in too well and I think one or two of them looked pretty botched. Do you remember seeing those? I wasn’t too happy about it, but didn’t know what else to do. Those old Z-macs with plumber’s tape hangers were pretty sketch too. And I know what you mean about how it’s tough to get a biner in and out of those chincy old hangers.
So, did you only place 3/8” bolts and rivets on the Harding route to restore it, or did you place quarter-inchers for rivets too? How many of the original holes were you able to reuse? That seems like a lot of work!
Marty(r), thanks for posting the R&I article!
Hey Mucci, can you get any photos or stories out of Bosque? That would be way cool.
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Darnell
Big Wall climber
Sequoia Ntl. Pk.
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Mar 17, 2012 - 03:35pm PT
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Bryan that pitch that you lead that joins the Harding route was more than kinda sketchy, I was impressed by how far you bat hooked before putting in a machine head. I tried to get some beaks into that shallow flake, seam on the right and finally gave up and put in a couple bolts. It was freaky in the dark!
Which of you two lead the traverse out left through the green lichen? That pitch looked scary.
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 17, 2012 - 03:57pm PT
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Erik,
As far as the section where we joined the Harding route, I wouldn’t exactly call the climbing an epic, just frustrating and sketchy. When I first joined the route, I placed a couple of beaks and maybe a couple of heads in the thin left-facing corner that Harding et al drilled next to. I figured that if gear could be placed in the crack, then why not, because drilling next to a crack is lame. Some of those empty holes next to the crack could have been patched; the ones where it is blank obviously needed a new rivet.
That is a bummer that Rich put in a new belay on that pitch. The spot where Harding belayed and we belayed has a really thin stance for your feet, as you saw. That is definitely the logical place to belay and the new belay bolts should certainly be removed. Just because a section of climbing entails a bunch of drilling doesn’t mean that it’s cool to start moving belays around.
Did you reuse any original holes for bolt replacement, or did you just drill new holes next to the old ones, like you did on the upper ladders of the Trip, etc.?
Rich,
Thanks. Klaus led the traverse pitch. He was expecting a killer knifeblade splitter across the wall, based on earlier scoping… but there was no killer splitter. There’s a photo that Klaus took of me cleaning the pitch in the 1999 BD catalog. Here’s a photo of Klaus beginning the pitch, from earlier in this thread.
And here’s a photo of the pitch where we joined the Harding route, from the same post with the above photo. Harding et al climbed up the left side (climber’s right) of the protrusion of rock in the photo and I climbed off our belay (right side of protrusion) on a bunch of beaks before joining the Harding route.
The Yosemite gigapans are pretty cool for checking out features. Take a look at the Porcelain on this one; the light is really good:
http://gigapan.org/gigapans/42873
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 17, 2012 - 05:17pm PT
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Yeah B, I hear ya
I said it was a bummer that Richie stopped early on that pitch-which he certainly wouldn't have done if you had left the hangers on the belay bolts. I don't know if you heard about Nikki's solo of WHWIS but it sounded pretty epic at times because the hangers had been removed and the nuts had rusted on the bolts and couldn't be removed. N ended up having to use stoppers he said which made getting the belay situated for upward pull difficult(because he was soloing), because he couldn't even tighten the nuts down tight on the wires so they were prone to sliding out and loading the bolts weird. I guess that's all part of being prepared,hahhahaha. Good Times!
We found mostly holes with broken off bolts or bathooks, not a lot of useable holes for bolts. Though we did have to resort to using the bathooks a bit. Still hard for me to believe they would have broken off all those bolts, which looked like a lot of work.
Klaus--that SIF splitter looks awesome! one of you two post up that topo.
cheers,
e
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Darnell
Big Wall climber
Sequoia Ntl. Pk.
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Mar 18, 2012 - 12:40pm PT
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Yeah if I could have seen the belay bolts, (without the hangers) I would of climbed up to them. I also had no idea how far you had climbed before joining the Harding route, I was starting to wonder if you had climbed only 30 ft or so before joining, so I was worried that I would run out of rope or would not be able to tag up before I reached your belay, so I stopped.
We were pretty low on bolts on our route, so we did everything we could to conserve them, used every feature we could
Wow, great photo's Bryan, I need to take the time and read this whole thread.
Won't happen today though, it's snowed over 4 feet in the last 36 hours here.
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Erik Sloan
climber
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Mar 18, 2012 - 02:08pm PT
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Ahhh, snowy days to dream of big walls. Here's a pic where you see the splitter 5th pitch of the direct. The red rope in the photo didn't get tied up tight enough and gotten eaten by the foot thick ice--had to cut it loose cause it was so buried in the ice I couldn't hack it free. crazy!
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