son of hart

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Darkcrystal

Trad climber

Lausanne, Switzerland

Aug 8, 2011 - 09:27pm PT

First part of the story ... SoH 1975 ....

We had planned to be 8 days on the wall => 8 gallons of water. (one of them got damaged and part of its content lost).

We had fixed some ropes at the bottom of the Salathé.
First bivy above half$.

day2: We reach Mammoth terraces (already tired, hauling the bags on the low angle slabs has been killing). Moreover hauling 2 bags needs lot's of time, with our organisation the second leaves his belay only when the 2nd bag starts moving up. Down to Heart Ledge. We fix two pitches pm and back to the ledge for the night.

day3. . Vey dirty cracks. First incident: while leading I find a bolt from the FA ... actually it is just a dowel, with a nice screw thread ... but no nut, no hanger! ... My vocabulary is too limited for explaining the problem to Dave. I fix a belay a bit higher on regular pitons, not that good, Sylvester had some reason to put a bolt ...

When Dave arrives, good news: he has taken the same kind of bolts (ie we have the appropriate nuts and hangers) ... bad news ... he has only 5 of them!

It will appear later that Rick had removed most of the nuts along the route.

We reach the right corner of the Heart, first (of the 9) bivys in our single point hammocks. My sleeping back has no zipper ... getting into both the sleeping bag and the hammack is kind of expedition on its own.

We had carefully packed every item contained in the haulbags in a plastic bag, because of possible rain. A disaster! How long does it take to explore more then 40 identical white bags in order to find your toothpaste, or something more useful. By the way, think how stupid we have been, each one of us had its own tube of toothpaste ... some energy bars would have been a better investment.

day 4: The next pitch is mostly a bolt ladder, easy, but because of the nut problem, I have to cut a mini string in small pieces for progressing on the dowels. Dave takes the lead for the pitch finishing below heart roof. Taking a picture when he is close to the end, I realise that he has forgotten the hauling line. He has to rappel down and we bivy ... just one easy pitch above the previous bivy :-(

One of the gasoline bottle is licking.

day 5. Dave finishes his pitch and I take the lead for the roof. I find one bolt in the roof, a 2nd one 15 meters higher, (real hard nailing) and get desperate crazy when I get to the belay (heartbreak ledge): There is just one huge rivet, one huge f... completely rosted rivet!!!

I do not have the drill (Dave considered he was the specialist), and no way to place a solid piton ... just down to my right some lose rocks in kind of vertical hole that I can fix with 2 or 3 chuckstones ... yes, I consider the chucks were holding the stones. Desperate, this is just enough to belay someone climbing below ... but what next .... after probably two hours of hopeless thinking I decide to have Dave coming up ... and not me retreating. After all he will bring the drill.

I nevertherless take a pic of this crap belay ... just in case ... never knows, might help who it may concern to understand what happened to us, if ...
When Dave arrives he adds one bolt ... well, he just manages to have the dowel entering half-way ... rather unpleasant, all of our 5 bolts will have the same fate: Half-way in ... maybe Dave had taken the wrong drill ?

I would really love to know if the guys from the SA observed these bolts ...

Looking backwards to it, I am convinced that the guys of the FA had much safer belays than we had.

Our stove is hanging to some wires, huge flames that night, close to one meter high, dangerous ...

We knew we were slow and started svaing food and water.
Dave decided that I was too slow, and that he would lead everything. Why not, I am not ready to waste strength in a dispute, especially when I believe that time is going to clarify everything for free. He did lead for the next two days, I have little memories of these days, remember that once the dihedral did open to the right, making the atmosphere less claustophobic.

I remember as well Dave doing a beautiful layback at the beginning of pitch #12 (according to the pic of http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/682186/Son-Of-Heart-T-R

Finally, on the 6th day, I lose my balance while cleaning, hitting a peg from below, receive tha hammer with full strength on the cheekbone, close to my eye, lot's of blood. I wrote about this: "I could not see my face, but I saw Dave's one when reaching the belay".

I had no gloves, and began to have wounds at all my fingers. Higher it turned out to be rather handicaping.

7th Bivy at the bottom of K Chymney: Again half a bolt inside. Looking upwards Dave comments: "looks like death" ...
In the dark a piton escapes ... 3,4,5,6,7 ... double sheaf of sparks above heart ledge, then a thick piece of silence, just the beat of my heart, bad night, full of anxiety.

In the morning everybody stays hidden in his sleeping bag, we are awake, but the nightmare is still above us.

Dave wants me to go for it. Ridiculous! Matter of good will I go up 6 feet. Ridiculous, not because of my mountain boots, just because that's me ... in those days I could perhaps go up to 6b-c (french scala, say 5.10d ), but with better shoes, and on limestone, gneiss or dolomite. In a granit chymney my limit must have been just french 5b-c ... basically no idea, never met an OW, not the same sport.
Sometimes, early pm I guess, and after smoking some grass, Dave eventually went for it.
Lot's of yelling, on both sides ... "we are going to die" Actually it was the first time I used this one. That's me, no problem with this, my friends will recognise my style immediately. Actually they find it safe with me, for I can recognise the smell of death from far away ... and that particular day it was some smell ...

I know it does not help the leader (and made progress since then), but you never know how reasonnable someone under grass might be. I never used grass or mushrooms, NEVER. I am just a human being (smoking regular tabaco then), courageous to some extend, in the sense that even when scared to death, I find sometimes the ressources to keep going, to some extend ...

How many A4/5 pitches have been done so far with a clean mind, without any dope ? You know better than I do ... for me it has been a cultural shock (It must be clear that for me this is not a moral problem!).
Some yelling from above too, kind of "I am coming down", "I am slipping". Dave has been very brave, congrats, could place very little protection. He made a belay directly at the end of the chimney, and I took the lead till the bottom of N Chimney. It was a wide crack, I used all bongs we had, removed some below me to use them again higher, did twinning bongs, and even a bong xrossings.
When I reached the next belay, Dave refused to join for the bivy (???), I hauled my hammock and sleeping bag, received a bit of food and water ... strange ...
In the morning he joined and that time went directly to the chim, no time for breakfast. Yelling, on both sides ... bis repetita.... congrats Dave!

Small comment regarding Dave's account." Finally, in order to "Get Maurice to shut up" Dave takes out one of his two aiders(etrea)and rolls it up into a ball, stuffs it into the back of the chimney, clips a biner and the rope to it and proceeds for another 15-30 ft. before it falls out and down the rope to Maurice."
Actually it's a good one :-) lol :-) but there might be another interpretation ... that day Dave simply learned from me how to avoid having a rope getting stuck too deep in a crack ... less funny, but think about it!

Last point, it would be rather incoherent that someone needing half a day to go for it does not try everything to place protections, no matter how bad. Anyway, congrats Dave! the chims were behind.

Going up to the (double) triangular roof was most interesting aid. Was happy to find a bolt close to the end. I had my first serious signs of dehydratation:When doing a strenuous move, my vision was becoming unclear, my picture of the world overexposed like a picture taken facing the sun, and during some seconds I could not figure out if I was still on balance.

Severe disapointment getting out of the roofs. I believed it would keep going straight up ... and a bolt 15m to my right had a different opinion ... had never seen any topo, did not know about this traverse.

It was already hard to pull the rope because of the double roof. I decided to pull all of it, and to continue as a solo climber would do, with a prussick on the rope. Most tricky nailing, no real crack, just a sample of all kinds of possible holes, and a unique bolt in the traverse.

The one bolt of the next belay was in sight (3 meters) when I had to use a skyhook. Drama, there was consecutively a second skyhook move, and our second skyhook had stayed by Dave. I tried tu use the hook of my ladder (european had this) but it did not work. That time I did not shout ... nowadays one would use the cell phone and tell the partner to put the hook on the hauling line, but shouting then, the risk would have been too high of having Dave believing I had reached the belay ... and happily sending the haulbag. I unroped, fixed the end of the rope to my last piton, went back all the way to the roof secured just by my prussick, and rapelled down to Dave. It had been kind of dancing with the angels.
Dave was in a bad mood, had been waiting too long without understanding what was going on. Much worse, Dave had finished his grass, maybe during his lonely night, maybe earlier ... or had it for breakfast ...

it was the beginning of the 9th evening, the end of what I did not know yet, had been the nice part of the story.

......................

sorry guys, leaving tomorrow for climbing in Italy, more later