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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Here are a few photos from my ascent of Dihedral Wall with Cybele in the spring of 2006.
Cybele takes the lead heading up towards the triangular-shaped roof on P6. To her left and above you can see the Pinnacle of Hammerdom on the left skyline. Is that a cool name for a bivi, or what? I understand the name has nothing to do with nailing!
Cybele made snowballs for us one morning! We got dumped on pretty hard for a few minutes. All the snow crystals slid down the Wings of Steel slab and deposited themselves in a deep pile at the base.
Climbing into the Black Arch, with the fearsome Wings Of Steel slab beneath. Note the new bolts which I have shamelessly clipped. I'm leading in blocks, so after hauling the rack up to the station which you can see just below me, I have taken off on solo belay while Cybele gets ready to follow and clean.
Cybele begins the classic dihedrals in the mid-upper section of the route...
...and charges onwards as she solo leads her "block" of pitches. The climbing in this section is OK, but never really great. Overall I was not impressed by the quality of climbing, nor the route. Never Never Land is a hugely better excursion if you're looking for something of similar difficulty in the area, and Cosmos is OK, too.
That's the Pinnacle of Hammerdom to my left.
This little critter had made himself a comfy nest in the crack, and decorated it with a single flower blossom. Not sure what kind of critter he is, but very cute!
When Cybele returned my camera after this pitch, I was rather surprised to find no fewer than ten photos of this feature. Perhaps she liked him as a textbook example of natural pro?
Here we enjoy morning coffee on Thanksgiving Ledge. Note: "Morning" begins around 10am and can carry on well past noon. It felt good to be able to walk around for the first time in so many days.
Above Thanksgiving Ledge the character of the route changes considerably as you enter a huge and wet chimney system. Cybele did a superb job swimming up this pitch, which was running with water in several places.
Above this next bit, you climb up a huge gully that was completely filled with dead trees. My rope became so entangled I had to attach a jumar to it to pull up slack, then short fix the rope and continue soloing to finish the pitch. I managed to get off route at the very top, and turned the final overhang on the wrong side. Remember to stay left!
And here's our Summit Photo!
Enough photos of climbers and gear on the summit, arm in arm with beers in hand! No more aluminum-covered hands fondling skyhooks, I say! Let's see a proper summit photo - Cybele's trashed fingers and her belly button full of dirt.
Buy me a beer and I'll email you the shot of the bruises on her hips! Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
We didn't haul the final four pitches up the swim and the gully, but rather schlepped it all across Thanksgiving Ledge, then rapped Lurking Fear. I've descended twice this way now, and it is emphatically the Better Way down from Thanksgiving Ledge, provided Lurking Fear isn't crawling with parties.
Cheers,
Pete
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Very nice! What is that little furry critter, anyway?
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Bill Murray and Steve Martin dressed as hayseeds:
"What the, what the hail is that thang?"
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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thanks for the cool pics Pete!
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eddie7
Trad climber
London, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Sep 11, 2007 - 08:28pm PT
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Nice photographs Pete!
Keep 'em coming.
cheers!
bp.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Sep 15, 2007 - 04:02pm PT
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Right, so here is the current state of affairs on Dihedral Wall.
The whole route is festooned with bolts. This is typical of what you will find in a lot of places, although this example is particularly grievous.
This is the pitch above the ledge, the former A3 pitch. As you can see, the placement accepts a wire, a green Camalot and a gold Camalot. The bolt is a measured sixteen inches away. You don't need a bolt to avoid buggering up the handjam, since the move is protectable with a wire.
Here's a view looking down the A3 pitch above The Ledge. The bolts are all within fourteen to eighteen inches of the crack. The crack would probably go clean given a few more Hybrid Aliens - I ran out of gear and had to use the pinstack you see.
I made a point out of not clipping the bolts, but it seemed like a pretty stupid exercise. Unfortunately, the person who placed the bolts - Todd Skinner - is no longer with us. I wish he were, so we could take him to task over this. Now please note that I am not attacking the identity of Todd - from all accounts he was a pretty cool dude, though I never met him. I am, however, condemning his behaviour, which is deplorable.
I've climbed 32 El Cap routes, and never seen anything like this. The Hubers are known for free climbing El Cap aid routes with bold climbing - they don't retrobolt like Todd did. The Hubers sack up and run it out, and are known for taking huge falls. I hope this sort of thing isn't happening on other El Cap routes.
I asked Tommy Caldwell - who made the first free ascent of Dihedral Wall - if he placed any of the bolts, and he said he didn't. But he told me he used them. Tommy made a pretty big splash in the climbing mags about climbing El Cap's "hardest" route at 5.14-whatever. But I don't think that new routes should come at the expense of turning them into a convenient sport route. While technically not as difficult, some of the other stuff the Hubers have done, and Tommy too, are a lot more difficult and sporting.
Unfortunately, I didn't have my bolt replacement kit with me on Dihedral, so I wasn't able to remove any of the bolts. It was my plan to ask Todd to do so. Perhaps his partner would be willing?
It's too bad the magazines gave this ascent so much publicity - one wonders if they would have if they had been aware of the huge ethical transgressions. The bolts need to be removed, and the holes filled with epoxy to render them as invisible as possible.
Peter Zabrok
Oakville, Ontario
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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Sep 15, 2007 - 05:44pm PT
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neat pics Pete.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Sep 19, 2007 - 09:29pm PT
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Where's Coiler when I need him?
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Thanks for posting the photos, Pete.
A simple solution to the bolts next to protectable cracks on the Dihedral Wall could be for the next person up the route who feels like dealing with it to have the follower remove the hangers from those particular bolts, then tighten down the nut. Maybe even add another nut on top if there are a lot of threads showing. Then it will effectively be unclippable unless someone is determined and has a wrench with them. But if someone else decides they want to clip some of them for free climbing, they can reinstall hangers.
[Edit: if I'm a "nobody" who cares, that might be about right! :-) ]
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Hmmmm, nobody cares I guess. [Except Clint, who is never a nobody]
You know what? I'm gonna go up Horse Chute, and I'm gonna whack in a bunch of 3/8" bolts next to cracks and stuff cuz I feel like it.
Since nobody cares.
Or maybe I'll get yelled at, cuz I'm just a Regular Joe Climber, and not a Superstar. Cuz nobody seems to care if you're a Superstar.
Or so it seems....
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Oakville, Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Nice photo!
If you guys haven't read it yet, go back to the second page of this post and read Don Lauria's account of the third ascent that Steve scanned from Summit Sept 1968. With eighty pitons and of course zero cams, Don and Dennis Henneck knocked the route off in an amazingly fast five days, which forty years later really puts Big Wall Gumbies [like me] in our place!
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Pete,
Shortly after Lauria and Hennek, Madsen and Schmitz did it in like 2.5 days.... Supposedly, on that A4 crack that Hennek led at dawn, Madsen wielded his 2-pound sledge and made it A1 with Lost Arrrows.
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Out on the sand.... man.....
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Pete... how many bolts total did you see near cracks? Are we talking 4 or 5, or more like 20? (one would be bad enough, AFAIC)
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 6, 2008 - 11:57pm PT
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Nice pics folks. Gotta hate those Futuristic Little Utility Bolts. Them's FLUBs in my book but hey.....Pre-protecting on aid or figuring it out while hanging there the old fashioned way would be way more inspiring when the placements are clearly there. Somebody will come along one day and burn those FLUBs off by climbing proudly right on by them. As Captain Beefheart once said "the dust blows forward."
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 17, 2008 - 10:28pm PT
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Bump since Lauria is on a roll....
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2009 - 10:12pm PT
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And now Henneck too!
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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The dust blows forward bump!
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