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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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How cool Zander. And who was with you for godsake? I presume you climb with people... I am hoping it was Ed.
The key on the lower pitches is to look for the "forked tree". If you ignore this detail, you will get off-route to the right and onto tougher although better rock. No, the forked tree and the funky rock is the way up.
What you do on the second pitch of the Great Chimney: you stay in the chimney. You stay in there until it dies out in the little forest up there. It is granular, bottomed out and nearly rotten though and maybe that is why you started to look for ways out.
Above the little bench/forest at the very top, there are several ways to go. I have done them all. Royal had this really cool totally unobvious way of snaking through at about 5.5--- we did together unroped back in 75 but since then I can't remember how it went. This last bit of terrain is weird anyway and can be 5.8 even if you take the right hand version. I think maybe the RR way was to start up the right version and cut left on a semi-horizontal crack leftwards and then up.
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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Hey Peter,
I was with my friend Greg. The truth is the original start looked too wet where you step across. The water was running pretty hard so I talked Greg into starting to climb right off the talus. Ha ha, it goes! I'm not sure how many pitches it took us.
We looked around for twenty minutes for a 5.5 ending but did the 10a way from the topo.
Climb on!
Zander
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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My first year in the Valley was 1969, which was an exceptionally wet year. One day, something like 17 parties signed out for the Direct Route, because it was one of the few relatively dry ones.
I took my first leader fall in the Reigelhuth Chimney. Roper's red guide said "beginners usually have some trouble." Right he was. A year later, I climbed much of what gripped me the year before unroped. By then, I guess I had gotten used to that sort of climbing.
I still like the climb, and maybe more so because it is so currently out of favor.
John
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Did this route in 76 with some friends... we got a late start after free coffee at the Awahnee or was it poached..? Had to take my helmet off to get through one of the chimneys and dropped the bish...We ended up doing some difficult jam crack in the dark to finish the route and shared a bivy with some large insects that kept me awake most of the night.....The chimney's were a pain in the butt and awkward...Rj
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Nice!
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mucci
Trad climber
The pitch of Bagalaar above you
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2011 - 05:16pm PT
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Nice Z!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Good on ya z-bro!
That's an adventure route for sure, as Melissa, and I can attest!
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nutjob
Gym climber
Berkeley, CA
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Excelente!
Que stilo, y buen'aventura!
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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I took an older climber up it in 1975. I still remember the '5.7' chimney up there, like it's for real. He'd always wanted to do it and he was so pleased to get up it that he bought us a 35$ bottle of wine at the Ahwahnee afterwards and we sat on the porch drinking that. It was a good adventure, definitely harder than Royal Arches. Nice TR, men.
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M. Volland
Trad climber
Grand Canyon
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My partner on this one was John Forde. He didn't pack his headlamp like he thought he did. While following the last pitch he pulled mine out and clipped it to his chest strap just in case he needed it as it was getting dark fast. The headlamp swung and hit the rock as he was climbing, and the batteries popped out and could be heard falling down the cliff.
In no moonlight, we descended North Dome Gully by using the light from his cell phone, which would offer us two feet of light for about ten seconds every time we pressed a button.
Loved that route!
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Ferretlegger
Trad climber
san Jose, CA
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Around 1970 my buddy Dave Collins and I attempted the Washington Column Direct route. Following Roper's stellar directions, we apparently missed a critical bush or shrub or something and ended up off to the right doing some pretty strange and stiff climbing. I led a very hard (for me, at the time) face climbing pitch with almost no protection, which steepened and then ended after a terrifying mantle on a triangular ledge about 4 feet wide. There was a crack behind the ledge, and I put a piton in and brought Dave up. The cracks we had thought led upwards turned out to be nothing but discolorations in the rock, and the face climbing above looked very hard and totally unprotected. We decided to rappel.
I went to put in another piton in the crack behind the ledge, and as I gave it a whack, there was a nasty groan and the ledge slid down the face a few inches!! It was completely detached, and just staying on the face due to friction!! Dave and I were stunned, followed by a moment of bowel churning horror, as we visualized the long tumble into space as the block finally fell off. We were standing on the "ledge" with no anchors, and a handful of pins (way before nuts..) and a single Goldline rope. I desperately searched for a crack, anything that would take a pin, but there was nothing. Except...there was a tiny horizontal seam, barely visible, above my head. As luck would have it, I had brought my RURP, purchased in the hope that someday I would grow to become a heroic aid climber (that was the sine qua non in those days). I had, of course, never placed a RURP, and had only the vaguest idea as to their strength, but our options were slim to none, so I whacked it into the seam and kept whacking until all that remained was the nylon sling. I hand placed a (now much larger) angle into the crack at the back of the tottering block as a "backup" which, had it become weighted if the RURP failed, would have served the same purpose as a cannon for Wylie Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon, namely to rip the block off so we would have something to look at as we fell to our doom. We threaded the Goldline through the RURP sling, and tied a long runner around the rope and through the piton, and Dave rapped off towards a tree way off to one side, and just about at the end of the rope. He made it, and I clipped in. As I got ready to weight the RURP, a strange peace came over me. I looked at the wretched thing, and it looked back at me. We sat there for a few seconds, communing in a way impossible to describe to a non-climber. It was one of those life-or-death moments where one balances on the knife edge of one's fate. I had no choice but to rappel. I was at once both terrified and in a state of extremely heightened awareness. Everything was very clear, and focused. I had accepted my destiny, and what would happen would happen, and I was ok with that. I stepped back onto the rope, and rapped to the tree with no other adventure but that going on in my brain. Dave and I retreated, learned from our mistakes (we took a course in plant identification) and came back and did the route another time. I recall it as a cracking good adventure climb, with lots of sweating, grunting, and dirt.
There is a lot to be said for being young, strong, ambitious, naive, and just a bit.....stupid!
Michael Jefferson
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Captain...or Skully
climber
or some such
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Great tell, Ferretlegger! Yeesh, rapping off a single Rurp.
Pure Death.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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yowza, nice FerretLegger
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jan 21, 2012 - 11:50am PT
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bump...I was talking about this rig yesterday. I really wanna do it.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 21, 2012 - 12:45pm PT
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I think I have mentioned before on ST that the critical (although certainly not earth shattering) detail (Column Direct & Lunch Ledge) in the first pitch or second pitch is to make sure you pass through a very obvious FORKED TREE. If you miss it and are sucked into going right at this early stage, you end up way the hell off route and into much much harder climbing that perhaps doesn't even pan out, off to the right. It's much better rock over there too and when you see it, you naturally want to be there instead of the junk you do have to climb and stay on route with. Offroute and way to the right, you will even find plenty of evidence of climbing out there, like slings and anchors, thus falsely convincing you your quest is truly fated brilliance... Just stay in the lame junky terrain, pass through the forked tree and don't make any self-congratulatory discoveries out there. Keep in mind and as a rule of thumb, the Direct Route on the Column unfortunately only has four good-looking pitches on it.
The Reigelhuth Chimney (5.7),
The Charlie Brown Chimney variation to Fat Man Chimney,
The "friction step" or its alternate the short open book straight up before the Friction Step,
The first pitch of the Great Chimney.
The remainder of the leads are severely compromised by easy ground, discontinuous features, trees, scree, graininess, unsightly ledges, abominable lack of exposure. (g).
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rogro
Trad climber
Sacramento, CA
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Jan 24, 2012 - 03:43pm PT
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Sometime in the early 60's I heard that Steve Thompson had soloed Direct Route. I would guess that he did it in 63 or 64. Anyway, it's the earliest report I ever heard of someone free soloing such a big route. At least as I remember, the first 30 feet or so of Great Chimney was the hardest and scariest part, and there was no pro.
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le_bruce
climber
Oakland, CA
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Jan 24, 2012 - 04:28pm PT
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Sweet thread.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jan 24, 2012 - 04:49pm PT
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The thing is a fuging nightmare! =Must Do!
As baffling and challenging in my teens as it was in my fifties, when i thought I had all the tricks wired.
Step off the path anywhere ( and you will!) and you're traveling a whole different wormhole.
Adventure climbing doesn't get better than this!
Do it today!
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 24, 2012 - 05:11pm PT
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Rogro, Royal was soloing it back then as well, routinely. And down climbing it too. Also the Arches, and those down climbed as well. It was not that unusual. Remember it's just 5.7.
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Daphne
Trad climber
Mill Valley, CA
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Jan 24, 2012 - 08:04pm PT
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^^^ That's why I got talked into doing it with Jaybro, "It's just 5.7" ... Ha! Just, ha!
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