I'm declining into grumpy retirement, but I can still stand in a pair of aiders all day. So, off we go again!


Some background info:

Over the years, I've put hours into eyeing up the beautiful, steep, curvaceous southeast face of Kingfisher. Soloed the Northeast Ridge one weekend, early 1990s. Tried for a second ascent of Death of American Democracy, with BIll Roberts, around the same time:



The monster flake Bill is nailing in the photo was creaking and groaning like a hippopotamus with severe intestinal distress, so we bailed. A couple years later we were robbed, robbed I say!--of the second ascent of Beyer's Jagged Edge by Keith Reynolds. Five years after the first ascent, Keith snuck in just a few days before our long-planned ascent......



Looking for a line of weakness on that southeast face, once even carried a ladder in, to see if Beaks could bite 20 feet off the ground:


No luck. Fast forward a couple decades. Robbed, again! of a line Chip Wilson and I had eyed up, when Jeremy Aslaksen and Paul Gagner established Weird Science.

Then, last summer, David Palmada climbed a new route, right up the very best part of the face.

He had earlier claimed a new route, rated "A6" on the Titan. He made four mistakes with this line.
1. Using 30-year-old Intifada as a template for style, and rating, giving this new route "A6."
2. Palmada, a sponsored climber, eagerly wrote up his route for the magazines, talking up an all-hook belay and proposing a rating of an unprecedented A6. Thus it would be by far the hardest aid climb in the US.
3. Palmada did not understand that the world of Big Wall Climbing in the US is a tight-knit (or is it tightly-wound?) community, conflicted, defensive, intensely distrustful of outsiders. It's always been this way. In the early 60s, Harvey T. Carter came close to a fistfight with Steve Roper. Harding and Robbins famously feuded over style and ethics. Beyer's own methods, trenching at will to force a difficult line up a blank face, have been largely abandoned. A good thing, I think.

There's an expectation that an aid climber will serve a long apprenticeship, absorbing the dominant ethics, honing skills, proving their mastery of the dominant paradigm, before they will be trusted, accepted.

Nailing is, in theory, unsustainable. yet it can be sustained, just, if we practitioners keep to a strict, complex, strongly-defended yet poorly defined ethic. Outsiders who are accused of transgressing these ethics can face years, decades even, of abuse, insults, of being pariahs, outcasts, scapegoats.

So, Palmada was walking into a situation where he would, inevitably, have his claims scrutinized by skeptical eyes. His fourth mistake was that, not knowing anything of this, he did not know that one does not have to be from Europe to be an outsider. His claims attracted the Sauron-like gaze of Richard Jensen. Someone who knows about having his own claims examined, dissed, disbelieved. And who has, over the years, developed a strong urge for justice; to examine and critique extraordinary claims.

More, much much more, here:

http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/1827613/Look-Out-Danger-Or-Look-Out-Weak-Sauce

To stand, now, under the route on the Titan is to be saddened at the worst that we climbers are capable of. Here is one of the iconic rock formations in the world, now sprouting scars, holes, scraps of wire sticking out like daggers in a dying bull's proud back, shiny new bolts and chains. For what? To please sponsors? To make a point? Right over a trail, too.

But, to stand under the line of Hot-Parad-Ice is to see something that is right at the limit of what is feasible. Something that might be feasible. Small hints of seams emerge, shyly vanish. Which side of feasible is it going to be? Sheer genius? Contrived and trenched? Only one way to find out!

A call to Chip Wilson found him needing to spend a few days in the desert. Turned out his dog, Millie, had just died, hit by a car.


Chip was really upset. Poor Art, Chip's other dog, was much worse. After a day with Art near the base, howling, I suggested we bail. Chip was determined to continue so he decided to take Art back home to Telluride, to be in familiar surroundings, with friends, for the duration.


Superb start, just-there Peckers lead upward in silence to a fixed copperhead in a horizontal. A testing yank rips it out. No biggie, as it's easy to bypass. Silence deepens, darkens. Concentration becomes effortless, everything moves smooth and subtle in a delicate clip-clack-tap dance of carabiners and topsteps.



At once a beautiful pitch that I hugely enjoyed, yet seeming to have some placements for Peckers that were not into any kind of seam or crack that I could see. About A4. When I emailed Palmada, he said he did not drill, he hammered Peckers, and bent and damaged many in the process. As did I. My drill stayed in the truck then entire time.


Next pitch goes up a nice flake. Chip led this


To a traverse right over the poor belayer--me, in this case. A piton came out hereabouts, causing a fall that was held by a pair of stacked Birdbeaks just below. The traverse led left into an A1 plug-and-go cam crack, that, oddly, sported a bolt partway.

To save time I led pitches 3 and 4 in one long, 170-foot pitch. This also meant that whatever stuff I dropped from high up at the caprock would fall far to the side of Chip.

There is a cool flake system up on pitch 4, that dives in at a sharp angle. I was looking forward to tricky nailing in this obviously delectably fragile feature. A few placements followed this, some went straight in:


Thus may be the one whee I placed an alumihead. A first for me, in the Fishers. Hate the things, but, once pasted in, it seemed pretty solid.

Reward was some of the most outrageous exposure in the desert:


with outstanding views:


You do have to bring your own hangers for the bolt ladder leading to the caprock:


From the caprock, one final pitch turned into two, with a pesky offwidth just before the summit, with the sun going down. Anxious to finish, to go home, to get back to see his dog, Chip fought his way up this in no time flat.



Yeah! Finally get to climb this awesome face. The placements are sometimes into blank-looking rock, but the route all fits together. Nice bolted belays. We really enjoyed it! Left it as we found it, too, no added bolts or holes.

I may talk some more, show some pics, about this route at a couple slideshows I'm doing in San Francisco Friday and Monday:

http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/2101648/730-730-Crusher-Bartlett-DESERT-TOWERS-shows-Berkeley-San-Jose-8730-873

Cheers,
Crusher