Prodigal Sun V 5.7 C2

What are we going to do this weekend? Living in Salt lake gives you almost to many options for going away but I've been itching to get on a wall after spending my summer in the Ditch. So zion was the obvious choice. With a destination set all that was left was to choose a route. I hadn't be on touchstone since last year and i figured it would be a great wall to start the fall walling season off with. Since this would be Chloe's first wall we decided i'd take the first four and then we'd pitch out the last four. We left thursday night and slept outside of the park.
We got up at 5 to drive in and catch the 6 am bus in the park. Temp's were perfect and we were climbing by 7. The two aid pitches i short fixed just because who want's to spend the whole day aid climbing on a free route? So i got up to the first belay, pulled up our little haul sack and all the rope on the lead line, fixed and set off on the next pitch while Chloe cleaned the first pitch. We were through the first two pitches in a little under a hour and a half. The whole aid was super casual and fun with a little exciting part on the broken fixed pin at the roof.
As i was sitting on top of the pitch 2 belay i hear a scream then a "WAHOO!!!!" as Chloe took a big swing cleaning the traverse up to the roof. "This walling thing is so much fun!!" was the next thing i heard,
The next pitch was the amazing 5.11 splitter. The pitch was absolutely amazing! For this pitch alone i think the route and worth doing. Plus the exposure is great for only being two pitches off the deck.
The following pitch may be the worse pitch on the whole route and i found it harder than the "crux" free pitch on the route.
Pitch five was pretty fun, since we only brought one 4 i just bumped it the whole way up this pitch. After a nice snack on the bivy ledge and water break, we ran up the last few pitches.
However, as most people know and especially in zion. Your only half was done once you get to the top, the descent can be the crux. For us however the descent went super smooth until the last rap. Note: DO NOT DOUBLE RAP the last rap. Do two singles. The rope drag was so bad that i couldn't pull the ropes down. I had to jug up and do two single raps. Al in all the route took us around seven hours to climb with lots of breaks during the route. On the route we brought up a double rack basically except for triples in the .5,.75, and #1 sizes with a set of offset nuts and micro offsets but only one #4. I would do the same next time except for only bring doubles in the #1 camalot. We brought up two liters of water each but in total ended up only drinking 3 liters. We were able to fit everything in this little haul sack i made. All i did was put some duck tape around an old rei fast pack and it worked perfect for a day haul pack!

After doing touchstone on friday my plan was to go over and rope solo Prodigal Sun on saturday. So the night before i packed my pack with basically the same rack except for a few less cams and one talon hook. However, with getting no sleep the night before i slept in till 7:30. At this point i had no motivation to do the wall. I got on the bus around 8:15 and was at the base around 9. I hadn't roped solo'd a wall ever but i had been soloing a bunch of aid lines back in little cottonwood canyon in Salt Lake. At the base of the wall my psych started to come back. I would bring up two ropes so if i wanted to bail i could. The system i used was my Trango Cinche with back up knots. Since no one else was on the route i just let all my lead line slack hand in space. I wasn't able to take many pictures but I had a pretty fun time for my first wall solo. I topped out around 5:30. So it took me about a eight hours and fifteen minutes to do the route. I ended up bringing a 40L pack with me which was perfect for walking off with all of my gear. On the route i just jugged with the pack which worked out great. Most of the pitches i cleaned on rappel. A few notes about doing it solo: Link p1 and p2. Hauling on this would suck so dont do it. I didn't feeling like there was one section of c2 on the whole thing and i didn't even have offset cams. Offset nuts make a huge difference! The hook on the last pitch is REALLY reach and I'm 5 11'. Finally, The route isn't over till you do the 5.6 squeeze! Sorry for the short description but the route was a great first wall solo and very casual.
After topping out and getting back to the car the park and realizing there was way too many people in the park we jetted out and did some sport climbing in central Utah for the rest of the weekend. Hope you guys enjoyed the TR!