Februrary –
BAIL Horni-Johnson with Mucci and Ezra
Ezra, Mucci, and I went up for this neglected classic climb. I soloed the first three pitches with a variation around the first real pitch (accidentally) and led the crux pitch 3 solo over an anchor made of machine head rivets and pins. We sieged the route over a few weekends and almost had it in the bag when Ezra took a fall that resulted in an injury that sent us down. We stripped the route of our gear and plan to get back on it once Ezra is all healed up and put her in the bag. Really interesting climbing through small features, big exposure, and heads-up nailing. A fun part of this climb was that I left my ladders up at the belay when I rapped the fixed lines to the ground one day, so I built ladders from the rope i was jugging.
April –
BAIL Misanthropic Execution with Mucci
Mucci and I took on this route on Wall of Ages (below Leaning Tower) and came up against the twin specters of sandbagged topos and loose, sharp, and deadly rock on the route. The first pitch of this route remains what I consider my most technically difficult aid lead in the valley with half of the pieces causing Mucci to exclaim “wtf” at high volume while cleaning the first pitch.
Later we hit an “A1” pitch that involved thin nailing for miles through a microwave sized killer block that decimated the base when we let it loose followed by 4 heads in a row (the fourth one Mucci skipped to get to the belay and came out in my hands when I went to hang ladders from it later. A1 my ass. Later when talking with B. Law about it via email he stated, “I remember that pitch being harder than A1”
We came down after I got shut down in the third pitch by an arch that didn’t show any signs of being previously climbed. Best part of the climb happened right before I was about to get onto a bad head in the arch right above the belay. This was the same type of placement that failed on Ezra on Horni-Johnson and Mucci’s words were, “Wait, let’s think about this.” We thought about it and decided that there was no reason to drop 125lbs of dumbass complete with his nailing rack directly onto the belay.
As we were rapping, I noticed that the most obvious line didn’t go through the arch, but tensioned right from the belay into a C1 crack that the arch was supposed to connect with. I trust a topo a lot less now.
June –
Zodiac (5 days) with Mungeclimber
Mungeclimber and I went up this trade route at the beginning of summer during the heatwave that put temps in the 100s on the valley floor. We moved slowly and methodically, doing the climb in 5 days or so and getting the entire thing clean. We ended up only using 1 sawed angle as a handplaced piece at the base of Black Tower, everything else went with clean gear easily. Sadly the teams immediately following us (Team Extreme Riders IIRC) were nailing long before even the Black Tower pitch. It was hot. Munge used his first camhook on pitch 1 and proceeded to master the camhook by the Nipple pitch when he took it all the way across leapfrogging camhooks. I live for camhooking, and I doubt I would have gone that far. Big mungy balls on that one. I’d write more, but Munge has already written a stellar trip report for this ascent.
More importantly than the climb itself was that on the night before we committed to the wall, we met Andy Kirkpatrick at the base. He was doing an IAD ascent of Zodiac with his friend who was legally blind. I got his autograph like a little fanboy and in the morning we watched then sail up the route in true Andy Kirkbadass style.
August –
BAIL Skull Queen
This was to be my gf’s first bigwall climb. She asked if she should know how to jug a line and I replied with “Oh, I’ll teach you on the wall!” Smash cut to the end of the first pitch where she ended up not understanding how to use her feet and ladders and instead ascended the entire pitch using only her hands pulling on the jugs. Completely my fault I’d say. She ended up with blisters all over her hands and heat exhaustion so down we went. We’ve since practiced jugging in the Berkeley Hills and in the gym a lot so our next attempt should go much better.
Afroman (6 days) SOLO
This route originally shut me down on the first real pitch and led to my statement last year of “I have climbed enough A3 to know that I can climb A3 and I have climbed enough A3 to know that I can’t climb A3.”
I headed up to attempt this route with a single point hammock. That lasted less than an hour into the first night. I rapped and went to my truck to get my single A5 portaledge. A good choice. The route is significantly overhanging for most of its pitches and each pitch required at least a bit of nailing if not a lot. Very fun, Very difficult, and very technical, this route was my crowning achievement of 2013. I almost bailed after the 5th pitch when I got off track and ended up at the base of the Hardning Slot on Astroman. I stuck with it though and downaided back to the route and finished the pitch and kept on going. A huge mental achievement for me. On that same pitch I climbed up to a large block that shifted significantly when I weighted it, almost popping out of the wall. There was a team prepping on the ground directly below me to start up Ten Days After and if the block had pulled, it would have landed directly on top of them. Silly wall climbers, look up!
I took one fall when a nut slid out from behind a flake that I didn’t think would survive a cam. After the fall, I stuck a cam behind the flake anyways and kept on moving. Ah to be skinny. The most memorable part of the climb came at the end of the traversing pitch where after a long hook and free traverse, I had to clip to a manky head and lean horizontal at the extant of my reach to place a blind cam. If the head had popped while doing this, I would have swung upside down 15’ around an edge. Good times!
After topping out, I filled my zion haulbag full and headed down the North Dome Gully for the first time in my life, thus starting the most horrible descent ever. Slipping and sliding and getting lost and back tracking and dropping my bag and pain and pain and mosquitoes and eventually darkness were the name of the game. I got home and had trouble walking correctly for almost a week. BIGWALL!
September –
Tribal Rite (via New Dawn) (12 days) SOLO
Fresh off of Afroman, I wanted to get on something big and long (that’s what she said) and so decided I’d do the New Dawn Start to Tribal Rite. Many many trips to the base and I left the ground with over 100lbs of water in my haul bags. The climb was fun and uneventful really. Everything was very straightforward compared to Afroman and so I was able to focus most of my energies on making sure my systems were in place. I lucked out when my portaledge ripped almost to failure the night before I got to Lay Lady Ledge so I was able to fix the ledge with sealant and let it sit out the night I slept on Lay Lady.
On Tribal Rite, the climbing was strenuous at time but never felt dangerous. Every morning on Tribal Rite I would wake up and sit in my ledge over the Boot and take video of people doing the King Swing. A great vantage point that I’d not seen before in video.
Later on the climb I became a bit saddened at the number of useless heads I encountered. Especially in the rivet sections of the climb where ¼” split shaft bolts were used, previous climbers apparently are so used to not trusting ¼’ bolts that they placed #1 and #0 heads all around the rivets rather than simply clip the bomber bolts. Weird.
Most memorable was the storm that rolled in around day 10 on the wall. The weather report stated that it would be a tenth of an inch. Not too bad, but to be safe, I decided to fix my next pitch early in the morning and then just hunker down in my ledge. Around noon, the skies simply opened up and it dumped rain from noon till midnight. I sat in my ledge and watched all of the Nose teams bail and a team on Zodiac at pitch 4 just get hammered without rainflies for hours. When the wind picked up my simple fly started to act like a parachute and my ledge would often get picked up and slammed back against the wall from the force of the wind. I spent a good part of the day holding the edges of the fly tight to my ledge so that the fly would stop puffing out. I spent the rest of the time devouring my store of snacks and sweets, Whoops. Bland meals for the rest of the climb fer sure.
I spent 11 days on the wall and noticed a change around the 7th day on the wall. I suddenly couldn’t remember starting the route. It seemed like I’d been up there forever and that the wall was no longer where I WAS but was where I BELONGED. Cheesy, I know. Later On I started laughing uncontrollably while rapping back to my belays after finishing a pitch. If anything, This route showed me the transformative ability of soloing and being disconnected from the rest of the world on the valley floor. The only things that mattered were the systems of the day and the 3-5’ to the next piece. Everything became simplified and (dare I say) easy. Except for the wind. The wind sucked.
November –
Icarus (3 days) Second Ascent with Brad young
Brad called me to help out with this old aid climb in the Pinnacles West Side that was to have a difficult pitch of aid climbing smack in the middle of the decomposing right side of Machete Ridge. First done before I was born in the 70s and with only faint oral recollections, this route had been a mystery for over thirty years. We went up several times for recon and also to rebolt the bolt ladder that led to some of the scariest 5.9 runout pinnacles climbing that Brad said he’d ever done.
After fixing up the route, we headed up the it and I proceeded to clock my longest aid lead to date of 7 hours over 3 days to lead the long aid pitch on this route. It was very different from climbing Premeditated just across the way on the Balconies. Whereas Premeditated had many placement possibilities, both iron and clean, almost all were certain to crumble away. Icarus had few to no placement opportunities that required a lot of inventive nailing and combining of placements to make the pitch go. Of note is the small bouldering pad that Brad brought up with him to hide under while I did my lead, as there was a constant shower of decomposing rock raining down upon him whether I was moving or not up there.
My advice? Go get on it! Just don’t ask me to come along. I just might be done aiding at the Pinnacles. Geez, what a jizzshow.
December –
Jericho (3 days) Second Ascent with Ryan Riggans
Just before the end of the year I knew I wanted one more wall. I contacted a friend who was in town for the holidays and itching to get on his second wall and we set out to do the second ascent of Mucci and Bosque’s most recent wall.
Easy approach (though not for me because we did it in one load and brought 2x the amount of water we would eventually drink) and fun, yet loose and dirty early ascent climbing was to be had. The route goes at A2 and almost 90% of that nailing is beaks. I placed two arrows (one at a bivy for the portaledge) and the rest was perfect beaking. Ryan got to do his first aid lead on the “Iron Messiah” pitch, a long 155’ C1 splitter crack that I decided to rename “Camhook Jesus” due to the ease of simply camhooking the entire lower section rather than having to use micronuts and 00 and 000 C3s as Ryan did.
The route has both great portaledge bivys and acceptable non-portaledge bivies. Fun climbing that never gets too hard but loose enough to make you think.
We trundled plenty of rock including a belaykiller flake and had smooth sailing up what will probably become one of the short first nailing walls of monkeys in the future.
