Thursday, November 29, 2007

Sandstone Drama

A four-mile 4x4 road literally dead-ends at the rim of the canyon. The view is outstanding—sprouting from the valley floor poke the twin towers of Crow’s Head Spires, as the West Shafer Canyon spills out before you for miles, reaching deep into Canyonlands National Park. The rarely climbed Crow’s Head Spires are less than four hundred yards away from the edge of the rim, but to reach their base requires a 450-foot rappel down vertical Wingate from the end of the road.

On Thanksgiving Day, Jonathan and I climbed the left tower, Don Juan Spire, by the route, Yesterday’s News Variation—5.10, two stars. The plan was to have JT lead the crux second pitch since the description read, “Climb the offwidth to easier OW…” In my opinion, there is no such thing as easy offwidth, let alone an “easier OW.” Plus, JT forgot to pack the essential #5 Camalot, so it was his punishment. But because I got lost on the first pitch and couldn’t deal with the ensuing rope drag, I didn’t make it to the first belay and ended up with the lead for the OW pitch. The pitch started with an unprotected 5.9 traverse for 20 feet on brittle, flaky crimps right off the belay. This was not the scary part. Easy hand jamming led to the OW. With my last piece of gear at my feet, I headed up the wide crack. After five feet, I made a futile effort to place the #4 Camalot. It wasn’t even close to fitting. Seeing that the crack only widened, I didn’t try again. Because it was such an obvious thing to be upset about and I knew he felt badly about it, I didn’t actually scream at JT for forgetting the #5. Instead I grappled on, trying not to think about the ledge below me that I would hit if I fell. I was out of JT’s sight and all alone with my battle. It was one of those rare moments I personally experience in climbing when things are so bad, that it is impossible to consider them. As a result, I was uncharacteristically calm and quiet and completed the task without drama. When JT reached the belay he was impressed with my 20-foot OW run-out. He said he would have for sure backed off. I wanted to at one point, as summits aren’t very important to me. JT has climbed nearly 50 desert towers. Summits are very important to him.

Despite the typical nuisances of desert tower climbing (i.e., loose rock, difficult route finding, and bad anchors), the route on Don Juan Spire was quite good. It was given two stars, so I naively expected the same out of the similarly graded Lizard Action, on the sister tower, Luminous Being Spire. Not so much.

It started out bad—really bad. I backed off two different first pitch variations because of loose rock, or lack of proper gear (yes, the forgotten #5 Camalot). I managed to lead a meager 100 feet off the ground, gave up, and put in a belay. JT then led an equally chossy, but much more difficult pitch up a super loose chimney and corner. It was so bad that at one point I heard him say from around the corner, “Uh… this is a significant situation. If you hear a lot of rockfall, don’t freak out… it’s just because everything I’m standing on just shifted.” I was so pissed and scared following this pitch that I bitched the entire time, screaming obscenities and things like, “This is bullshit! We are going to bail… it’s not worth it!” When I got to the belay and saw JT’s conflicted expression: He loves this tower choss shit, but hates to see me stressed. I knew I couldn’t force us to bail. We were only 130 feet from the top. I took the rack.

I set off, jamming the stout, 15-foot crack off the belay, but broke a hold on easier ground and whipped, nearly landing on JT’s head. Great. I went back up, got to the base of a dirty, disgusting wide crack and said forget it. I was over it. I down-led 10 feet and was prepared to go all the way back to the belay, but then thought about JT again. “Alright, I’ll try another way,” I told myself. I climbed a farther right line, through better, though still crappy, rock to a small ledge. I saw a drilled pin higher up, but couldn’t help worrying about the ledge that I would hit if I fell before getting the pin clipped. I saw JT’s eager (but still concerned) face and clawed the soft, eroding, sandstone slopers for 10 feet and clipped the pin. And then what? There was nothing but sandy slopers and crumbly edges. “Take!” I couldn’t handle it any more. I hung on the end of the rope and shook from the cold and the stress. Before conceding once again, I took out the route description JT had printed from Mountain Project. It read, “Move left to a drilled pin, move up and left to the arĂȘte and another drilled pin and an alcove/roof. Place as much shit gear as possible (I had 5 equalized pieces that wouldn’t have held a fall). Relax. Make final moves to the anchor.” I was definitely coming down now. I was again out of JT’s sight, but could imagine him holding me on the rope, worried. Shit, ok, one more try. I unweighted the rope and climbed left. No pin. I hung on the rope again. “There’s nothing to the left!” I shrieked. “Then it must be right.” JT’s small voice came from below. I went right and did finally see it, but it was still 20 feet above me. Again, the thought of hitting the ledge vaporized and I methodically climbed the slabby face to the higher pin. 20 more feet to the top. After coping with rope drag, more runouts, and route finding, I beached myself on the summit.

“Off Belay!” I thankfully called down.

JT had been patiently belaying me for nearly two hours in the freezing, shady cold. I would have been hollering like my head was on fire, but not him. Although he followed the pitch with composure, I knew he was suffering big time from frozen hands. He enthusiastically stood atop the summit, which was technically 10 feet above my belay. I couldn’t be bothered. I was more concerned with getting back to the ground and safely up the 450-foot jug and haul back to the.

There were two anchors on the summit and I wanted to use a different (better) anchor than the one the guide described for the rappel. The tower was 250 feet, and I illogically figured we could make it to the ground in one double-rope rappel. JT, sensing I was in no mood for an argument, reluctantly threaded the ropes through the rap rings. I insisted on going first. After rapping for about 100 feet, I could see the ends of the ropes swinging in midair, 50 feet from the ground. Damnit! Two feet from the ends of the ropes, I swung into a shallow chimney, plugged in two big cams and clipped myself off to them. I screamed up to JT the situation and he started to rappel.

On a ledge, 50 feet above me, JT said evenly, “Why didn’t you stop at these anchors?”

“Because I obviously didn’t see them!” I snapped in a super bitchy tone, annoyed that I had somehow missed the rap anchor.

As if JT had never been involved in a rappelling epic on a tower, I screamed the obvious, “Pull the ropes, thread that anchor, and we’ll both make it to the ground from there.”

I could hear JT struggling with the pull.

“It won’t pull… the knot is stuck at the lip.” He calmly shouted down.

I thought fast and yelled up, “Fix the rest of the tag line (I had the end of it in my hand) to that anchor, cut as much of the lead line as you can, rap to me on the tag with the piece of lead line, and we can fix that from these cams to the ground.” I screamed up with self-appointed authority.

“No way… I’ll up-rap to the knot and free it.” He dared to answer.

“Forget it, it is getting late and I want to get out of here!” I yelled. “We have dozens of ropes… it’s not worth the risk!”

“No I’ll up-rap real quick,” he explained. “I don’t want to leave ropes littering the tower.”

“I don’t give a shit what you think! I want to get the hell out of here NOW! Leave the ropes! We have 100s of ropes!” I was out of my mind with fear and frustration. I also was so afraid of JT up-raping the scary thin tag line and it cutting. I was completely overcome with the ghastly vision of his body hurling past me and exploding 50 feet below where I helplessly hung. JT wasn’t going to leave the ropes, though, and quickly set off, up-rapping the 150 feet back to the stuck knot.

“I will never climb with you again you shithead jackass unless you leave the goddamn mother-fucking ropes!” I sobbed in a crazed, insane, hysterical voice. “We have millions of ropes!” (I’m certain I have never behaved this badly in my life.)

“It’s okay baby, don’t yell at me, I’m almost to the knot.” He said in an assuring, yet ineffective manner.

“Screw you! I’m going to unclip and down climb to the ground! I can’t deal with this anymore!”

“Don’t do that baby… that’s too dangerous.” He cooed.

Poor guy, not only did he have a rappel epic to contend with, he now had a mental case to counsel. I didn’t unclip, instead, I waited for what seemed an eternity for JT to free the knot, rap back down to his anchors, re-pull the ropes, until finally both ends of the ropes reached the ground.

We didn’t talk to each other much as JT coiled the ropes and we walked back to the jug out. As I jugged and hauled more than my share (I was feeling extremely guilty for how I acted), I thought about how climbing can bring out the very best of you and the very worst. And that although the thought of losing the person you love most can make you insane, one of the bonuses in loving that someone, is learning to become a better human being by that person’s example.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

BAG - That story was hilarious, I wish there was a video. How was the weather? I saw Mal's photos from Indian Creek and there was six inches of snow!

Keep up the good posts!

Jason Manke said...

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT: http://www.youtube.com/AmericanAlpineClub

Unknown said...

Awesome "wobbler" TR!

7th paragraph, missing "truck" I assume.

Also will assume JT is really "up-rapping" and not "up-raping".

Har har.

Cheers,

-Brian in SLC