Zion

Despite living in Utah for several years each, Andy and I had only two Zion climbing days between the two of us. So, this weekend we doubled (that’s right, doubled) out combined number of days on the big sandstone. Unfortunately, it rained like the monsoon on Saturday morning, so our original goal of doing a wall was instantly crushed. Instead, we strolled out of camp at about noon and tried to find some dry rock. Luckily, all three pitches of Headache were bone dry, so we climbed that beautiful hand crack and finished with Ataxia Tower before going back to camp for the Jesse Mattner Memorial Dinner (Jesse isn’t actually dead, or even close, but we want to make sure his quality camp cooking lives on) and re-racked for Sunday. We slept in again in hopes of the sun drying the rock, but there was no sun, so it did not matter. Either way, we hiked to the base of Spearhead and started up Iron Messiah. A little bit of soloing, six rope-stretching pitches, and three squeeze chimneys later, we topped out the massive dihedral. Andy did the most impressive trad climbing I’ve seen him do so far. Good on ya mate! Then we rappelled, which was super sketch due to the many ropes that we found stuffed into the cracks, reminders of easily the descent can go wrong. We joined forced with two French climbers on the way down, so we would not have to pull as many ropes, and Andy, while at a hanging belay, managed to catch a falling shoe that was dropped from over 200 feet above. Anyway, we made it down, saw a fox on the walk out, drove all night, and got back into SLC at about 1:00am. I can’t wait to go back to Zion.

A Swell Weekend

Every fall has to have a first day of desert climbing. Usually it’s a serious ass kicking while your body gets used to the unique type of movement, and you come home thrashed and with very few sends. Somehow, this fall was different. Ben and I headed down and actually climbed well for two days. We ticked off a few quality pitches on the Stock Exchange Wall the first day, and on day two we did the Lightbulb and a sweet 11b pitch near Red Corner. There were a lot of people down here this weekend, but we didn’t see another climber.

West Slabs

Andy joined me for a quick solo lap on the West Slabs of Mt Olympus today after work. We made the 2600ft lap car to car in 2hr 16min without rushing. I think we can get it in the 1:45 range if we make a real effort. I guess we’ll have to see. Either way, I had forgotten how much fun it is to come up here and solo a lap.

American Fork

Yet another day of clipping bolts in American Fork. Today was pretty chill, but fun as always. Great temps, changing leaves, slimy routes that see way too much traffic, and splitter, bluebird skies. I’m stoked for winter to come, but I’ll miss days like these.

City Life

Jesse, Glenn, Andy, Ashley, Zig, Alex, Ceci and myself all headed up to the City of Rocks and spent the weekend thrashing fingers and chasing shade. The City is basically my anti-style. The climbs are usually just under vertical, super tech, often friction dependent, and often runout. That combination generally leads to me getting my ass kicked, and this weekend was no different. Everyone had a kickass time hiking around the unique landscape looking for new stuff to climb. And Saturday night’s fish tacos were sweet.

Post-Work Pile

Pretty standard post-work Pile sesh with Andy. I did alright, and Andy cleaned up another of his projects. All in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Back on the Rock

Back to American Fork for Andy and Myself. I started the day off by sending a route that I had never managed to get before, but the rest of the day not so productive for me. Andy, on the other hand, began the day by sending Isotoner Moaner (which was his project from last weekend) and continued to climb strong throughout the day.

After finishing at the Division Wall, we made the trek up to the Blue Wall after hearing great things about it. It definitely did not live up to the hype and had some of the sharpest rock I’ve ever touched. Don’t waste your time.

At Least We Got Outside

I haven’t been climbing in nearly a month, and Phunk has had a super chill summer to let some injuries heal, so we climbed like total crap today. Andy, on there other hand, has been hungry. We all went to American Fork and climbed a little but really just sat around and watched Andy work on Isotoner Moaner. After just a few tries today, he’s super close to the send. My guess it that it’ll go down the next time he comes here. Phunk and I are a good ways from being strong right now, so we’re not sending shit in the near future.

Epic

With 4500 vertical feet of technical climbing (if done all the way to the summit)—the Direct South Buttress of Mt Moran is the longest continuous rock route in the lower 48. The approach, on the other hand, is about as plush as it gets. Jesse and I loaded a rental canoe with everything but the kitchen sink and paddled across two lakes with a short, flat portage between. Then we schlepped all the gear 50-feet from the shore and set up camp. Getting to the base of the route is notoriously complicated, so we sussed it out that afternoon and stashed gear while we were at it. We ate a nice big dinner, drank water until we were bursting at the seams, and turned in for the night.
We set the alarm for 3:00 and were moving by 3:30 in order to start the climbing as the sun rose. Despite getting off route for two pitches, we managed the lower portion pretty quickly. Quality was hit and miss, but mostly pretty good, and Jesse freed the 5.11d traverse in fine style. The 5.12 crux came on my block, but I opted for the A1 version to keep things safe. Blowing the send would likely rip several pieces of sub-par gear and end with a factor-2 onto a belay that consisted of a fixed knifeblade and two of the smallest stoppers on our rack. It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. A short hand-traverse took us to the end of “the route” by noon. Most people turn around after these first 11 pitches, but we still had 3000 feet or ridge to go.

As we would shortly find out, it’s not the vertical that gets you on this one. It’s the nearly one-mile of horizontal that you have to cover which takes up time. We folded a 70m twin rope in half and simal climbed in sections until we ran out of gear or wanted to consult with the other on route finding. During one two-hour chunk, we moved perhaps seven or eight rope lengths without gaining more than 100 vertical feet. Reports on the ridge are both scarce and wildly different. We found the vast majority of the climbing between 5.6 and 5.8 with a few sections of 5.10 here and there. It was definitely not the hauling-ass-on-5.4 that we were expecting.
Despite continuous movement pausing only to place gear every 50-feet or so, we watched the sun set while we were still 1000-feet from the summit. Jesse stopped to place a piece of gear, put on his headlamp, clipped mine to the gear, and kept going. Shorty after that he found the luckiest trickle of water either of us had ever encountered, and we got to refill all of our water. Route finding in the daylight was hard. At night it was nearly impossible. All we new was that the black stuff was rock and the area with stars was not rock. We tried to follow the black stuff as much as possible.

As the night wore on we found ourselves in pretty rough shape. I was climbing so sloppy that I made the decision to stop simal-climbing for fear of falling and pulling Jesse off the rock. Withing a couple pitches after this decision, Jesse has started to fall a sleep at belays. Just past 11:00 Jesse took us through an overhanding squeeze chimney fueled by nothing but a steady stream of F-bombs. I got to follow it with the second rope on my back and the pack that he had clipped to a piece of gear.

At midnight we pulled the plug. Jesse just looked down at the belay ledge we were standing on and said “you want to sleep here?” I just replied with “sure” and committed to the first open bivy of my life. We were at just over 12,000 feet.

Each of us had a windshell, and we had one ultralight belay jacket to split. Since Jesse is a full foot taller than me, he didn’t fit in my shirt, so I took his base layer top and he took the down jacket. We each flaked out a rope for insulation and left our helmets on as pillows. It was by far the coldest night of my life. Every time I looked over Jesse was in a different position, and each one looked more uncomfortable than the last. I just tried to ball up as much as I could to expose as little to the wind as possible. I thought all night “I should take some pictures of this” but I was way too cold to actually put those thoughts into action. The sun rose at 6:00, but we were still experiencing seizure-style shivering fits at 8:30.
By 9:00 we were more or less normal again, and I led out for the day’s first pitch. It only took us 45-minutes to get to the summit and begin the descent. Having never been up the CMC route (descent route), we managed to waste 4-hours attempting to find the correct path down, had to reverse two rappels, and eventually ended up descending into the wrong drainage, downclimbing a 400-foot, 40-degree snowfield with nut tools, climbing back up 1000-feet of scree to get in the correct drainage, and eventually finding the trail and make our way to the lake. Jesse commented that he’d only recommend the climb to someone he absolutely hated.
That night we ate pounds of Jimmy Dean and pasta, drank beer cooled in the lake, and slept for 14-hours before getting up the next day for the paddle out. Seeing 50-people splashing at the takeout, mothers yelling at kids, and overweight tourists floating on innertubes was a serious shock to the system. Jesse asked if we could just go back and sleep in the open again.

Semantics

Anderson [an-dur-son] -verb: To fall off the very last move of a 5.12 after crushing the crux and requiring nothing more than to complete the 5.10 finish to get the send. This is especially true if you’ve done the same thing several times already. “Dude, I thought it was in the bag and then I totally andersoned at the end.”

Right when the crew and I were about to send this newly developed word to Websters for consideration, Andy (aka. Andy Ando Anderson, aka. Randy Rando Randerson) completely turned things around. Not only did he send basically every outstanding project on his list within the last few weeks (including the two he’s famous for whipping off in The Crew), he also set a personal best today by sending three 5.12 routes in the same afternoon—two redpoints and one flash. I, on the other hand, managed to squeak out one send and then whip off the top of a 5.12b over and over again. Basically, I andersoned all over the end of that thing.