10 March, Fortress with Jesse

ok ok! i'm a slacker and haven't been maintaining this. maybe i'll try to catch up...

this is from the first day of an overnight red trip i took a couple of months ago. jesse wanted to cheer me up after a rockless winter, so we drove to the red & met up with a guy he knew from the redriverclimbing board. (whose name i forget! but he is leading calypso 3 in that photo, i think. he called himself a nOOb but led more solidly than i did.) we climbed at fortress all day, then jesse went home while i stayed at true north. i met up with eric & alice & bill the next day.

i didn't get a lot of pix of that day -- jesse took a video of me leading route 48, but it's a huge (!) file. this is jesse chilling on belay.

the route 48 debacle

route 48 is a 5.5 trad line with a wide crack in a bulge at the bottom and nothing to worry about above that. i placed two huge cams on the under-side of the bulge, got above it and, stemming ass-and-feet on opposite walls, sat on all my gear.

lots of metal poking me in the ass would be uncomfortable at any moment of my life, but at that moment it was particularly discomfiting. i was above decking height, and (whether it was true or not) i felt very strongly that i needed at least one piece of that gear in the crack in order to avoid death or paralysis.

i was too scared to move for a while. had a long conversation with myself that went like this: "must-pant-calm-pant-down-pant-pant-pant," over and over again. (ordinarily, i would separate myself from any conversation that even approached that level of dullness or redundancy -- not to speak of never initiating it -- but i was very focused on staying alive.) being so boring must have helped, because after a while i did feel calmer and was able to scootch up and sweep the gear out, thinking "victory! life! victory!"

but the gear was then twisted around behind me. i couldn't see any of it. how could i pick the right piece? the panic came back. so i decided to just start unhooking biners from the sling one after another and pulling them in front of my face until i got something big enough. (thinking all the while that i had about 100 pieces and that doing that was the stupidest idea ever.)

luckily i racked big-to-small that day. the first thing that came out was my #4 c4. exactly what i needed.

when i stood up from that ass-feet stem, i started laughing. the climbing was RIDICULOUSLY easy.

yeah, so if you climb this route, bring at least 3 #3 c4s (i ran out of those), and save your #4 on your LEFT HIP for just above the bulge.