The Slash a.k.a. The Scar a.k.a. The Scab a.k.a. The Rant

Me leading the first pitch of Surrealistic Pillar, 5.7

"This is fucking ridiculous," I rant as I steam my way through the bushes towards Todd. "That's it. I'm never climbing anything ever again." I've just turned a corner around some pile of scrunge to find that we're still not at the top of this thrash-fest. My right foot plunges through the bushes I'm using as a foothold and I have to wrest my leg free of the grasping branches before I can take another step.

At least he appears to have some sort of anchor. I can't believe we were simul-climbing back there. Without my knowledge, I might add. If I'd known, I might have placed some gear but the rope drag as it wound its away through trees, around boulders, and across slopes of dirt and dead branches was bad enough already. Still, imagine if one of us had slipped! If you're not going to place gear there's precious little reason to remain tied together. I grab the rack as I pass him.

The relatively low angle above leaves me plenty of breath to continue my tirade as I slog towards the tree line.

"There's absolutely nothing about that route that wouldn't be improved by a couple of bolts at the top of it. Rap down from the second pitch and you have yourself a very fine route. But this! This isn't climbing. This is just suffering. There's no way anyone actually enjoys this. You know why there's no anchor there? You know why we have to climb three pitches of crap to get down from that route? It's the price of admission. How to keep the riff-raff away."

I make a last detour around a patch of sand, heading for something that vaguely resembles rock, and touch the realm of the horizontal.

"Off belay!" I growl.

I throw a cordelette around a tree and put him on belay. Even though I didn't place any gear on the way up, we're still going to do this right, god dammit. We've taken enough stinking chances on this trip. What is it? Is safety on a holiday too? Todd waits with unexpected patience until I say "on belay." I think he knows better than to push me now.

"I thought you were going to throw my rack over the edge," he says later.

"I wouldn't throw your rack over the edge," I tell him. Not that there was any edge to speak of, just a sort of filthy slope, an off-vertical bowling alley, a poorly terraced, poorly maintained cliff garden. Nothing where you could really let something fly.

But all that happened later. It started with . . .

Deception, 5.6

At the top of Hogsback, looking back on the East Wall of Lover's Leap

I suppose some people would call it scrambling, or one of those other words--third-classing or fourth-classing, between which I've never been able to discern the difference--but I call it soloing and it's something I promised myself I'd never do. I should have asked for a rope the minute Todd told me to put my rock shoes on, but I wavered long enough that he was already mostly there and Nathan was halfway up which made getting a rope to me on such blocky terrain problematic.

It's a when-in-Rome kind of thing. Nathan says he always starts the route up there, although I'm pretty sure it really starts on the broken ground somewhere below where I stop to change my shoes. Todd solos all the time anyway. I scramble, of course, and once I even downclimbed something with a name but that was a descent at Joshua Tree and what other choice did I have? Wait until someone came along with a bolt gun?

Admittedly the corner I crawl up so carefully isn't hard, but it's fifth class territory, so when I tie into the rope at Todd's single piece belay and cast off on lead it seems almost anti-climatic. What I've had to do just to get to the starting point of this route exceeds what I'm willing to do altogether. It's not that I'm too much of a social coward to ask for a rope when I need one. Grrrr. It's just that I hate always being the weak link.

There's one sketchy move on Deception. It would have been a little less sketchy if I'd put the green Alien I'd been saving where Nathan meant for me to--over my head, instead of at my feet. You have to traverse across an irregular dike: one good foot, one iffy foot, one good foot, no hands. At least I'm not soloing now.

Bookmark, 5.7

After a lot of negotiation, the crux pitch is going to fall to me after all. Perhaps crux isn't the right word. The first pitch is also 5.7, after all. Perhaps the right word is: off-width. I don't do much leading on off-widths, finding them quite hard enough on toprope. Unlike some people who claim that you can't fall out of an off-width, I usually feel like I'm going to fall out every single minute.

Leading the third pitch of Bookmark, 5.7

The #4.5 we've been dragging around all day (and placing--a lot of big placements at the Leap) will only go so high in the crack, namely at a spot where I can stand quite casually and before any of the difficulties have begun. The off-width feature is perhaps 15 feet long. There's a big old hold about 8 feet up. I measure about 6 1/2 feet from my toes to my fingers. Optimistic math suggests that I only need to make one move. Off-width math says otherwise.

Snuggled deep within the crack, my feet resting on the last bit of the blocky stuff below, I'm already hating life. I place two silly pieces: a black Alien and a brass nut. Honestly, what's the point? It's not like I'm going to make any moves above gear like that.

"I can't," I whine.

"You can," they cheer.

One of them recommends turning around which helps. Wiggle, squiggle, wiggle, squiggle, hating life, having gained about 6 inches in height and feeling, as usual, as though I'm about to slip free at any moment. Wiggle, squiggle, "can't", "can", and I find it. A hold! Not a great one but enough. I wedge my way up far enough to place a pink tri-cam that I think is pretty good and then do something that actually resembles climbing until I'm free at last.

"Best lead ever!" I tell Todd. He looks at me like I'm crazy but I know what I mean. What I mean is that it wasn't my kind of climbing and it wasn't my kind of gear and even though it wouldn't set any new standards in the realm of bold leads, it felt pretty good to me.

"You can't call yourself a 5.7 leader until you can lead 5.7 crack, face, chimney, off-width, in the cold, rain, snow, etc., etc., etc." People are always spouting this kind of crap online. Ah well, today I got one step closer to calling myself a 5.7 leader.

Phantom Spires

Todd leading Short Step, 5.10b

Todd and I spend Sunday at Phantom Spires, planning to leave the classic lines at the Leap for one of the weekdays to follow. Middle Spire seems hugely popular--there are two cars in the parking lot and two parties at its base--so we trudge up the hill to Upper Spire.

On the way up we're cursing Nathan who said it would be cooler here. In fact, he suggested we bring something with long sleeves. Is he crazy? We're both on the verge of keeling over before we stagger into a tunnel of rock at the base of the spire and burst through to the dark side. Ah, relief. Sure enough, I have a fleece on before long and I'm enviously eyeing the sunny side of the rock.

Upper Spire is hard, the main difficulty being getting off the ground, or at least getting very far off the ground. Todd has to take over the lead on a supposed 5.8 for me after I completely fail to figure out its tricky opening moves (a dyno to a hand jam, as it turns out). Later I get my revenge when he pulls on gear while leading Crispy Critters, 5.10a, which is a great route as long as you're not the one leading it.

We lead little, toprope much, and run out of water before we get around to Gingerbread, a 5.7 that has been recommended by a passer-by as "the best 5.7 in the world."

The Groove, 5.8

My first attempt at leading 5.8 here, as referenced above, ended in abject failure. Now my second attempt back at the Leap isn't going so well either.

"I think I could lead anything here if I could just get off the ground," I fume to Todd. Nathan edges discreetly away. According to SuperTopos, the start isn't even the crux of the route but it's what we at the Gunks call a "bouldery start." I'm guessing that these moves haven't been factored into the rating at all.

If I climb straight up, I get stuck. If I layback to the left, I get scared. The issue is, once again, having to climb past an Alien. And not even a well placed one at that. I'm just not willing to chance falling on it. I don't like the idea of hitting the ground, not even from two feet up.

Me looking very honed on Surrealistic Direct, 5.10a

Eventually a compromise is reached. I climb straight up, insert a second Alien, return to the ground, and make the layback to the left. Sure enough, the rest of the pitch is pretty stinking cake. I never even find the so-called crux. The things you have to do just to get on a route around here. Sheesh.

The Line, 5.9

"There is one thing I'd like to know," I ask one of the local experts. "The topo says there's no gear for the first 20 feet. It also says that the crux is 20 feet off the ground. What I'd like to know is: which comes first?"

The expert laughs. The gear comes first. So it's mine, all mine.

I've got a monster-sized rack, bigger even than our usual over-large offering. I'm standing 15 feet or so off the ground with two pieces in. They're in about one inch from each other, but it still counts as two pieces.

I want to come down.

Although the climb up here was mostly on an easy ramp there was just this one move to get where I am now, just this one move I don't think I can undo. Above me is a move I'm sure I can't do. Todd has just pointed out that it's probably a layback off a smear and there's no way I can do that.

"Rest there," he says, which is just what I'm trying to do.

"It's not as restful as it looks," I answer.

"That's often the case," he admits.

He wants me to downclimb. I just want to beam back down to the ground. He wants me to put in another piece if I'm going to lower off. I just want to . . . well, I said that already. I start to ask him why two pieces is good enough to fall on but not good enough to lower off of but I can't get the words to come out straight. I decide it's easier to put in the third piece than to argue about it.

"This is an anchor," I say, half to him, half to myself. "Why can't I fall on an anchor?"

Of all my options I'm now the least scared by the idea of going up. If I could do this move I'd be at a stance; I'd have gear everywhere I could look; I'd be safe. I do the move in stages, using my strategy of hovering as a preparation to moving. I put my left foot against a bump, press hard, and lightly lift my right foot until it leaves the rock. I survive.

It takes two more tries but finally I have both hands on the dike above me and I'm climbing. This ride is worth the ticket price, I decide. It's fun and not scary, although I have to run it out just a little because I've got a long ways to go and a limited number of runners. Basically the route goes like this: put hand on lip of crack, put foot on dike where hand just was, layback/high step up until other hand can reach next dike, stand up, repeat. The ability to hand/foot match would come in pretty handy around here. My friend Lisa would be queen.

About two miles later Todd warns me that I'm less than halfway through the rope and already halfway through my runners. It's the part about being less than halfway through the rope that really amazes me. I start backcleaning, clipping the rope directly to biners, running it out a little further, anything to conserve on runners. It's a good thing this route goes straight up.

For all that the pitch has seemed very long, I still manage to miss the belay stance. It's described in the guide as a "ledge." People who climb at the Leap have a thing or two to learn about ledges, I think, when the stance is pointed out to me later. Todd shouts up that I have 15 feet left and I realize that it's now or never and manage to build a decent belay out of scraps. I look down at the remains of the rack: two blue Aliens, two black, the two smallest nuts, the two largest, the brown tri-cam, a #2 and a #3. I've never seen the rack so depleted. Then I laugh to think that this is still 11 pieces, more than some people leave the ground with if you believe them.

April Fools, 5.8/5.9 PG/R

We have three guidebooks and we have none. The contradictory ratings and route descriptions between the three books and miscellaneous local gurus leaves us more lost and confused than not having a book at all would. We also have none literally; we've left them all on the ground.

Nathan on the unnamed face to the right of Short Step

Dave shows us where to start. He tells us the first pitch is 5.7. He also recommends that Todd lead it ("heady"). One book says the first pitch is 5.8 and ascends a line of bolts. These we never see. The other book says the first pitch is 5.8R. This we don't see till it's too late. The third book is mercifully silent.

Todd takes his time leading the pitch. When I join him at the belay I tell him I never found the 5.7 move on it. "I found a couple of 5.10 moves, but I didn't find the 5.7 move." The next pitch is mine. This one is alternately described as: 5.8, 5.9, 5.8 and "the best hand crack at the Leap."

With a couple of small roofs to turn and a runout wider section, the pitch is no gimme for me and I'm inclined to take the 5.9 rating and feel pretty good about it. I have to hang at the first roof to get a piece in high enough to commit to it, then find myself sweating and swearing when the crack suddenly opens up in back and I'm forced into layback after layback farther and farther from my gear. A creaky #3 is my salvation and when I finally sink a hand jam above it and push my whole body against it in a last desperate high step, I understand what people mean about a good hand jam being a belay.

But it's nothing compared to what comes next. The third pitch is either a 5.7 route-finding challenge, a 5.8 face climb past a bolt, or non-existent, depending on who you listen to. We take the 5.8 path--straight up. Todd leads it and finds the bolt: removed. Above the bashed bolt is a long line of bad gear. When he insists on slinging a chicken head that is round like half a basketball I feel compelled to protest. The going is slow and I'm itching to get down. Eventually he's out of sight and moving a little faster. Turns out that it was the moves that got easier, not the gear that got better.

Something like two hours later we struggle back into camp, grumpy and scratched from our scramble to the top up "The Slash" which I've taken to calling "The Scab." We give Nathan and Dave a piece of our minds for recommending the route and then leaving us to it. They give us suggestions on various more pleasant ways we could have gotten back down from the end of the second pitch. A little late now.

Donner Summit

Through the crux on Surrealistic Direct, 5.10a

With only one day and very little motivation left we head to Donner Summit. Checking out some of the crags close to the road doesn't improve our attitude. We half decide to just take a walk but finally resolve to give Dave's recommendations another chance and do the first pitch of One Hand Clapping (5.9, first pitch is 5.8).

I tell Todd it's his lead, "because I've been getting all the good ones." This is the problem with my edging into 5.9 territory. Where once the harder 5.8 and classic 5.9 pitches would have been enjoyable romps for Todd, these days they're terrifying tests of will for me instead. Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't enjoy ourselves more climbing quickly and without fear or uncertainty with Todd on lead, but I don't see how else I'm going to learn to lead 5.9s well without leading a whole bunch of them badly first. Then I wonder if my dream of fear-free leading when only I get good enough is an elusive target, pushed ever farther by harder grades. Todd still gets scared, I notice. Sometimes he even still gets scared on 5.8.

Not this 5.8 though. The first pitch of One Hand Clapping is as enjoyable as Dave said it would be, truly unmissable. In fact Black Rock is everything that the rest of Donner Summit wasn't--inspiring. The other crags get points for being close to the road, but this crag was worth the walk up. Now that we've done the first pitch of One Hand Clapping and loved it and have looked around at the beautiful rock and splitter cracks surrounding us, we actually want to do a wee bit more climbing today. Unfortunately we've hiked up here with two guidebooks to Lover's Leap and none for Donner.

So Todd curses his way up a crack that has been loosely described to us by the party now climbing One Hand Clapping as 5.10a with the hard part at the bottom. He has to hang once through the thin section, although he should have pulled through because he was within reaching distance of a stance as it turned out, then moans and groans through the stuff at the top of the crack that we thought was going to be easy. Following it later, I'm amazed at how much harder--and longer!--each and every segment of the route is than it looked.

"It's the route that just keeps on giving," I say to Todd.

"First ascent, first ascent," he keeps chanting.

And it may be for all we know. Even with the guidebook in our hands later we can't figure out what route it was he climbed, if it has a name at all, and if it does, what it's rated.

It was hard. It was good. We climbed it. We're done.