Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line. Beauty walks a razors edge, someday I’ll make it mine. – Bob Dylan
So the other day I did something very uncharacteristic. I did a sport climb. Yeah, I know right? Those who know me, know that I am always prattering on about how sport climbing is neither. I had actually done one short sport climb years ago, in Kentucky, but this one the other day was markedly different. For starters it wasn’t at some roadside crag adorned with a multitude of grid bolted routes. This was about a one and a half hour approach, complete with a bit of honest to god bushwhacking. Second… it was 10 pitches long, and over 300m tall!
We got a pretty early start on the trail; just after sunrise on a cool, late fall day. There were three of us, including my buddy and his 11 year old son. Of course we got lost right from the get-go, but we soon got that sorted out and quickly we were back on the right trail. The nice thing was that we could see pretty much the entire climb on all of the approach, making for some good motivation on the hike in.
Eventually we got to the start of the route and began sorting out the ropes and other gear, which really wasn’t much, only amounting to a bunch of draws. The first two pitches were pretty short so we opted to combine them. Easy ledges punctuated by some steeper slabby sections, but well featured so there were ample holds. The climbing never got above 5.8, and was mostly 5.6 or even easier. The third pitch was a blast with a fun arête to navigate plus more cracks and slabs. The harder bits being around 5.9. The next two pitches we also combined. A bit of traversing on each pitch but nothing more than 5.8. The next pitch had a pretty hard start over a bit of a bulge that went at 5.9 or so, but eased off soon after, and we combined that with the next pitch as well.
Pitch 9 was advertised as the crux, and it didn’t misrepresent or disappoint. I certainly found it to be the the most challenging pitch of the route, and not sure that I would have been able to lead it, even though it was 5.9 and well bolted.
There was an absolutely massive roof capping the climb above the ledge where the belay for the last pitch starts. Fortunately for all concerned the route angles out to the left and goes up a line of weakness and ends almost on the summit, where we were soon all smiles, and took our first food of the day. We were also finally in the sun, which was a pleasant change, as we had been climbing in the shade the entire day. It might have been nice to linger and bask in the warmth a bit, but by now it was getting on in the afternoon, and the shadows would be lengthening before much longer, so after a few more bites and some slugs of water we started down.
Even though the descent was now a nice easy trail that led us back to the start there was still a potentially deadly objective danger that we were most concerned about; one not to be taken lightly. Bees! Africanized Honey Bees. or so called Killer Bees. These little critters are no joke. Highly territorial, extraordinary hive population density, and extremely aggressive. One hears stories almost every year about climbers receiving well over 1,000 stings, including several deaths. In this area it is very common for them to nest terrestrially…i.e. in the ground. There had been numerous reports of some recent attacks in the area, including one that necessitated an airlift evacuation. Indeed, there were warning signs that had been posted by the Forest Service at a couple of points along the trail. We were thinking that the cool temperatures and the fact that it was pretty windy would act in our favour. Wether it was that or not, we saw not a single bee, much to our delight.
We made our weary way back to the car without incident, pretty chuffed about our success, arriving 9 hours and 38 min after we had set out in the morning.