Not again! Yes, again...and this time SUCCESS!
Infinite Bliss is just something that I need to get done and heck it is so close to home that it is almost effortless to make the approach. For my third attempt to climb this long route in my back yard, I hooked up with Craig Chappel. I was feeling like I owed him a good time since taking him gardening on Galaxy a few weeks earlier. In addition, I was determined to go and place a couple of rap stations on this route to improve conditions related to safety since my last experience was less than desirable. Matt P from the WCC and Radd from CC each contributed bolts and a hand drill and I bought chain and hangers to plug a few of the missing holes.
With the weather looking like it would be overcast but no rain predicted I thought this would make for a good day since it is a south facing route. I confirmed the details with Craig the evening before and gave him directions to the I-90 meeting spot and suggested a 6am rendezvous. The next morning I was waiting for Craig at the Albertson's parking lot but unfortunately with Craig's newness to the area he got confused and went to the exit on I-5. Once we sorted that out we ended up about 1 hour behind schedule but nonetheless we were off.
During the drive in we saw a cougar on the road. A real live wild cougar! That was my first WA cougar sighting and it was exciting. As we rounded a corner we could see something down the road that looked like a very very large dog or maybe it is an El Paca with a weird tail...no, no that's a...wow a cougar! This one had a long tail and seemed to be more rust or dark reddish color but it was hard to tell for sure since we were up the road and it was dawn and the light was filtered through the trees. Cool either way!
With a quick approach we were at the base and simul-climbing in no time. This time I paid careful attention to all the topo details and worked hard to find all the belay stations and fixed gear. I also discovered that the topo description is flawed and made the necessary corrections. We made good time to pitch 14 but then with a flawed topo Craig missed the upper bolts of this pitch and needed to run it out. The next two pitches were easy but again I took time to find the fixed gear and figure out how to head across the slabs but still provide Craig a belay. At one point I climbed ~330' straight up with no gear and had Craig tie the two ropes together to get us to the belay of pitch 17. Once again I "onsighted" ;) pitch 19; this is the money pitch! The last three pitches were all new to me and Craig was game to finish so off we went. Sometime during the lead on pitch 21 clouds began moving in and we were caught in a white out. This slowed our ascent and also dropped the temperature enough so that I needed to layer up. Unfortunately Craig was in shorts and didn't have extra gear to layer up with so he began to find himself a bit chilled. We topped out around 6:30pm, ~10 hours of climbing, but now had many raps ahead of us to get down. During our second rap the ropes got stuck and we spent a fair amount of time dealing with that issue. We ended up rappelling to around pitch 18 before we really lost light and had to switch on our head lamps. Knowing that the raps stations are all bolted was comforting but the challenge would be finding them in the dark. I worked with the pitch lengths from the topo and estimated how far down the rope I was rappelling until I found each and every station. Needless to say the going was slow and all in all we ended up down at about 2:30am in the morning. Overall I viewed this as good practice for something but what a long 18 hour day.
Due to the late night rappels I never got to pound in a new belay station but intend to go fix that issue eventually.
Here are my pros and cons regarding the day...
Things that didn't work so well:
- not providing Craig with clear directions for meeting point. I didn't consider his newness to the area and this set back amounted to more than 1 hour at the end of the day. I should have emailed him a map and made sure he was clear on the place to meet
- for a long demanding route like this consider my partner's state of physical fitness. At the same time my partner needs to understand what he/she is signing up for and they need to make that same assessment. In this case, the route is frigg'in long and we could have rappelled at anytime so it was less of an issue
- provide a complete description and location information to those you have put on notification as your emergency back-up team. Although I gave Michael and Scott an itinerary and information where we were going, I neglected to provide a map to the area
- Stuck rope. We should have tested the "ease of pull" after the first time I went up to fix it. I made the mistake of determining that the rope knot was catching on the rock which wasn't the case. Bad root cause analysis :( and this cost us time. I don't usually test ropes when the 1st man is down unless the pull angle is tricky
- Prepare for changes in mountain weather especially when there is a change in weather fore casted for the region. Although the forecast was over cast with sunny breaks for the day, the system moving in for the following days was forecast to bring rain. This meant unstable weather and as the systems gain strength the weather can change quickly.
- The topo was somewhat incorrect for lengths and bolts were hard to see
Things that went well:
- I knew the route from prior runs and except for the top pitches this aided us in getting belays found in the dark and in general orchestrating our overall descent.
- We were able to protect the 2nd on the long traverse and the 325 ft, run out. I was ok to solo that section since I had been on that terrain before in some sort of fashion.
- We had water, food and I had a wind extra jacket.
- Both of us had headlamps.
- We worked together to rap and find anchors and kept the communication up even thou we were getting tired.
- Belays were all bolted!
- Topo lengths helped to locate anchors
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