Pocket Hercules 

Mark Wilford discovered this crag in the mid-eighties when Jef Lowe's company, Latok, was located downstream in Lyons. Four of us (Jeff, Mark, Steve Mammen and I) went up one afternoon to climb here and we all epic'd. Mark and Steve took the thin crack line of what is now called Pocket Hercules so Jeff and I got the Neurosurgeon line. Here's what I saw:

Steve was more of a boulderer so Mark took the lead on their line. The water was low and the flat slabs at the base were slick so Steve belayed fairly far to the left; maybe 25'. Mark traversed to the base of the crack and clipped in one of his half-ropes to an upward pulling directional. Then he started up and after about 10' placed his first downward pulling cam. He cruised the crack, clipping alternately, and was virtually at the top when he stopped to place a last cam. He got a good one in and was pulling up the rope to clip when his hold broke and he fell. By the time he stopped falling, Steve had been dragged 20' to the right (There's is not much in the way of anchors there) and Mark was hanging about 2' above the water and getting closer as Steve tried desperately not to get dragged farther across the slab. Mark was screaming at Steve not to let him down into the water (the route overhangs about 20' so Mark was out over the water), Steve was freakin' because he didn't want to let Mark down but there wasn't anything he could do about it and Jeff and I were laughing so hard we had to quit for the day. Well, Mark got all wet so they bagged it and we all went for beers.

What happened was that when Mark fell the weight came on the rope which was through the directional. It pulled, leaving about 30' of slack. Between the slack and Steve getting pulled across the ledge Mark ended up taking a 50 or 60-footer.

Same story as for Neurosurgeon here. I told Piana about the epic and the cliff and by the time we got back to climbing there he had bagged the ascents of both routes.

Malcolm