Climbers stuck overnight in Eldo

dailycamera.com/news/2008/m…

Anyone know what climb these guys were descending from and which ledge they got stuck on?

Wow. That must have been a cold bivy, even if they were a spoonin'.

Hey, thanks for the link.

Glad everything turn out well for these two.

I've had worse epics; I'm glad mine didn't wind up in the newspaper. :)

--Marc

There was a party of two high on the Yellow Spur (but below the crux pitch) at about 5:30 pm Sunday evening. Looked like imminent benightment to me.

I am guessing this party got stuck on either the Dirty Deed or the West Gully raps. Maybe we'll find out later in the week.

I saw the party on Yellow Spur as I was driving out around 7 pm on Sunday. They were almost finished with the crux pitch and it looked to me like the leader was belaying his second from the summit. If they were not experienced with the rappels and did not have a headlamp they definitely could have gotten stuck. At least that area of the wall is somewhat sheltered from the winds!

They didn't want to leave gear and rap off that?

we got started on yellow spur at 1400. on the third pitch i realized i had forgotten my headlamp. the first multi pitch climb i have done was rewritten we descended in the dark but i had my head lamp so everything was fine. my partner has only been climbing outdoor a few times so i was leading every pitch. i will say that he did really good, kept it together throughout the entire ordeal. this was the second multi pitch trad climb i have done so my rope management, racking skills are pretty inefficient. as i set up the belay on the summit i was watching the sun go down, then watching night creep in as i was literally pulling my second up the crux pitch out of sight. i would have set up a belay before the 5.6 arrete but we were only working with one cordelette so i had to sling my rope around the peak. when he finally came up, i had him read me the descent from the mountain project printout i had brought with as i coiled the rope. we only had about fifteen more minutes before it was too dark to read, and i was trying to memorize all of it. we rapped down in the dark and i had no clue where to go. there were trees and fins and notches and gulleys every where, i could not remember what the paper said. i checked all the trees for slings or rope burn, scrambled and felt up all the rocks for anchors, then i down climbed a gulley for about 150 yards only to meet a vertical drop for a few hundred feet. that's when i realized we were spending the night up there in t shirts. we climbed back up the gulley and made a bed out of pine branches on a small low angle pad. wind kept us relocating through the night. we tried many different spooning methods to stay warm, it was a pretty miserable experience. but as soon as i found the anchors the next morning i was thankful for the lessons learned, and ready to attack another mutli-pitch climb. i learned alot that day, just to clarify what the news report messed up, my name is nandu, i am 23, i am a former marine, thanks pa and ma, thanks rescue team. onward and upward

Tim Stich wrote:Wow. That must have been a cold bivy, even if they were a spoonin'.

Especially if all they were wearing was T-shirts.

Nandulal Thibeault wrote:just to clarify what the news report messed up, my name is nandu, i am 23, i am a former marine, thanks pa and ma, thanks rescue team. onward and upward

Thanks for the first-person account. I really appreciate your willingness to come on to this board and post this!

I typically budget an hour per pitch on an unfamiliar climb, including descent. If the descent is tricky or not obvious, I add in some additional time to that. If I've done the route or the descent route before I can estimate better, but typically I've found that an hour is about right.

Did you do the rappells in the first dihedral to the left of Yellow Spur in the photo? (red letters "rap X 50m")

mountainproject.com/images/…

There are a lot of webbing anchors around trees in that one that can fool you.

Glad to hear you are ok. Great to see someone willing to suffer a little in order to create a safe situation in which they rescue themselves.

Remember, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger.

My respect for dealing with it on your own.

Chris

Jed Pointer wrote:Yeah - it would be interesting to get more detail on where he went. Reads to me like he made Red Ledge, but couldn't find the West Chimney raps in the dark (understandable...), so spent the night on Red Ledge.

If he had a printout from this forum, the recommended rappel (which I did last week) is the Vertigo rappels. Never having done them before it took me a while to find my way down, and I did it around noontime. The west chimney raps seem to be dirty and prone to rockfall.

Anyhow, glad everyone made it down alright, it was probably better to stick it out than to wander around up there too much.

Nandu--

It sounds like you guys did the best you could once you found yourself in that situation. What you did is better than than cruising around trying to find anchors in the dark. What you did is also better than demanding a SAR team come up and rescue your party; I'm sure you realize that wouldn't be a safe situation either.

Thanks for the first-person account; I appreciated reading it after the news-web article.

Enjoy safe climbing!

--Marc

I can sympathize..had a similar NOOB experience on Petit Grepon in 96. Glad you guys made it down safe and wiser for the experience. Semper Fi!

Nandu, first off, I am glad you guys are OK. I am the guy who recommended that you and your friend do Rewritten instead of the Yellow Spur a few weeks ago. We saw you guys on something near rewritten, you were off route to the right, and were actually worried that you would get benighted up there because of your late start and stated (by you) lack of experience. I am glad you guys made it off that night as well. I do not mean to offend you or talk you down in any way, but there looks to be a trend here. Launching off onto a route like the Yellow Spur at 2pm without knowing the descent and it being only your second multipitch route is a recipe for being benighted, or worse. Please be careful out there and get some more experience before doing routes like these, I would hate to see you guys (or any other climbers) get hurt.

Mark Ferguson wrote:Launching off onto a route like the Yellow Spur at 2pm without knowing the descent and it being only your second multipitch route is a recipe for being benighted, or worse.

This is true, but don't lose your sense of adventure; it's not the worst thing in the world. Be safe!

--Marc

Nandulal Thibeault wrote:the first multi pitch climb i have done was rewritten we descended in the dark but i had my head lamp so everything was fine. ... this was the second multi pitch trad climb i have done so my rope management, racking skills are pretty inefficient.

Glad you guys are OK; chalk it up as a good learning experience.

You might want to try a few less-committing multi-pitch climbs before tackling anything as ambitious as Yellow Spur. In the old days, we worked our way up through the grades, honing our skills on climbs like Breezy, Wind Ridge, Calypso, and the Bastille Crack. Some long Flatiron climbs like the First and the Third, the Matron and the Maiden. Some classics in Boulder Canyon like Disappearing Crack, the Owl, Cozyhang, Empor and North Face Center on Cob. Then onto longer Eldorado climbs like Rewritten, Great Zot, Ruper, and Anthill Direct.

It was a few years before I considered myself ready to lead Yellow Spur. Things are different now, that's for sure...

Glad to hear you're ok.

If it makes you feel any better, we had a mini-snafu on Yellow Spur last year.

We climbed up the easy slab at the start of the Roof Routes intending to doing Ruper. We got to the top of the slab, and instead of looking at the book, we just kept going! We went around that dirty corner, and realized our mistake too late. Instead of reversing the corner or hiking around, we decided to start Yellow Spur around 1. I racked up and lead all the pitches, which was at my lead limit, and my second's follow limit. We topped out at dark, but my partner found the raps before total darkness. We made the first two rappels fine. We got to the Red Ledge, and were deposited at a tree festooned with rap slings. Just assuming there would be another rap station below (we only had one 60m rope), I rappelled over the bulge into a free rappel. I was scanning the wall as I was going down, but quickly found the end of the rope before any anchors. At least we weren't totally dumb, and had knotted the ends of the rope, and I had myself backed up on rappel with an autoblock. After a few minutes of swinging around, looking for ANYTHING, I knew I was screwed, and had to ascend the rope. Which I had never done, only read about, and since my second had nearly all the rack, I had no extra slings. So after about 10 minutes of yelling, several slings on a biner came sliding down the rope. I rigged my prussiks, backed myself up with an 8, and finally got back to the ledge. We walked around till we found the bolts by the West Chimney, and finally got back down to our headlamps and water around midnight. Wooh, sure learned a few lessons from that one, and we practiced prussiking soon after.

So don't feel bad, I'd bet most climbers have some "situation" they've learned from. If I didn't get spanked for being dumb, I might have made a bigger mistake later. Even now I sometimes forget the proper clothes. But not my headlamp :-P

When Ron Olsen and I installed the Vertigo rap to replace the tree, Ron camouflaged the anchor to match the rock. In retrospect, I thought they should have been painted neon orange so they can be seen in situations like this. There have been other postings indicating of trouble finding the anchor.

Greg Hand wrote:When Ron Olsen and I installed the Vertigo rap to replace the tree, Ron camouflaged the anchor to match the rock. In retrospect, I thought they should have been painted neon orange so they can be seen in situations like this. There have been other postings indicating of trouble finding the anchor.

You can thank Fixe for the camouflage, Greg; it's a Fixe powder-coated tan anchor. I did spray-paint the bolt heads, however.

The requirement for camouflaged hardware comes from Eldorado Canyon State Park. But I agree with you; this anchor should be more visible.

But in this case, I think Nandu and his partner were rapping down from the notch just below the Yellow Spur summit ("there were trees and fins and notches and gulleys every where"), and weren't looking for the Vertigo rap anchor.