THE BIG WALL PORN POST!

Ziggy Chalkdust wrote:

JT…. That nice granite crack definitely takes a beak or a pin, and probably would take a nut- hopefully that’s not an actual climb that you are filling with metal trash. 

Well now I'm embarrassed. It is a real climb and that is real metal trash. Where else is a noob allowed to practice heading if not 10 feet off the deck in a field of poison oak?

I seem to recall clipping a lot of fixed heads on the Prow and would have been in something of a pickle if any of them busted loose. Thus the incentive to try it out in a perfect beak splitter.

I will just add (NOT that this justifies such behaviors) but the local ethic at Woodson is to leave a substantial trace -- that is, machete trails through the aggro chaparral, pesky blocks crowbarr'd out of the way, and fingerpods banged down to about 5.11 or so.

It will be done. 

Cleaning my friend's artisan Fear B Gon Ne'er Rip (TM) heads with my I Can't Believe It's Not a Real Butterknife.

But not before I hook em with a beak to see what that's all about!

How is the El Cap season these days? Seems a world away down here in the southland.

RIP this guy's mom's actual butter knives...

This is turning into a big job. Thank goodness Mom has her fine china out for Thanksgiving dinner!

You know I'll always be Sancho Panza to your Don Quixote, Zig ! Once a squire always a squire.

This all started as a humble quest to battle those windmills up on Sunkist. 

Andrew Schaferwrote:

Peanut rescue party!!! 8 people on the ledge at one point, that’s gotta be nearly a record!

You rescued two of the most famous and accomplished big wall climbers who ever lived!

I started at the letter A.  Here are some pics from my ascent of Atlantic Ocean Wall in the spring of 2011.  A.O. Wall was my 43rd different El Cap route, climbed with Neil Chelton of vdiff climbing infamy.  Be sure to click on each photo to see it in higher resolution, and then hit the back button on your browser, eh? 

Atlantic Ocean Wall originally started to the right of Gulf Stream, climbing that shattered section of white rock that has since fallen off. No one has been ballsy enough - or stupid enough! - to attempt replacing the three opening pitches, and we all start on the original El Cap Tree route which starts on the Trip and follows the diagonal ledge system up and left. One of the crux pitches - shared with Iron Hawk - leads up a gigantic apartment-sized block to the base of the roof. Iron Hawk climbs straight out the roof, and Atlantic Ocean goes to the left as you see above.  

Atlantic Ocean Wall works its way leftward and ends up where you'd expect - to the right of the North America Wall diorite. There are a lot of expanding cracks and flakes - which can be spooky at first until you get the hang of climbing them - and it is supposed to have more expando than any other route on El Cap. I don't remember ever being too scared - maybe the hard pitches were Neil's leads.  

Looks like fun hooking!  And have I ever mentioned how STUPID spreader bars are on portaledges?  The First Ascensionist of Atlantic Ocean Wall - John "Deucey" Middendorf - has done away with this horrid retrogression with his D4 ledge design.  

A zoomed-out shot so you can see where we're at. El Cap Tower and Texas Flake are on the left skyline, and you can see Continental Shelf and Big Sur on North America Wall. More hooks for Neil!

It was a wet springtime season, and we enjoyed a few rest days in storm.  The wall is so overhanging we never even got wet! When I arrived in Yosemite, it had been raining for days, and there was only one person on the entire wall - which was Neil soloing Shortest Straw. Neil was the last man standing - I had never heard of him before - but I knew he would make a great wall partner!  

No climbing today!  The headwall is totally soaked. 

I thought I got this "killer deal" when I picked up this old A5-TNF portaledge fly from The North Face outlet store in Berkeley for $25.  It was discontinued and they didn't know what it was for.  It's the kind of ledge with a floor, and it is NOT recommended for above-freezing bivys because the bottom of the ledge fly fills with water and becomes a big heat sink. And yes, it has grommets, and no, they never drain! You don't need or want a floor on your fly in above-freezing conditions.  Not only is it EXTREMELY difficult getting your ledge under and inside of this fly contraption, it ends up being colder than a floorless fly.

At least I had what I needed - from left to right ghetto blaster, wine bottle, big wall crab, JetBoil stove, insulated coffee cup and coffee press. 

When the storm cleared, Neil took off on lead again. By this point Atlantic Ocean Wall has joined Iron Hawk which I suppose is really New Jersey Turnpike.  Compare this photo to the photo below:

This is me in 1997 on my first ever solo of El Cap by the route Iron Hawk.  Same place, same flake, but you can see how much of the flake has come off over the previous 14 years.  

Neil led us to the summit through the spicy 5.10R/X free climbing - I guess I was too gripped belaying him to take any photos!

Cheers and Happy New Year, eh?
PtPP [and Neil]

Because you hosers think that the only big walls are made of granite (bwahahaha), here's some vertical beach (Fisher Towers) for y'all....

Intifada (SA)

Look Out; Weak Sauce (SA)

Line In The Sand (FA)

There be some steep sandstone in them there parts, pardners. I'd say "Good clean fun," but it's really "Good DIRTY fun!"

More desert

Why does E's climb look a hundred times better than Richard's climbs? 

Hey Richard, what ever became of that film interview we did? 

Peter Zabrokwrote:

Why does E's climb look a hundred times better than Richard's climbs? 

Hey Richard, what ever became of that film interview we did? 

Jfc Pete. I don't think El Cap itself casts that much shade. 

Hey, Pete, it's because Erik's route is on ROCK instead of a barely compressed vertical beach. There's desert, and then there's desert. The Fishers consist of "rock" in only the loosest sense. LOL

We're in editing. It's coming, it's coming.

Erik's photo is on Pangea, Abraham, Zion. btw

Richard - please email me. 

The right side of the golden finger of fate

^^ Scorched Earth! ^^  You can see right through that thing - it's 300 feet tall.  Native Son climbs the left side. 

The Quinlan Corner during the second ascent of Adrift with Sean Warren.  

Quinlan and Paul Pritchard made the first ascent of Adrift I think just a month before the first ascent of Tempest was made, and Tempest shares this pitch. So this pitch had been climbed plenty of times before I climbed it this time. In fact, I had climbed it before when I did Tempest.  Great pitch, but a bit loose at the bottom.  

Still working through my 'A' walls.  Unfortunately, my camera died on [Flight of the] Albatross, so I don't have any pictures of the Canoe and the superb #1 pecker pitch above it.  However I do have a bunch of photos of Aquarian Wall, which is an old and seldom climbed Jim Bridwell route on the left side of El Cap.  

As always, click on the image to see it in higher resolution. Otherwise you're really missing out. Besides, I monetized the photos, and if enough people click on them, I get a free beer.

Looking down on Kate "Batgirl" Robertson jugging up to join me. The stellar Timbuktu Ledge is visible middle right.

Kate leading through the roofs.   

I, like, look after my partners, eh? Especially when they're tired. 

^ Heading out left under the roof, ^

^ Looking down on Kate cleaning my pitch - a fabulous view of the Great Slab up which the notorious Wings of Steel climbs.  

The portaledge camp set up and ready for the impending storm. Click on the photo to zoom in, and see what I'm holding in my hands.  As per above, I look after my partners!

Batgirl Kate lowering on in.

The Aquarian Wall became quite aqueous for us. 

Kahuna Kahuna Ledge, so named by Holly Webb.  

Our sherpa Dave Turner who met us on Thanksgiving Ledge to help Kate over the top with her half of the kit.

My solo bivy on Thanksgiving Ledge after Dave and Kate took off over the top.
I rapped the entire height of El Cap with half our kit, a fairly involved proposition considering the several big traverses you have to somehow swing across. Those bits took me three trips - down, up and then down again.

Cheers, eh?

P.S. Yous are gonna love my set of B walls - does anyone know what the Bad Trilogy on El Cap is? 

Pete, nice tent on ledge there—how did it work?

Ryan - Aquarian is just OK.  It was a little dirty and grassy in places.  Timbuktu Tower is outstanding, as is Kahuna Kahuna Ledge.  Better options in the area are Never Never Land and Octopussy.  Actually, I even enjoyed Winds of Change which is a much easier trip up the Great Slab than Wings of Steel which is insanely hard.  

Hey Deucey, I found that floored ledge fly at the North Face outlet store in Berkeley, CA and nobody knew what it was for. I suppose this was after TNF sold the ledge business to Conrad Anker? I think I got it for $25. The first time I went to set it up was in a storm somewhere high on the wall. It was 2 in the morning, and it had started to rain. I had taken off my harness and my Russian aiders, so I had to put all of that back on which takes time. And of course get everything off the ledge so I could get the ledge connected under the fly. Only one problem - the fly has a floor, and I could not for the life of me figure out how the hell to do it! I had written many times online that you should always practise setting up your ledge and fly ahead of time so this exact thing wouldn't happen! I remember crying tears of frustration at how stupid my situation was, soaked and miserable in the dark, and how I should have known better. My partner Valley Giants Tom was able to figure out how to do it, and I eventually got inside.

Anyway, once the A5 fly was set up, it was quite cozy, and it was my setup for many many walls and storms. The big problem with the design is that the bottom of the fly fills with water. I guess I should have put really big grommets in it, but I never did because I'm not that handy. There was an unused grommet kit rolling around my storage locker for years that never got used. So it would rain, and there would be this giant lake of freezing cold water under my ledge sucking out all the heat. I put up with it for years as the fly became more and more knackered in the sun, and less and less waterproof. We talked about it at one point, and you told me it's impossible for nylon to stay waterproof after around ten years. I certainly got my money's worth out of it!

Anyway, my whole paradigm changed when I got your first D4 ledge and fly. That was our epic trip up Waterfall Route in fall of 2017 when we nearly died in the rockfall, and surely would have had we been 24 hours slower. We were fixed to the top of three, and the forecast was for 0.10" of rain. We got about an inch and a quarter. I know why they call it Waterfall Route! We got HAMMERED under the direct flow of Horsetail Falls. Patrick and Ryan Sheridan were in Ryan's BD ledge with the grey fly, and those guys were on their knees trying to bail the water out of the ledge. Meanwhile, I was so dry under my D4 fly, I didn't even bother putting my camera in a ziplock plastic bag, I just had it clipped in above me. Nothing got wet, at all.

The next morning when the rain and the waterfall abated, Paddy and Ryan grabbed all their wet stuff, and we headed for the free employee clothes dryers in Tecoya. Nothing of mine was met, so I probably brought some more beers up when we returned that night.

I will never again use a floored ledge fly in above freezing conditions because of the certainty of it collecting water underneath and sucking out all the heat. I remember this realization on Waterfall Route, and that I was actually much warmer with no floor than with a wet floor. I guess if you were on some Marek horror show on Troll Wall in the winter when you knew it would be below freezing the whole time, a floor with a ledge would be perfect, but not if it's going to be above freezing.