Rope Solo in a Day - South Face of Washington Column

November 4th I rope soloed the South Face of Washington Column in about 8 hours and 35 minutes.  Below is a bit of my story:

I'm writing up this trip report because I wish I had had more reports to read when I first started researching the possibility of soloing the south face, specifically in a day.  There are a few good reports, but they were a little dated and I always wanted more information.  So if you are anything like me and are hungry for beta spray, then please read on, I'm writing this for you.

First of all, I know that people solo the column all the time without making a big deal out of it, but I’m not some YOSAR member who can solo a big wall before lunch, I’m just some guy from the Midwest who didn’t even know how to hand jam two years ago, much less big wall climb or rope solo, so for me this was a huge achievement that I never could have imagined myself doing a few years ago.

A little context about who I am and my relationship to this climb; My name is Brady and I'm an aggressively average climber.  I've been climbing for about 10 years now and only just started toproping 11's in the valley this fall.  I am pretty scared to fall on trad gear, and I am far from being a "hard man."  I'm not some construction worker or tree trimmer that's built to endure working all day long outside, I gym climb 3 days a week, maybe, I get outside maybe 2 weekends per month, and I don't have any one thing that I can point to as being my super power, except for being super willing to call it quits when the going gets rough.

Soloing the column started out as a way for me to teach myself how to bigwall climb.  But then I began to think that it might be possible for me to do the entire wall in a day by myself.  Then it grew into a bit of an obsession that was constantly simmering in the background as I pursued other goals in the valley.  I would give it an attempt every once in a while when I worked up the will to hike that heinous approach with that heavy pack of gear all by myself, fall miserably short, and hike all the way back down with my tail between my legs.   

Some attempts were so horrible that I never wanted to try it again, but I would go home and take notes over what went well and what I needed to do for next time, slowly narrowing in on my plan for success. It wasn't all bad, however.  Some days I would solo up to dinner ledge and see the congo line forming beneath Kor roof--I would sit down in the morning sun, take out my lunch and play pokemon while I watched everyone else try to conquer that mantel over the roof.  Those were some of my favorite days in the valley, but I knew that I could do more, and I knew that I'd have to be prepared for that time when I finally arrived at the Ledge and it was empty, then I'd have no excuse but to continue on, so I obsessed and I practiced and I theorized, writing out hand-drawn pitch-by-pitch topos listing exactly what pieces I would need, which pitches to link, which side of the rope to rap down, etc etc.

This was my 9th time on this route. The first time I attempted this climb was an onsight solo attempt resulting in me getting off route on the 5.6 first pitch and bailing off of a purple totem I left in the rock.  That evening on the way out of the valley  I wanted to throw my rack in the river and never come back.  I managed to refrain from doing so but I felt such shame in my utter lack of ability and I continued to live with the shadow of my failure(s) during the weeks and months and years to come.  In those months and years, however, I would find it within myself to give that ugly hike up to the base of the column one more go, a few times with a partner, and many more times with just myself.  

I climbed it to the top twice with partners, but had never made it past pitch 5 on my solo attempts.  This last weekend finally marked the day I made it to the top solo, in a day, the exact way I hoped I could.  Everything that could have gone well did, and I felt so fortunate to have had so much good luck on this day.  Here’s how it broke down;

I woke up in camp 4 at 4:20AM and packed up my bedroll, a little dewy from the cold air.  It was maybe a little bit above freezing that night with a forecasted high of 60 degrees and sunny weather to come.  I hopped in the car and drove to the ahwahnee parking lot, dropped my backpack off, and parked at the church bowl parking lot where I enjoyed 2 packets of oatmeal, a protein shake, and some coffee.  I began my hike around 5, maybe?  A light jog to the ahwahnee helped me stay warm.  I scooped up my bag and continued on the 45-50 minute hellish hike up to the base of the climb– in all of my trips up to the column this hike never got any easier.

6AM I arrived at the base to see one party leading pitch 1 and another party, a kindly couple from France, racking up to do the same.  As I flaked my ropes and threw on my harness, the couple from France asked where my friend was.  I told them I didn't have many friends and that nobody really wanted to climb with me--a more-than-half truth masked beneath a joking tone.  

Seeing that this party was going to be hauling, I asked if they would mind if I could step ahead of them in line and be out of their way.  I was going to free solo this pitch--a tactic I had never fully committed to before but I never placed any gear on this pitch anyways.  Right before I set off, one of the french party members asked if I wanted a belay.  Checking the time before starting (6:15), I said I would happily take one, and I proceeded to do the first pitch without placing any gear as I had planned, calling for off-belay and bidding them good luck.  I moved to beneath the second pitch and flaked my ropes, now coming face to face with the first party on the wall.  They were kind enough to offer to take the right 11a variation of this pitch and let me climb the true P2 to the left, which I was incredibly thankful for.

(Me on the beginning of P1 one of my other times on this formation.)

The next 2 pitches of climbing (pitch 2 and 3) are some of my favorite free pitches in the valley.  Splitter hands, fun movement, engaging step-over moves, etc.  I linked 2 and 3 all the way up to Dinner Ledge with my 70m and rapped down to clean the pitch.  Usually I throw on my traxes and TRS follow these pitches, but this day I decided to see if jugging would be faster.  It wasn't, but I still found myself on top of Dinner Ledge by 7:28, a little over 1hr from the beginning of the climb.  This was my fastest time yet, so I was feeling pretty good, but as with many of my other previous solo attempts, I knew that the first 3 pitches were not going to be any indicator of my success on the route– That was solely dependent upon whether or not there was going to be a party on the Kor roof yet.  This is where so many of my previous attempts stopped; as I busted over the edge of Dinner Ledge only to be stuck watching someone lead the Kor for an hour or more.

This time I got lucky.  As I crested up and onto Dinner Ledge I did see another party but their leader had already made it to the pitch 5 anchors and their follower was preparing to jug up to him, leaving the Kor completely empty and ready to be climbed.  Perfect!  I set up my ropes and began leading the pitch, busting the lip and leapfrogging purple totems basically all the way to the first anchor.  Here I accidentally locked one of said purple totems in the crack as it constricted into yellows.  I didn't have my nut tool with me and I couldn't for the life of me get it out.  I decided to give up on it and left it as a potential reward for the party who allowed me to pass them on pitch 2.  

(Me on Kor during another attempt of this climb)

I continued on to the alcove anchors and linked into pitch 5.  I had learned from a previous attempt with a partner that the entirety of Kor and Pitch 5 could be linked with a 70m, so I did just that.  I had attached my 60m to me before beginning the Kor, so as I pendulummed into the Pitch 5 anchors I fixed both ropes, zipped down the 60m, and set up to jug and clean the roof and P5.  

The previous party who had already done Kor had actually rapped down from P5 after realizing that one of their harnesses' tie-in points' sutures had ripped.  We all agreed that that was messed up, and that it was the right call to bail.  I bid them farewell and good luck on their descent as I stared up at a now-empty wall, sure that there was nobody else ahead of me.  That feeling scared me, as I knew that if I started jugging now, I'd be committing to the potential of success.  Why this induces fear is hard to describe, but I swallowed that feeling and thought at least it's better than wanting to die, which is what I do pretty much every time I bail, so I owed it to myself to at least try to succeed.  I sent a text to my wife that today might be the day, then I blasted off.

Cleaning Kor and P5 was pretty quick. I arrived at the anchors, now in the sun, and prepared my rope for P6.  I was nervous about the mandatory 5.7 free move to the anchor because I knew it was kind of ugly to try to protect, and I had only ever followed this pitch, never lead it myself.  Taking a little extra time and care with the black to blue totem moves, I arrived at the P6 anchors by 10AM.  I put on a shirt, had my first calories of the climb, rapped down the dead end of my rope, and jugged back up.  

I reflaked my ropes and found myself excited to be staring up at the absolutely gorgeous thin crack of Pitch 7 leading straight up to heaven, having only ever followed this pitch as well.  I attacked this one and motored up the alternating blue-yellow totem ladder, having a blast and feeling like this pitch was the absolute coolest thing ever.  By 11:30 I had fixed the pitch, rapped down the lead line, and jugged back up to the P7 anchors.  (trip report continued below)

My elation over having just climbed such a sick pitch was short lived as I now looked up at the gaping maw that is the eighth pitch chimney.  I had always been nervous about soloing this pitch, as I was familiar with the cramped confines of this chimney and was worried that it might interfere with my self-belay device.  As I exited the splitter hand crack on-ramp and merged into the chimney highway I was pleasantly surprised that the chimney was a little wider than I remember —or perhaps I had gotten a little skinnier!—and my device wasn't really in jeopardy.  

I was right-side in most of the time and 5.8 felt appropriate. I rapped down the lead line and jugged the pitch, which was an awkward pain in the ass even though I only left maybe 2 pieces of pro in the chimney.  I pulled up and reflaked both ropes here and prepared for the tighter squeeze chimney beginning to Pitch 9.  

(me staring down the length of P8 during my actual send, I didn't really stop to take many pictures!)

Knowing that both my arms and my legs would be totally locked in once I started the shuffle up this part of the chimney, I gave myself a very big loop of rope out of my belay device so that I wouldn't have to manage it until after exiting the chimney.  This worked wonderfully.  I clipped the exit bolt and finally emerged from what I thought was going to be the most difficult part of the day, so I was feeling pretty psyched at this point and that carried me quickly through the remaining free section.  I rapped down the free end of my rope and jugged back up to the super plush Pitch 9 anchor by 1:15.

By this time I had finished about half of my 750ml of water and had eaten my second goo pack, and my favorite dungeons and dragons podcast was providing me company.  I knew I had the rest in the bag with how much light I still had left, so I took a couple minutes to reflake my ropes and to rest and enjoy the shade of the belay station's trees before taking it to the top, beginning to contemplate the logistics of getting down after reaching the P11 rap station.

For both Pitch 10 and 11 I rapped down the free side of my lead line, meaning that I could maybe hypothetically linked these two with the 70m, but I was still happy with how I broke it up.  Pitch 11 is so chill that I only placed a single piece as a backfeed preventer and just slapped on my single microtrax and TRS followed it up to the glorious rap tree that marked the end of my climbing adventure and the beginning of my potential rappelling nightmare.  

The time was 2:50PM, the sun still high in the sky.  I was exhausted.  I didn't feel as excited as I thought I might, having succeeded at a goal that was 2 years in the making.  Instead, I felt thankful that I was safe, and thankful that I kept choosing life over death time and time again so that I might finally witness this day when my dream became a reality.  I took a second to thank god and to curse all of the haters who wanted to see me fail, and I began the journey of the 7 raps ahead.

(me at the rappel tree on top of P11)

(me calling my wife on Totem wireless)

I opted for the rappel retreat instead of the cursed North Dome Gulley descent, which I had never done before, and this quickly proved to be the crux of the route.  By this point my hands and fingers were very raw from all of the climbing, jamming, and scraping, and pulling the ropes was agonizing on my skin and on my elbows/biceps, which I could feel now were pretty wasted from all of the jugging.  

The first few raps were painful but thankfully low-drama, and I soon encountered all of the friends who I passed along the way:  I met Bryce and Chard, who let me pass them at Pitch 2, at the Pitch 6 anchor, and they helped me organize my rappel ropes amongst their own gear and helped feed the rope through the rings after I made it to the Pitch 5 anchor.  At the Pitch 5 anchor I sidled up to another party I hadn't met yet, but who was also so nice and helpful, also helping me pull my ropes through the rap rings after I had reached Dinner Ledge.  The french couple were just finishing up the Kor roof, and I took a moment to thank them for their help in turning my multi-year dream into a reality.  I wished them good luck and continued to the rap off of dinner ledge.  

I rapped all the way back to the top of Pitch 1, passing another soloist who was starting up Pitch 3.  At this point I noticed that my lead rope (the 70m) had started developing some pretty mean kinks and coils, probably due to being run through the trax all day, and I was slightly worried about the rope not pulling through the thin quicklinks at the Dinner Ledge anchor.  Well, that worry was justified as I laid into the pull-rope with my entire bodyweight without so much as an inch of movement from my 70.  Damn.  I REALLY didn't want to climb Pitches 2 and 3 again to pull my rope, so I yelled up to the soloist and asked if he might help me pull after he reached Dinner Ledge.  Thankfully he heard me and agreed.  

I sat on my hands for a few minutes and felt my deep thirst, still unwilling to finish off my water bottle until I had reached terra firma-- in case I needed to reclimb anything in an emergency.  The soloist was such a pal and helped pull through my kinky 70 after he crested DL, and it fell cleanly to the ledge I was planted on.  I yelled up my thanks and sent a big one up to god again as I coiled up my ropes and rapped the last Pitch down to the ground, which someone had hooked up with a fixed line.

Only NOW did I finally feel like it was all over, like I had done it.  I chugged the rest of my water and ate a granola bar, the time was 5:00 sharp, 30 minutes before sundown.  I packed up my backpack and laughed at myself as I struggled to even pick it up off of the ground, my body so racked with soreness.  I rolled down the hill to the bottom of the ditch and began the hour long walk back to the church bowl parking lot in the dark, dreaming of how much food I was about to savagely devour on my drive back to the Bay--I still had to work the next morning, after all.

(Me at the base getting a call from my future self telling me that I'll be in even MORE pain tomorrow morning.)

Gear and gear notes:

• 60 + 70m ropes*
• 3x Black - Green Totem**
• 2x Red - Gold C4
• 1x Big Blue C4
• 5x Alpines with backfeed preventers + 1 alpine without
• 4x Lockers
• 1x Jumars and Ladders
• 1x Microtrax
• 1x Grigri
• 750ml electrolytes
• 2x 100cal Goo Packets and 1x granola bar

*Deciding on the rope situation was a constant struggle for me.  At one point I thought that the entire route might be able to be rapped with an 80m, allowing me to bring only one rope, but that left me with no backup rope in the case of an emergency like having a rope get stuck during the raps.  Then I considered taking the 70m rope and an ultralight 60m tag line just to have for the rappels, but again, if something were to happen to my lead rope, I could have been SOL.  

In general, I knew that my critical thinking and self-rescue abilities were below the required threshold to justify relying on just the one lead rope, so that's why I opted to bring along the 60m dynamic rope every time; If one of my ropes got stuck or I encountered an emergency of some kind, I had a backup fully lead-able rope.  I'm sure a wiser climber could pull off this route with the single rope and a tag line, but like I said, I realized my shortcomings in self-rescue knowledge and paid the price for that in exta rope weight, which was fine.

** 3 Black Totems was unnecesary and next time I would bring just 2.  There is never a time on this route where you would need to do a black to black aid move, meaning that if you only brought 2 blacks and left one somewhere lower on the pitch as protection, you wouldn't be SOL with just the one left on your harness.

Some things I tried that didn't work for me were as follows:

1.  One time I tried carrying a shoulder gear sling with all of the extra pieces I didn't need for a pitch, opting to leave it at the anchors before leading each pitch, then rapping and collecting it before jugging back up.  I found this to be a pain in the neck, as jugging with a 5 pound necklace of long dangly things quickly became cumbersome and not worth the weight reduction it offered during the leading.
2.  Another time I tried bringing a "rack pack" instead of a shoulder sling and thought to dump all my extra pieces in there and perhaps haul it up with a trax after leading each pitch or just shouldering it and jugging, but again, I found it to be to much weight and popping open the bag and reracking from the bag and dumping the extra pieces back in the bag all proved to be more worry than it was worth.  This finally taught me the lesson that reracking in general was going to be my single biggest time waster of the entire trip, so on my final attempt I ignored all of my hard-earned pitch-by-pitch gear beta and instead chose to just carry everything I needed for the entire cilmb on my harness at all times throughout the climb, meaning that I never had to rerack.  In the end, this was a huge time saver, and although I was a little heavy in the waist, it didn't stop me from freeing the same pitches I had been freeing with less gear strapped to my harness before.
3.  One time I tried hiking up the evening BEFORE I wanted to go for the send, thinking that I could hike up there with my sleeping bag and breakfast, set up camp right at the base, fix the first 1-3 pitches that night, then wake up and blast off up the fixed lines I left the night prior, saving me HOURS of time on the day of the actual send attempt.  Well, that was one of the worst attempts I had ever had.  Hiking up with the additional weight of a sleeping system (even one as barebones as mine, my few friends can attest) as well as the extra weight of water for that night and the next morning proved to make the hike up to the base an absolute hellish nightmare, not to mention with this approach, I couldn't park in church bowl because it's "no overnight parking", so I had to park in curry village!!  Add another 30 minutes to that already heinous hike.  By the time I got up there, I was incredibly pooped, but still determined to try out this new idea, so I fixed the first pitch....in a little over 45 minutes.  Not going to cut it.  I was gassed, not psyched, and climbing by headlamp made me much more cautious and slow-moving, not to mention that I started climbing around 10PM, a good 2 hours after my normal bedtime, so my body was shutting down and refusing to adjust.  I woke up the next morning at 4AM, ate my oatmeal mixed with cold water, TRS'd that first pitch, and promptly decided that this wasn't going to be the way.  What I learned from this experience is that my body has an ideal operating hours that it's used to, and by trying to save time by operating outside of those normal hours, I ended up costing myself way more time due to fatigue.  I decided from here on out to only attempt it from the church bowl parking lot after having a full night's sleep and a belly full of hot coffee and breakfast.  I can't overstate the impact this had on my psych and overall energy to perform.

—----

Now, I don’t feel at all qualified to offer any kind of advice to anyone, because I'm still such a new climber and I’m still just figuring all of this stuff out, but I want to say something about what this experience taught me.

If you are in a love-hate relationship with your climbing, and you find yourself on the "hate" side of that spectrum more often than not, please keep choosing life, and don't throw that rack into the river just yet.  It's possible for you to succeed one day, even when so much of your relationship to climbing feels like an incredible failure.  I can't tell you how to deal with that unbearable grief, because I still struggle with that myself, but I can tell you that if you can find any way out of that deep well of despair and towards the choice of living one more day, please take it.  It’s so hard to get back up when you feel so far down, but feeling accomplishment, feeling success, and feeling happiness is possible if you can just keep giving yourself one more chance.

Thanks for reading, -Brady

Proud send !I am in the  North dome gully is best avoided when possible camp too!!

Way to go Brady! Thanks for putting up. 

Effing awesome dude, congrats! This is super inspiring and was a fun read. Great work sticking with it 

No nuts?  Somehow seems like a light rack without them.
Who are the haters who wanted to see you fail?

Great trip report ❤️

Thanks for the trip report. Great outline about how to get it done! Keeps me inspired, SFWC is very soon or next on my list.

Commenting again because upon re-read, I notice you mention choosing life over death more than once. Maybe I'm reading too much into it and it's more about not giving up on the climbing itself rather than a nod to the struggles of depression. 

However, if these comments are related to depression and the type of ideation that comes with it, I can relate big time. I'm glad you're still with us, still waking up to give a new day a chance, and still kicking ass doing it - clearly. Major respect.

"I don't have any one thing that I can point to as being my super power, except for being super willing to call it quits when the going gets rough. "  LOL

Nice man, this will inspire me to get out on some similar stuff!

Nice work and write up. Way to keep at it.

Awesome trip report! What was your LRS device?

Tom England wrote:

Awesome trip report! What was your LRS device?

Thanks!  Grigri 2019

Hell yeah dude, this is fucking awesome. Thank you for the amazing trip report. Keep up the good work, I hope you get up to more adventures in the future. Any thoughts of doing something like Touchstone wall in a day?

That's a hell-u-va great report, thanks man! I've gotta get one of those totem-phones ....

This is gold! In this Instagram reel and photo bomb post era, a long form trip report with a clear storyline is hard to come by. Not to mention a report that makes me laugh out loud. Thank you for sharing, Brady!

What’s your PAS,  for connecting to jumars or ladders? Did you wear climbing shoes all day? Sorry if I missed that if you mentioned that somewhere. I close my eyes when I laugh hard. 

I loved this. Thanks for sharing!

Great trip report! Thanks for the back story too. I’ve spent a lot of time “projecting” climbs that are huge for me and meh for lots of others. Nice to hear success stories from other mid-level climbers. Although soloing SFWC in a day might just maybe take you out of the mid range. Good job!

Mei pronounced as May wrote:

This is gold! In this Instagram reel and photo bomb post era, a long form trip report with a clear storyline is hard to come by. Not to mention a report that makes me laugh out loud. Thank you for sharing, Brady!

What’s your PAS,  for connecting to jumars or ladders? Did you wear climbing shoes all day? Sorry if I missed that if you mentioned that somewhere. I close my eyes when I laugh hard. 

Thanks Mei!  I love all of your writing, so many of your stories have given me the psych to keep trying hard things.

I have a petzl evolv adjust (the one with 2 arms) that I use as my PAS.  I wore climbing shoes all day— I’m not badass enough to do free moves in approach shoes.