Ecstasy
5.13a YDS 7c+ French 29 Ewbanks IX+ UIAA 29 ZA E6 6c British
Type: | Sport, 140 ft (42 m), 2 pitches |
FA: | Tom Herbert, Eric Doub 1990's |
Page Views: | 10,677 total · 116/month |
Shared By: | Sean on Jul 30, 2017 · Updates |
Admins: | Aron Quiter, Euan Cameron, Mike Morley, Adam Stackhouse, Salamanizer Ski, Justin Johnsen, Vicki Schwantes |
Description
Start up a seam just inside of the arete, on the clean face to climber's right of Pratt's Crack. Then veer out to the arete and up. P1 via 17 bolts of high pressure smearing ends at a rap anchor at about same height as that of Pratt's Crack to the left. P2 veers left back onto the same face above for another 8 bolts to the upper anchor at 12b face.
The first ascent and first bolting efforts are quite interesting. Here’s what Eric Doub of Colorado has said about it:
This history may be of interest: In 1987 [before checking my records I wrote 1990] Bishop local Dennis Jensen showed me the route [I don't recall the "Gary Slate" Tristan mentions on MP], of which he'd done the first ~35 ft to reach the large foot ledge below the crux arete, and named it "The Edge of the Universe." After that, starting in 1990, I put in 9 days on the route, TR, to brush and make the rock climbable by doing those high-pressure lieback and smearing moves. It turned out that brushing was not enough; it took the high pressure of shoe rubber on the gritty granite, with feet no more than 16" below hands, to remove the micro flakes that kept coming off. Eventually it was ready to free climb, which I did on TR with 1 hang, in 1991. At that point I contacted Tommy Herbert because he had a drill. He had not yet been on the route. We split the cost of the bolts and installed them. Tommy did a yoyo pinkpoint of the first pitch, meaning the rope was left through a draw midway up the 5.13 crux arete. I did the first pitch with one slip midway; I weighted the rope and without resting climbed to the top of the pitch.
[Doesn't count, I know! But accuracy and honesty matter, in history.] Later I pinkpointed the second pitch, which to my knowledge Tommy never climbed. In short order Tommy had Greg Epperson take photos of him on the first pitch and renamed the route "Ecstasy.")
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