Whitesides - Free'ing Traditionswoodzy | 20 October, 2007 20:44 It all starts on Friday... I suppose most good things happen on Fridays... Anyway we left Atlanta at around 8:45pm, and started up toward Cashiers. We were pretty paranoid about all the rain that fell all over the East on Friday. It would be pretty annoying to see water seeping all over the routes we wanted to do. But you always just gotta go, unless T-storms are 100%; cause you can always climb something. Anyway, I wanted to run up the "Original Route" but Andrew had already climbed that, and he convinced me that "Traditions" was just as easy. So we decided during the drive up that "Traditions" was going to be to the goal for Saturday. "Traditions" is nine pitches (with some weird traverses), there are two crux pitches one dialing in at 11a and the other at 11c. Both cruxes are sport climbing bolted, so its all good right? Heh at least thats the plan. I missing the NC 106 off of 441... that added many many minutes to our drive. Since 64 between 441 and Cashiers is the curviest road in the world! Anyway, camping at Whiteside's not allowed so since it was like midnight and I didn't want to drive all the way to Panthertown we just found a nice sized pull off and ran into the woods to find a kinda flat spot and camped away. I figured it couldn't go too bad since we were up and rolling before the sun was even fully up. Our morning started at 6:25am. It was kinda dewy in my bivy sack, but that was probably just due to me breathing all over the place. This early its still dark, and I knew I had thrown my headlamp into my sleeping bag/bivy sack somewhere but I just couldn't find it. So Andrew was up and moving and I gave up and slept some more. He got annoyed with me a headed down to the car to grab some breakfast. I decided to try looking for my headlamp again and found it this time, dunno why I missed it the first time. It probably had something to do with the kinda slopped ground we were on. I packed up my shit and headed down to the car. Got my breakfast on started and tanking up on water. We then headed to the Whitesides parking lot. We got there only a few minutes after two other groups. We just prayed they didn't want to get on the same route we were planning on. They were heading for the OR. Glad we decided on Traditions. We hike down the side of the mountain and watch the sun rising, and stare up at some of the more ridiculous routes on Whitesides: "Warrior's Way" and "The Matrix". The leaves were also turning, and the valley looked absolutely amazing in the red sunrise rays. So yeah... I had to take a few minutes to absorb that in. We get to the base on Traditions, and the commitment to this route happens RIGHT off the deck. Its really easy to get about 15 feet up, like you just follow a ramp, but the first bolt on this 5.9 slab is 25 feet up. Of course, I guess they're trying to set the tone of the route? BAH, thats just annoying. not to mention that there was a bolt at my eye level that had been chopped. That was just an omen of all of the chopped bolts we were about to see on this route. Anyway, you really had to commit to this crystal step and use those nasty slopers to get up to the bolts. So I stand around being annoying and not wanting to slide down to the ground. Finally I sack up and trust my feet. Do the three small moves to get onto some slopers that are kinda good to stand on and clip my bolt. Ah thank god. Sigh. I'm not gonna hit the ground anymore, probably. Now I run up to the little lip and plug a little piece of gear, do a quick mantle. This move was harder, but there was gear directly below my feet, so I was much more confident in my footwork. Now I get to romp up the slab (with no more gear) for 30/40 feet to a small "bowl" in the rock, throw some gear in there. Later I will realize I should have extended that piece about 10 feet more. The rope drag became ridiculous, and made some of the harder slab moves up high much harder since the drag was screwing up my balance. I studied one more for a good 10 minutes it felt like, trying to figure out how my balance was gonna react and being able to step up 10 feet to a crimp/slab jug (for our purposes here a slab jug is anything that is positive enough for tips to crimp on, heh). Slab really makes you think, anyway I get to the first belay and setup and anchor. Andrew runs up (almost literally) the slab. Passes the gear I placed back to me, and I'm off to attack the first crux pitch going free at 11a. It starts like right off the belay to the right a little. You clip a bolt and then the moves start. The 20 foot boulder problem was pretty awesome, there were three 45 degree rails that were kinda slopy and a little overhanging. You just had to layback these rails and basically sport climb for a little while clipping 3 bolts. Then run up some 5.8 sloping jugs for 60 more feet clipping two more bolts, and I think I got one piece of gear in near the top, a brown tri-cam. The anchor was only a single bolt however, I backed that crap up with a small nut in some hollow flakes, that "probably" would have held. This next pitch was wierd, the topo said something completely different than the route description, and I didn't see ANY bolts anywhere. The topo said there would be two bolts, pah, whatever. It was a good 140 foot pitch and I put 4 pieces of gear in. Yeah, it was 5.8 but there clearly could have been more pro. I had to run about 30 feet to the right of the belay before I even got a piece of gear, and even that piece of gear wasn't amazing and required a non trivial move to get up to the good gear placement spot. Blah, maybe I read something wrong, but I certainly believe I followed the clear weakness in the rock and what the description seemed to suggest. I did find an old piton (which was in the description). The next pitch had better pro, but it was more of finding sloping jugs and climbing up on them with little gear. This takes us to the 5th pitch the second crux, 11c. Andrew starts leading at this point. The belay "fixed pins" for this also didn't exist, so I built an anchor in the best place I could see (probably were the pins used to be) and Andrew headed up to the pretty clear crux bolts on a overhanging/dead vertical slab. Those moves were hard as balls! I fell at least 5 times at the 4th bolt with the backpack trying to mantle onto little slopers off of some really small crystals. I ended up French Free'ing that move, I just didn't have the patience for it. Grabbed the jugs above the crux and kept going. There was literally no gear above the crux until the anchor; the fall was sorta clean unless you hit the ledge 40 feet down (cause you were at least 20 feet above the last bolt at the anchors). There were a couple really weird traverses at this point which lead to a pretty awesome 5.10 boulder problem that lasted 15 feet. That pretty much sums up the route. It was really inconsistent. Lots of 5.8/9 sloping jug pulling that was run out, and maybe 70 feet of 5.11/5.10 climbing on the entire route. Andrew linked the last two pitches and BARELY made it to the top with the rope we had available. There was plenty of run-outness on the last 5.8/9 pitches after the tree ledge with basically no gear. Although I was basically used to it at this point, its still just kinda annoying. I'm not sure I completely agree with the NC ethic. I have no problem forcing people to be bold, but if your gonna grid bolt the cruxes and have ridiculous run-outs in easier terrain, that just doesn't make sense. If your gonna be bold and "carry your balls in a hammock" then you should also chop the bolts at the cruxes. What your afraid people might need to aid it (like I did)? But not afraid that someone may fall, I dunno something is fishy about it. Anyway, a little bit of a rant at the end there. I certainly respect the NC ethic, but some of it seems a little contrived some times. We need to invent some kind of gear that will work without cracks/alcoves, that would be sweet. Then we don't have to scar the rock with bolts/pins. Whitesides is an amazing place that I must go back to. Its friggin awesome.
|
MenuSearchCalendar
Recently...
Categories
Syndicate |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Trackbacks (0)