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Scenes from Silent Line

Jack, Kelly and Chris showed up that night, and the next day Jack and I went off to tackle Astroman (5.11c). We made the excellent decision to start late - we didn't leave the Ahwahnee until past 10 (mental note - never attempt to carry a mini haul bag on your back that doesn't have shoulder straps! I slung it from the butterflied rope, where its 5 litres of water immediately began painfully blocking all blood flow to my arms. The one benefit of this procedure, is that it gave the mosquitoes a dry well to suck on), and started climbing around 11. This meant that the enduro corner would be in the shade. Jack took the first 4 pitches, making short work of the Boulder Problem and the Enduro Corner, then we swapped leads 'till the Harding Slot, which with many tears, and much reluctance, I permitted Jack to lead. He launched himself at it, stuck the entrance, and squirmed through it with barely a grunt in less time than it took me to write this sentence. I shit you not. I then made the mistake of thinking "wow - that's easy! My favorite colour is blue. No yellow!" After lengthening my knot, putting all excess gear including helmets into the mini haul, which then swung out and got hauled with a mini-traxion (see Jack - I told you it would be so much better than using a pulley!). It's hard even getting up to the slot - overhanging off fingers. I fell right at the entrance, and had to pull on gear to get re-established. The first sequence out sideways at the base of the slot is moderate, as are the off-width moves getting deeper into it. Then it starts narrowing down to full squeeze size, and you have to slither back left to its widest part. Note that widest is what is described in the english language as a relative term - despite removing everything from my harness, I still got stuck, having to exhale to make the smallest move, and small they were! I finally managed to get my chest past the tightest bit, but my waist got stuck (sometimes the hips of a 14 year old Vietnamese boy are still to large), and I couldn't make any progress at all. I tried all the traditional off-width techniques: scraping skin off my knees and elbows, grunting, cursing, panting loudly, screaming, offering up my unborn children to Satan. But it was to no avail. At that point I gave up trying to style it, and shamelessly began pulling on the rope, which was only marginally effective. After what seemed like a very, very long time, but what was in reality no more than half an hour, I made it through those last few inches, and emerged like a horribly traumatised moth from its chrysalis. Except that I felt the opposite of being born.

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Scenes from Astroman

I cannot begin to describe how worked I felt. In all my years of climbing, I have never expended that much energy on one short pitch, or felt so horrible doing it. The rest of the route is a piece of friggin cake in comparison. The thoughts that were running through my head at that point consisted of "kill me now", and "I'm never, ever, ever doing this climb again, unless I do the 5.11X lieback instead". I despise Jack for making it look so trivial. He has some magical offwidth power, that he probably sold his soul to Beelzebub to acquire. If anyone with the appropriate connections is listening, I'm willing to do the same. Despite barely being able to think coherently, I took the next pitch. Or maybe because I couldn't think coherently.... In any case it starts off with an awkward 10b roof move, which left me rather unsettled, and I proceeded to sew up the rest of the pitch, moving unusually slowly. I fell at the 11b lieback crux, and grabbed a piece to yard through it. I only finally pulled it together for the last 30 feet of 5.9 lieback. The next pitch was the Changing Corners, which involves a lot of delicate face moves off thin edges, and interesting transitions around corners. That's most likely how it got its name. I spent 10 minutes trying to clean one of Jack's nuts - a #9 HB offset. I was able to move it around a bit, but for the life of me couldn't extract it from the crack. I was loathe to leave it behind, as they're currently irreplaceable, but was ready to give up when Jack got tired of waiting and yelled down to find out what the hell was taking me so long. When I explained the situation to him, he informed me that the nut wasn't his. D'oh! Over the years, I've developed a fine art of, somewhat unintentionally, screwing others when giving gear beta. Outer Limits? Oh, you only need about 4 pieces, nothing bigger than a #2. P2 of Reed's Direct? A set of nuts will do it. Matthes Crest? Why bother with gear at all? Well, all you victims will be delighted to hear that it's finally my turn to suffer. When we geared up at the car, we decided to go light, bringing singles to #4, doubling up the small gear to #2, which seemed reasonable for the first half, though I would probably have brought another #1 for the Enduro corner. I trusted Jack in his gear recommendation, as he had done the second half the previous weekend. As I pulled around the roof on the second to last pitch, I was confronted by a 100 foot long fist sized 5.9 corner. As you all know, fist sized means larger than a #2, smaller than a #4. A little bit of deductive reasoning will produce the answer that this requires a #3. Of which we had one. Or a #3.5. Of which we had none. Ooops. I was still a little blown from the slot, so I had to shuffle the single god dammned #3 all the way up, which means slow, slow going. Curse you Jack! Next time I'll probably be willing to run it out, but at least I'll know what I'm getting in to! I set up a belay at the start of the ledge, hauled the bag which was finally getting lighter as we consumed the water, and sent Jack over to the corner to finish the last pitch. The topo shows a 10d R move on the last pitch, which is in fact well protected by a bashie, followed by a 10b R "bear hug the flake" move, which is well protected by a blue alien behind an expanding flake. Yahhh... The 10d move is definitely full value, but luckily the 10b is reasonable. After that, we unroped, hiked the gear up the final stretch to the top, and summited at around a quarter to seven. We relaxed there for a few minutes, had some lunch (a cliff bar) and a bit of water, then hiked down the north dome gully and back to the Ahwahnee, where Kelly was starting to get a little concerned.

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Summit shots

It's amazing how quickly traumatic memories fade. Horrible car wreck victims buy new Gremlins. Women give birth multiple times. Large industrialised nations re-elect Republican leaders. By the time we reached the pizza deck for some well earned dinner, I was actually contemplating returning to the scene of my misery, if I can find someone else to lead the Harding Slot for me. Jack, you want to go back next weekend? Not surprisingly, we got to a slow start on Sunday. My upper body felt fine, but my legs were sore, and my psyche still in denial. We met up with a few of Kelly's friends at the meadows, went to the cafeteria for a caffeine infusion as Jack had neglected to bring a stove, and eventually decided to check out Stoner's Highway on Middle Cathedral. By the time we got there (around 1PM), it was in full sun, and neither of us wanted to do a runout 10c slab climb on warm, slick rock. So we played around at the base for a bit, running up Pee Pee pillar, the first few pitches of the DNB (BTW, it's not a good idea to do it in shorts and a tank top, though most people who aren't me know this a priori), and finished off with a couple of pitches of Central Pillar. We sacrificed a bit more blood to the bugs, picked up Kelly at the Lodge and headed for home, much the worse for wear (at least I was!).

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Cragging at Middle Cathedral

How am I ever going to manage the Astrum if just doing Astroman leaves me this worked?