I’ve done a fair bit of most forms of climbing. I like trad, sport and bouldering, and get out on the ice as much as I can in the winter. The one area I haven’t had much experience with, however, is aid climbing/big walls. Other than a few practice pitches, the only aid route I’d ever done was Mental Blocks on Wallface in the Adirondacks. This 600 foot route was a great adventure, and worthy of a trip report in its own right.
Fast forward to 2007. Tracy and I live 7 hours from Zion, but I’d only been there once and we got rained out, and had to bail to Vegas instead. I’ve always wanted to check out the longer routes, and last year we scored a deal on a new BD double ledge, which had just been sitting in the closet, collecting dust. So back in October we made plans with our friends Mike and Joy to go do a wall together. They’ve got a lot of experience with this kind of thing, so we figured it be a great way to learn all the systems and tricks that come with territory, minus the trial and error of going by ourselves and unduly stressing our marriage. (I said haul, b$#%#!!!) The date was set and we were psyched to finally be making it happen.
Thursday evening found us driving down to the park in the dark, we didn’t get to Mosquito Cove until about 1:30am. Some sleep and then drill sergeant Mike had us up and at ‘em. We got our permit and headed to the base of the wall. Mike had selected a route called Disco Inferno, a little off the beaten path but we thought it would be a good intro without the crowds of the trade routes.
The route lies just to the right of Desert Shield, a popular C3 outing up the steep rock to the left. It took us awhile to get all our crap packed into the bags and make the 10 minute walk to the base. I started walking towards the wall and then realized I forgot something, so I set our new BD portaledge down on the shoulder and went back to the car to help Tracy finish packing the last of our gear.
When I came back 5 minutes later, the ledge was gone, much to my amazement and disbelief!!! I yelled up to Mike and Joy, do you guys have it? NO!?!? WTF?!?!? Where is it??? Tracy yells, what do you mean it’s gone? Now going into panic mode, we figured someone must have grabbed it. Joy yelled down that she had seen a white van stop on the side of the road 5 minutes ago. I was pretty confused, who the hell would do such a thing? Mike came racing back down the trail and we hopped in his car and headed off at high speed in chase of the culprits, adrenaline racing and #6 Camalot at the ready for whatever ninja fighting lay ahead.
As we came around the corner, we saw a white van pulling out of the parking lot for Touchstone. We came to a screeching halt in front of it, movie style, and I jumped out of the car. I saw the ledge in the passenger seat, and opened the door, figuring I’d grad the ledge first and ask questions later. Turns out it was a tour operator, with a bus full of folks, that saw it lying on the ground and thought some one had left it, so they were taking it to the ranger station. Relieved that it was all a misunderstanding, we got back in the car and returned to Joy and Tracy who were waiting for us at the lot, and brushing up on their Kung Fu for whatever encounter was sure to ensue once we found the perpetrators. We told them the story, had a laugh now that it was over, and got back on with the day. What a start!
Back on track, we had originally thought we’d climb in two groups of two, but realized the day was getting late and we needed to reach our bivy spot before dark. Mike linked the first two pitches, I quickly followed, and we got the party started. Tracy figured she had some private time before it was her turn to jug, so she got out a wag bag and was just about to attend to some business when several large rocks were knocked loose by the hauling bags, landing inches from her head and almost literally scaring the poop out of her!!! The trip was shaping up to be pretty eventful so far.
The next pitch was a squeeze chimney, which for some reason I opted to follow in my approach shoes, with a bunch of crap hanging off my harness. Bad idea, unless the point was to make 5.8 feel like desperate 5.10 and come close to throwing up. You’d think this was my first rodeo…
After that unpleasant grunt, we got the bags hauled through the chimney (more work), set up the ledges, and enjoyed a delicious dinner of rice and beans. I could already tell this big wall stuff was a bit more work than free climbing long routes, but I was learning a bunch, and excited for the next day. We weren’t sure what it would be like to sleep on a portaledge, but the exposure wasn’t bad due to being only 400 feet up and suspended over a ledge system of sorts. I got the ledge all dialed and gave Tracy the spot closest to the wall. She didn’t like it when I bounced around, but we soon settled in for the night, and I dozed off pretty quick, and whenever I did wake up during the night, it was rad to look around the canyon and realize just where we were.
To be continued….
