Tuesday, May 5, 2009

4/29/09 - Brownstone Wall and the Nightcrawler

Today we hit the Brownstone Wall. This hike is a long one. The book says the Rainbow Wall hike is 3+ hours and the Brownstone Wall is 1 hour and 15 minutes. Odd since they are adjacent. The truth is that the Brownstone Wall was about 2 hours of work. The Rainbow Wall would be about 30 minutes more – it’s a bit higher.

Long hard steep hike.

We arrived at the Brownstone Wall – our objective was the Nightcrawler. If anything, this route has a cool name! It is four pitches. From the ground, I could see trouble in my future.

A chimney. Gack.

Wide crack. Argh.

Long sections of stemming on smears only. Overwhelming Dread.

I was doomed and I knew it.

Dave was thrilled about every aspect of this climb. Off he went. He sent this route in great style finding it bolted just enough. When a bolt would show up, he was very happy to have it! He did a great job onsighting this route. I worked but needless to say, I failed to onsight it. Hell, I failed to free climb it. It was simply not my style at all. And I clearly suck.

After we finished this, there was no way we were going to do the companion climb to the left of the same feature. It was late and Dave had enough climbing. My arms were tired from yanking on gear. Ha! So we hiked all the way back out. It is a pretty area. It was fun seeing Dave climb as well as he did.

You can see my assessment of my performance on this climb in one of the photos. If you are there, and you smell a stench – that is not a dead animal…it is the after effects of how much I sucked on this climb!

Back at the trailer, we got to enjoy a rare moment outside without gale force winds. Nice evening.

















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