SkiSickness

Tony and I had a great day out last Friday. Both Tony and I really enjoyed this route. It provided a really good mix of fun crack climbing with a couple of pitches of 5.11 or aid-up bolted pitches. I can't wait to get back on it sometime.
Here I learned a valuable lesson. I assumed that this was going to be predominantly a sport pitch with a little bit of crack climbing mixed in and hence left the majority of the gear at the belay save for a handful of pieces. As you round the crest on this pitch you are greeted with a fun lieback flake with great exposure followed by an optional belay with another bolt ladder to the base of a stiff little finger crack. As I approached the first optional belay I debated whether I should stop and belay Tony over as I began to question the amount of gear I had left and was beginning to become burdened a large amount of rope drag. I decided to follow the topo and continue to the next belay at a small ledge. What followed was a some fearful run-out climbing and a lot of whining and cursing. I safely reached the belay and vowed to NEVER PASS UP A PERFECTLY GOOD BELAY WHEN QUESTIONING WHETHER YOU HAVE THE RIGHT GEAR OR ROPE DRAG IS BECOMING AN ISSUE. This pitch really should be broken into two pitches if you want to climb without the burden of the rope drag and enjoy all of the moves.
What a great climb. After down climbing the South arete, we ended up running into Bryan Burdo who was up there working on some psycho new rout on the south side. As we were talking to him, we asked if he knew of a direct way down rather than taking the easy spire gully decent. He thought we were trying to get back to the base of the Direct East Buttress and so kindly pointed us off in that direction. We thought we were saving time by taking a more direct descent back to our gear. When we were already committed to that we told him where in fact we were going and he pointed us straight down the gully to a fixed line that we should be able to down climb. What followed was a min epic down a scary loose rubble filled gully to a bleached out old fixed line followed by more loose and scary rubble to our gear.

Another valuable lesson: ALWAYS STICK WITH YOUR ORIGINAL DESCENT PLAN AND DON'T TRY AND SAVE TIME BY CUTTING CORNERS.

A really fun day out. Thanks Tony!

That's a really fun climb. And those are some good lessons.

Nice Casey. Lots of respect for your thoughtful approach.

loved the photos. looks like a lot of fun.