Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

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skykilo
olikyks
from Santa Fe
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Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by skykilo »

I just got home from a lovely visit to see Naomi in Vancouver. The past two weeks I've been tweaked.

Josh kindly showed me New Mexico's secret answer to Indian Creek and I hurt my neck while leading a 5.11 that had only been led a couple times previously. I didn't want to call it a day like that so we kept climbing. I got generously served top-roping this 5.12 that hasn't been sent yet.
uwall, nmic
The shattered 5.10 up the middle was fun. The thin corner on the left is wicked hard. UPDATE: Josh has since sent the thin corner. Nice work!

So my neck was on the fritz for a week. Then it was better. Then I hopped on an adventurous route in the Sandias after a day at Diablo and before the end of the day my upper back was smarting. I wasn't at all sure how my mutinous body would withstand a big route going into the weekend. But we decided to go for it on University Wall.

Naomi set her alarm for the exceptionally early hour of 7 am. Naturally it was raining. The parking lot at the Chief was practically empty. I requested a trip to the grocery store to get more food and give the rock some time to dry. We just aren't meant for early starts.

Naomi wanted to warm up on Seasoned in the Sun, a classic 5.10b finger crack.
uwall, seasonedinthesun
The University Wall system is visible in the background about 1/3 from the right side of the photo.

The rock was moist and it even sprinkled while Naomi was leading. Perfect, let's go take a look at University Wall. Big surprise: the part that's supposedly always wet was gushing. Once the rock became dry a burly crux ensued. I tried many approaches, but the method that finally resulted in progress was a powerful change in direction from one lieback to another, followed by a knee-bar and chicken-wing thrutchathon and finally a confused frenzy of lieback, chimney and stemming techniques.

Naomi cranks into the business on pitch 1.
uwall, naomip1crank

Hooray for the knee bar.
uwall, naomip1inthere

Pitch two has a beautiful finger crack in a corner, then a fun sequence of moves following a flake to the left, finished with a strenuous lieback into a confounding squeeze chimney. The cruxes of the first two 5.12a pitches are technical and powerful at the same time.

Prepare to move to the left. Naomi will always be jealous of my stemming abilities.
uwall, skyp2

Naomi on the finger crack part of pitch 2. How beautiful is that?
uwall, naomip2

Time to crank!
uwall, naomip2crux

After two pitches of burly climbing leading into off-width or squeeze chimney type moments, why not a pitch of straight up burly chimney climbing? Pitch three looks like this.
uwall, p3

Here's the look on my face pulling through the roof to exit the maw.
uwall, skyp3

Pitch four features a nice finger crack then a section beneath a roof which I found spooky.
uwall, skyp4
I led it directly to the roof then to the left. It doesn't sound like it's about to move but personally, the block wedged under the roof seems quite scary. When I climbed the pitch again in a top-rope-solo style (more on that later), I moved left from where I am in this picture. That seemed safer to me but also more difficult.

Naomi led pitch 5, which has some wide crack followed by a perfect/monotonous finger crack.
uwall, skyp5
This perfect finger crack I'm climbing is also a perfect rope-muncher.

Pitch 6 looks like this.
uwall, p6
It was about 5:45 pm, or 2.5 hours before sunset. While we only had three pitches left, given our physical state and rate of progress, it seemed far from guaranteed that we would hit Bellygood Ledge before sunset. So we decided to bail.

We used a tag line. It was apparent that the finger crack on pitch 5 wanted to eat the rope. I tried to keep the rope away from the crack while making the rappel, but the shape of the dihedral just pushes the rope in that direction. As we tried to pull the rope, the nightmare scenario came to pass: the pull cord was stuck. Luckily it wasn't the worst scenario, since the rope was still within reach. We secured the tag line and after some anxiety and discussion, I soloed up the two pitches we'd just descended using Naomi's Grigri. Eventually I found myself at our previous high point, whence I made two rappels to Naomi using just the climbing rope. The rope nearly got stuck in the same place again even without the tag line. It was good to be reunited at the anchor atop pitch 3. One more single-rope rappel put us at the top of the second pitch. The descent of the first two pitches was made via a freaky free-hanging rappel in the dark using the tag line. The relative safety of the approach ledge felt great.

Anyway, all is well that ends well, especially after a colossal plate of nachos and a couple IPAs. I'm really happy that my neck and back still feel good after a day like that. What an adventure!

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huevón
are we there yet?
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by huevón »

Nice pics, those pitches look super clean and beautiful and hard! Nice work getting started on others' day off. Will all this be on the final??

naomig
naomig

Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by naomig »

Alway jealous of Sky's stemming! But I discovered, with Sky's assistance to do some measuring, that my arm span is 4.3" longer than my height. That's a large ape index. No wonder I'm drawn to climbing. I'm a monkey.

It felt spooky being at a belay ~ 80 m above the next ledge down, by myself and without a rope. Glad we kept it cool and handled the snagged tagged line situation well. This climb and the super awesome brownies I baked made for one of the best weekends with Sky.

ryanl

Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by ryanl »

I'm an idiot and need more details.

You've got a (?) mm cord tied to a (?) tag line. You go to pull the main line, the tag line starts to rise then gets stuck in the crack. But it's within reach, so you grab it and secure it in a way that leaves Naomi without a rope? And then you solo top rope by climbing and sliding the grigi?

hell of a story. AND FREAKING AWESOME THAT YOU CLIMBED MOST OF UNIVERSITY WALL !!!!!!!!

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skykilo
olikyks
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by skykilo »

Guesses: 9.8 mm rope with a 6 mm tag line. While pulling the _tag line_, the whole rig gets stuck. We secure the tag line and I ascend the lead rope by climbing and sliding the grigri. After I start climbing Naomi has no rope because it travels with me -- I tied into the end as a backup. She still has the end of the tag line. We rig these things so that our weight only ever goes on the climbing rope.

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huevón
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by huevón »

I was Googling "university wall squamish" out of general interest (didn't know it went back to the 60's) and noticed this thread is already on Google's page 1 (for me, at least...) [Nice SEO?]
Do doubles get stuck in there too (or do you think they would)? [my guess: probably] Guess you would have more 'fallable/rappable' rope at your disposal though. Any drawbacks to double ropes besides weight and individually reduced strength and durability? I still haven't owned any but seems like they are becoming standard for big modern trad climbs (I could be wrong but I have that impression.) That little Aiguilles trip was my first time using them extensively so now I'm considered buying some. (Also decided I was dumb not to use a correct rappel brake even though I've never 'needed' one...that was a [metric] shit-ton of rapping!)

naomig
naomig

Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by naomig »

Almost right: the tag line is 5 mm. Actually Sky's weight was on the tag line as well at one point since the stuck locker on the climbing rope dislodged while he was rope soloing up. A double rope would've been trouble as well. It's the crack. The crack on the 2nd pitch snagged the climbing rope when he made the rappel to the first anchor, but he got it unstuck and was able to pull the whole rope down. I was worried about that actually and thought this would be really fucked up if Sky got the rope stuck on the first belay and I'm at the second belay without one.
Last edited by naomig on Tue Aug 27, 2013 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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skykilo
olikyks
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by skykilo »

Two lead-rated cords are nice. It's just that they're heavy and the rope management is more of a pain. In a spot like this, even with two ropes, it could be better to make a single rope rappel to have an extra cord in a jam. However, the ideal scenario is to climb on a single (short and skinny!?) rope and SEND.

I'd be happy to discuss my array of SEO tricks. The search engines seem to find everything on here quite well.

While the tag line was taut/weighted, the lead rope was the only one through the anchor at that point and there was a massive locking biner fixed to it such that should the tag line fail, the lead rope would still have stuck at the anchor. But that would have resulted in a fall of at least the distance we had pulled the tag line before it stuck. Exciting times!

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DonJuanPakistan
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by DonJuanPakistan »

Superheroes. Gotta be.

ryanl

Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by ryanl »

skykilo wrote: However, the ideal scenario is to climb on a single (short and skinny!?) rope and SEND.
I think I read this in Freeedom of the Hills

In the current issue of the Alpinist, which has a profile on the history of Squamish climbing, Croft contributed a full page spread to his/the first free scent of UW. Pretty amazing. Then and now.

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huevón
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Re: Squamish, Schooled on University Wall

Post by huevón »

Yeah sounds like bailing blows and is not necessarily easier or safer. Thanks for the reminder!

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