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.
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.
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.
Hooray for the knee bar.
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.
Naomi on the finger crack part of pitch 2. How beautiful is that?
Time to crank!
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.
Here's the look on my face pulling through the roof to exit the maw.
Pitch four features a nice finger crack then a section beneath a roof which I found spooky.
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.
This perfect finger crack I'm climbing is also a perfect rope-muncher.
Pitch 6 looks like this.
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!
