Our resident animal Spy CougarMage sold me a Misty Mountain Harness and a Black Diamond chest harness and I put them to good work. The Misty Mountain harness has 6 gear loops. I have a couple systems I keep in certain places on my harness, so this helps a lot. Pretty excited over these two gear loops. The more I solo, the weirder I get.
The chest harness is better than using a double sling, and better than a harness I made and used a handful of times. I don't notice it's there, which is a hallmark of something close to perfection.
This allows me to set my self-belay up better and some other crap I'll spare you. Anyway, point is you have more fun when things go really smoothly gear-wise.
Last time I went to SugarLedge, Kat and I did this shitty 5.8ish wacky route on the north side. While up there, I saw that the West Face looked way better. Today I went up this face. The usual hike up the scree/talus gullies to the start of the route. I had a small ledge and a Fir to use as my anchor. Started up 5.6ish stuff. First piece was a small X4 that everyone either loves or hates (but secretly loves if he knows what's good for him) in a horizontal hole of some sort.
There are some 5.8ish or 5.9 moves over a bulge or whatever, but I didn't do those on lead. I went left under a big tree, my body wedged between branches and granite. Sounds so dramatic, but it was just real awkward. I slung a branch and moved right. This gave me more protection if I fell, otherwise I'd hit a ledge at anchor level and being on belay wouldn't even really count.
The route opens up a bit, and you have some choices as to where you want to go. Eventually there's a huge crack way up and left. I scrambled around the face from protection to protection. Finding protection is completely different here than in most other places, due to the way this granite formed.
Had that grey X4 get fixed when I tried to clean it on rappel. Used a rock I had to pry off down low to bash the crack to remove my gear. My first time chipping holds!
Got my cam back a little bent but still good.Things get real laid back near the top. Low angle stuff. The route ends just short of the top of the ledge. There's a safe ledge to stand on to build an anchor in the cracks (climber's left). Then just hop onto the ledge.
I just bought an Edelrid Mega Jul, which is like a Reverso/ATC Guide/etc, except it autolocks on rappel. This comes in very handy. For easy quick lock offs, this beats carrying a GriGri which would've been used only for cleaning on rappel and weird traverses etc. It takes some getting used to, and I'm still not very smooth with it yet.
So, I lead the route and fix the rope at the anchor on top. Then I rappel down and clean most pieces from the route, leaving some to keep the rope running a certain way off of sharp flakes, loose rocks, etc etc. I go to the bottom, clean the anchor, and prep that end of the rope to be pulled upwards at the end. I then TR solo up the rope with a Micro Traxion on my chest, and a Petzl Basic on my waist.
That's up near the top on the TR solo portion of doing this. It gets real low angle but this being the San Gabes, I don't trust the rock to hold enough for me to be unroped. The rock on the route proved to be generally very good, which surprised me. The rock had a strange texture to it, with lots of undulations and bumps and stuff. Very few rocks came off the face during my climb (meaning I didn't rip many off). Protection was alright, but I still felt fear a few times, which is important to an experience for me, as it means I have to think and be mature and everything. Then you pull it off, and it's cool.
At the end of each pitch, I stuff the rope in the bag. Bags keep the rope feeding smoothly while you climb. This is critical. Sometimes if a pitch is short and doesn't traverse much, I'll stuff the bottom slack of the rope in the bag at the bottom of a pitch, clovehitch it to the rope to keep it in place, and use it as a weight to allow the TR solo gear to feed smoothly immediately, as they require some weight on the rope to function. Without a weight, this effect usually happens about 15-20ft up.
Here is my rack for the day. I have a single set of cams to #4, a single set of Wild Country Zeroes from 3-6, and BD X4's .1-.4, a whole buncha slings, etc.
And the view. I just hung out for an hour or so thinking and listening to music. It's a sweet spot. If you intend to go there, always remember to keep it clean (not like anyone needs to be reminded, but...).
Additional pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tacodelrio ... 857783374/
Started hiking up around 11, got back to the car around 4 or so. The route was about 70m long and had a section up to around 5.8. Solid short adventure. 8)
