We met Christopher Brennen and his wife, Barbara! Very cool! He led us to a better approach to the headwall, instead of crossing the creek and whatnot.
Heading up:
Marc
What kinda flower?
Looking at the headwall
Good spot for a break.
Yo Soy El Army, yours truly.
Marc moving up
Did a couple of routes. The latter was just up the split up Sheep Canyon's Headwall, which went in steps. We only got about three pitches up, and I reckon one could rate it around 5.7ish, though it's not too hard. Protection was rather easy to come by, and one could thread runners around chockstones. It got loose further up, where I couldn't set a decent (any) belay anchor to bring Marc up, so I bailed off a sling. Pro got worse higher up, though I did get one extremely shallow #1 nut to hold very well. Very uni-directional.
Setting up belay station
On the route
Marc rapping off the route
Ze #1 nut
Rapped off some natural anchors and headed home.
The best part of the trip was "Optical Illusion", which we feel is about 5.8 R/X. Looks cool when you walk up, easy when you reach it, and rather horrifying when you climb it. I sent it to the crux, and was only able to get a half-assed #6 or so hex to hold. Everything else blew. I couldn't get up the crux, so after much of nothing, I very carefully downclimbed and had Marc send it. He passed the crux, and was able to set a bomber #2 Tricam(love these things) at the top fo the pitch. He rapped/downclimbed the pitch, with the #6 hex coming out easily upon cleaning on his way down. If anyone is on this headwall, and finds themselves on this route for whatever damn reason, that #2 is yours! Says Taco on it.
Marc moving to set up belay station for "Optical Illusion"
Myseff
"Having fun"
Route from below. Follow the purple rope up. 1 pitch.
Post-route
Ooh, auto-locking Petzl Freino (for use with GriGri)
Looking around
We then headed home. Easy hike down, some class 4 scrambling, which would be fun if I didn't have an 50lb rucksack. (This made things harder) Dumped most of the excess so it was light on the way down.
Marc on the unfriendly rappel below "Optical Illusion". Bigass chockstones meant you rapped into a cave... not cool.
Pretty picture
Shot before I rapp down
Looking back at what we did today.
We ran the last mile out of the canyon to the car, stopping a few times for the rocks, and because I was getting tired.
We had a great day. While we didn't reach the highest of any one point, we had fun (which is why we went in the first place). We walked through some plants that sting like crazy on mutliple occasions. My leg is still "humming" from it.
Unidirectional... was intended to be part of a belay anchor, bringing my buddy up.