Goodness was this a rough day!
- Location of climb on Mountain Project is totally wrong
- Cold, cloudy, windy, and a potential storm rolling in
- Ticks, ticks, and more ticks
The first thing that went wrong was the approach. On Mountain Project, the crag’s location is set to be around the main crag wall. That also seemed to match up with the distance the approach directions said to travel. So we hiked up to that crag wall, and spent a while comparing photos to see if one of those aretes were it. Finally, we concluded it wasn’t the right crag, and it indeed was that big arete we saw further down the valley. So we hiked back down, and further in on the trail, and back up lots of scree again.
Since this area is grassy, there are ticks everywhere. I probably had 20 on me throughout the day, Alexis even had one get inside her pants.
We decided to try the “original start” rather than the 4th class scramble. The original start was actually pretty good, two or three cruxes intermixed with some easier class 5 climbing. It’s about exactly 200 ft, so I spaced gear, but it all felt mostly fine.
After we both got up to the official start, it was getting really windy, and was a colder, cloudy day. Additionally, there was a 30% chance of rain that afternoon, and the storm was constantly lingering only 10 miles further up in the valley (we could see the rain). It seemed like the rain wasn’t moving any further down the valley, but with the wind and the cold, it wasn’t pleasant at all, and potentially borderline for being too cold.
I took a peek at the start of the official P1, and it was a full-on crack. Seemed kinda difficult. Alexis wasn’t feeling it, I was cold, so we decided to just bail considering all the things lining up against us (late start due to bad approach directions, potential of rain, really cold, potential of it being a struggle).
So we headed down the 4th class scramble. We roped up for that section and placed a few pieces as it was a bit difficult, but not too bad to downclimb.
Of course, when we got down, another group showed up. Who knows whether they climbed it or bailed, but oh well, it wasn’t our day!