Space Boyz

Hola amigos!

So last Thursday, I went to the Jungle Wall with a dude named Eric to climb a 11-pitch route called Space Boyz. Somehow I met the guy the night before and convinced him to climb with me, and he suggested we do it. Eric's an interesting guy; he's a blond Californian from Humble County who, post-graduating, apparently climbs nearly full-time, and he works in Yosemite in the summers in order to climb. It's pretty crazy to meet someone whose lifestyle is similar in a sense, but yet so much more extreme. Makes what I'm doing seem so much less crazy =)

Anyway, so this route is a classic line established in 1994 over the course of 52 weekends by two dudes new to bolting. Talk about dedication. It's 1000 feet tall in total. The first four pitches are rated 5.8, 5.9, 5.9, and 5.9, so we decided that we would "link" the first four pitches at least. Linking pitches means that someone leads two pitches in a row, because when you have a 70m rope, you can climb almost 70 meters high until you run out of rope.

We started climbing at around 10:45am, and I led the first two pitches in a row, making sure to carry a ton of quickdraws with me, which was really no problem, except that the first two bolts were way too high. Fortunately it was pretty easy so it was no problem. Then I belayed Eric up to my belay ledge, and he led the next two pitches (since he collected all my quickdraws on the way up), while I belayed. Then I climbed the next two on toprope. I checked my watch, and we had the first four pitches done in about an hour (noon).

Next is when things got spicy. I opted to lead the next pitch (#5), which was a 5.10. It was kinda strange and a bit traversy, and I very nearly fell at the crux, but somehow managed to shake out my pump and move through the sequence without falling, earning the onsight. Woot! The weird thing about this pitch was the belay ledge at the end - it's kind of like a shallow shelf, and to get to the next climb, which is a 5.10d in a dihedral, you have to walk right on the shelf around a corner, using a few cold-shut bolts for protection.

So we had Eric lead the crux (#6) of the route, a 5.10d dihedral, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to lead it myself. It was definitely a really tricky, interesting route, which involved a lot of stemming and some odd moves on overhanging rock. It was fun, but I did have to hang once because I climbed into a position I couldn't get out of. He also led the next one (#7), which was a 5.10, and was somewhat similar in that it followed a crack / bulge, so again there was a lot of stemming and a few hand jams.

The next four routes are somewhat of a blur. I think I led the next 5.9 (#8), and he linked the next two after that (5.10 and 5.9), and we were at the last belay ledge. I was pretty happy to finally be up there because I was getting tired of climbing =)

The last pitch is really fun, despite the fact that it's only like 30 feet tall. It's this easy off-width crack where you can do all kinds of chimneying to get up, and I led it, and it turned out to be even more fun than it looked. The summit was not quite as crazy as Pancho Villa, but I could kinda see down over the other side of the gendarme into a different valley further west. Awesome!

After some rope management, we hooked up our GriGris to the rope and started simul-rapping back down to earth. I think we did 10 rappels in all, since the last pitch was so short. I'm not sure what time it was when we reached the summit, but we made it back down by about 4:30pm. So that's 11 pitches in about six hours. Rockin!

My only regret about this route was that I forgot to bring my camera, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures /-: Next time Gadget, next time.