Mount Ellinor / Mount Washington

Intro

So I'm taking this mountaineering class this spring with an organization called BOEALPS, or the Boeing Alpine Society. The class is called Basic Climbing Class, or BCC, and every year there are roughly 60-70 students and a whole bunch of instructors helping teach the class. Every Wednesday from mid-February there is a 2.5-hour lecture where we review the material we should have read for our homework each week; most of the material is from Freedom of the Hills, THE bible on mountaineering. The students are also split into teams of roughly 6-8 students for either Saturday teams or Sunday teams, and every weekend from mid-march until early June there is an outdoor outing on the selected day.

The early outings focus more on skills work, such as routefinding / navigation, belaying, rappelling, ice ax arresting, snow anchors, kicking steps, etc. But then the trips transition very quickly into "real" mountaineering outings where the goal is to summit a peak and live to tell the tale. For this particular outing, it was actually a two-day overnight outing where we had to set up a snow camp overnight inbetween our first day's hike and our second day's objective.

The plan

For this trip, we selected Mount Ellinor and Mount Washington in the Olympic National Forest, about 2.5 hours' drive from Seattle. Because we wanted to start hiking from the trailhead around 8am, we planned to arrive by 7:30, which meant that most of us met up at the Kent P&R at 5:30am or earlier. Personally, I got up around 4am on Saturday. If you know me very well at all you probably already know that I am not a morning person and I consider 10am to be a reasonable time to show up at work. So waking up at such an hour feels like insanity every time. But I digress.

We had determined online that there was some kind of trail from the Mt. Ellinor upper trailhead to a saddle just east of Mount Ellinor via either the "summer route" or the "winter route", where the winter route goes right up a steep snow chute. Since it's not summer yet, and there was some snow in the chute, we opted for the winter route. The snow was super icy and the chute was super steep so kicking steps up to the saddle was challenging, but not quite impossible.

Snow chute!

Kicking steps in the chute

Mt. Ellinor summit

Sonny and Leonard headed to "A" peak (east of Mt. Ellinor) to begin leading the rock face on the west side of it while the rest of us booted up to the top of Mount Ellinor, which was an easy hike. Fortunately for us, the clouds cleared right when we got there so we took some excellent summit photos (and selfies of course).

Seal Team 6 - Mt. Ellinor

Sun's out, guns out!

"A" peak

After that we headed back down to the saddle and traversed over to "A" peak, and got our harnesses on so that we could toprope our way up to the top of the prominent rock face. The climb was pretty easy, probably 5.4 or 5.5, but was made harder by the fact that we had mountaineering boots on and scarier because there was a lot of exposure.

"A" Peak

Rockin the summit

Whoa, that's a lot of air.

Steep gully

There was a little bit of confusion as to the way to proceed next. We had figured that we wanted to traverse north / northeast into a flat bowl roughly north of "A" peak, but weren't quite sure what the right way to do that was. We eventually found a steep gully coming down from a saddle and set up fixed lines with snow pickets and tree anchors to downclimb with prussiks. Looking back up at the gully from the bowl, we realized it was actually steeper than we had thought.

Wait, we came down that??

Descending the steep gully

Snow bowl, setting up camp

The snow bowl turned out to be even more flat and perfect for camping than it looked on the topo. Plus, the snow was pretty soft so we set about digging trenches for our tents, both for wind protection and to flatten out the snow. Soon we had our tents set up and we were ready to melt snow, boil some water for dinner, and watch the sun setting over the horizon.

Home is where your tent is.

Snow kitchen

What was really amazing was that from our "kitchen" we had the perfect view of Seattle, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, and Mount Saint Helens. We were truly blessed by good weather and good visibility!

Amazing sunset!

Unfortunately after sunset it got really cold really fast so we hightailed it to bed.

Rope teams to flat spot

In the morning we got up early and set about deconstructing our tents. This was made somewhat difficult due to the fact that the snow was now quite solid and icy, but we managed.

Amazing sunrise!

Eventually we geared up and started traversing northeast-ish towards Mount Washington. Since the snow was so icy, we decided to set up rope teams protected by snow pickets, and then ascended a fixed line to the top of a steep / icy section that flattened out nicely at the top. From there we took in the view and decided to leave behind our camping gear in order to lighten our load a bit.

View from the "flat spot"

We headed up a gully that looked promising, but when we reached the ridgeline we realized that we had probably gone the wrong way unless we wanted to rappel off to the west side of the ridgeline, which we didn't. So we headed back down to reconsider.

Traverse around

Eventually we decided to traverse around further to the northeast to try to find a route from the south of the summit, but by the time we got nearby we realized that we probably didn't have enough time to reach the actual summit considering that we'd need to set up some ropes on the ridgeline even if we found a good snow path to the ridge. So we took a good look at the route options... and headed back to where we'd stashed our camping gear.

Mt. Washington is the pointy tall one in the middle.

Bushwhacking down to the road

After a short-ish snack break, we decided to head back down to the road. We had figured a bearing of around 120 degrees would get us to the road, so we started heading down. I wouldn't quite say we followed the bearing very well though, because we were trying to find the least-steep way down through the snow. We made quite a bit of progress downward until we got bounded in by a steep creek (waterfall?) and a cliff, and we weren't quite sure how to proceed. We stalled for at least 20 minutes doing some recon and considering our options.

Finally found something resembling a trail.

Eventually we decided to hike up and right, away from the creek, hoping to find a path that wasn't too treacherous, and we found one. In fact, we actually found something that resembled a climber's trail, and from there on out we were golden. When we got to the road we were actually only about 100 feet from where one of our cars was parked! Success! So we rounded up the other cars and changed into more comfortable clothes, and headed out for post-trip burgers and beers =D

Meeting up with Dave in Tonsai

So after a night of staying up way too late, I grabbed my stuff from my Bangkok hostel in a rush and headed to the airport to catch my flight to Krabi. The flight was short and more importantly it was cheap, only 2500 baht or $83 USD. I arranged for a taxi to take me to the beach in Ao Nang, and from there you buy a $3 longtail boat ride to Tonsai which is only accessible by boat. I was quite literally stunned at how amazing the Thai cliffs looked framed against the beautiful turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea.

Is this place even real?

I stepped off the boat and found myself in the little-known hippie / rasta beach village of Tonsai. Most tourists visit the more developed Railay Beach nearby, but Tonsai is where most climbers stay and you can get bungalows on the cheap. I knew Dave was staying at the Jungle Hut so I oriented myself to the layout of Tonsai and headed back there.

This is roughly how Tonsai is laid out.

Very shortly after I met up with Dave (or as I like to call him, Coyote Dave). Dave and I met over three years ago in Potrero Chico, Mexico, and as both of us were "long-term" climbers there, we quickly became good friends. Dave is a fellow nerd, formerly focusing on web development and now studying robotics at CU-Boulder. In fact, he developed this very awesome Potrero Chico website which I personally consider to be the best. But I'm biased. In any case, Dave had already been in Thailand for nearly six weeks and only had a few short days left in Tonsai, so he let me sleep in his hammock on the porch of his bungalow for the low low price of 100 baht per night, and then he let me take over his bungalow when he left for only 325 baht per night. Shya!

Jungle Hut bungalow! Climbers reuinte!

In the afternoon of my arrival, Dave and I headed out to the Fire Wall to do a quick easy 6b as my first Tonsai climb. The rock is yellow/orange limestone mostly, and is absolutely riddled with tufas and pockets, and although I'd like to say that I've climbed plenty of limestone in my life (thanks Mexico!) this limestone was really completely different from anything I'd ever climbed before. Footholds are often polished but the routes tend to be overhanging and have huge jugs for hands. The kind of place where your biceps get stronger than your fingers, and if you keep at it you get really strong.

After the 6b warmup, Dave wanted to try out a really classic route called Burnt Offerings, which goes at 7a+. For you Americans, that is roughly equivalent to a 5.12a sport route. It starts out in this pretty cool cave and you then find yourself traversing across the lip of the cave and then up and over the cruxy overhanging finish. Dave worked it pretty well, making it to the cruxy part, and then he convinced me to try. I wasn't particularly keen to try hard at the time, so I only climbed the first couple of moves and then I was good. I'd like to blame the fact that I was hot and dehydrated and not acclimated to the heat and humidity, which is true. That's one thing I didn't quite realize about climbing in southern Thailand: it's fucking hot. I was sweating like crazy before I even started climbing, and sweaty palms do not a good send make. So we bailed right after watching another party trying the route with much more success =)

A Korean girl absolutely rocking this route.

Anyway, we quit climbing for the day and he introduced me to some friends and we had dinner and I believe we went out for drinks at one of the village bars. The cool thing about the bars in Tonsai is that they are all outside in the open air, and instead of standing packed inside of a building you typically sit down on wooden decks and drink and relax. It's definitely a very laidback, jungle rasta vibe. Many of the bars put on fire shows, or slackline and fire shows, or sometimes there is a band playing, but ultimately it's a very friendly place, and the visitors are very international, so when you meet people (and it's easy to meet people), you never quite know which country they will be from. I should mention, nearly everyone in Thailand, including the Thais themselves, speaks English or at the very least enough broken English to get by, so if you're lucky enough to be from an English-speaking country you will be able to converse with nearly everyone you meet. However, there were enough French/Canadians/Germans around that I definitely wished that I was competent not only in Spanish but in French and German as well. Maybe next time.

My favorite bar in Tonsai, Small World Bar.

Dave and I unfortunately didn't quite manage to climb much together in the next couple of days; his next day was a rest day so I merely convinced him to belay me on Groove Tube, a fun/easy/classic 6a on the Fire Wall. It was pretty groovy. The next day Dave and I planned to go deep-water soloing together via BaseCamp Tonsai (on a paid/guided excursion), but I woke up super nauseous and decided to cancel; ended up throwing up three times that day, probably due to food poisoning of some sort. Dave ended up partying long into the night with his Tonsai friends for his last night while I slept most of the evening and night in the hammock, so we couldn't get on the same schedule to climb on his last day either. I did end up climbing with two of his friends from Sweden though, Simon and Seven, the first of whom I *probably* met in Mexico three years ago as well. We tried a couple of 6b+ routes at the Tyrolean Wall and a 6a at Dum's Kitchen, all of which were fun, but by midday it was too hot to climb and I wanted to say goodbye to Dave.

Tonsai Roof Wall, near Dum's Kitchen.

Later that night I ended hanging out with some of Dave's friends, and got invited to a house party, and ended up using my glowing juggling balls to entertain quite a few people. They weren't completely sober, if you know what I mean, so the juggling light show was quite a hit so despite my new "alone in Thailand" status I made some friendships of my own. Success!

Glowing juggling balls for the win.

A Day in Bangkok

So my flight from Seattle to Bangkok arrived at 1am Thai time, which is sort of inconvenient, but I had a reservation at the Lub D hostel in Siam and I knew they had 24-hour checkin, so after grabbing my checked bag I took a taxi straight there. Found my mixed dorm and tried to quietly arrange myself for bed without disturbing the others and mostly succeeded.

Hostel lobby

I woke up the next day with only one main mission in mind, to book a flight to Krabi the next day. I probably could have done this online in advance but I'd heard that this was unnecessary and no cheaper so I didn't. I hailed a tuk-tuk for a travel agency and booked a flight for the next day. Success.

After that I decided to check out Chinatown, so I rode the tuk-tuk there and started walking around. I've been to a few other Chinatowns in the world, and this one wasn't much different, except I stumbled upon a Buddhist temple named Wat Mangkon Kamalawat. Lots of people were buying flowers and papers and incense, apparently to offer as gifts, but I didn't really understand it. So instead I walked around and took pictures and tried not to offend anyone.

Wat Mangkon Kamalawat

After wandering around Chinatown for a while, I realized I was hungry so I took a ride back to Siam Square and started hunting for Thai food. I actually had little success until I went into the Siam mall and ordered some curry in the food court. Really good and remarkably cheap.

I then wandered around the mall and found a wax museum which I thought might be fun. It was, and I convinced some strangers to help take some photos for me.

Bend It

Wolf It

Next I headed back to the hostel, which is really nice by the way, and saw a flyer for a nearby massage place, with a price of only 360 baht ($12) for an hour-long oil massage. Sold! It was really good and professional and well worth the $12.

After the massage, I took a nap and got my phone charged so I could go out a bit later. I wasn't sure where to go, but I eventually decided to go to the Hard Rock for dinner and a beer and then go to Club Insanity. I ended up meeting some people at the Hard Rock from Maldives / Russia / Ukraine and somehow convinced them to come as well so we did. The club was pretty wild with electronic dance music and plenty to drink, so I found it pretty amusing and stayed there pretty late until it was time to take a taxi back to the hostel. After all, I had a flight to Krabi to catch.

Club Insanity

Tilting at Windmills

So after a painfully long week in Potrero full of more rain than I can ever remember seeing in Mexico (especially in the dry season), punctuated by only a day and a half of dry weather, the end of the year was nigh. Spirits were probably not quite as festive as they would have been after better climbing weather, but still, the climbers of Potrero gathered for a night of celebration by drinking and dancing around a bonfire while Edgardo spun beats. My recollection of the night is a bit hazy but you can be sure that fun was had by all.

The next day my friends and I awoke, eventually, and gathered up. We headed for the Spires and I led the first pitch of Aguja Celo Rey (5.10a) in order to get to the saddle while the other half of our friends climbed up the west side of the spires. I then belayed Eric to the top of the second pitch and bailed because I had to take a friend to the airport, but I had played my part. We had previously purchased several Santa hats and sent them to the top of the larger (downhill) spire and made the party of Bostonians who were there join us in wearing them for a festive Christmas photo. The results speak for themselves.

Merry Xmas Potrero Style!

After that day of fun shenanigans, it came to pass that it was my last day in Mexico, and I still had one piece of unfinished business. There's this climb in the Virgin Canyon which I first attempted on toprope three years previously, and eventually managed to climb (once) without falling, on toprope. This was quite the achievement for me as the climb is a very difficult, pumpy, technical dihedral called Don Quixote, and it's rated 5.11d. Definitely the first, and perhaps still so far only, climb of that grade that I've climbed clean on toprope, and I had battle plans with it.

Toproping the Don over three years ago

A few weeks previously I'd managed to climb it again on toprope, possibly for the 4th or 5th time, and even though I hadn't climbed it since last year I actually climbed it clean. Which unfortunately meant that I was out of excuses for avoiding the scary task of leading it. So on my last day in Potrero, my friends and I set out for the Virgin Canyon so I could try to redpoint my project.

Unfortunately, when we got there, we realized that the rock was still a little wet from the rains that had come before. Shoot. But we looked at the route and it seemed like the wet spots might not actually affect the difficulty of the climb that much. So I led Mugre Mugre (5.10d) as a warmup and it felt pretty good and not too difficult while Felipe led another 5.10d. A little while later, I convinced Felipe to lead Don Quixote for me both to hang the draws and to test how wet the route was. He sent the route and placed some much-needed draws for me, and assured me that the route wasn't really that wet.

Warming up in the Virgin

I was pretty stoked, but pretty nervous, when it was time to climb. I tried to calm my nerves by singing a few notes from The Final Countdown, and it seemed to lighten my mood a bit, but I was still really nervous. I made the first couple of clips without a problem, going slow and remembering to breathe, but soon after the third clip or so, right before it starts getting hard, my left foot popped off of the corner and I found myself falling before I realized what was happening and fell about 15 feet. Super clean except for a slight hit on my right thumb which made it feel slightly numb. Despite the fall, I was actually pretty stoked and felt pretty good and pretty psyched that I'd had the nerve to try the lead in the first place. And somehow the fall made me less nervous as I got some fear out of the way.

Devon decided he wanted to try a few moves on it, so he did, but he wasn't feeling too stoked so he stopped before it starts getting serious, and this gave me some time to regroup and shake out and get ready for my second go.

Making some moves

Now it was go time, again. I made the first few clips, no problem. I made it past the point where my foot had slipped before, and suddenly it was business time. The cruxy part of the route is tricky because all of the bomber holds are on the left face, and it's overhanging, and you have to stem and smear the right foot on essentially a blank face. So your feet feel insecure and your left arm is pumping out, but what's worse is that the bomber jugs kind of disappear and you find yourself sketchily moving your feet up with not very much for hands. I made some sketchy moves and stemmed hard and was convinced my feet were going to pop, especially when I lunged for a key hold on the right face, but somehow everything held and I stayed on. Then the only thing left is to stand up awkwardly and grab the money jug above the roof, which I managed to do to my surprise. Todo bien. From the jug it was a relatively easy clip to guard against the fall, and I knew the hard part was over. Or so I thought.

I was tired and out of breath and although I had a money jug for my hands, I didn't want to stall too long. I knew the next clipping stance would be balancy and awkward, but I moved up anyway thinking I could handle it. But the pump was overwhelming, and I couldn't figure out how to move my feet into a secure spot, and before I knew it I was trying to clip the next bolt but lost my ability to hang on. I fell... and when I did so, my left foot got caught on the rope between my harness and the last draw I'd clipped, and before I knew it I had flipped upside down!

Right before getting flipped

Fortunately, somehow, the fall was super clean, even cleaner than before, and even with my back to the wall I hadn't hit a single thing on the way down. My friends were silent for a moment, trying to assess the damage, but when I screamed "Holy shit!" they knew I was basically alright. Unfortunately I knew that I was out of time and I had to leave the crag in order to pack up my tent and fly back to Seattle, but my friends convinced me to finish the route so I did after a short rest. Then I bid my awesome Potrero crew adieu =)

Love these guys!

In the end, I didn't send my project this day, but I was super proud of myself for having the cajones to finally try the route on lead, and I even managed to pull the crux without falling. And I even took a couple of really good (and safe) whippers in the process. I am confident that next time, Don Quixote, you are mine.

Timewave Heroes

So there's this climb in Potrero called Timewave Zero. It's kind of a big deal. Ever since I first started coming to Potrero in 2005, I had heard about this climb. It's 23 pitches (where a pitch is about 100 feet of climbing), so you end up climbing about 2200 feet to get to the top, and the hardest pitch goes at 5.12a, which if you're not too familiar with climbing grades or the Yosemite Decimal System, 5.12 is a really difficult grade - many, perhaps most, climbers never climb 5.12 or higher in their lifetimes. There is also a much more manageable 5.11a pitch (four letter grades easier), three 5.10ds (one letter grade easier than 5.10d), and a lot of other pitches ranging from 5.7 to 5.10b. But regardless of the grades, 2200 feet of climbing is a LOT. So there's this thing where climbers come to Potrero and they try to climb Timewave Zero in a single day - it's basically a marathon of sport climbing, and an achievement all by itself. And the thing about this climb is that I had always considered it way beyond my capabilities - until this year.

7 pitches to the top of the buttress, 15 pitches on the headwall

So a couple of my friends had paired up with plans to do Timewave Zero, but my friend Felipe didn't have anyone to do it with and he definitely wanted to do it. So for at least a day, he kept trying to convince me to do it with him. I definitely wanted to do it before I left Mexico, but I kinda had plans to do it with another really close friend who was planning to come down later in the month, and it seemed kind of silly to try to do it twice in the span of a week. But in the end, I couldn't resist taking advantage of the good weather and my good health and for some reason I was worried that something would happen between then and later that might somehow prevent an ascent from happening, and when Timewave is on your "40 before 40" list you don't want to accidentally miss your chance and have to wait until your next trip to make an attempt. So in the end I told Felipe that I would climb it with him on Christmas Eve, and then if my other friend still wanted to climb it on New Year's Eve then I would do it then too. Timewave Tuesdays, if you will =)

So we had picked the day, we checked the weather, and we determined our lead plan. To save time, it helps if you and your partner take turns leading pitches because then you don't have to re-stack the rope when the follower reaches the leader - the follower just becomes the new leader for the next pitch and you feed out the rope you just pulled in. You can also save time by "linking" pitches, where the leader leads two pitches at a time, extending nearly the entire length of the rope in the process, which saves time because there's no delay between leading the first pitch and the second and there's less rope to pull. So we made a master plan of who was going to lead and link which pitches the day before. We drank lots of water the night before and went to bed early.

The morning of Christmas Eve, Felipe and I woke up at 4:30am as we had planned. This was a first for me - I don't think I've ever had an "alpine start" in my entire life, but just this once I was willing to do that kind of crazy early morning. We drank some coffee and ate some breakfast, brushed our teeth, grabbed our gear, and started heading out around 5:30am. Only the gate at La Posada was locked. What the heck! Fortunately we managed to find a staff member to unlock the door for us, but we were almost screwed from the get-go. Anyway, we walked out past the Hobo Camp, hiked up past the Spires, and kept hiking in the dark up near the Surf Bowl until we reached the Timewave Buttress. We put our harnesses on in the dark and organized all of our gear and Felipe started leading the first two pitches in the dark at 6:30am with his headlamp attached to his helmet while I belayed him.

The first pitch was easy, 5.7, but the second pitch is 5.11a, which is a pretty stout grade for your second climb of the day especially when it's the early morning and it's not particularly warm, but Felipe managed to lead it just fine and I started following the first two pitches right as it started getting light out but before the first rays of sunshine were upon us. The 11a definitely got my blood flowing as it was a little tricky and pumpy. I then led the next two pitches (5.8 / 5.8) and belayed Felipe up to me, and I believe the sun first hit the wall right as Felipe was starting the next two (5.10a / 5.8). I led the next short 5.7 pitch and we reached a 3rd-class garden walk over to the headwall. We were 7 pitches up in maybe just over two hours.

Headwall from the 3rd class garden

Due to the potential for some rope drag with some traversy pitches, I led the next 5.9+ pitch and Felipe led the 5.10b pitch after that. The 10b pitch was one of my favorites on the climb because you end up doing some really fun laybacking / smearing while holding on to underclings in a crack. Super cool! I kept telling Felipe how stoked I was for that particular pitch when I reached him. I then led the next two pitches (5.9 and 5.7) until we reached the bivy ledge on the top of the 12th pitch. At this point we were about 4 hours in. We had a small snack, drank some Gatorade, and dropped off one of the packs at the bivy ledge thinking that we'd have plenty of water in a single Camelbak for the two of us. Then we started up again.

Bivy ledge on top of the 12th pitch

We were kind of surprised to find that we still weren't very tired yet, but we did kind of slow down a bit on the next couple of pitches. Two leads for Felipe (5.8 / 5.9), one lead for me (5.9). Two leads for Felipe (5.10d / 5.9+), one lead for me (5.9+). One lead for Felipe (5.9+), one lead for me (5.10d). This particular pitch was the hardest thing I had to lead on the route, and it was pretty tough - 5.10d is a grade at which I sometimes still have trouble onsighting on the ground, let alone after having climbed 19 other pitches, but somehow I managed to get it clean and got the onsight! I blame the fact that Felipe kept urging me on to send it - "a muerte!"

Sending weather

Next was the crux - the 5.12a pitch. Felipe was inspired and decided he was gonna try to get it clean, which I found pretty astonishing because by this point I was pretty tired. After all, we'd already climbed 21 pitches. Felipe climbed up past several bolts and made a valiant effort, but in the end he said "no fucking way" and took a short fall. Then he started using draws and carabiners with slings to use the bolts in such a way to basically aid most of the moves, because the route gets super thin on hands and the feet are basically nonexistent. In not too much time, Felipe had made it to the top on lead, and it was my turn to follow. I had no compunctions whatsoever about cheating my way up by aiding, but I have to say I was even more impressed by how far Felipe got without aiding when I had to climb the route. It's so much harder than it looks from the belay station, and even when I clipped into bolts with my personal anchor and called for takes and stepped into slings, I still struggled and had a really hard time making it up even on toprope. Holy cow. I have no idea how strong I'd have to be to climb this guy free, but it's much stronger than I was. Regardless, our plan was to aid if we needed to because the summit must be reached!

Unsure about the 12a pitch

After the 5.12a pitch we were basically home free. I led the next 5.9 pitch, which was extra difficult because of how tired I was after the last one, and then I stupidly kept climbing to link the next 5.6 pitch. The problem is that the last pitch is basically a long, loose, exposed ridgewalk to the summit and if you try to link it with the previous pitch then the rope drag is extreme. I eventually decided to just stop fifteen feet short of the summit and start belaying and pulling up rope until Felipe started climbing up to me. I swear I had to pull the rope with both hands using a heave-ho motion. Anyway, Felipe eventually reached me and climbed up to the summit and I shortly joined him.

Wow. The summit of Timewave Zero is actually amazing. Look at this:

East side from Timewave summit

Back of the Potrero canyon

Hidalgo from above

Some of our friends had joked that their claim to fame was doing the Tallest Ascent of Timewave Zero, as they averaged about 6'5 between them, but our claim to fame was the "first mohawk ascent" as we'd both gotten mohawks only a few days before (mostly because we thought it would be funny).

First mohawk ascent

We took a few minutes to enjoy the summit, and celebrate our victory over Timewave, but it was 3:30pm and we realized that we needed to start rappelling if we wanted any chance of reaching the base before it got dark, and rappelling in the dark is not the most fun thing in the world. So we downclimbed the ridgewalk using the fixed line (which was super scary!) and then started rapping down the rest of the route. We were a little slow at first but soon developed a pretty quick and efficient rhythm for rapping back down. We stopped at the bivy ledge to grab our other pack, and then continued back down. We simul-rapped pretty much the entire way, which I think saved us a lot of time, and in the end we made it back to the base around 6:30pm, literally right before we had to turn our headlamps on, so we really squeezed as much value out of the daylight as we could have.

Some of our friends were awesome and dropped us off a caguama (36oz) of beer and some juice, which we were super stoked about, so after packing up our gear and hiking down the semi-sketchy hike to the road, we cracked open the beer and talked about how much we loved the route. It's actually pretty amazing - every single pitch has fun and interesting features, and none of them are boring. The weather had actually been perfect too, a bit chilly near the top with the wind but the relatively low temperature meant we stayed well hydrated all day. All in all it had been a really awesome, really inspiring experience and we were super stoked to have had each other as partners. After that we started calling each other Timewave Heroes, as a joke... mostly =)

(Note: Although I had also planned to climb it on NYE, this turned out not to be fated as the weather turned really sour starting on Christmas Day and my friend was not feeling well enough to want to come down and climb, so sadly it was not to be. But I was definitely super glad to have done it the first time!)

Crescent Moon Buttress

So not too far outside of Hidalgo, there's this pretty aesthetic buttress between Mina and Icamole called Crescent Moon Buttress. It's right next to this other long wall with a bunch of routes on it called Culo de Gato, but Crescent Moon Buttress has only one 8-pitch bolted line which goes right up the middle of the buttress.

Crescent Moon Buttress

Despite the fact that I've been to Potrero like a dozen times, I've never climbed at Culo de Gato or the Crescent Moon Buttress. And as I had a rental car, my buds Devon and Eric and I made a plan to head out there and do the buttress one overcast morning. We left camp around 9ish, drove NW on highway 53 past Mina, turned left for Icamole, and then turned onto some random gravel road that takes you right past a smelly chicken ranch and near the base of the buttress. The guidebook says to follow the path of least vegetation to the obvious trail to the base, but we soon realized that this "obvious trail" was a myth when we started bushwhacking through cactus to get there.

Where's my machete?

Anyway, we eventually reached the wall and found a line of bolts that looked promising. Eric started leading the first two pitches, trailing two ropes behind so that Devon and I could follow at the same time on different ropes (using a Reverso or similar). Devon then led an amazingly short "pitch" to a 3rd-class ledge that you have to walk across before starting the crux pitch, which was 5.10a. Not too hard of a pitch, but a little exposed and tricky.

Cruxy and exposed

After that, there are a couple more easy pitches until you reach the top of a flake with a gap between where you are and the rest of the wall. So you have to rappel down into a notch and then climb back out of it to do the last two pitches.

Rapping to the notch

I had the pleasure of leading the last two pitches, which unfortunately could not really be linked due to rope drag, but the last one goes at 5.8 and was actually kind of tricky and cruxy after the traverse. We got up to the top and enjoyed a beautiful 360-degree summit. It was actually really amazing. We signed the summit log, and noted that the last ascent had been done approximately 11 months earlier - apparently this climb doesn't get done much!

Beautiful summit!

Chillin

Unfortunately, this is where the hard part of the climb started. We managed to rap back down into the notch, but then we weren't really sure which way to rappel. The book says to rappel right, but doesn't really specify if it means climber's right or right as you're looking at the bolts in the notch... so we eventually rapped on climber's left into some loose 4th-class terrain. That was sketchy enough, but as we continued moving downwards we found ourselves having to actually make some scary and somewhat dangerous downclimb moves on 5th-class rock while carrying our ropes and wearing our approach shoes (or sandals).

4th-class scramble, yay!

Thankfully, we did successfully make it down the sketchy 5th-class rock unscathed, but only to be greeted with a pretty steep and loose scree field that was loose and scary enough that it seemed better to slide down on our asses rather than try to walk down. So we did that for a bit, hoping we wouldn't gain too much speed and slide out of control, and then walked across some talus to try to get back to the cactus field. We did eventually make it back to our packs at the base of the climb, and then back down through the cactus field to our car, but by the time we finally reached the car we were completely exhausted, I think mostly from the mental energy and fear of not knowing if we were going to be able to get down without accidentally hurting ourselves on the walk off, as well as the annoyance of having to navigate a cactus field.

Sunset on the buttress

To be honest, I don't think I'll be repeating this climb anytime soon due to the difficulty of the descent, but it was a really beautiful aesthetic feature to climb and a really amazing summit, so I'm glad I did it at least once =)