More Than Last Time

The four of us got out to Manuel's today...this morning (5am). It was windy and it was cold! Bob brought his own source of natural gas to keeps himself warm but unfortunately it was an open system and he contaminated the rest of us with his retched stink. At least the wind was good for dealing with that.

I am finding developing this face is harder than the German Face. We had to cut a new trail but it is steeper. When we got there, we discussed potential lines. It was decided that we needed to have the top anchors lower than where we were so you could climb it with a 60 meter rope. So we had to get to the top, lower on rap, drill two top anchors, pull the rope and then set up top ropes. That only took 2 hours leaving only 30 minutes to climb (we cleaned a lot of moss off the face). Kim was at the top for quite some time and when she came down, she was really cold. She needs some more meat on her bones.

The plan is to keep these two routes as a two pitch. Bob's top anchor keeps the rope short by 10 feet. On rappel you can get enough rope stretch to get to the ground. The one Jan and I were on will have to be two pitch, a 60 meter is definitely short. I placed a second set of top bolts at the bottom of where the face goes vertical. The bottom section will be EASY sport (5.2) just to gain the belay ledge. I think that we have 2 potential lines off that set of top bolts, both real cool climbing. One on the left is dead vertical with great features. Good jugs just when you need them. The other one I didn't climb but it is really quite thin. I was on Bob's line last week and that is looking pretty cool as well.

We have spotted 3 or 4 trad lines in the face but we haven't brought our racks to try them out. The next time out we should be putting up routes. Unfortunately for me that will not be until July, I have to go to Rumney!