Memorial Day Weekend at Smith (May 25-26, 2008)

As it is usually with Memorial Day weekends, the once promising forecast had deteriorated into an unstable weather pattern. So were the dreams of a potential Squamish trip quickly dashed. Another long weekend and no climbing, I never have luck with long weekends. So it was mostly yard work on Saturday. Later in the afternoon we walked to Laughing Planet in downtown with Sally and Andrew. Soon after we got back a huge thunderstorm and heavy downpour hit the town. Given the dismal forecast we hatched a plan to do at least a day of aid climbing on Monkey Face at Smith Rock and also bring Andrew's haul bag and portaledge to spend the night on the West Face.

When I arrived at Andrew's on Sunday morning, given the rainy weather and thunderstorms we skipped the haulbag and portaledge idea. We drove down to Smith in steady rain and wondered why we were so optimistic. It was cold, drizzling rain and the low clouds were hanging over the rocks. We still decided to drag our climbing and aid gear to Monkey and see if we can get anything in. Going over Asterisk pass with the heavy packs was challenging. The continuous drizzle had soaked us at the base of Monkey. It was after 1pm when I put on Andrew's wall gear sling and 4 aider set. He told me not to get into to habit of using a fifi hook, so no fifi! One hook and clip the first bolt off I go. After 5 bolts, cam hook move followed by a nut and more cam hooks and nut placements continued. I was fiddling too much with the gear and the aiders were getting tangled. Slow progress. Higher up I was bounce testing a bad red C3 placement when it failed and I took a short fall. Soon after that I was at the mantle move below the anchors. It wasn't bad once I took the gloves off. In the mean time the sun came out and it was beautiful. It had taken me about 2hours and 15 minutes to lead the pitch. Andrew cleaned the pitch in a whopping 10minutes, unbelievable. Once at the anchors he showed me how to haul, which needs to be tested with the pig someday. Dark clouds were once again gathering so we rapped down quickly and hiked back over Misery Ridge. This was my hardest and most serious aid lead ever and I enjoyed it very much. Thanks much to Andrew for his patient belay and all the tricks and mentoring he showed.
I used a dozen of various nuts (had two sets of regular nuts, offset nuts), set of regular aliens, green, red and gold C4s, two medium cam hooks and the grappling hook for the start.

In the Smith parking lot we ran into Stan and his clan. They invited us to stay with them at the Prineville house. We spent the night eating pizza and drinking beer. Next morning I really wanted go climb cracks, haven't done any cracks since Yosemite, but somehow ended up spending all day sport climbing on the Mesa Verde wall in on and off rain. Stan ropegunned all the hard routes. We climbed Cosmos (5.10a), Screaming Yellow Zonkers (5.10b), Moons of Pluto (5.10d) and finally Bad Moon Rising (5.11a). The climbing was mainly pulling/pinching and stepping on tiny nubbins. Not exactly crack climbing but given the bad forecast we managed to get some climbing in and had a good time after all.