| Anti-Climbing At Pinnacles |
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Page 8 of 9 Whirr . .. bip . .. bip ... bip ... eeeooo ... all the fearful sounds begin, and as I peer into the crack I see tucked-up limbs and fuzzy ears. God, I've got to get out of here! The dihedral bends left at this point, forcing me onto the face. A very hard stem to the left brings me to easier ground and eventually to the belay spot. Here I clip into two anchor bolts, three higher aid bolts, and a nut, but I still feel insecure. Chris climbs smoothly and quickly up to the stem, then falls off trying to move across. There's no way to traverse back to try it again, so he just continues."5.11," Chris says tersely. "Can't be," I say. I always say that, thinking 5.11 must be equivalent to the worst boulder moves I've ever done. The mood turns more and more glum as we hop on little holds, trying to find a comfortable stance, suspecting that the whole patch of rock and bolts might burst off with a pop, like a faulty door of an airplane at high altitude. The next pitch takes off on a steep wall above and beyond the dihedral. Black, brown, pocketed, and knobby, the rock sweeps upward. The aid bolts stop and an aid crack begins, meaning that the bolts we are accustomed to for protection become farther and farther apart. Chris refuses to lead the second pitch, again concerned about the doubtful bolts. I start out, reach the crack and find it takes nuts only grudgingly. No move is over 5.9, and most are 5.8, but I'm exerting tremendous energy, moving as if each hold might snap off. My moves become more and more rigid. I start to think like Chris, unable to blank out the vision of the line of bolts plucked out of their roost, clinking and tingling down the rope to meet me as I ram to a halt. At the end of this pitch I hang out on a sling belay from two fairly good-looking bolts. Above, the wall bends outward, showing another bolt ladder. As Chris comes up, unclipping from bolt after bolt and about to leave us both on just my two, I panic at the thought of popping the anchor bolts. I ask him to stop, then clip us both through the next higher bolt. I inform Chris I'm just too rattled to take the next lead. He glowers upward, calculates, broods, then attacks the headwall. He's careful and more fluid than I've been, testing holds, obviously desperate but still in control. He's hating it again, but smells the relief of the summit and pushes on. Soon he disappears around a corner and gains a belay tree. Another short pitch ending on clunking hunks of rock, and we're on top. We are in a hilarious mood, stomping up and down in the dry weeds, enormously relieved, proud and mystified at how and why we free climbed through this minefield of wobbly rock and shaky bolts. Our socks are full of stickers. Chris gurgles a little, squeezes up a laugh, then bursts forth with whooping hollers. Laughs echo off the grotesque boulders which surround us like monsters, then vanish into the darkening air. We feel like children who have just touched a tarantula and gotten away without a bite—that slow, devilish black rambler, so beautiful and frightening all at once. |
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