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May 18: Holes and Rivets

Here are some new pics.

Today I just kept drilling and trying to make this into a “route” at all. I’m up about 150 feet, which, if the topo is to be believed, puts me well past the infamous hook anchor, which I just have not been able to find yet. From the pics I’ve seen, it must be below where I am now. Maybe it’s now obscured by mud flows. I don’t know.

I was planning to just bypass it anyway. I bought 200-foot ropes with the intention of combining the two first pitches into one. A hook anchor is useless for a solo climber anyway, as hooks won’t handle an upward pull, which is what happens to the anchors solo climbers must use. So, I had planned ahead on this, and finding the hook anchor is more of a curiosity than a necessity for me. On rappel and clean, I’ll inspect more closely, but it’s clear that wherever that “anchor” was, it was just in the middle of the endless line of euro-bashie holes.

I’m about 40 feet below where a dihedral starts. I can see an obvious seam in that, and it goes for something like 40 feet. So, hopefully this endless drilling will cease, and I can start placing conventional gear and moving much faster! Somewhere above the dihedral is where the second anchor is supposed to be.

The drilling is a real pain! The face is close to vertical, so being up in second loops in aiders is very difficult. And this compressed sand drills more slowly than rock, because the drill tip just treats the bottom of the hole like a mortar/pastel and makes the grains of sand into smaller and smaller grains of sand, rather than chipping away rock and migrating it out the flutes of the drill. So, you have to drill a minute, then twist the drill a lot, trying to get that dust to migrate out of the hole. Then drill a minute more, then rinse and repeat. It’s very time-consuming, and very tiring in the extended position I use to get maximum reach between rivets.

So, I will experience no end of relief to be able to stop drilling and move more quickly and easily!

Interestingly, some of the “bashie” holes the FA team drilled were very deep. It’s like they drilled them out for angle pitons, and some of them even show grooves made by a piton. So, they weren’t just using bashies. Not all the holes are shallow. Clearly they were drilling out angle holes when they got a bit more scared by the “runouts” on just bashies.

I’m taking tomorrow off. I’m in a hotel in Moab now, trying to feel somewhat human again, rather than the abominable sandman. But next week I’ll keep going and see if this pile is actually worth continuing.

If all I find in the dihedral above me is a line of trenched aluma-heads, and it won’t take normal gear, that’s going to be very troubling; and that will have me wondering if the best thing wouldn’t be to just let the mud flows obscure and ultimately erase this “route.” I’ve already debunked the rating and style of this “ascent,” so the mystic (if there was any) is now gone. But hopefully there’s something worth doing in the way of real climbing higher up. I’ll continue on for awhile and see.