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Saturday April 12th

Though it’s never been fun, the approach to the backside saddle has worsened as a young forest sprouted over the landslide area above Dodson in ’06-‘07. Now more bushwhacking is required although the shrubbery is not very dense. On Saturday morning, Shirley, Pat, our two dogs and I hiked up to the saddle. I’ve had knots in my stomach since the night before and got little sleep. Seeing the choss of the lower bands again did not ease my mind. The plan was to start at the highpoint of the saddle instead of scrambling the vertical boulder field to Furrer’s Cave on the Darr Route. From the looks of things, calling (as Dodge does) the standard route A2 and our variation A3 seems meaningless as you cross the same deteriorating bands of choss.

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The first 20 feet were educational for me. I’ve learned to test the cobblestones with the hammer for relative looseness (ALL are loose). I’ve also learned that I’d have the best success by forcing short, thin KB’s into incipient seams in individual cobbles versus forcing longer KB’s or LA’s in-between cobblestones. I led on double ropes placing two pieces at roughly the same level – slower but felt safer. In retrospect it was a good call as we later discovered severe damage to one rope probably from rock-fall. The first 15 feet is where I had all my bounce test failures too. A spark would fly every time a KB zinged out. I either got better at nailing KB’s or rock improved higher. About 30 feet up I found an old “bolt” with a rusted-shut biner (“Ace Hardware special” per older Steins Pillar TR). Below, Shirley was ducking the loose rock I was knocking down continuously. Higher, I found 2 or 3 old pins driven behind loose blocks of basalt. These indicated that the last party veered east at about 35 feet up. I followed. The rock got really loose as I was within sight of what looked like an old belay (another Ace Hardware bolt). I could find no further placements to support my weight. Shirley sent my rock shoes up and I reluctantly did about 10 feet of easy but loose free to a mossy 6 inch wide stance next to a solid slab.

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Someone probably used this as a belay and I was guessing that the route veered back west from here. I clipped my fifi to the “bolt” and tried desperately not to weight it while tip-toeing the mossy, deteriorating stance. I drove a large angle in – OK but not great. I hand-drilled a belay bolt into the solid basalt. This stance is about 15 feet below 96-foot band though I like Jeff Thomas’ term of “96-foot nightmare” much better. The pitch took me four hours to lead. We fixed ropes and called it a day. We left the pin rack at the base thinking we’d come back next day. As a bonus, I bruised my ribs on the “hike” down as a large, moss-covered boulder shifted under me and I went tumbling into it. Next morning neither one of us (Blondie included) had the least inclination to go back up. We knew however that we did not secure the stuff for long term keeping and needed our good rope for a trip to Moab during the coming weekend.

Photos

Go to Day 2.
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