Six men on a rope

We climbed at Suicide Rock on Saturday, Tom and I each led a one pitch 5.7 climb called the Philocetes Bow variation to the Axe of God. We top-roped a bunch of climbs, the Axe of God, a 5.8 crack, the B. S. Arch, a long fingertip undercling traverse rated 5.9, a fingertip lieback crack rated 5.10a and another fingertip lieback traverse rated 5.10d. We could do them all except the last, on which Patsy managed to go farthest, perhaps because her fingers are the smallest and she could find more places to hold on to. I managed to fall on the crux of Philocetes Bow (after I had successfully led it) as I was top roping the Axe of God. This move was an undercling/lieback with greasy footsteps. My left foot slipped (I hate it when my foot slips). Falling off this came as a surprise to me but not nearly so much as when I landed on the shelf below. We were top roping this climb using an upper belay with a full length of rope. Evidently the rope stretch was sufficient that I fell the 6-8 feet to the ledge. Yowza! I landed sharply on my right instep and although it hurt a bit at the time, no damage was done.

We met Paul and Leslie Kortopates, old friends of Carl's from the Rock Climbing Section (RCS) of the Sierra Club whom we had first met a month or so ago at the Santee clean up. As we left Paul was leading up a 5.11b.

We drove to my favourite campsite and were relieved to find no one else there even though there were half a dozen cars (this is a trailhead). The campsite itself is a bit obscure. We ate a great dinner. Tania had brought marinated salmon and we had salad, potato salad, bread and wine to go with it. Tom brought fruit salad and rhubarb pie for desert. It was pretty warm, even at 7,000 feet, so I slept only half inside my sleeping bag.

The next morning, we met Carl and R. J. and we all started up the trail to Tahquitz Rock, on the other side of the valley. We met Paul and Leslie again, so Carl enjoyed chatting with them. Turned out that he had introduced each of them (before they got married I suppose) to climbing at Tahquitz.

When we got up to the rock (about a thousand foot climb), it was already quite crowded and people were on all the climbs that we wanted to do. We decided to climb the Left Ski Track, rated 5.6** (the two stars is a quality rating, three stars being the highest) in two groups of three in each.

Patsy, Tania and I were to be one group, Carl, R. J. and Tom the other. We had to wait, though, for another group of three people to get started. I led off first. The very first move was perhaps the hardest of the whole climb because you had to climb an 8 foot high wall onto a shelf. There were two feasible-looking approaches. I checked them both out and decided on the left one, partly because the wall was lower there but also because the climbing looked easier. I got my head over the edge and looked around for a handhold. By the time I decided there wasn't one I was tired and had to come down for a rest. I asked for a spot and then mantled over the top without pausing. Easy that time. I walked up to a small crack and plopped a piece of protection in. The next significant move was a climb up and simultaneous step around left over a drop off. It didn't look possible to protect this but there were a couple of piton scars (holes in the rock left from the many times that pitons had been pounded in for protection and subsequently removed). I played around seeing how well I could lock my fingers into these scars and was able to satisfy myself that I could hold my body weight in the event that my feet slipped. Then I made the step up and around. It was spooky but easy.

I placed my next piece of protection, a runner hitched around a big rock knob and continued up a crack. It was easy to place protection in the crack. Then the climbing looked easier on the face, on huge holds, so I went out onto the face. This was kind of like the climbing at Owens River Gorge, vertical but much easier because the holds were huge. I reached a fixed piton and clipped into that. After going a bit further I found a crack with two fixed pitons. That troubled me a little because I thought the climbing above must get much harder. The rest of our group was cheering, however. It turned out that this was the first belay ledge. I tied off to the pitons and hitched another knob for additional security.

Patsy came up next, removing all the protection I had placed except for one (to protect a traverse). Patsy took all the hardware and I belayed her as she led the second pitch (the hardest). This pitch has the hallmark step around for which this climb is notorious. After twenty minutes or so, during which I could see nothing except the rope creeping upwards, she had reached the second belay ledge and secured herself there.

I belayed Tania up, while Carl also belayed her from below to protect her from a pendulum as she made the first move. Tania chose to climb up on the right hand side of the initial wall. She climbed the whole way to the first belay ledge without falling but she looked terrified when she reached the belay. It was a really scary climb. Almost completely vertical with no good place to sit down at the belay ledge. I tied her off and tied her in to the rope that Patsy had led on. I then tied off the rope which she had trailed. It is really important that you don't let go of things, but especially not drop the ropes and the shoulder sling that contains all the hardware. None of us dropped anything during the climb. Patsy belayed Tania up to the second belay ledge. Meanwhile, Tom had begun to lead the first pitch and he reached me before Tania reached Patsy. Tom tied off and I asked him how he felt. "Scared shitless", I think was what he said. He said that he couldn't lead the second pitch, he was way too scared. Uh oh, this was the first sign of trouble. We decided that we could probably all climb as one team although we were really a rope short and we would be pushed for time. None of the pitches was a full rope length, so I figured that I could start climbing the second pitch, trailing the rope that Tom was belaying R. J. with. I told Tom that I would wait until R. J. started climbing because otherwise I might take up all the available slack in his rope.

Tom put R. J. on belay and R. J. trailed the fourth rope. Unfortunately, Carl didn't belay R. J., who also decided to climb the wall to the right of where I had gone up. The wall was higher here and as he climbed the rope got jammed under a knob, preventing him from going up. Carl told him to flick the rope out with one hand and then suggested that he just climb down and start over again. R. J. called for slack and almost immediately afterwards fell. Since the wall was lower on the left, the rope slid leftwards and generated a bunch more slack. R. J. tumbled sideways as he fell into the gully at the bottom. He didn't fall far vertically but he fell quite a ways horizontally. He was swearing up a storm. He hurt his shoulder, arm and right ankle. Carl and he checked his ankle and they decided it was a sprain and not broken (later confirmed by X-ray). R. J. told Carl to go ahead and climb and he would just sit there and rest his ankle while he waited for us.

After some debate we decided to continue. I started up the second pitch and Carl started up the first. The second pitch began with a large crack that diagonalled up to the right. I looked up to find that Tania had neglected to clip the rope back into the piece of protection on the right side of the step around. Since we were moving up and right, merely trailing the rope would have left the follower subject to a radical pendulum fall. As we went up and passed each piece of protection, we unclipped the carabiner from the rope above us and reclipped it into the rope that we were trailing. Unfortunately, Tania was so scared that she had neglected to reclip the carabiner on the right hand side of the step around, leaving me subject to a 20 foot sideways and downwards fall if I miss-stepped. Furthermore, all the force would have fallen on the belay anchors. This was not a good situation.

Pretty spooky, hanging out over a hundred foot drop. At the top of this crack was the step around. I waited for Carl to reach the first ledge and asked him to belay me on the rope I was trailing. Good thing that we were now all climbing as one team and that I was still trailing a rope. That way I would be protected on the step around. I'm not sure how I would have managed to get back onto the rock if I fell but at least I wouldn't fall very far.

The step around was a really reachy move around a block on the face. Below was a 150 foot sheer drop. Exposure city! There was a good hold for the left hand before the step. For the feet there was a small sloping edge. A peek around to the right revealed one good, well chalked, hand hold. I tried reaching for the right hand hold but it was a couple of inches beyond my reach. Move back left. Shuffle the feet further right on the small edge until my right foot is almost off. Reach right again. Still out of reach. Damn! Don't think about the 150 foot drop off. Move the fingers of the left hand further right to a ridge of granite crystals. Reach right again. Further, further. Fear of falling sideways. Right hand wraps around the hold and step across. Phew! I clipped the trailing rope into the carabiner and joined Patsy and Tania on the second ledge.

We saw R. J. heading off with his pack. I yelled down that he should leave the pack for us to carry but he said he was OK even though he was hobbling really badly. He yelled something about the radio but I yelled back I would if I had it but I didn't. It was hard to hear each other and R. J. kept going.

Patsy belayed Tom up to the second ledge and then I belayed Patsy as she continued up, leading the third pitch. This was the shortest and easiest pitch, nowhere near as vertical as the first and second pitch. Still, when Patsy got to the last move, she found that the promised bolt was a rusty hanger spinning on a 1/4" bolt with several proximal holes where other, similar, bolts had obviously pulled out. Fortunately to Patsy's piece of mind, there was a piece of protection (a 0.5 Lowe Tricam) jammed in a piton scar. Patsy clipped into both the bolt and the fixed piece. When she moved up however, she started swearing and yelled for me to give her some slack. I kept a foot or so of slack in the rope the whole time so I yelled back that she already had enough and the rope must be jammed. It turned out that the two carabiners on the end of the runners attaching the rope to the bolt and the fixed piece were interfering with rope travel. Patsy tried to kick them apart but each time she moved up, the lower carabiner moved into the upper one and jammed the rope. She was really swearing now, the only time she swore during the whole climb. She was scared. She couldn't reverse the move above the bolt to free the rope and she couldn't move up with all the rope drag. In the end she just pulled up several feet of slack with both hands and continued to the last ledge.

We waited for ages while Patsy set the anchors. Tom belayed Carl up. Carl was the only one who had a pack. We all got a drink of water and a candy. Finally Patsy said she had placed anchors but didn't trust them and whoever came up next had better not fall! Carl said he would go next and double check her anchors. We figured the anchors were probably OK after having Patsy describe them but I put Carl on belay on the trailing rope just to be sure that there would be plenty of protection between the two of them and a fall. Carl got up OK and reported that the anchors looked OK but he added another (a sixth) nut for additional security. The only cracks were horizontal and to the right and left of the belay position. There was nothing directly behind the belay position. No wonder Patsy didn't feel comfortable. Carl walked left over the "boardwalk", a four inch wide 50 feet long ridge over a sheer 200 foot drop.

It was really getting late now ... and cold. I went up next. The final move was quite hard. I could jam the index finger of my right hand into a piton scar and wrap the tips of my left hand over a tiny ridge of crystals. A quick move and I was up. Phew! I went up and tied off. Then Tania and finally Tom came up. I coiled one rope, traversed along the boardwalk and placed an anchor to protect Patsy after she had removed all the belay anchors. The last move on the boardwalk was a spooky one too. There is a boulder that blocks the end that is negotiable by use a left footstep on the edge of nothing.

Patsy broke down the anchors, came over and we coiled the last rope. We headed toward the descent route as the last light of day was fading. Carl had the only flash light. The descent route isn't easy either and it is safe to say that had Carl not been with us we would have been forced to spend the night on top.

Fortunately Carl knows this route like the back of his hand. He guided us down and we used the rope a couple of times. Now we had to find our packs. I went on ahead, as I could see fairly well (not really well but I could distinguish the white boulders from the black dirt). I went very carefully using my hands for balance. I was looking at Tahquitz as we were descending, trying to remember where the climb started. I saw it up and to the right of us and called for Carl to guide the others to the right. Then I started heading down again. As I was picking my way down I put my right hand on something soft. A pack! I had thought the packs were still a hundred yards or so below us. I called to the others and they were so happy. Just as Carl arrived, the batteries in his flashlight died. He had no spare batteries with him. Were we ever lucky! The packs had food (we hadn't eaten anything except the one candy for ten hours), water, flashlights and spare batteries.

We repacked and checked that we didn't leave anything behind. I almost left one of Patsy's climbing shoes, which was underneath my pack. We headed down again, this time with two flashlights, I with the one in front and Carl with the one in rear. When we arrived in the vicinity of Lunch Rock, we startled a couple who were camping out at the base of the rock. "Long climb, eh?"

As we continued, my flashlight died. Patsy fished out a couple of new batteries and we continued. Duds, these batteries didn't last long. She found another two. Her helmet, previously attached to her pack took off down the hillside but came to rest against a tree a few yards downhill. These batteries were better. On again. Carl's light died. No more batteries. We continued downhill, more slowly than ever as I kept having to stop and shine the light behind me. Finally I spotted the Wilderness Information Board. In another minute we were on the Riding and Hiking trail. Fifteen more minutes and we were heading up the final slope to the cars. R. J. shone his flashlight. What a relief. It was midnight.

We drove to Hemet and stopped at Denny's at 1.30 am. to eat dinner and sort out our climbing gear, which was all mixed up. We finally reached home at 4 am and got to bed before 5 am.