Leaning Tower, V 5.7 A2

September 1997

Ahh, yes. Leaning Tower 1, Ed and Sam-I-am zippo. Time for the rematch. My partner, Sam, and I had tried to do the Tower at the beginning of June and got repelled by Sam’s shoulder injury. Since then I had done the Nose and figured that LT would be a good, fun time. And that it was. We started Thursday night, intending to launch Friday morning. At its best, the Tower is a two day climb, but most parties do it in three. We briefly had illusions of finishing it off in two days, but it was not to be.

The approach
Sam and I finally arrived in the Valley about 2am on Thursday night / Friday morning. We arrived late because I had to work reasonably late, and I was dealing with a girlfriend epic of my own. The love of my life decided that it was time to call it quits, and I was in the process of trying to convince her otherwise (without too much success). Oh well :-(. What I really needed, Sam and I decided, was a Wall. In retrospect, I think we were right. I think when your Ki gets violently thrown off center, you have to make a bold move to violently yank it back. So off to the Valley we went.

This wall turned out to be an incredible place to sort through my feelings for my ex-girlfriend, myself, my career, and my outlook on life. There were long hours of belaying without much to do except think and reorganize the anchor. There’s only so much checking of the cordalette you can do before the mind drifts to what needs to be sorted out.

Anyway, enough whining. Back to the TR. We bivied next to the Bridalveil lot and arose at 5am. Sam and I haven’t had the best of luck with the LT approach. The first time we did it we missed the trail. On the descent after we bailed we missed the trail. You’d think we would learn, two smart guys like us. Not a rin-din-din. . . We missed the trail again. After an epic approach we finally made it to the bottom of the catwalk. Ah, yes, the catwalk. We had such a nightmarish time getting our haulbag across the catwalk last time we attempted the climb, we were both dreading it. As we started up, we met two guys who would prove to be an important part of our Tower experience -- Indy and Nate. Both really cool guys from the midwest; Indy had done some really hard walls on El Cap and elsewhere; Nate was a first timer on the wall. We talked about what to do, and it was decided that Sam and I would head over to the base of the climb, lower out and haul our bag, then trail Indy and Nate’s line over to the base. I headed across the catwalk on lead and did just that.

Pitches 1&2
After my first haul of the trip and a little bit of negotiation we were ready to launch. We had decided earlier that Sam would lead the first two pitches as one, then I would lead the second two as one (effectively running 1&2 and 3&4 together with our 200 foot ropes). Off went Sam on lead. His leads were relatively uneventful -- the first two pitches are bolt ladders (with the exception of a roof fixed with manky copperheads) and pretty straight forward. Everybody’s got their issues, and this was the first time Sam had been on aid lead in a long time, and one of the first since being put in a wheelchair by an alpine accident. He didn’t know, but I admired his courage throughout the climb -- the ability to get yourself mentally disciplined and put your fear aside is an rare talent indeed. Our late start combined with the mental battles going on early in the climb put us a bit behind in time.

Pitches 3&4
Since we were taking a while down low, we decided to stop at the top of the first pitch and let Indy and Nate get started. By the time I got to the top of the second pitch and was ready to launch it was just after 5pm. Hmm, one 200 foot pitch (3&4 combined), A3-, the technical crux of the route, and about two hours to do it before it got dark. This was going to be tight. Off I went with the rack. The first couple of move were pretty easy and I enjoyed getting back into the aid rhythm. All I had done all day was haul and belay and I was getting really ancy. Our original goal was to fix two pitches above Ahwahnee ledge (the top of 4). Now we were just trying to make it to that flat spot to sleep. That said, once I got going I started feeling really good. The beginning of the third pitch is technically A2, but I expected that most of it would be fixed. In fact, the beta on the Tower is that most of route is supposed to be fixed.

What I forgot to mention earlier was that prior to meeting Nate and Indy we also met a soloist (whose name I promptly forgot). As it turns out, he pulled a lot of the fixed pro on the route (two biners full of, by his own account), and I really think that he changed the character of the route. I was expecting a clip-fest -- everyone I talked to for beta said basically the same thing: good route, it’s pretty much all fixed. As it turns out three, four, five, and seven all were pretty much clean. The bolt ladders on one, two, and six were still fixed, obviously. Eight was a short gimme pitch, and nine and ten were pretty fixed.

Anyway, off I go up the third pitch, starting with some good, solid placements and a piton or two to keep me feelin’ warm and snug, then I get to the crux -- about ten feet of dicey-ness to a fixed piton. I look and look for a placement and all I can see is an obvious hook. “Hmm. The hooking move is supposed to be on the fourth pitch, not here.” I look some more. No good placements I can see. Just twelve feet -- two pieces -- and I’ve got a bomber Harding piton. I resign myself to hooking, and place what actually looks as good as a hook gets and step up. Ahhhh. Eight feet to go -- one placement. All I’ve got now is an overhanging detached flake that flares a bit on the wall side. I place a yellow alien in a pin scar. I gingerly step onto it. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Pop, SssssssssSSSSS, Schmack. That’s the sound of an alien popping and hitting me square between the eyes (fortunately I had my Wal-mart special glasses on). I drop back down on the hook hard (it holds -- yee-haw) and I settle back, a bit shaken, but also tired and wanting to get onto that ledge. There is another, better placement for a smaller alien a few feet off to the right of the one that popped. I slam in a green alien, bounce a couple of times, step up, and clip the piton just as fast as I can. Yee-fucking-ha, there I am. I cruise to the belay for three and keep right on a’goin.

Pitch four is technically the crux, although in retrospect three was harder. Four is pretty easy until the very end of the pitch. I’m about twenty feet below the ledge, 160 feet over my belay, and I have to get myself up and over a bulge, across a slab, and onto the ledge. I manage to get over the bulge without too much problem. Four moves to the ledge. I clip a piton. Three moves, and here is where I am supposed to hook. I look around -- no hooks here. There is a TINY crystal that MIGHT hold a hook, but I ain’t a stickin’ around to find out. There is a tiny pin scar, again in a bloody detached flake and I figure that is my best bet. The MVP (Most Valuable Piece) for the trip turns out to be the #00 alien (otherwise affectionately known as the “body-weight only” alien), which I whip out and place here. The #00 is made for cracks which are about one-third of an inch big. You do the math. Long story short, I fire in the #00, gingerly step over to the pin, clip it, and I’m home free. It’s before 7pm, the sun is near the horizon, and I’m on Ahwahnee ledge. I am absolutely beside myself with happiness.

The next fifteen minutes I will remember for a long time. I set up an anchor, fixed the lead line, and started to haul. In order to get the best leverage on the haul bag, otherwise known as the pig, I hopped over the ledge and counter-weighted the line. There I was, hanging on my jumars, 800 feet above the deck (straight down!), trying to get the pig up to the ledge, when I noticed that the sun was setting on the west rim of the Valley, directly across from me. I had to stop and enjoy the moment. All the anguish of my romantic and career life came flooding back and I started praying, then singing cheese-ball high school hymns. And not humming, mind you, but really singing. I mean, who is going to hear me? The closest person is 200 feet below jugging up the line! The amazing moment brought tears to my eyes (although you go figure all the emotions in that sandwich, thank you very much). This I what climbing is all about -- the yin and yang of experience and the power of a moment.

Sam and I made it to the ledge that night and fixed a line for Nate and Indy, who would join us later. We heard them arguing about something as we drifted off to sleep (then Nate came over and joined us), but we weren’t sure what. Nothing beats a good bivy.

The next day: the pig takes a ride
The next day started with us learning from Nate that they had forgotten Indy’s clothes -- all his warm gear -- at the base, and he was planning to rap down to get it. Because the route is so overhanging, rapping four pitches (really two with a 200 foot line) is more complicated than it sounds. You have to swing back into the wall periodically (no small task) and clip yourself in, I guess. We advised him against it and suggested that if we combined efforts as a party of four we might just be able to get off the route in one more day. After conferring with Indy, we all agreed that that might be a good idea, at least for the first two pitches, which Indy and I would do since we were fastest. Indy would take five, an A1 ramp that turned out to be quite a bit harder because of all the fixed gear that had been pulled, and I would take the 5.7 free moves to the bolt ladder on six. As Indy and I were gearing up to send him off, the worst of the worst happened. In retrospect, no one was at fault for the accident -- on a wall, things happen. In any event, Nate was rearranging their haulbag to get it out of the way of our belay. It got unclipped, somehow, and started to slide. I have this vivid memory of the pig sliding down the angled slab toward the edge. It looked so innocuous, trailing a bight of unconnected webbing or rope that we had used to tie it in. It slid right off the edge and pitched 800 feet to the talus below (a party later told us that it sounded like an airplane going by). I made the classic comment of the wall: “Ehhh (Beavis noises) I think you guys just pitched your haulbag.” We were all stunned and rattled: now we had to join up. Sam and I had enough food (if we spread it thin) and water to do it, we thought, and so we offered to help.

We sent Indy off on lead on the fifth pitch. It was agreed that we would run things like this: Indy and I would swap leads, going as fast as we could. Nate and Sam would haul the one remaining bag and follow us up. That way we could always keep the leader moving. We were hoping to make it to the top, but the difficulty of the fifth really prevented that. Indy took a while to polish five off, I followed and zoomed up six with relative ease. Seven was a long pitch that Indy led -- long but straight forward. I hopped on my jugs and motored up to the top of seven. By this time it was pretty late in the day, five and seven took a while (one hard and one long). I fired off to run eight and nine together.

Sport aid climbing
Eight was an easy pitch. One of the things I am constantly amazed by is the amount of learning that goes on when you are aid climbing, and I found a trick, somewhere between six and eight, that improved my climbing significantly (basically, I just started sliding my fifi hook up the biner as I was clipped into and grabbing it, extending my reach by about four inches -- critical inches on aid lead). Anyway, eight was easy, and I jammed through it and took off on nine.

Pitch nine was a roof that was mostly fixed, but the placements were really reachy. I absolutely loved this pitch -- probably my favorite aid pitch ever. I cruised up to the roof clipping just about every piece from my top steps, making it to the overhanging section pretty quickly. The overhanging roof was GREAT. I would clip a piece and absolutely muscle myself up my aiders, then clip in with my fifi, and rest (I actually shook my arms out like a bloody sport climber a couple of times). Then I would stand up in the second step or top step and lean out (by the way, it is a straight shot to the deck from here -- 1300 feet down). Picture this: I am hanging from my fifi hook, which is the pivot point on my body. My feet are extended toward the wall, but most times were not touching the wall; the upper part of my body was extended the opposite direction as I tried to clip the next piece. In this pose my body was straight, at a 45 degree angle from the ground. Absolutely exhilarating!!! Six or seven reachy fixed placements like this and I was home free and up to the top of the roof.

I raised myself up to the top of the roof and peered over. Yup, there’s the ledge. It looked like about ten feet of free climbing to go. Here I made an error of cowardice. Instead of committing to the free climbing and unclipping from my piece, I decided to climb up a bit, check it out, then downclimb, regroup, and then go for it. I made about three moves to the end of my daisys (only about 5.8 climbing) and checked out the scene. It looked good. In order to go any further, I had to downclimb, unhook my aider / daisy system and go for it. But when I looked down, I realized that my fifi had come unclipped and that reversing the moves I had just done (in clunky hiking boots) was going to be harder than I expected. Now I was in trouble. I was hanging from my arms, burning out, and looking at a probable six or seven foot static fall onto my daisys. This was bad news and I started to panic a little. What can I do? No placements in the free section looked good, and I was really starting to burn out my arms as I hung from a bomber pointy side pull.

THINK! I commanded myself. Okay, first things first, get yourself off your arms (my feet were in the top step of my aiders, but swinging around wildly and doing no good). I brought my left foot up and heel hooked this big ledge, which I then pseudo-straddled. Then I took out the MVP (that #00 alien that had saved me on pitch four). The alien is slung with about 12 inches of webbing in a circle four inches in diameter, which I took and looped around the pointy side-pull jug that I was holding on to. If I weight it in just the right direction. . . Aiders were clipped and I settled down gingerly onto the steps, careful to keep my body positioned in just the right way. . . There, got it, I unclipped the bottom aider / daisy system and carefully stepped back up my second set of aiders, grabbing the side pull as soon as I could. Phew. I scrambled up to the ledge on the top of nine, where we would spend our second night on the wall.

I set the anchor system and the guys took a while to follow, haul, and jug, so I had some time on the ledge to myself. For the second evening in a row I watched the sun set on the west rim of the Valley from a solitary position on the ledge and prayed a little. As the orange glow faded from the sky I dozed off, and dreamed of my ex. We had exchanged letters right before I left from the Valley and she came to me in the dream and told me she loved me but had leave, and then kind of floated there and we chatted. Hmmmm.

The guys got to the ledge a little bit after dark. We broke out the rest of our food (one can of chili and two of beans) and a Guinness that we had been saving for just this moment. The four of us ate, drank and generally observed that we were the luckiest four dudes on earth at that moment (and I think we might just have been).

Getting off
The next morning we finished off the last pitch and a little bit of fourth class to the top (in retrospect, the top of ten is a heck of a lot better than the top of nine, which sloped pretty severely and was kind of a nightmare to sleep on). The descent was pretty easy (six or seven rappels through a chimney system). I took the pig and rode that bad boy all the way down. The last rappel was pretty close to vertical, and I arranged my system so that I was straddling the pig like a bronco. I rode it down the face whooping and yelling like Slim Pickins in the last scene of Dr. Strangelove. All the exuberance of the wall flooded through my body. If there is any drug that makes you feel like that, it must be addictive, because I was absolutely high on it. I felt great.

We all got down and finished the descent (once we found the trail, it wasn’t half bad). The good news was that stuff Indy and Nate had left behind was still there (jackets, etc.). The bad news was that the pig that took the express elevator down was demolished. Beer cans, gear, electronics, everything except a can of almonds (go figure). The pig was actually split down the seam, and the top and bottom blown out. Oh well. Once we got to the parking lot, we got all the classic stares from the Tourons, although we may have been more crazy and dirty than usual. At one point Sam looked at me somberly: “Will you hold my helmet and glasses?” Quizical look from me, “Sure”. Then Sam jumped on top of the pig and started beating it like a red-headed stepchild. Ha! Anyway, instead of asking the typical questions (The ropes are already up there, right?), twenty or thirty of them just stared in disbelief. After calming down, we headed over to El Cap meadow to drink beers and sort gear. Two new friends and one wall later I was content. I at least had hold of my Ki again, even if it wasn’t exactly where it needed to be.