Index with Theron

Published on 2003-7-4 by Michael Stanton

Index Climbing, July 4, 2003

Theron and I had a few hours to stop by. We did the monster 4-pitch Aries (aka "Lizard") climb! Not really, each pitch is only about 30 feet long, but with some sustained or difficult 5.8 on each one. First a short fist crack to a ledge that had me breathing hard on the exit moves. Then a really nice finger crack in a left-facing corner. Then a flaring chimney that felt really hard. I tried to follow some good advice and stay on the outside of the chimney. I ventured into the back to place a cam, then came back out for more upward progress (back and one foot on one wall, one foot on the other wall). Where I ran into trouble was in the exit moves. I placed a small cam near the top, then floundered around and eventually hung there for a while. I just couldn't find a needed handhold. Finally I got close to exiting, then my rack of gear hung up on the small cam, leading to a short fall. I think I did a 5.10 variation to finally exit. Either way, I was completely wasted at the top. Theron came up, finding it pretty tough. We got really schooled by this thing. The last pitch was much easier, and really fun because of the great exposure stepping out from under a roof after a 15 foot leftward traverse. Then some nice jamming took us to the three-bolt anchor on the Great Northern Slab. We rappelled, and I tried to lead Libra Crack (5.10a), but couldn't get past the short difficult section. I fell two times onto a red 4-cam that I had placed high from the belay. I was perplexed, because I'd climbed it okay on top-rope before. So Theron led the classic Great Northern Slab pitch, and we rapped down. Then a guy came along and soloed everything we had done at least twice in 15 minutes!