Index Aid Climbing

Published on 2005-7-9 by Michael Stanton

Index climbing, July 9, 2005

On this rainy morning, I convinced Theron to come with me for a first (gasp!) visit to the Upper Town Wall for some aid climbing. The approach trail is steep, but very nice. As Theron pointed out, the color of the plants was such a brilliant green it could be described as (0 255 0) on the RGB color scale. We found the first pitch of "Town Crier" (5.9, C2), running with water. Hey, we'll just aid it then! So I did this, moving kind of slowly as it had been a long while since I'd been aid climbing. It was fun, easy aid with great protection from medium nuts. I free climbed the upper 4th class ledges which were a little scary because of slimy moss and weeping waterways. Theron jumared the route, for his first time following an aid pitch. It was hard at first, but some advice from an old hand passerby to make less backup knots allowed his bottom jumar to run smoothly. It's all about equipment in aid climbing! All this took awhile, and we would already be late returning to town, so we just scoped out the chimney above. We also looked at the Davis-Holland route above on the left...man that looks like great climbing! I'm tempted to come back some dry morning and see if we can climb the first two pitches? The triple roofs above us looked just awesome. Also, the town and surrounding mountains with the clouds drifting in and out reminded Theron of the idealistic home of "King Kong."