Follies and Fun on Disco Inferno – Part One
I throw my haul bag down in frustration next to the trail, sweat dripping from my brow and small bush branches still stuck in my shirt, my shoes and my hair. How could I have so grossly missed the start of the trail? After a good bushwhack to find the real trail, I yell down to my wife, Joy, and our friends, BJ and Tracy, warning them to find the correct path. It’s then that I overhear the stressed dialogue between BJ and Tracy about the location of their brand new Black Diamond portaledge. I remember seeing BJ set it on the side of the road while he went back to the car to help Tracy and now he’s frantically searching the roadside. By the time I get to the road, we’ve surmised that someone has taken it, most likely a white van. BJ and I jump into my car and scream down Zion Canyon and I already have images in my mind of the kind of brawl that might ensue. When we come around the corner at Big Bend we spot the van and make a “Starsky and Hutch”-like screeching halt in front of the van, blocking their exit from the pullout. Turns out it’s a tour operator from Vegas with a heavy Asian accent who thought he was doing the park a favor by picking up the “abandoned” gear to take to the rangers.
Wow, this is not how we envisioned this trip to go. We’ve already wasted a good chunk of the day taking the dog to the Doggy Dude Ranch, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, getting permits, buying gear, searching for a “wall mascot”, and lounging around Zion looking at climbs. It doesn’t help that the girls are somewhat skeptical as BJ and I, the so-called “Choss Twins” have chosen our climb, Disco Inferno. I’ve assured them that the “Pretty Damn Disco” rating on the topo doesn’t mean anything sinister and that this will be a fine climb for first-time wall climbers BJ and Tracy.
Packing it all up. That’s a lot of crap!
Joy, striking the Disco Inferno pose. Check out the rack on her!
Disco Inferno is a short, 5 to 10 minute hike from the car but it feels like it takes a lifetime to pack everything up and get our stuff to the base. Our short detour to reclaim the ledge provides some fun excitement and soon we’re at the base, racking up for the first leads. In the interest of time, it’s decided that yours truly, the Choss Monkey, should fire up the first two pitches to give us a good start on the wall. Things go smoothly and soon I’m hauling up our wall gear: one full-size haul bag, two small haul bags, two portaledges, and a 5-gallon food bucket.
Joy supervises the hauling while BJ does the work, just the way it should be, right ladies?
I’m exhausted from hauling a gazillion pounds of stuff and I’m seriously planning on BJ taking the next lead, an ominous looking squeeze chimney, but when he looks up he quickly pulls out some lame rationale of why I should lead it. Great, come on twin choss brother!I wiggle my way into the back of the chimney where I could start to get some purchase and look up at my first runout. No one ever falls out of these things, right? I awkwardly make my way up to my first protection, a flake on the inside of the chimney. When I reach up to place a #2 Camalot the flake discharges a mouthful of sand in my face. I wiggle the cam around a bit and realize that I’m only making the placement bigger so I pull it out and place a #3 Camalot and leave it. No one falls in these things, right? As I slither my way up, I occasionally tap on the flake and the sound it makes serves as a nice, comic relief for my friends at the belay below. We laugh and I plug some gear behind our acoustic flake and move on. No one falls, right? The squeeze ends and I am forced to leave the relative security of the chimney for difficult and insecure stemming between the wall and the upper chimney. Again I place some gear in a suspect crack which BJ will later laugh about and get to the anchor.
When BJ follows he inexplicably decides to follow the climb free in his approach shoes. At 5.8 on the topo it can’t be that hard, he reasons. Lesson learned he makes it to the belay but he is spent.
Maybe I shouldn’t have climbed that in my approach shoes?
With our daylight quickly waning, we establish camp and enjoy a beautiful evening, a great dinner and a few beers, all making the day’s events wash away in a cloud of laughter as smiles grace everyone’s face.
[...] Mike Schneiter has the first part of his write up about our trip to Zion. [...]
[...] In Part One of Follies and Fun on Disco Inferno, we climbed the first three pitches and established our bivy at a beautiful ledge. Now, here’s part two, the conclusion of the story. [...]