chossmonkey.com Blog

“Maybe it hasn’t gone free,” Chris pondered as we hiked out from the Titan in the dark on Sunday night. Hmmm, that would have been a nice thing to know before we started. But, then again, it probably wouldn’t have affected my decision earlier that week.
“Wanna go free climb the Finger of Fate?”

That was pretty much the extent of the inquiry Chris emailed me on Monday morning. I trust Chris and his judgment, so with no research or consideration of my lack of Fisher Towers climbing experience I agreed.

Chris excitedly emailed me links, photos, and anxious messages from that point on for the rest of the week. My inbox seemed to be perpetually full with “Adventure Climbing With CVL” messages and I began to seriously wonder if I might get in trouble for using my school email account to this degree.

I knew little about the Finger of Fate, except that it was first done by Layton Kor, Huntley Ingalls and George Hurley in 1962 in a climb sponsored by National Geographic. Ingalls had taken pictures of the Titan on a reconnaissance mission and shared them with fellow Boulder climbers one evening where the consensus was that climbing in the Fishers would be too dangerous and it wouldn’t even classify as climbing. Ingalls was approached by National Geographic to do the climb and Kor reluctantly agreed to the climb. Remember that Kor was the original “choss master,” but he was afraid of the Titan and at the base of the tower he danced and sang, “boys, we’re going to die up here!”

I had a busy week so my research yielded little information, other than Stevie Haston had tried to free climb the route but backed away on the upper pitches and that it was aided at A3 or C2 or C3 or something like that. A google search for “free climbing finger of fate” yielded nothing. Surely, something as classic as the Finger of Fate would have some information about free climbing, like a blog entry, trip report or free climbing beta.

During the week we added Bob to the team that had affectionately earned the moniker, “Team Danger.” When Bob and Chris showed up at my place on Friday night we headed to the “Man Land Gear Room” for some final preparations. Chris excitedly pulled a number of sawed off angles from my wall along with a number of large tri-cams. “You guys haven’t hand stacked pins before? Man, you’re gonna have a hoot when you’re free climbing above a series of these!” Free climbing above what? I thought to myself. Chris assured us that the majority of the free climbing was 5.10 with sections of 11 thrown in for good measure. The whole issue of rock quality didn’t seem to occur to any of us.

On Saturday morning we hiked in, already talking about plans for another climb, such as Phantom Sprint or something in Castle Valley on Sunday. At the base, armed with a topo drawn by Chris McNamara we prepared for the first pitch. It didn’t look too bad and the second and third pitches almost looked less than vertical. Chris started us off on a pitch that the topo described as 5.8 sustained hand jamming. Should be a cruise, we thought. When Chris started sewing the pitch up with gear and taking longer than expected we began to wonder. When it was our turn we discovered why. The rock was barely rock and the 5.8 hands was just one section, above which was some solid 5.10 climbing. I made the mistake of climbing behind Bob, only to receive a constant pelting of sand and rock.

On Bob’s lead, our hopes of free climbing the route quickly withered away. Bob, although a strong free climber, couldn’t commit to the sandy, loose rock with funky gear in pods that had been awkwardly flared and widened by years of hammered pitons. Reverting to some French free technique proved difficult as Bob had little to no aid climbing experience, particularly on a pitch of this nature, rated in the neighborhood of C2 or harder. The gear mostly consisted of tri-cams and awkward cam placements in the wildly flared pods. Keep in mind that Bob had never placed a tri-cam. Coming up second I quickly reverted to grabbing gear as I was perplexed by the wide, flared pods with which I was supposed to stuff my fingers and insert my toes. Chris made a gallant effort on top rope, falling just once on the pitch.

On my first lead, the third pitch, I could see the free moves but couldn’t commit to the insecure free climbing above a small offset nut in sandy rock. Stepping on slings for aid I was able to move upward but took time with the funky placements in the widely flared rock. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on moderately hard clean aid climbing in Zion but this was a different kind of show here. Eventually I found my groove and was even able to do some free climbing where there was a nice crack. I gradually became more at ease with the placements and the rock and finally commented, “hey, I’m starting to have fun!” With that realization my motivation surged and drove my upward. When I reached the anchors, the guys had already made the decision to fix lines and rap, thus returning in the morning to finish. With my newfound energy I was all game.

A view of the Fisher Towers, including Cottontail Tower and Echo Tower, from the Finger of Fate.

Coming soon, part two……

In the meantime, we’re on spring break. Yesterday we finished climbing Desert Shield, a classic big wall route in Zion. I’ll have photos and a story from that soon, as well, if I’m not too busy climbing, which I probably will be!

Aaaah, the Creek. Indian Creek that is. We had a fun-filled weekend with friends despite some occasional cold weather. A day before leaving we finally got our beloved van back from the shop. Less than 100 miles later the starter died in Grand Junction. We got it to Moab and slept behind Checker Auto Parts where we picked up a new starter, which was quickly installed at camp while we waited for the cloudy weather to break on Friday. What a fun start to the weekend!

The cloud broke up and we were left with a beautiful, sunny day of cragging at Battle of the Bulge. The girls did battle with Quarter of a Man and Crack Attack while us boys went after some other stuff, such as Our Piece of Real Estate.

Crack Attack

Joy nears the top of Crack Attack while the moon makes an appearance.

The next day we found ourselves at the Optimator Wall. While most of our group tackled the sweet thin-hands of Soul Fire, I found a new route for myself. On the far left side was a nice big hands to offwidth climb that went down easily, and Ditch ‘em was born. The name came from an encounter the girls had with a couple of well known climbers on Friday while struggling on Quarter of a Man. One of them remarked, “you know, if you ditched those guys and climbed with us, you’d be able to climb that.” Hence, a route name was born.

On our final day, the well known climber joined us for cragging at Broken Tooth. Either he softened on us or gained some respect in our climbing abilities, because we merrily climbed together all day. And, he thoroughly laughed at the new route I had named in his honor. With him on belay I established another new route, Numbing the Wild, which proved to be somewhat difficult. It was a great way to cap off an outstanding spring weekend.

I’m still working on the story of our climb of the Finger of Fate on the Titan. In the meantime, check out this story, written by our group leader for the climb. Had I read this story before agreeing to climb the Finger of Fate I may have second guessed myself. Instead, blind ignorance prevails and we had a great adventure.

This afternoon we leave for Zion and our annual spring break pilgrimage to my favorite climbing area. Also on the agenda is Joshua Tree and maybe Red Rocks. How much do we have time for? We shall see!

Alpinist TV has a bunch of great videos on their site. Definitely worth checking out. Check out Climber, a short movie to provide some relief in your work day or a little amusement at home.

What is it about us climbers that causes us to willfully put ourselves in harm’s way, be pelted with sand for a weekend, and return to work with open sores galore? This morning I barely moved my tired body into the door of the school after a weekend of climbing on the Titan in the Fisher Towers. After finishing late, we topped off the day with a late-night drive home, leaving me to catch about 5 hours of sleep before heading into school to educate our nation’s youth. Our plans to go for a free, or mostly free attempt, on the Finger of Fate, were quickly dashed by the difficult climbing and insecure protection in the soft rock. Still, it was fun to climb a classic route without the use of jumars. More on the adventure later, in the meantime, check out this great video of BASE jumping from the Titan. Radness!

Yeah, yeah I know. YouTube is all the rage and probably gets overplayed on blogs. But, you gotta love this:

I wouldn’t normally take up space here to report on climbing news, let alone training tips; however, I couldn’t help but laugh at what Beth Rodden had to say about her recent send of a possible 5.14c trad climb in Yosemite. Quote: “I think the shoveling helped my climbing. It makes your back strong.” She and Tommy spent some time shoveling snow from the top of the climb and base during the 4 months that she spent working on the route. It touched my heart in a way, to think that even some of the best climbers are willing to do some interesting things for a piece of stone.

Voice From the Dust on Mt. Moroni

Zion National Park is hands-down my favorite place to climb. I love just being there, amidst the towering canyon walls; climbing, biking, hiking, running, or reading a book alongside the Virgin River. So, it was with interest that I read the following story on Climbing Magazine Online. The article deals with the Southwest in general but the opening section about Zion is pretty darn funny. It reminds me of my second trip to Zion when my friend and I woke early to drive in to the park and take a look at our objective. I’m not sure how far I had driven before I was awaken from my trance by the sound of a park ranger’s screeching sirens and flashing lights. When the ranger came to my window, I meekly admitted that I was probably speeding but that I had no idea how fast I was going because we were both so excited to be in Zion. He smiled and after a brief chat about where we were from and what we intended to climb he let us go on our way.

Check out this killer video about Kelly Cordes and climbing big mountains. It’s a great glimpse into the training, preparation and thought behind some of the gnarliest alpine climbs in the world.

I ran across a series of climbing instructional videos on YouTube that are quite laughable. I only had the heart to watch a few of them but it’s sad how many errors are made and the lack of understanding shown by the “guide.” You heard me right, the instructor shown in the video is a so-called “guide.” Clearly, he has no formal training and it’s sad to see him offer himself up as a professional guide when it’s clear that he’s anything but. What’s sad is that he’s passing himself off as a professional, experienced guide and people will accept his instruction as safe and proper. As a professionally trained guide by the American Mountain Guides Association, it kind of pisses me off that people can be so careless and ignorant and then profit off people who want to be taken rock climbing or learn how to rock climb.

The worst video that I saw is our friendly guide showing viewers how to make an American Death Triangle, something he politely calls the triangle anchor. Check it out below. The video is an example of such an egregious mistake that I almost thought it was a joke until I checked out his website, where I realized he’s quite serious. And, just to make sure that everyone knows, the “triangle anchor” or American Death Triangle is not an appropriate anchor and should never be used. This type of anchor actually increases the force placed on each placement, or bolts in this case. Quite simply, NEVER USE THE ANCHOR DESCRIBED BELOW!

I stumbled upon this great web page today, Climbing Mythbusters. It tackles some relatively popular climbing myths with research and tests. The dropped carabiner myth is one of my favorite myths, particularly the fear of “micro fractures” that people fear can be invisible to the naked eye. The myth is easily disproved with the author quoting a REI study while I’ve also seen other studies done to disprove this myth. I particularly got a kick out of the author’s personal test, “Petzl Reverso VS. .357 Magnum.” Check out the site to see pictures of a Reverso which took point-blank hits from a handgun. Classic!