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.
Peaceful, serene mornings in Zion are some of my most memorable moments in life. As the sun slowly rises the outlines of the canyon walls begin to stand out from the morning sky and the soft sound of the Virgin River below is the only noise in the entire canyon. Peeking over the edge of my portaledge, I am reminded of the exposure and position from which I’ve just slept the night before. A soft breeze touches my cheeks, sending a shiver through my body which is warmly wrapped in my sleeping bag. This place and this time feels like it may be the most perfect thing in the world, as Joy sleeps soundly by my side. Often I enjoy laying here for an hour or more, enjoying the canyon and reminiscing about the many adventures I’ve had in Zion – laughing with friends, climbing into the night with or without a headlamp, and getting married on the sandy beach next to the Virgin River below Angels Landing. I’ve long felt like this place is a second home, or perhaps the home I was most meant to live in for the way it refreshes my soul and fills my heart with joy.
BJ and Tracy, waking up on their first morning in Zion Canyon.
On this morning, I try not to linger too long, with the knowledge that we have several pitches to climb today if we’re going to top out before dark. As I heat water for tea and breakfast, I playfully toss small rocks onto BJ and Tracy, to wake them. My role as the “Drill Sergeant” is not a role I want but it’s one that I know I must play because I know our start to this day will dictate how the end of our day turns out.
The fourth pitch and BJ’s first Zion lead.
While the girls finish packing for the day, BJ begins the first lead of the day, a seemingly benign 5.9 C1 pitch. Right from the belay he quickly encounters the kind of climbing I’ve come to expect on a non-trade route. When you venture off of the trade routes, there rarely seems to be simple, straight up and down pitches of easy free or aid climbing. On this pitch, BJ has to make some delicate, sandy free moves to reach the crack. Once in the crack, he finds atypical C1 aid climbing, calling for Ball Nuts and other small offset nuts to be sent up on the trail line. BJ has never used a Ball Nut before but I assure him that they’re bomber, not telling him that of the aid falls I’ve taken in Zion a number of them had to to with Ball Nuts ripping out of the soft sandstone.
Looking down at the fifth pitch, the “kinda-bolt ladder”.
The next pitch is one that I’ve been anxiously looking forward to for a long time. Anxious because I’m wondering how far the bolts are spaced and how blown out some of the bat hook holes are between the bolts. Looking up I realize that some of them are indeed, spaced out. Before reaching the headwall, some nasty, loose, unprotected climbing takes you to the small ledge below the headwall. I delicately “tip toe” between some loose blocks wedged in the sandy ledge. I joke with BJ that the “Choss Twins” are at it again in an effort to steady my racing heart, knowing that I could take a huge fall and pull an ugly block down onto BJ below.
A couple of ugly holes lead to the first bolt and I quickly decide to pull out the tent pole that we’ve brought along to use as a cheat stick. After taping a draw to the pole I reach up to clip the first bolt, only to have the pole awkwardly bend backwards into space after getting halfway to the bolt on the overhanging wall. The pole comically wiggles in space like a Twizzler spun from a child’s fingers. Well, this could be interesting. Quickly I realize that I need to keep the draw and pole pressed to the wall to keep it from bending out into space and once mastered, I start to make quick work up the overhanging wall. I make a few hook moves on good edges but otherwise avoid the drilled holes and use the cheat stick to go bolt-to-bolt. Every time I come to one of these holes I consider hooking it but always choose otherwise because many of them have become blown out, rounded and ugly looking. I’ve heard that Chris McNamara has offered to donate the hardware to fill the holes, which is needed, because the holes aren’t going to last as the fragile, soft sandstone can’t take the repeated use.
Halfway up the pitch I come to a dilemma. Instead of a bolt, there’s a fixed pin, which proves near impossible to clip with my flimsy tent pole. After a number of attempts I revert to trying to “lasso” the pin with a slip-knotted sling. The best I can do is getting the sling halfway over the spine of the pin, so finally I just go for it, and gently jug up the rope, all the while staring at the sling which is a mere half inch from the end of the pin. Above, I reach my next dilemma, a bolt far, far out of reach with my pole and with holes that look equally unimpressive. We brought a bolt kit thinking that if we had time we might fill some of the holes and now I ask to have it sent up on the trail line. The wall is slightly overhanging so drilling the hole out is strenuous, not because of the drilling but because of how hard it is to top step and drill. The first half of the hole goes quickly as the hole has mostly filled with sand and the rest of the hole goes with ease due to the soft stone. After 20+ minutes of effort I slide in a long, 1/2″ bolt and crank it tight. Above I am able to reach the rest of the bolts with my pole although I have to jug up a slung pin once again, carefully jugging up as I watch the sling sit precariously close to the edge of the pin.
When I arrive at the belay I look down to see that the girls have decided to bail. Tracy didn’t feel good about the exposure and it’s obvious that they won’t want to lead that last pitch. Now I feel really bad for getting us into this “mess” and BJ and I consider our options. The girls insist that they’re okay with us finishing the climb, but it feels weird to know that we drove 7 hours to have the girls jug a few pitches. Going down is an option although I half-heartedly want to finish the route so I don’t have to come back and re-lead the last pitch. Eventually, the consensus is reached, we’re going up!
Just past the crux rotten roof of the sixth pitch.
Part of me wanted to go down because I had some fear about what lay ahead on the sixth pitch. I had avoided Disco Inferno for years because of an ominous note on the topo; “rotten roof.” Bryan Bird, a local hardman, assured me that it was no big deal, but this was coming from a guy who regularly puts up new, hard aid routes on the walls of Zion. Sure enough, the roof was a sandy mess but that turned out to be the least of my concerns. The dead horizontal roof made aiding difficult as I searched for a placement above. I was aiding on a gold Camalot in an awkwardly flared placement and I wasn’t sure it was going to hold. I had good gear below me but it was far underneath the roof, ensuring that I would swing forcefully into the slab below if I fell. I started to have doubts about the route and my desire to climb it with my wife comfortably resting on the ledge below. My only good piece was a #6 Camalot, retail about $110, so there was no way I was going to bail off that, which meant the only reasonable option was continuing.
BJ jugs over the lip of the roof on the sixth pitch.
I struggled to step high in my aiders as I searched the face above for a placement. Much of the rock was sandy and it seemed like everything was out of reach. I had to use my core and leg muscles together to get above the roof and I would quickly tire, my legs feeling like they were about to cramp. After the climb, I had deep pain and soreness in my right hip and quad muscles from the strain I placed on them. Finally, I was able to reach a horizontal cam placement and move up. Then, I realized that there was a simple stopper placement hidden from my view that would have made the whole thing easier. Once again, I had let my emotions get in the way of climbing and my frustration and stress levels clouded my vision. Above the roof, the climbing was straight forward though it wasn’t the easy, “plug-and-tug” type of aid climbing I was accustomed to on the trade routes.
Jugging the final stretch of the sixth pitch while our ladies casually lounge below.
When BJ got to the belay we discussed our options. It had taken a long time to lead those two pitches, meaning we only had a few hours of daylight left. BJ was worried that he would take too long and I was exhausted mentally from the previous two pitches. At this point I felt really bad about our route choice, knowing that it was my suggestion to climb Disco Inferno. Now, it felt like a selfish thing as I had led almost all of the pitches and the girls had already bailed. It was supposed to be a fun, first big wall experience for BJ and Tracy and it appeared that I had only dragged everyone along for a thrashing. All I wanted was for people to have a good time and I felt like I wasn’t even having a good time myself. I desperately wanted for BJ to take the lead but I also knew that if we were to top out that I would probably need to lead the last pitches. My internal battle with my feelings only exhausted me more before I finally took the rack to lead the next pitch.
Finally, I was climbing a pitch that was easy, straight forward and quick. When I reached the belay I pulled up the extra rope and short fixed, knowing that I could probably rope solo the last short pitch to get us to the top. But, I hesitated and my struggle for motivation dug in. Looking at my watch I knew we had enough time to top out before dark but then we would be relegated to rappelling in the dark. Every time I’m confronted with a decision like this I’m hit with a flood of emotions, many tied to life questions and not just climbing: “Am I getting too old and conservative that I’m unwilling to go for the top anymore?” “Am I slowing down?” “Am I getting old?”
BJ and I sat there for a while, enjoyed the splendor of Zion and decided that we were okay with not finishing the final 50 feet of climbing. Would we regret it later? Probably not when we were hanging with our wives at the ledge below, which seemed the most important thing in the world at that moment.
Finishing the eighth pitch.
We began rappelling and everything seemed like it would go smooth and we would quickly be with our lovely ladies. I was a little nervous about rappelling the overhanging face but we had just seen some guys rappel Desert Shield the day before so I tried to ease my fears. At the first challenging rappel station I was able to easily swing in and clip the anchor. Ahh, no problem, I thought. As darkness neared I took off my helmet to put on my headlamp. Absentmindedly I forgot that I had my glasses on, which I had worn all day because my eyes had become irritated from all of the sand. They slipped off my face and I fumbled at trying to catch them, only to see them come to rest on BJ’s arm. “Don’t move your arm…what?…ohhhh no.” They were gone as I watched them free fall through the air and disappear below. Great, those were brand new this summer after I lost my other pair of glasses while swimming in Chasm Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Joy’s going to kill me and now I’m going to be seeing all blurry for a while.
On our next rappel the girls said they could see the rope and it was only five feet from our bivy. I was surprised to hear that our rope would reach that far but off I went. It was now dark and with my headlamp I could see the anchor but I couldn’t see how far our ropes reached, but I assumed they reached past that anchor and to our bivy. As I neared the anchor an overwhelming sense of fear rushed over me as I realized that I was five feet from the ends of my rope and ten feet above the anchor. I hate rappelling in general and I particularly hated the thought that I was that close to slipping off the ends of the rope and into the dark void below. My frustrations and stress from the day’s events came out in an obscenity-laced string of wild exclamations. I bounced and swung on the rope but knew there was no way I could get another five feet of stretch to reach the anchors, which was probably what made me so frustrated. There I was, just fingertips away from the anchor but seemingly helpless. All I wanted was to be safely at our bivy with my wife and the last thing I wanted was to be dangling in space. After calming myself down I jugged back up the ropes to the anchor above me. There, BJ met me and we finished our rappels, this time much more calmly.
Of course, it wasn’t quit over. The fifth pitch overhung steeply so I clipped a number of bolts to help swing me into the wall and to the anchor below. Particularly after my previous rappelling epic I had no desire to be swinging around in space with the anchor out of reach. When BJ came down he cleaned the draws as he went and I helped hold him into the overhanging wall. But, at the bottom of this steep pitch, BJ was having a hard time cleaning the draws and it seemed like he would have a hard time swinging into the anchor to meet me, despite my best efforts at pulling him in. To combat this he left a couple of bolts clipped because who cares about a $5 carabiner, right? It worked great until we pulled the rope and you guessed it, the knot came tight into the draws. I was so frustrated and done with the climb that I offered to just cut the rope and buy BJ a new one. Luckily, BJ was of a more sound mind so he jugged up one rope and re-clipped the draws so that the rope could be pulled. After returning to the anchor we made one final rappel to our wives below and a much-desired, well-earned beer with our warm dinner.
John Travolta looks over the PBR that awaits another crew at the shared bivy for Disco Inferno and Desert Shield.
That night, it was all I could do to down some dinner and drink a couple of beers before passing out on the portaledge. I was exhausted and embarrassed at making stupid mistakes, getting scared, and most of all, picking the wrong route for our friends in their quest to climb their first wall.
The next day we stashed a few leftover beers for future climbers, which only made me more embarrassed – I mean, what kind of wall climbers are we that we can’t even drink all of our beer? After getting all of our big wall crap down from the wall I searched in vain for my glasses in the bushes and ledge systems at the base. A few years ago I found my friend’s lone key in the detritus below Moonlight Buttress so I had some hope, particularly after Joy found one lens. It wasn’t to be, so we hiked back to the car, me feeling somewhat defeated even though I wanted to feel good about finally doing (kind-of) a route that I had my eyes on for a long time. I started to wonder if they would ever get sick of me apologizing for my route selection and making plans for another wall only seemed to add insult to injury.
In the end, with over a month of reflection, I guess it wasn’t that bad of a deal. We all had fun, we slept on ledges, climbed some neat and challenging pitches, and we’re still great friends, which is probably the most important thing of all. Rest assured, we’ll be back, although this time maybe we will do something a lot easier, even if I’ve already done it two, three or four times.
The team, post-adventure and still smiling.
