ja1484
May 30, 2007, 11:35 PM
Views: 5915
Registered: Aug 11, 2006
Posts: 1935
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Funny this should pop up. Was out at Stone Mountain yesterday and my partner and I got on Grand Funk Railroad. It's an excellent route, but even by Stone Mountain standards, it's pretty ballsy. The route, for those who don't know, is about 600 feet over 5 pitches. Excluding anchors, which are bolted, I believe we had 5 pieces of protection on the entire route, 3 of them being bolts on the first two pitches, the other two being slung horns. Pitches 4 and 6 have no protection whatsoever, making them nice little 100 foot runouts anchor to anchor. Thank god the climbing is about 5.6/5.7ish.
Anyway, I was leading pitch four and initially missed the shuts at the end. I was motoring along towards the shuts I *could* see some 50 feet ahead, thinking this was awfully long for 100 feet, when my partner yelled out that I had about 20 feet of rope left.
I was 160 feet out from the anchors, and about 40 feet out from the last (and only) piece of pro, a slung horn.
So, you do what you have to do. I downclimbed the 40 or so feet, grabbed the juggy horn, and took a look around. I finally spotted the shuts (they were off the right of the route in a depression...easy to miss), removed the pro, and downclimbed another 30 or so feet, and traversed about 20' to the shuts and anchored in.
Sometimes life ain't easy, but you gotta keep calm (probably more important than anything else, honestly speaking), think for a little bit, and communicate well with the belay. Then, as Petsfed said, you either go up or down until you can manage things.
Good luck out there.
(This post was edited by ja1484 on May 30, 2007, 11:41 PM)
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