The Prow - A2+

The plan was to climb the route with three people, but we lost the third on the way. Climbed the route in two and a half days. Ran out of water on the second day due to the heat. Watch out for the ring tail cats they will steal your food. Ended up drinking out of a seep on the top, the water brown and had spiders in it. UMMM, spider water! My partner ended up taking a head over heals fall in the north gully hurting his pride a bit. Great route, look forward to doing it again with better style in the future.

It was a good line but I am surprised how many ledge falls there were for such a steep route. It seems like every time I looked down on lead there was ledge or section of slab below me. The first crux pitch, the C2+ dihedral, was wet and a bit interesting to lead. The aid was not hard per se, but with a ledge fall below me, a wet crack and not many solid placements in the beginning, it was a bit interesting. Despite being rated C2+, it was not actually the crux for me. The crux came up higher, P4 I think, right off the first bivy ledge. The C2F climbing steepens up and I had to resort to a few sequential hook moves, once again with a ledge below me. It was not hard, just a bit exciting. However, you dont have to use hooks, I just chose to as I am not a big fan of really small offset cams in steep placements.

The reachy bolt ladder was surprisingly more reachy than I thought it would be. It doesent start out that bad but towards the end I was top stepping every bolt. I am 5'8" and had to top step to reach the next bolt. So if you are shorter than that you may want to pass the lead over to your partner on the bolt ladder pitch.

My hard-gal 11 trad leader partner broke-down early. I lead all 13 pitches. We "slept" on the two "ledges", thus taking a whopping 3 days! Christ almighty what a fiasco. Wandered around the top on thurdsay (we started on tuesday) like a pair of jack-asses. My partner was now a sobbing mass. The descent was horrendous. I was doing double duty. Making alternating trips to carry the haul bag and then the back pack. Thus we spent a 3rd night on the rock. Out of water. What a god-awful night we had. We arrived at base by 10am friday. Poor Karin looked like I beat the snot out of her for not cooking dinner right.
I lost 3 toe-nails from doing the descent in my rock shoes - idiot. But I was so tired I didn't trust myself.

booyeah

Fun climbing but terrible hauling at the top. Take a ledge if you plan to bivy on the route, the ledges are mostly sloping or poor. I led the 10th pitch all free w/ 5.11a liebacking up the golden corner before moving into a chimney slot & belaying back on the left for easier hauling.