Aaron starts up pitch 28

As I started to haul pitch 27, and just as Aaron was about to start following it, he looked up and noticed the rope going around the sharp arête. “Hey Will,” he called up to me, “How's that edge?”

I looked down to find that one of the small nuts I had placed had popped out, and the lead line that Aaron would jumar up was now running across a much higher part of the arête than it had been when I moved around the corner. Since I was already hauling the pigs, I just took a really long hauling stroke, until I was face to face with the arête. “It's super sharp!” I yelled down to Aaron, “Hang on a sec. I'll tape it.” I reached behind me and retrieved my small roll of duct tape, and padded the edge as well as I could with two layers of tape. Even so, by the time Aaron had jugged up to it, much of the tape had worn through. Scary.

Fortunately, the hauling was becoming extremely easy by now. At this point, with much less water and food remaining, the pigs were quite noticeably lighter than when we had started the climb. Furthermore, these upper pitches were completely vertical, even overhanging in some places, so the friction was substantially reduced, making the hauling easier still. Unfortunately, this also made it easier to get the ropes tangled. Throughout the third day of the climb, we found ourselves untying from the lead line and retying in at almost every belay, in order to easily untangle the ropes.

Though the hauling on pitch 27 was quick and easy, I got the ropes tangled pretty badly, since the pitch ended at a hanging belay. We wasted a little time dealing with that, but soon Aaron was ready to start leading pitch 28. This photo shows him just starting up it, as I hang out with the haul bags underneath me. This was the first photo of the day taken by Aaron's dad with the spotting scope. Notice that, because we're so high up now, even with the scope we are pretty tiny.