Looking up pitch 5 from Sickle Ledge

By the time we and our pigs had reached Sickle Ledge, it was close to nightfall. We really wanted to get at least one more pitch done before the end of the day, and we especially wanted to get the pigs up another pitch or two, to get a good head start on our first day on the wall. Aaron took off leading pitch 5, which went very quickly, since the climbing was mostly fourth class. Unfortunately, it was blocky, mostly horizontal fourth class, as you can see in this photo. (Note that the photo was taken looking horizontally to the right, not up.) This made the hauling extremely difficult. When Aaron was ready to haul, I tied the pigs in to the middle of the haul line, so that I could use the remaining length of the line to lower them out. I lowered them out as far as I could, but as I did, I could see that the bags were rolling across the wall and twisting the lines to hell.

Aaron began hauling, and just as we had both feared, it was a beast. After a tremendous effort, much cursing, and a fair amount of bodily abuse, he managed to get the bags to the top of the pitch and dock them to his anchor. By this time, it was completely dark. Of course, Aaron then had to deal with the haul line, which was hopelessly twisted and tangled thanks to the way we lowered out the bags. He struggled for what seemed like an eternity to untangle the rope, in the dark, with only the light from his headlamp. He intentionally let the knot protector (a two-liter soda bottle with the bottom cut off) fall to the ground, because it simply would have been too much of a pain to deal with it. We never did retrieve it, which I feel bad about, but I'm sure someone found it and disposed of it eventually. But after much toil, he managed to finally get the haul line untangled and coiled neatly. He strapped it on his back, and downclimbed the pitch by headlamp as I belayed.

Once he was back on Sickle Ledge, we rappelled to the ground again, leaving our four ropes anchored in place so that we could jumar back up two days later. By that time, we had decided that we would definitely take the next day off, then blast off on the following day, Wednesday. That way, we had a rest day, which was especially nice since we were finishing so late that day, and we also gave the Brendons a chance to blast off a full day earlier than us, so we wouldn't be in each other's way at all. We returned to camp that night and had a wonderful feast of steak, veggies, and pasta, before going to bed for a long night's sleep.

(Note: this picture was actually taken when we first reached Sickle Ledge earlier in the day, before we rappelled down to get the bags.)