Trip to Zion

The trip report below was taken from a long email I sent to my family the morning we got back from the trip. (To prevent my mother from having a heart attack, I mentioned nothing of this climb to my family until after it was done, despite all our planning and our three attempts.) The details of the climb itself are included at the bottom, and more photos are avaible on my photo album.

The Trip

Zion Canyon
And the frigid Virgin River, seen from the top of pitch 6 We've been planning this ascent of Moonlight Buttress for well over a month. We were originally going to do this on the weekend of November 5th, but after gathering all the gear we needed, packing, and planning every detail, the weather turned sour at the last minute. Our second planned attempt was supposed to be the weekend before Thanksgiving, and this time we were packed and on our way there when the weather forecast turned bad. That weekend, we went to Red Rocks instead, but we even got snowed on there. Finally, this weekend, the weather forecast looked good, and both Aaron and I had no school commitments for a few days.

We drove out to Zion on Saturday, and got there in time to schlep our masses of gear to the base of the wall. This was probably the hardest (or at least the most painful) part of the whole trip, because getting to the base of the climb required crossing the Virgin River. The only easy way to do this is to wade across. It's a small river (back east it would be called a creek, but here in the desert, anything more than a trickle is called a river.) But at this time of year, the water was frigid. I am not exaggerating when I say that the water temperature must have been 33 degrees. I don't think I've ever been in so much pain just from water. And having to do this with seventy pounds of gear (each) was quite unpleasant. We had to cross back over the river in the dark that night, and then cross it again in the dark the following morning to begin our climb, but at least we weren't carrying so much those times.

Sunday, just as we had planned, we climbed four pitches, bringing us to a decent sized ledge where we would spend the night. We organized our gear as much as possible, set up the portaledge, and ate a lovely meal of military MREs. By this time, it was getting dark, and with the dark came the cold. So
The Portaledge
Aaron testing out the portaledge even though we weren't that tired (it was only about 7:30) we crawled into our sleeping bags, hanging in the portaledge, and went to bed. The temperature was probably between 35 and 40 degrees, but we were pretty cozy in our sleeping bags. And the portaledge was pretty cramped quarters, but we both got a pretty good amount of sleep.

We awoke the next morning before sunrise, bundled ourselves up in all our warm clothes, and geared up to finish the climb. By the time we were ready to go, it was light enough to see, so I started up the next pitch. The climbing on this pitch was truly spectacular, easily my favorite part of the whole route, and I was also able to move pretty quickly through most of it. Before I was halfway up it, the sun was fully out, and I was able to shed a few layers. Aaron led the next pitch, and I led the last, bringing us to the summit right around 2:00.

We ate some food and took some pictures, then once again packed up our gear. The hike down was fairly long and steep, but followed a nice paved trail. It had been easy back in October when we climbed Prodigal Sun, but this time, with tons of gear on our backs, it seemed like it would never end. Since it was relatively early when we reached the car, we decided to head part of the way home before stopping for dinner. So, of course, we stopped in Vegas for a celebratory buffet at the Rio. It was a bit pricey, but it was a much nicer buffet than the others that I've been to in Vegas. I ate my weight in sushi, crab legs, and shrimp, then I hit the roast beef, and finished off the meal with a cannoli and some gelato.

Pitch 8
Me leading the last pitch On our way to Vegas, Aaron had talked to his parents and found out that there was supposed to be a really spectacular meteor shower which would peak at around midnight. So rather than camping somewhere near Las Vegas (the city with the worst light pollution on the planet) we drove an hour farther, bringing us into the heart of the Mojave desert. We found a place to camp, set out our sleeping bags without any tents, and watched shooting stars for an hour or so before drifting off to sleep. That was an excellent way to finish off the trip. The next morning, we woke up with the sun and drove the remaining few hours home.

The Climb

Saturday afternoon, we waded across the Virgin River with just enough time to climb and haul the first pitch before dark. Aaron carried the pig across the river on his back, with the portaledge in his arms. I carried the rack and my follower's pack, with all our slings and draws, on my shoulders, and carried both ropes in my arms. He definitely had the heavier and more awkward load, but crossing that river was no picnic for either of us. The Virgin River, named by the Mormons, lived up to a good Mormon reputation: she was frigid! After crossing the river, the hike up to the base of the route was fairly short and straightforward, but Aaron of course had a harder time of it, with all the extra weight on his back.

I led the first pitch, and freed all of it except for a single move of french free at the very end. The pro was a bit sparse and sketchy, but the climbing wasn't hard. At the top of the pitch, it took me a few minutes to set up to haul, since this was the first time I'd ever done it for real. But the transition from “big wall theory” to actual practice was smooth enough in this case, and I had things set up before long. We had borrowed both the haul line and the pulley (not to mention the portaledge and fly) from Aaron's friend Matt. The haul line was the nastiest looking rope I've ever seen, about 13mm in diameter and with all the handling qualities of twisted steel cable. The pulley was even scarier, an original Rock Exotica Wall Hauler. This thing had a strength rating of only 5 kN, and its integrated cam boasted an even more impressive breaking strength: 1 kN, or about 225 pounds. Drop a 100-pound haul bag just a few feet onto this thing, and it would be all over. I tried not to sneeze as I was hauling. Needless to say, I double and triple checked everything this first time, and weighted the haul line very gingerly once I had everything set up. Fortunately, since we would just be on the wall one night, the pig (a Fish Deluxe haul bag that I had recently purchased on eBay) wasn't too heavy. All in all, I found my first hauling experience to be far less unpleasant than I had feared.

As I hauled, Aaron jugged and cleaned. When he reached the large ledge at the top of the pitch, he helped me schlep the pig and the portaledge onto it, and we secured things for the night. We left everything we could on the ledge, including the entire rack. We then rappeled down the lead line, secured the bottom of it with a rock, and hiked back out. Crossing the river the second time was slightly easier because we didn't have so much weight on our backs, but it was now completely dark, which didn't help matters.

Back at camp, we ate a quick tortellini dinner, and went to bed early. Sunday morning, we awoke in darkness at around 5 AM, packed up camp, and drove to Big Bend. We crossed the frigid Virgin for the third and final time, hiked up to the base of our climb, then jumared up our fixed line to the top of the first pitch. As the first rays of sunlight began filling Zion Canyon, Aaron started up pitch 2. He aided most of it, but pulled a few free moves here and there. In particular, he pulled off a 5.10 move to avoid a tricky aid move at the right end of a roof near the beginning of the pitch. A minute later, I was jolted from my early-morning haze when he suddenly went from standing calmly on a cam to hanging from the end of the rope fifteen feet lower, about three feet above a ledge! I locked off on the rope, but my grigri had already arrested his fall.

“Are you alright?” I shouted.

“What the hell was that?” he asked in shock.

“Uhh, it looks like you fell,” I answered. Not meaning to sound sarcastic, I asked again, “Are you alright? What happened?”

“Yeah, I'm okay,” he replied, “I don't know what happened. I was just standing on a cam, and I guess it pulled out!”

This was scary. One second, he was standing on an orange TCU placed solidly in a splitter finger crack, and the next second, it slid right out, under body weight! Only in the soft sandstone of Zion....

Pitch 3
Me leading up a bolt ladder in my Russian aiders Fortunately, Aaron finished the rest of the pitch with no further trouble, though he was understandably shaken. When I was cleaning the pitch, I took a close look at the piece that had caught his fall. It was a blue alien (scary), and as aliens have no cam stops, two of its lobes had completely inverted (even scarier), and it had slid down an inch or two from its original placement (scarier still) until the metal collar at the base of its trigger wires had become wedged like a nut in a slight constriction (scary as hell)! To this day, reflecting on that sight sends a chill down my spine, because if that little alien hadn't held, Aaron would have hit the ledge below him, then probably fallen another ten feet or more below it. I still have a hard time imagining how that TCU pulled out under body weight, but ever since then I've had a slight fear (probably an irrational one) of trusting three-lobed cams.

I led the third pitch, mostly a bolt ladder that traversed far right to the infamous “rocker block”: a roughly cube-shaped block about the size of a small SUV. It was completely detached from the wall, but perched on a ledge. Apparently putting enough weight on the outside edge of it would cause it to rock outward, hence the name. While this was, to say the least, scary, the block had survived for years without falling off its ledge. But to protect against this possibility, someone years ago had secured the block to the wall with about a dozen bolts and several short sections of chain, placed on either side of it. Fortunately, Aaron and I never put enough weight on the outside of the block to see if the stories were true.

Aaron lowered out the pig with little difficulty, and I hauled the pitch fairly quickly, since it was relatively short. Because the pitch traversed so much, it took Aaron a while to follow it, so I had a few minutes to relax on the rocker block and enjoy the view. As I was admiring the beauty of Zion Canyon and the frigid Virgin, I spotted a large black bird gliding along the river. I watched as it soared smoothly along the river for a hundred yards or so, then pulled up with a single flap of its huge wings and landed on the branch of a tree that hung over the water. From my perch hundreds of feet above it, I could just make out its snow white head and tail feathers. It was a bald eagle. I've always been a bird lover, and I'm sure the memory of seeing this majestic creature will always remain with me as one of the most beautiful moments I've witnessed on a climb.

The Yellow Alien Pitch
Aaron leading up the beautiful dihedral of pitch 4 Of course, I also took a few moments to admire the beauty of the rock as well. The fourth pitch, the famous “yellow alien pitch”, was up next. Above me loomed a gorgeous dihedral, split in the middle by a perfect laser-cut finger crack. This was supposed to be the beginning of the really spectacular climbing on the route. Once Aaron had joined me on the rocker block, he got ready to lead up the awesome dihedral. The pitch lived up to its name, because after the first few moves, Aaron started using nothing but yellow aliens (and a few yellow TCU's, roughly the same size.) His progress was slow and steady, but the climbing was pure fun. It was also cool being able to see the whole pitch so clearly. I took several pictures, while Aaron kept yelling down about how awesome the crack was.

Cleaning and hauling the pitch was easy, though the hanging belay at the end made for cramped quarters as I got ready to lead pitch 5. I continued up the splitter finger crack, through a slightly strenuous overhanging section, and toward the right end of a huge roof above us. The overhanging part was a bit awkward, as I was wedged in a small flaring corner, but with my Russian aiders it wasn't too bad. Turning the right side of the roof wasn't hard either, but it put me in a tight chimney, which the topos had described with the statement, “Pass this pitch to your partner.” Aaron had, of course, done just that. He always gives me the wide crap. I struggled up the chimney, using some aid (with a #4 Camalot and a #3 Big Bro) and a little free climbing. After a few moves I reached a nice shiny bolt, at which point the going got much easier. Aaron was concerned about the lead line (which he would later be jugging) running across a sharp-looking edge, so I had him lower me from the bolt and I padded the edge with some duct tape. Once I got a closer look, I realized the edge wasn't really that sharp, so I don't think it would have been a threat. None of the edges at Zion are sharp after a few ropes have run across them, because the rock is so soft.

Pitch 5
Me leading up the initial part of pitch 5 Upon exiting the chimney, I found myself staring up at a perfectly vertical headwall, flat and smooth as a glass tabletop, with a laser-cut half-inch crack running straight up it for as far as I could see. The rock was immense and beautiful, the crack was amazingly perfect, and simply being there in the middle of that otherwise featureless sea of sandstone was awe-inspiring. This crack was what had earned the pitch its nickname: “the orange TCU pitch.” Though less famous than the yellow alien pitch, and deservedly so because of the initial flare and chimney, the rest of the pitch, and the entire length of the next one, were certainly my favorite parts of the climb. I cruised up the crack using mostly grey and red aliens, leaving an occasional nut for protection. At the end of the pitch, I reached a large, slightly sloping ledge, our destination for the day.

When Aaron reached the ledge, it was already getting late, so we set up the portaledge, organized our gear, and got out our sleeping bags. We made sure everything was tied in somehow, right down to our sleeping bag stuff sacks, then we enjoyed a nice dinner of MRE's. By the time we had eaten, it was already dark, and it started getting cold quickly. Though it was early in the evening, our only way to keep warm was to get in our sleeping bags, and there was really nothing else to do anyway now that it was dark. So we carefully crawled into our places on the portaledge and zipped up our sleeping bags, and at about 7:30, we went to bed. Since he had spent one night in a portaledge before, Aaron took the outside spot, which he said was a little scarier than the inside. It was cramped quarters, so every time either of us moved, we both woke up. But since we had nearly twelve hours before sunrise, we got enough sleep. I wasn't completely comfortable, because Aaron's body was pressing against me, and his knees in particular were digging into my back. In retrospect, I've realized this was because the ledge was tilted slightly, with the outside edge just a little higher than the inside. The outside straps needed to be lengthened, or the inside ones shortened. Adjusting a portaledge so that it's just perfect takes practice. Live and learn.

Aaron and I
At the top of pitch 7 Monday morning we awoke just before the sun, ate some breakfast, and geared up to finish the climb. If we linked the next two pitches as planned, we'd have just three pitches left. I started up pitch 6 as soon as there was enough light, and was easily able to link it with the next. These pitches followed the same splitter crack I described earlier for nearly a whole ropelength, though the size varied a bit more than on the previous pitch, and the wall actually had a few other features now. Nevertheless, following such a continuous splitter crack for so long made it a stellar lead. Aaron led the next pitch, which was more of the same. I took the final lead, the “big nut pitch”, which continued up the same crack through a small overlap, then finished on a 5.6 slab. After aid climbing for two days, and having tons of gear and slings hanging all over me, 5.6 friction never felt so sketchy.

Moonlight Buttress has one of those rare and awesome finishes where the rock goes from nearly vertical to horizontal almost instantly, so there is a distinct rim to the cliff. When I reached the rim, I anchored the lead line to a pine tree, and found that previous parties had left a fixed line in place to facilitate hauling from over the rim. It took a few minutes, but I was able to set up my hauling pulley over the rim, and soon I started hauling. It was a bit tricky, but Aaron helped as he jugged up by nudging the pig along when it got stuck. By 2:00, both of us and all our gear were at the summit. We ate lunch, then organized gear for the hike down. Aaron insisted on carrying the pig, but we lightened it significantly by emptying most of our remaining water bottles. We lashed the portaledge to the top of the pig with my adjustable daisies, making it a very awkward load to carry, but Aaron managed. I carried the rack and ropes. Fortunately the descent followed a nice paved trail, albeit a steep one, for most of the way. We had hiked down the same trail, the famous Angel's Landing Trail, after climbing Prodigal Sun a few months earlier. We made it down in fairly good time, with a few brief rests along the way and a much needed pit-stop for me near the beginning. (Though we had brought along the “pipe bomb” that Aaron had taken on his first attempt of The Nose, we'd managed to get through the two days of climbing without needing it. Thus after two overnight climbs, it still hadn't been broken in. In fact, it would never see a single use, because before we climbed El Cap eight months later, we found a better way to deal with such privy matters.)

Collapsed
Check out that massive pile of gear! When we reached the Angel's Landing parking area, Aaron carefully sat down and shed his massive burden. I compulsively started stripping off my gear, beginning with the ropes and rack, then moving on to my harness, helmet, and everything else clipped to me. Aaron did the same, and as we removed everything we piled it all onto a large flat rock. When we were done, we marveled at the size of the pile we'd created. I felt so light not having all that stuff on me, for the first time in two days. We collapsed for a few minutes, while thinking over our next move. My truck was still parked at Big Bend, so one of us would have to stay with the gear while the other hiked or hitched a ride a mile up the road. Fortunately, a few cars passed in just a few minutes, and one of them actually offered us a ride. We decided that, of the two of us, Aaron probably stunk the least, so I gave him my keys, and he took off. In just a few minutes, he returned with the Jimmy, and we loaded it up. Since it was still early, and our one previous experience with dining in Springdale was pitiful, we decided to head to Vegas for a real meal. We drove out of Zion toward the setting sun, a fitting exit from such a beautiful place.