Goat Wall, Mazama WA
Last september, Billy Ray and I cruised over WA SR20 in the cherry tomato. We arrived in Mazama, more of a region than a town, after dark and set up our tents in a some trees next to a field. After a little beer drinking and a quick session on the small boulders by the camp site, we turned in to prepare ourselves for the next day's battle. As we drifted off, visions of our quest quest swam in my brain. Goat wall, almost a thousand feet of low-angle to vertical granite loomed above us in the starlight, still unseen. The route we planned on following the next day, Prime Rib (5.9, 11p) was the longest I'd ever attempted, and one of the longest sport climbs in the Cascades. What was the rock like? Did I have the endurance to climb 11 pitches, even on relatively moderate terrain? What were our options for the rappel? Would I freak at the exposure? How would my partner react? Alone in my tent, camped in a place I hadn't seen by daylight, on the rugged, dry, unwelcoming eastern slope of the range, I felt my confidence wain.
But inertia was with us. I woke up still a little jittery, but with fires fully stoked. Oatmeal and single-cup drip coffee, and we were ready to go. We had to fuck around with some gear, and mash uphill for an hour to get to the granite buttress, and didn't end up getting on the route until 11 AM or so. Bad form, and we'd pay for it later. Prime Rib is an 11 pitch sport climb. For you non-climbers, this means that someone has to climb up part of a rope-length, establish a belay anchor, hopefully on a ledge, and belay up his partner to the ledge, bringing up the rope. We did this 11 times to climb this route.
Here Billy is clipping a bolt. The protection on this climb consisted completely of pre-placed metal rings drilled into the rock using expansion bolts designed for attaching things to concrete. At each bolt, the leader clips a 'quickdraw', or 2 carabiners connected with a short loop of webbing. You can see how this works in the bottom left of the above photo. Then, the climber clips the rope through the other 'biner on the quickdraw, protecting himself from falling. As Billy is doing here, you keep doing this as you climb up to limit your fall potential. Since the protection on the climb consisted only of these pre-drilled bolts, it is called a 'sport' climb to distinguish it from traditional climbing in which climbers place and remove their own protective gear as they climb, leaving the rock unscarred. Traditional climbing is more cerebral, more elegant, more adventurous, more scary, much much more expensive.
I won't spray about the trials and tribulations of each pitch. All had well spaced bolts, and fun exposure. Belay ledges were comfy and large for the most part. The final pitch was a real treat, the most challenging of the climb. A couple of moves around a short overhang with a huge chasm to the left were the some of the most psychologically difficult I've ever done, given my exhaustion, the exposure, the waning light and the closeness of our goal. An exciting climax to the climb. We topped out to views of the Eastern North Cascades silhouetted by a westerly sun.
We didn't have long at the top. Losing light, we began rappelling like mad to descend the route. On our 6th rappel, we were in total darkness. Tossing the rope down where I hoped we had climbed up, I kicked off the wall and down in search of the next bolted rappel station. I swung down past a large overhang, my feet scraping lichen off the underside. Approaching the end of the rope, I considered my situation. I couldn't climb up past the overhang, and the fact that the lichen hadn't been worn off by previous climbers meant that we were off route and possibly totally fucked. I made out a ledge to the left, and managed to reach it by running along the wall, swinging myself like a pendulum. I didn't recognize the ledge, and wasn't sure what to do or where to go. I yelled to Billy, "hey, i think we're off route...hang on a sec while I check this ledge out". The night wind, laughing, threw my words down the methow valley. "What?" came a yell from above.
"Wait! Don't rappel!"
"WHAT?"
"DO NOT RAPPEL! I THINK I'M OFF ROUTE!"
"WHAT?!"
"DO NOT RAP DOWN!!"
"OK, RAPPELLING!"
ah fuck. here he came. At least he had the backpack, and inside it a headlamp. After a little scramble-exploring of our ledge system, we realized we had just ended up about 50 yards right of the next set of anchors. We were back on the route and totally fine, thanks to that headlamp. The next 4 rappels we did were in total darkness. I've never been so happy to be off of a climb. Lessons learned: bring a headlamp. Get on the route early. Think about the season and the amount of daylight available.
All in all an awesome trip. Goat Wall has a bunch of other cool multipitch sport lines on it, most more challenging than the route we did. I hope to return there someday and lay them to waste in a brutal multi-day siege of bolt clipping and finger destruction.
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