Saturday 3^rd

I can remember waking up feeling pretty damn tired. Fortunately the rest of the motley crew were just as whacked. Except John. It took a lot of pressure to force him to go slow and let us have breakfast and relax for just a little while. Yesterday had been a bit of a shock for all of us. We moped around Gary's place for a while, slowly getting all our stuff together. We went out into his garden and checked out all the deadly desert flora he had on display. It was going to be another fantastic day. Eventually John had us all (me, Leon, Andrei, James and himself) shoehorned into the van with all of our crap. We drove into town and visited the Summit Hut (something John insisted on calling the Smut Hut) to make a few purchases. I got a replacement bag for the one I sliced open the previous morning, as well as a couple of cool looking T-shirts and some propane for my little primus stove. The others all purchased various bits and pieces. We hit a nearby Walmart for water and film too. Finally John got us back in the van and we drove through tons of traffic and then north east of town. We were going up Mt Lemmon.

Along the way we stopped to stare at the thousands of saguaros that grew in wild profusion on the lower slopes. John also pointed out some sort of jumping cactus which was truly evil, the sort of thing with barbed spines and a short fuse. I forget what it was called. He also told stories of how shin-dagger cacti behaved when on fire, how they would break loose from their roots and roll flaming down the hillsides. He also explained how the big saguaros survived the fires that infrequently razed the area. I was left with the feeling that this part of the country is infinitely hostile and that the inhabitants must be a little crazy to live here.

When we got to a little over 6000 feet we had reached a place called Windy Point. This place was covered in climbable pillars and walls of rock. Not huge stuff, but lots and lots of it. John, having lived in Tucson for a number of years during the 80s, was very familiar with the area and pointed out all of the cool routes for us. We parked at a big pull-out and caught up with Mike Soo again. Mike was with a couple of friends of his and they were also going to climb in the same area.

After sorting out our gear John made an unfortunate comment about the size of his wired nuts and the fact that he didn’t bring any camming devices. Which translates to the following phrase we started to chant over and over …

John has small nuts and no Friends. John has small nuts and no Friends.

For those who don’t understand … Friends are a brand of active camming device.

James had been making sounds about maybe wanting to try a lead. John, having shrugged off our mirthful humour with his usual “bite me”, suggested that maybe he would like to try a climb called Hunchback (5.7). I said that I would climb with James while Andrei and Leon went with John to attack a route called R1 (5.8+). John walked James to the top of the trail above the little pillar on which Hunchback was found and gave him a fair amount of advice and beta. I sauntered along behind and let them sort it out between themselves. John said goodbye and good luck and then disappeared with the others to find their climb. James and I headed down to this pillar and had a look.

We had a little trouble finding the route, but once we did we had a bit of a serious talk. This would be James' first lead. It's not an easy climb, but there are a couple of bolts, so that would make protecting it easier. However the start looked a little dicey. On the other hand Mike Soo had mentioned something about using a hex in the lower crack to protect the opening moves. Hmmm. The rating was 5.7 too, a bit stiff for someone's first lead if you ask me. James and I discussed it for a while, I was a little bit worried for him and perhaps communicated this a little too much. Anyway we decided on the following approach. I would lead it first and then he would climb it on top-rope. After this he would decide if he wanted to lead it himself, I would leave all gear that I placed for him to merely clip into on his lead. With that agreed on we started up. I placed lots of gear, pretty much sowing up the lower crack all the way to the first bolt. After that I couldn't find anything until the second bolt and then nothing after that during a bit of a run-out to the top. It was definitely a 5.7 climb too. Hmmm. Let's see how James feels about it.

Well, he came up and didn't have much technical difficulty. But he was definitely gripped. This aspect was pretty odd. James had climbed hundreds of feet with Leon and I the day before and this one was really short, less than sixty feet, so the height couldn't have really bothered him. The difficulty wasn't particularly great either. At the time it was a bit of a mystery to us both … later we decided that he had been putting the climb in the context of a lead. In any case he declined doing the lead, so I lowered him to clean all of the gear and then rapped off the top.

I was going to try another climb just to the right which looked tough but doable. Fortunately I was rescued from what turned out to be a fairly heinious 5.10+ route. John turned up looking for us and saying that it was time we moved on. We packed up our rope and gear and followed him back to the car.

Back at the car there was no one to be seen, they were all nearby playing on a cool looking pillar of stone called Hitchcock (5.7). This was one of John's favorite routes in the area, the one he always had time to do. We all had a go at this. John, Leon and I leading it and James and Andrei knocking it off on top-rope. At 2pm we have finished with it and John decides that we might have time to do something big. He makes a suggestion. "Let's go to Rappel rock just below the summit of Mt Lemmon and climb the whole thing."

Fine, sure, what the hell, let's do it. The fun we had on Hitchcock had obviously scrambled our senses. John was talking about a 5 pitch climb with five people on three ropes and one rack, not to be started until well after mid-afternoon. He promised that we would be walking out in darkness. As long as there was a trail we didn't care. We blasted off from Windy Point and headed for the top, John driving like a drunken maniac as he endevoured to point out every item of climber-related interest (there were a LOT).

The summit of Mt Lemmon is a shade over 9100 feet, the top of Rap rock is just a few hundred feet below that. We parked near the observatory with a bunch of other cars (there are lots of hiking trails in the area) and lugged our sorry butts down and around to the base of Rap rock. At 3.45pm ropes and racks were sorted and John announced the precise strategy.

There were two separate routes right at the bottom and we would be using both of them for the first pitch. One was called Bender-Axen (5.8+) which had a really tricky friction start (a move rated at 5.9 itself, but not counting towards the overall rating of the route because it's practically at ground level) and a hard friction route called Ciboni (5.10a). Andrei was mucking about trying to do the first moves on Bender-Axel, it looked pretty hard. I had a crack at it in my brand new shoes and surprised myself a little by succeeding on the first go. Leon and I tossed for the lead on Bender-Axen, he won. So John had me set up to belay his lead on Ciboni while James and Andrei prepared to follow Leon.

John asked me to spot him for the first really hard moves of the route. Ha! Very funny. John is a big guy and I could see myself getting squashed flat if he fell on me. Nevertheless he started up. After two or three moves he lost purchase and slide back down, forcing me to dance nimbly to one side as he crashed to earth. We were pretty rattled by this, Johns sticky rubber shoes weren't so sticky. So I offered to have a go at it.

Up until now the hardest two climbs I've lead have been one 5.8 over a year ago and a single 5.9- two weeks ago. I really didn't give myself much of a chance. But my shoes were new and I was feeling pretty good after acing the start of Bender-Axen. John said sure, why not. I stepped up and immediately slid back down. John gave me some encouragement and told me not to worry too much about the starting moves … they were the hardest of the route. So I tried again and managed to get things rolling. I reached the pin which was under a low fold that I would have to step up and over. After that I had to move up to the first of three bolts. Following John's hints I placed my feet in shallow dishes and my fingers hauled on small ripples and somehow I was making it up. I got passed the first bolt and almost made it to the second when a foot slipped and I was dropping back down.

Below me John yarded on the rope for all he was worth, hauling back about 7 feet before he made the catch on his left hand. It was a good catch too, no ATC involvement (that would have come into play had he not been able to keep his grip), but I was thundering under the onslaught of a sudden rush of adrenaline and really couldn't appreciate John's skill. I tried again and made the bolt, I kept moving up and got to the third. After that the angle lessened enough (John said the top half of the climb was about 5.8) that I could relax a bit. Indeed I stopped and rested at the third bolt to see how Leon was managing with Bender-Axen.

I finished the easy top part of Ciboni, but I was unable to run it out … stopping to place one small nut in a handy little crack halfway between the last bolt and the top. I got to the big tree at the top of the route and slung it for an anchor. The climb had been hard but it had gone pretty fast, I wasn’t even disturbed by the fall … but that’s just the trust that I place in bolts. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too trusting though, they DO occasionally (rarely) come loose and rip out. Although on a popular rock like this one there are usually locals who keep an eye on them, replacing them when needed. The bolts you really should worry about are the ones you find in rarely visited locales, they’re usually the rusty old quarter inch ones that look about as secure as a cardboard bank.

Anyway I take up the slack and hear James say “That’s me.” John had asked him if he wanted to try the route and he jumped at the chance. So I started to belay James who, apart from a fall right at the start, surprised himself by finding the friction pretty good. As James moved up towards me Leon finished Bender-Axen and set up his belay from my tree. His thumb was a bloody mess as he had cut it deeply somewhere early in the climb. James reached the belay and after congratulating him for successfully doing a 10a we sent him around back of the tree. I put John on belay and waited for him to start. It took a little time because he was watching Andrei struggle with those hard friction starting moves on Bender-Axen. Eventually they were both on their way. John weighted the rope a couple of times, his shoes must have lost a lot of their stick, but he still got up to the tree. Andrei got up there at about the same time.

We follow the Regular Route (5.7) above Ciboni, as Andrei puts him on belay John starts the lead and tells me to follow European style (i.e. clip my rope into his gear, we only had one rack). Leon belayed for me and I started up just a few metres behind John. At some point I had to stop and lower a nut tool, as none of the guys down there had one on them. Apart from a tricky traverse to the right the pitch is pretty mild and easily protected. Struggling around the remains of a tree I reach John and clip into his anchor (which is just a big loop of rope around a large stone). John is already bringing up James and I start to belay for Leon. As soon as James reaches the belay John has a crazy idea.

“James,” he said, “why don’t you lead the next pitch?”

James agreed pretty fast and I got all nervous for the big ugly blighter. What if he’s not ready? What if he falls? Does he know how to protect? Will he be able to set a good belay anchor? It looks like chickenheads up there and not a lot else. If he gets killed will it be my fault? I worried myself sick about him. If James detected any of this he didn’t let it change his mind, and he shimmied up the wall like a rat out of an aqueduct.

“Don’t worry it’s only 5.2.” Said John. But I was pretty concerned anyway. James climbed about 25 feet before slinging a chicken head and moving on out of sight. As soon as Leon reached us I gave him what gear I could and sent him up on lead with instructions to “look after James a bit”. After we thought James had set himself some sort of anchor, John started to belay up for Andrei.

But James was just fine, he set himself a nice little anchor on chickenheads and then belayed for me to follow. Andrei came up just before I took off. Leon called down about how much rope was left and John said “lots” (there was none) and just started climbing up after him. Lunatic. Leon eventually climbed up about 65-70 metres on a 60 metre rope.

I reached James and congratulated him on his lead and what appeared to be a sensible use of protection, we swapped and I started running up past him on my fifth lead for the day. I shortly passed Leon and told him that I was “going for the top”. The pitch was very easy, rated at 5.2, and I ran it out about 60 feet before putting in a piece in a crack below a low fold. Stepping over that I just went as high as I could, following a low angle chickenheaded slab, before deciding to use a very nice horizontal crack for a belay. I was only 30 feet from the finish, but didn’t think I had enough rope to make it.

It was starting to get dark and looking south I could see the lights of Tucson spread out like strands of copper across the desert floor 7000 feet below. It was a fantastic view.

John raced up by me and reached a pocket scant feet below the top, there he rapidly simul-belayed for both Leon and Andrei. I brought up James just before and sent him up the last bit almost immediately in the last light of day. Andrei stopped beside me for a bit and we both admired the view. It had been an incredibly fun climb. Soon we both had scrambled up to John and then over the top. We had done it, it was a great climb and had a low anxiety pitch to finish. Bloody marvelous.

Of course it was dark now. Not really really dark though. We could see enough to scramble down the back of the summit, find our packs and then hike the trail back to the car. On the way John was talking about having lost his javalina somewhere around Windy Point.

A javelina (pronounced something like havelina) is a type of peccary native to the Sonoran desert. It’s not really a pig (although they share a common ancestor with pigs), but lots of people call them pigs anyway. John had bought a stuffed toy javelina from the Summit Hut that morning. But he had lost it somewhere around Windy Point.

John wanted to stop and go look for it. We didn’t give him much chance of finding it though. John parked near the trail to R1 and headed down into the darkness with Leon’s headlamp. He returned empty-handed. Lost pig. Feral pig. Windy Point climbers had better watch out for a small, fuzzy, inert work of chinese stitching, lest it rip their limbs off and beat them with the soggy ends.

Conversation soon turned to food. We were hungry. Somehow Hooters was suggested. Andrei had no clue about Hooters, or at least about the point of it. So we enjoyed some hilarity in promising ourselves a night at Hooters, even John was actively promoting it (safe in the knowledge that there was no such establishment in Tucson). So when we headed into town and happened to pass a sign for Hooters we all yelled at John to make good on his earlier agreement. But the big bloke went bright red and hightailed it away to somewhere, anywhere else. We got him to stop at a Mexican joint on Speedway. Then a weird thing happened.

John got this glazed look in his eyes, said “er … I’ll see you guys later.” and ran away! We figured he didn’t like Mexican food … Andrei later explained that Mexicans aren’t known for their burger construction, which was John’s sustenance of choice. So we shrugged, went inside and stuffed ourselves silly on enchiladas and fajitas with beer. Some time afterwards John returned and we left.

We drove back down to the Cochise Stronghold (west) and at midnight set up camp somewhere near the Isle of Ewe. The wind was blowing pretty fiercely so it was a battle to get the tents up and inside before they blew away. Aparantly Andrei and John slept like the dead, but the rest of us were unable to achieve much more than an hour or two of restless dozing. Too bloody windy.