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After lunch, we headed down toward the
south end of Cathedral Ledge to work on another route. This time, he
picked Bombardment, which begins on the same route as Funhouse. The
climbing here was quite a bit different than Thin Air. There were
also a few scattered trees on this climb, some of which made really
good anchors. George tied onto one of them at the top of the first
pitch to belay me, and then I tied onto it to anchor myself as I
belayed him on the next pitch.
Not far above the start of the second pitch, there was
some slab climbing, which he wanted me to try. I found it fairly
easy as I'd scrambled up similar slopes before. The rock climbing
shoes also helped, providing a lot more traction than my hiking
boots. He said that Whitehorse Ledge had a lot of slab climbing, and
that he brought me to Cathedral Ledge so I could get a better mix of
climbing types.
The crux of the second pitch was a
slight overhanging boulder which I couldn't quite get the hang
of climbing over. After a few failed attempts, I climbed
around it to the left, which was off route, and as George explained,
not quite as safe because if I fell, I would tend to swing back to
the right before he could stop my fall.
The third pitch didn't go as well. We
were close to the top, where there was a wide treed ledge or plateau
that we could have followed like a ramp up to the summit, and then
walked down the cliffs on a trail. Unfortunately, seepage made the
rocks just below the top rather damp and slippery, and George
couldn't find a safe way up them (although I'm sure he would have
done fine if he didn't have a person with much less experience to
think of below him).
He rappelled back down to me, then after
covering rappelling a bit more, he continued down to the bottom of
the second pitch, and belayed me from below as I rappelled down
after him. We repeated these steps to rappel back down to the
ground.
It was now mid afternoon, and he thought
we had done enough for the day, although he did cover rope coiling
some more before we went down to his car. |
