TRIP REPORT: Davis Holland --> Lovin' Arms
Eric Hirst
Time for another tale of woe and intrigue. This will be the third time
I've posted a trip report, and, as usual, it describes two hapless souls
getting their butts kicked. For any of you who are beginning to wonder,
I actually do have a lot of great climbing days where everything goes
smoothly for pitch after pitch. It's just that these aren't as much fun
to write about.
May 16, 1993: Davis-Holland --> Lovin' Arms, Upper Town Wall, Index, WA
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The easiest line up Index's Upper Wall has been on my wish list for some
time, and on Susan's since she moved to Seattle last fall. Clint's guide
says 10c A0, but my-oh-my Index is hard. Six honest pitches of granite,
nothing easier than 5.9, and you can just about spit down the entire route.
Solid fixed anchors at each belay, but only two protection bolts on the climb.
Susan and I both try to delude ourselves into thinking we can climb 5.11,
but it's all just a pack of lies designed to get us onto the really cool
routes. The flaw is that it doesn't always keep us on them.
I started my day with the usual coffee and discount oat rings (not the brand
that gave me so much trouble on Dreamer last spring -- those in search of
droll scatological witticisms can stop reading now). The phone rang at
7:30, a gentle reminder from Susan to get my tushy out of bed if I hadn't
already. We left Seattle at 8:00 and reached a nearly empty Index parking
lot a little after 9:00. Weird. It was the first really nice weekend in
over a month, and the new guidebook was just out, but the usually teeming
area was nearly deserted, except for the usual line on Godzilla. I dunno,
maybe everybody checked the forecast and went to Squamish. Or maybe they
all realized that Index is indeed too damm hard and went to Leavenworth.
We tromped up the fine new trail to the Upper Town Wall. The cobwebs clearly
indicated that we were the first ones there that morning. Susan, who thinks
spiders are cute, walked behind me and just couldn't seem to understand what
I was moaning about. We reached the base and I began trimming down Susan's
Rack From Hell while we squirmed and looked up. It was a beautiful sunny
day, and we dressed accordingly. I also wore a stylish Ace bandage around
my left knee, to commemorate a dumb move I had made at the UW climbing rock
the day before.
We had agreed to swap leads, with me on the odd pitches and Susan on the even.
This way, I would get a nice 5.9 warmup crack, follow Susan's lovely 5.10a
undulating dihedral pitch, and then lead the disturbingly thin 5.10c third
pitch to the top of Davis-Holland. From there, Susan would have the privilege
of leading the dirty, wet, greasy, and just plain vile 5.10a/b first pitch of
Lovin' Arms, then follow my brilliant lead through the thin, steep 5.10c A0
crux face pitch, and finally blast up the final overhanging runout 5.9
chickenhead jugfest to the lip of the wall. That was the basic idea.
I chugged Gatorade for confidence and started up the first crack. Nice jams,
nice pro (including a fixed tcu which appears to have been there all winter),
and a good chance to get my head together. Susan followed cleanly, stopping
for a few minutes to make a halfhearted attempt at the booty cam before
declaring it unworthy. As I handed over the gear, I had her stand in a
position where she could not see her impending dihedral o' doom. Susan is in
fact a world famous slab climber, whose exploits in New Mexico's Organ Mountains
have been featured in America's Number 1 Climbing Magazine, but she still
gets a tad alarmed by them steep cracks. (I can't imagine why.)
She led the layback/stem/jam/puff/grunt sequence in impeccable style, in spite
of all the unsightly tape on her hands. OK, she hung like a sow for a few
minutes before attempting the crux, but the guidebook did say A0. I followed
sloppily on jams that just didn't feel right, not even slowing down for
the second possible piece of booty, another mangled tcu that just looked like
doodoo. A beautiful crack, but I may have been too busy pondering my next
labor to savor it properly.
I reached the belay and looked up. Uh-oh. It was the don't-fall-unless-your
belayer-is-big-and-squishy roof that I had been warned about. I did the
composure thing as I racked, and stepped up to the roof. I wasn't sure if
this was the 10c bit or not, but, as Susan is small-and-perky, a fall would
not have been appropriate. I was on Susan's double 9's, so I put some gear
to my left on one rope and climbed up and right on unprotected ground with
the other. The moves turned out not to be harder than about 5.8 or 5.9, and
I reached a stance and protection without mishap. After a very ungraceful
but reasonably well protected body fall traverse onto a good ledge, I was
back on comfortable ground, and climbed easily up to a shady pocket below what
would clearly be the crux dihedral. I calmed myself with the soothing sound
of gunfire from the nearby shooting range and summoned the gumption I would
need to make what would be very committing moves on uninspiring pro.
I popped in a nice big Camalot in the roof of my little cave and stepped out
into the sunshine. A couple weird moves and I was stemming widely on my last
good footholds for the next fifteen feet. I put in a blind brass nut in the
corner and yarded off a pin scar to establish myself firmly in the steep
thin dihedral. I looked at the nut, saw that it was worthless, and
moved it up to a better spot a few feet higher. I have a few tiny brass
pieces on my own rack, but I don't think I've ever used them. Susan's looked
like a fine piece of brass, however, so I set it hard, clipped on a screamer,
and cranked with my left fingers as I maneuvered my right foot toward a
small pocket on the right face. Yow. One long reach from there, and a bucket.
I threw a sling around a horn above the overhanging left face, and pulled on
incut pockets to easier ground. Certainly the most intense 10c territory I
had ever led through.
Expecting full well that Susan would hang like a pig and worship me like a
god as she followed the pitch, I got comfy for the next belay. Right on
schedule, there was a long pause followed by a sudden jerk on the rope, but
she regrouped and eventually came charging up, her grunting all but drowning
out the gunfire in the distance. Unfortunately, instead of worshiping me
like a god at that point, she just looked pissed, and snarled a lot. The
crux is height dependent, and I have a good 10 inches more reach than Susan.
(I know this teenager who had to do more moves on it the first time he led
it, because he was shorter then than he is now and wasn't able to reach the
jug yet. Feh.)
Susan had the next lead, the first pitch of Lovin' Arms, 5.10 dirt and moss.
It's pretty surprising how much crap was on this pitch, since the climb does
get a fair amount of traffic. We may have been some of the first ones up it
this spring, though, or off route or something. Susan french-freed rude wet
cracks to a fun chimney, using lots of clever double rope tricks to work her
way up. She moved slowly, gardening as she went, but my ledge was comfortable,
and those guns banging away sure were cool. I followed free, very happy not to
be leading as I greased all over everything. I actually got some good jams in
the portions of the cracks that had running water -- maybe it washed my hands
off a bit.
The next pitch was to be my last and possibly orneriest lead, although Susan
had already hinted that she might prove to be chicken of the sea of chicken-
heads on the final runout 5.9 pitch. The idea was to step out of the big
belay chimney and reach high for a sling on a rawl bolt, then yard off
of this up to exposed face climbing with not quite enough deep jugs. Fully
stretched, I reached the slings, and yarded. I clipped a screamer into the
bolt, covered my hands with White Courage, and stepped and reached high to
a horizontal crack. It was a deep jug, but my feet started slopping. Susan
told me to get it together, and I did. I stuffed in a small Camalot, and
reached left to the next jugs. Rats -- they were full of sand. I reestab-
lished and brushed out some of the crud with my hand. I tried again, this
time a long stretch for avoid having to match or cross over, and slipped off,
self-arresting on my first jug to avoid the fall. I went for it again, and
made it. The next move would be more tenuous, moving on slopers to another
far-off jug. I worked my feet and body high and stretched for the hold. My
fingertips just barely touched it. Tiptoes . . .
"CORNDOG!" I screamed as I whipped ten or fifteen feet down the face. (I
think that's what I said, but it could actually have rhymed with "duck.")
Susan's screamer lost a few stitches, (it was on the bolt, acting as a
directional at that point) and my left knee acquired an excellent boo-boo.
I was pretty disgruntled at this point, and suddenly ready to bail. The
earlier hard lead had sapped my commitment quite a bit, and I now had a
lovely road rash on my left knee, right on the part I hadn't covered with
the Ace bandage earlier. The net effect was really cool -- two superficial
unrelated injuries which, when combined, looked totally gnarly.
I climbed back up to the top piece, and pondered. Actually, I didn't really
ponder, I just rationalized and tried to think of clever things to say to Susan
to make her think I was doing the noble thing. I talked with Susan a bit to
make it seem like a mutual decision, but there was no way in hell either of us
wanted that pitch, so I basically just rambled for a while and then started
cleaning the gear and downclimbing to the bolt. I don't like falling much,
and few things discombobulate me more than taking multiple falls on real gear.
Also, I was subconsciously anxious to find people to gross out with my knee.
I put a junk biner on the bolt, clipped one rope through it, and had Susan
lower me on the doubles to the bottom of the previous pitch. She rapped
down to join me, and it was two straightforward 45m+ vertical rappels to
the base.
I went down first to the intermediate chains (new anchors for the various 5.12
sport routes below), and Susan followed. I offered her first ride from there
to the ground, but her Stitch plate was pretty warm and she wanted to wait a
bit. We were in the shade now, but these were long steep raps. I proceeded
down on my trusty Tuber, expecting an easy ride to the ground.
Well, one of the ropes was hung up in a tree, but there was enough on the
ground that it would be easy to make it down and worry about that that later.
Or so I thought. Instead, I found myself dealing with increasingly evil
rope twisting and jamming as I dropped through the last few feet of 4th class
terrain. When I reached the ground, the rope in the tree was hooked under
my rack and chalk bag, and jamming hard in the hot tuber. I struggled to
keep it moving so I would not overheat the nylon. No such luck -- I could
smell something burning! I cursed and struggled to untangle the rack and
get the rope through, but by the time I threw it and the chalk bag on the
ground, the jammed section of rope had been in the hot spot for a good twenty
seconds. Susan must have thought I was getting attacked by bees.
I freed the ropes, and noted the large blackened spot on one, and smaller
burn mark on the other. I was more pissed than that guy who bought junk
instead of Fish Gear. Susan came down and was very relaxed about it, since
she was planning to retire the ropes this summer anyway. We marked the burn
spots with tape and pulled the ropes. Financial reparations are still pending,
but I may get off the hook because she makes gobs more money than I do.
Still, I feel that I was somehow naughty.
[For those now freaked out about rapping on Tubers, I add the details: Double
9's, long steep rap, two fat locking biners, large round Tuber, fat end out,
deciduous tree, possibly a juvenile alder.]
We finished the day by drinking beer in the last sun by the river and parading
my gory looking knee around the Index General Store parking lot. We decided
that while we would have had the fun of ten guys had we finished the route, we
had the fun of at least five or six either way. Besides, the fearful memories
are already fading, so I imagine we'll be squirming in our britches at the base
again in another week or two.
Finally, I know an excellent palindrome which combines big-wall themes with
Susan's first and last names, but I refuse to post it here. Also, she refers
to Davis-Holland as the "Harley-Davidson" route.
Eric Hirst
er...@u.washington.edu