Let's continue the last post's theme: Los Angeles is kickass. See the Wikipedia article if you don't believe me to convince yourself that everything about our city is ridiculously awesome--beaches, diversity, universities, culture, geography conducive to sports, yadda yadda; I'm outsourcing this job because this blag is about climbing, not watching Carmen at the Dorothy Chandler (which is nevertheless recommended). My new motivation for calling this city awesome is that we have bona fide ice climbing!
Now bear with me through some historical gabble. Tahquitz Rock in the San Jacinto mountains of Southern California was the cradle of rock climbing in the United States. Many of the great climbers of Yosemite cut their teeth here, including John Long and Lynn Hill, and indeed one of the first 5.9s in the world was established here as the Open Book. The Yosemite decimal system was actually developed at Tahquitz by a local group including Caltech scientist Charles Wilts. Under certain, somewhat rare conditions, this 800 ft granite monolith transforms into a sheet of ice, and some truly fantastic multipitch, alpine-feeling ice climbing is to be had. Alois from SummitPost lives in Idyllwild by Tahquitz--Alois, if you read this and get freaked out that I know these things, I'm just going on your SummitPost profile, man--and also notes that Tahquitz ices up once per several years. The Trough may be in more frequently and is awesome in winter, but the Northeast Face is where the real ice is, and it doesn't form often.
However, thanks to El Niño and a trip report from Kia Ravanfar, we realized the time was nigh for ice! Alex Falk, Pratyush Tiwary and I headed out there on February 7 to see what was to be found:
To say we were thrilled and absolutely giddy is an understatement! This isn't just a consolation prize piddly climb we get animated about because it's rare and two hours from home; the scenery is perhaps not world-class, but the quality and style of climbing is comparable to moderate, technical routes in the Alps, and the scenery is charming to boot. I particularly like this picture snapped by Alex:
The route we did is called Northeast Face West and goes at sustained 5.6 in the summer for 4-7 pitches, depending on rope length. Based on three trips there last month, the route includes anything from impossibly steep snow to neve to water ice to bare rock; basically, it's varied and alpine and awesome. The first pitch usually has such perfect neve that my partners and I have felt comfortable soloing it. That and the next two pitches are along a prominent, right-facing dihedral which averages around 65 degrees with a few significantly steeper steps. Alois says this part is 80 or 85 degrees, but I disagree unless he means the short steps; I measured the angle of the bottom of the first pitch with the Gimp measure tool, and it came out to 63 degrees when rotated so trees were vertical. The fourth pitch is the real magic of this climb; if it's in, the overhangs which protect the exit fill in with beautiful water ice which goes at WI3.
The protection is sparse because if the ice exists, it's probably not thick enough for screws, but pitons, hexes, nuts, and sometimes cams will go in at the right place. On my first trip with Alex and Pratyush, I ran the second pitch into the middle of nowhere where the dihedral was totally covered by snow, and I had no luck excavating for cracks. I bottomed a 13cm screw, tied it off, and backed it up with an ice bollard, which I used to belay the seconds. On both subsequent trips, we were able to get excellent, 13cm screw placements at the same place, but I wouldn't count on it.
Trees are integral anchors; just this Sunday, I returned with Alex and the Kedrone and nearly all of the route was in prime but slightly spooky water ice condition. After running it out half a rope length on moderate ground, I decided I needed some protection for the vertical ice step in front of me. I tried to traverse right to a convenient pine trunk arched out of the ice (and back into it), but I realized after a few tentative steps that the traverse was too unnerving above such a runout, since it was on less than one inch of rotten ice on slabs. I downclimbed, placed a remarkably solid screw--the only one not already in our anchor--to protect the traverse, then proceeded with gratuitous tree-humping as captured on camera:
On my second trip to NE face, I also led the tree-humping pitch and had no problems on that traverse, and I was even able to stomp a platform for fiddling with slings.
On our first try, as can be seen in the second picture, the ice was very thin at the waterfall part. Alex anchored us into the middle of the face right of the waterfall, and we tried to traverse into a gully on the right to circumvent it but got cliffed out. I returned to the overhangs and tried to force through the thin ice, but it was too sketchy for me. I'm sure there are some people who would enjoy it, though; it was probably M5 based on the climbing grades page. We rapped down from there and gifted a large hex, two vintage 70s Chouinard pitons, and a large nut to the mountain; fortunately we retrieved about half of that the next time.
The second attempt materialized when I realized that the weather was stable and stormy and when eagerness to finish the route kicked in. I contacted Jordan Ramey, who I had seen following another climber on an adjacent climb on our first attempt, and asked if he wanted to join. He brought in Bill Sherman, also from UCLA, who has climbed a lot of ice in Montana. Both are bill wall climbers who have done some pretty cool stuff, and Jordan was actually one of the guys who climbed with Epic Mike! Now, I realize this post is littered with links, but do yourself a favor and read that if you're not familiar with Epic Mike. Seriously.
Second time's a charm, I guess, because we sent! I put in the third belay left of the waterfall ice in a convenient horizontal crack system, and Bill powered through the vertical crux in a narrow, awkward gully. Here's Alex on the same section:
The Kedrone joined Alex and me after our Lone Pine Peak schemes for the weekend died due to weather. Now, I know my grammar is far from perfect, but in line with the rule-of-thumb that one is permitted one pet peeve without being an anal douchebag, and since grammar is an important aspect of climbing, which this blag discusses exclusively, I want the scumbags who make this mistake to know that as a direct object "me" is the correct pronoun in "the Kedrone joined Alex and me." Yeah, English isn't my first language either. You're not special. Lulz, now wouldn't it be ironic if I were to make some grammar mishap of my own?
I actually wrote a long paragraph explaining how while it's not a grammatical error, the previous paragraph is an irrelevant diversion, and that I could be penalized for that. I went on to point out that that was meta-analysis, which has the peculiar property of justifying stupidity, and THEN I went on to explain how invoking meta-analysis is ACTUALLY acceptable as long as it's done ironically. I was jarred away from hours of recursive typing by a rumble from my stomach.
OK, back to the third attempt with the Kedrone and the Falkman. We started balls early, as always, by meeting at 3:45 AM in Pasadena. I had been awake for 9 hours at that point thanks to a sleep schedule which was handily corrected by this nice day. After a succession of nice photographs, we had an epic snowball battle on Tahquitz summit
which was followed by a preposterously amusing glissade of the north gully on powdery snow which formed cushioned sleds under our butts. We ran the rest of the descent under trees dripping from the fresh snow and strong sun.
The Baldy rando race was sparsely attended but nevertheless quite fun. Nick and I are hoping to grow the event next year; there was plenty of interest this time, but stuff just seemed to come up for everyone. There are stories of Dynafit boot toe dimples icing up, owners clicking in unawares, and skis popping off and sliding over a thousand vertical feet down the north face, but let us save such jolly tales for another time. Enjoy the Socal winter while it's still here!
Hamik