Benighted On Tahquitz

Benighted On Tahquitz

Story by Chris Leger

It had been just long enough since Jason and I had gone to Tahquitz that we'd forgotten what the approach & descent was like. Thus, it was time to head back. We spent Friday night at my grandmother's, since she lives in Banning and I hadn't yet seen her since coming to Pasadena for a summer job at JPL. There were the obligatory questions about how we climbed, what gear we used, and so on, at dinner. In the morning as we left, she asked us what time we'd be back, so she'd know when to call for help. We tried to convince her that we wouldn't need her to call in a rescue party for us, but eventually gave up and told her we'd be back sometime after dark. Incidentally, this was the first time anyone had said they'd call for help if I didn't return on time...

We made our way up the talus to the Northwest Recess and arrived at the base of Whodunit around 10. One party was just finishing a retreat from the first pitch; not too inspiring, since the 5.9 first pitch was to be one of my hardest leads (oh yeah, I'm a hardman). A second party started immediately; the leader took a while to get through the long first pitch, and then the second cleared the belay. I watched the second flail, and fall, a few times at the crux. It was nice to know where the crux was, but again I was not quite inspired by what I saw...

Finally, around 11:30, I was able to get started. The first bit of the pitch was probably unremarkable, since I don't remember it. I started getting nervous about 15 feet before the crux; I'm always kinda wiggy the first climb of the day, even if I'm *not* leading, and I had some slabby moves ahead of me. I got 3 or 4 nuts in during those 15 feet, finding a slightly better placement each time I made a move. Finally, I was able to reach the crux. Slot a nut just over the overlap; grab the large but slick ledge, paste a foot on a greasy lieback, and pull....high step to the ledge, an inch or so away from the next ledge...

Shit!

My left foot blew off the greasy lieback. I had a good second or two to try to regain my balance, but after teetering on the brink for a bit, I pitched off. Before I knew it, I was almost 15' lower, and had taken my first fall on my own gear. I was pissed that I'd blown the crux, but glad that I'd finally taken a fall on my gear. (The night before, Jason and I had both discussed taking intentional falls to get some faith in our placements...) Now confident in my pro, I breezed through the crux and continued up. Strangely, my confidence was rapidly disappearing, and I had no idea why. About 15' after passing the belay on the climb to the left, I strongly considered downclimbing and setting up belay there. Fortunately, I was mad enough at myself for climbing like a wuss that I forced myself to finish the pitch, the remainder of which was only 5.7ish. Jason spent a lot of time cleaning my stoppers, but eventually joined me at the belay. He continued on to the base of the chimney on the 3rd pitch. The second pitch wasn't too hard, objectively, but I was still feeling spooked, so Jason took the chimney pitch as well. He said he'd be perfectly happy leading the rest of the climb, which just had one 5.8 move at the top of the chimney followed by 5.6 & 7 faces & cracks. This was good and bad: my head was in a fog, but I typically spend much less time than Jason when placing gear, so I usually climb and set belays a bit faster. Still, I was probably seconding almost as slowly as he was leading; my confidence was nowhere to be found, even on toprope. This had happened to me once before, again after having a hard time leading the first pitch of the day...and then, too, my partner had been willing to take up the slack. Maybe next time I should force myself on after the first pitch...

I had fun seconding the chimney, pack hanging from my harness, though the offwidth exit of the chimney woke me up. I joined Jason at the belay, we swapped rope ends, and he got to work on the next pitch. At this point I was starting to realize how slowly we were moving: the sun was quite a bit past its apex, and we were only 3 pitches up on a 7 (or more?) pitch climb. By the time I reached Jason's anchors at the top of the 4th pitch, I was beginning to suspect that we'd be descending in the dark. Jason climbed quickly on the 5th pitch, but not as quickly as the sun dipped towards the horizon. How could we possibly be climbing so slowly? Did we really start at 11:30? Thinking back, I had probably taken close to 45 minutes for the first pitch, and Jason had had to hang several times and break out the nut tool to clean some of my placements, so he probably took just as long. Additionally, I realized that little things like taking off and putting on our shoes at each belay and inefficiently re-racking gear had eaten away at the day. The sun had decidely set by the time I reached a ledge about 20' below Jason's anchor.

"So, what do you want to do?" he asked. "Well, I've got a headlamp. I don't like the look of the slings and rap stations, though." Two of the belays had small trees with slings on them; not bad for supplementing some gear at a belay, but none of the slings had rap rings (mmm...what's that burning smell?) and I wouldn't've trusted the trees by themselves anyway.

We agreed that, given our slow rate of progress during daylight, continuing up wasn't going to happen. I was strongly opposed to rapping down in the dark, especially since we had only one headlamp. The weather looked good, though, so we decided to bivy on the ledge I was at. I quickly threw some cams in for an anchor, breaking out the headlamp to see what I was doing. I lowered Jason to the ledge, and we settled in for the night.

At this point we remembered that my grandmother had said she'd call for help if we didn't turn up...argh. It figures we'd get stuck the one time someone was going to check on us! Our only hope was that the rangers, or whoever she called, wouldn't feel like hiking up just to see if *maybe* we needed help; Tahquitz seemed to be crowded enough that if someone was hurt, they'd be able to call for help, so I figured there wouldn't be a rescue party blazing up the talus to look for us. I didn't relish the thought of topping off our fumblings with inconveniencing a bunch of strangers for no reason.

Or tried to, anyway: there was enough wind to make things chilly on the wide, flat part of the ledge, so we both squeezed into a partly sheltered, 2' wide ramp. At least we weren't the only dumbasses to get stuck here: we found some batteries and other miscellaneous debris that pointed to previous bivies.

We had about 2 cups of water left with us; the half-gallon in our other pack at the base of the climb did us little good. Jason finished of the rest of a bagel, and it took me about 15 minutes to eat mine, dry as my throat was. Bugs immediately descended upon me; Jason, on the other hand, is one of those people who bugs seem to ignore (and thus vice versa). I soon balled up and pulled my t-shirt over my knees in a futile attempt to avoid the bugs and chill. I was exhausted, though Jason seemed to still be full of energy as he spotted shooting stars and talked about various aspects of an AI technique he was planning on implementing at work.

Sleep soon came in small pieces; limbs fell asleep and woke the rest of me up every so often, and I eventually decided that the chill of the unsheltered ledge was better than the sheltered discomfort of sleeping on pointy rocks. I finally managed fall asleep soundly enough to have a long dream about flying down hallways, work, and a deranged psychopath who looked like a bloated version of the dean of the art department back at school. (Which was particularly strange, considering that I had been in the engineering department...) At one point a dime fell on the floor, out of nowhere; I picked it up, then looked up to see where it came from and found an inset ceiling fan jammed full with the bloodied meat of an unidentifiable corpse. "Would you like some donuts?", cackled the evil art dean. I don't know where the hell all that came from, but I remember straightening things out before I awoke.

A few more dreamless spans of unconsiousness, and the sky began to lighten. Each time I reopened my eyes, the sky was noticeably brighter. We were up and moving by 5:30, and I untangled the rope--which was surprisingly easy considering I'd used the rope as a blanket and pillow the night before. The topo was strikingly lacking in detail for the last 3 pitches, but after we'd thrashed up the short offwidth to the belay Jason had set the previous night, we decided that the next pitch did indeed look like a 5.6 crack and face climb.

It was 6am, I had climbed like a floundering moron the day before, I was hungry and dehydrated, and I'd only had a few hours of uncomfortable sleep, but goddammit I knew could lead a stinking 5.6--and if I didn't lead *something* today, I'd feel even worse. I knew we were on route after the first few moves; the crack felt 5.6ish and was well travelled. It was a great pitch; interesting, varied moves, bomber gear, and a nice serving of altitude. I soon recognized a roof that signalled the start of the next pitch; there was supposedly a belay ledge below and to the left of it. I sunk a TCU and a small nut (dammit, where were the #5 nuts?), decided that this ledge (more of a slab) sucked, climbed to the next ledge, decided the flared cracks offered no placements, downclimbed, set some gear, decided the slab sucked for belaying, downclimbed some more, lengthened my tie-in, decided that belaying from the comfy but hollow block was bad, and finally smeared my butt on the wall and each foot on some holds. So much for climbing fast. I quickly hauled up the rope and belayed Jason, and tried to keep from being too grumpy as I waited for him to rack up and take off so I could sit on the comfy block again and get some blood back in my legs.

My attitude quickly improved once I was comfortable. Soon we'd be at the top, and I could guzzle the last of the water; then we'd head down and drink the rest of the water and munch some grapes. Jason was soon at a belay, and I cleaned up my station and cruised up. Excellent moves going up and around a roof; in retrospect, each of the pitches had some great moves, and even the occasional offwidth thrutch was fun. I soon reached his belay, grabbed the rack, and hiked the rest of the way up the 3rd class slab to the summit. I slung a few big chickenheads for an anchor, but Jason moved more quickly than I could reel in the slack as I belayed. We put down the gear and surveyed our surroundings; the view summit was superb.

As thirsty as we were, we decided that there was no better place to sort gear than right where we were, surrounded by sun and open sky.

"So, were you totally miserable last night?" Jason asked sheepishly. "Well, I was uncomfortable, but I don't regret doing it." "Good; that means I don't have to feel guilty about enjoying it." (This would be an appropriate time to point out the fact that Jason had hiked the entire Pacific Crest trail last year with homemade gear, and had biked from LA to Seattle to North Carolina 2 years before that...I'm convinced that Jason enjoys suffering. He'd probably make a good wall rat...)

The descent to the base was ugly, but water never tasted so good. Descending the talus sucked as well, though Jason somehow managed to move twice as fast as me--"Oh, I just let my knees take all the pounding; my quads are totally fried" was his explanation.

We both learned a fair bit from the ordeal, even if it was on a climb that many people could cruise through in a few hours, and that quite a few people could free solo without thinking twice. Taking my first fall on gear seemed like an important milestone for me, though I was already pretty confident of my nut placements. More important was the fact that we'd made rational decisions and had chosen the safest route. (Though a storm during the night would have been serious, the weather was clear and a midnight thunderstorm in the middle of the desert didn't seem likely.) That, and we had it beaten into us that we need to climb a lot faster. In the future, I'll probably bring a little more water and a space blanket if I think there's any chance I may get stuck on a long route. Or maybe I'll just stick to bouldering...nah.

All in all, our first night spent on the rock was memorable, and made us actually look forward to going back to work the next day. We both managed to keep a sense of humor the whole time, even if I did have to force it through my grumpy haze. Jason and I have been friends since middle school and have yet to get into an argument, and I'm glad that climbing, of all things, didn't blow that.

Chris Leger, August, 1998