SUMMARY HAIKU
Theme of Day Thirty-Four
What the "FORGET ABOUT IT!"
Bad climbs galore! Whew!
Theme of Day Thirty-Four
What the "FORGET ABOUT IT!"
Bad climbs galore! Whew!
Yes, this is still Day 34, because we came over from the truly terrible "What the FORGET ABOUT IT" climb called Return to Sender at Flight Path. But, I wanted to keep all of the Flight Path climbs together on one page (so I combined multiple Days on Flight Path and split this one off... in case you even noticed or really even care - haha!)
So, little by little we are working our way through the routes in Stick Gully and so far they aren't particularly inspiring. We first had the WTF'r Unknown Left Start to Datura and now we have this one - Prelude...
Prelude is rated a "bomb" on Mountain Project and has been done by, like, maybe four people now (the FAs and now us). When we read the description and it said things like "A dusty pitch that might not be popular even if it were easy to get to and saw enough traffic to clean it up..." and "Somehow struggle up to a chimney alcove at the base of a handcrack..." we decided we weren't going to lead this thing if we didn't have to. So, we visually located the climb, hiked up to the Shadow Play area, made our "best guess" about where the climb topped out, built and anchor and rappeled down. Then we toproped the climb - hey, why put ourselves in danger for a likely crappy climb? (We've been hit with a few bad climbs recently!)
So, little by little we are working our way through the routes in Stick Gully and so far they aren't particularly inspiring. We first had the WTF'r Unknown Left Start to Datura and now we have this one - Prelude...
Prelude is rated a "bomb" on Mountain Project and has been done by, like, maybe four people now (the FAs and now us). When we read the description and it said things like "A dusty pitch that might not be popular even if it were easy to get to and saw enough traffic to clean it up..." and "Somehow struggle up to a chimney alcove at the base of a handcrack..." we decided we weren't going to lead this thing if we didn't have to. So, we visually located the climb, hiked up to the Shadow Play area, made our "best guess" about where the climb topped out, built and anchor and rappeled down. Then we toproped the climb - hey, why put ourselves in danger for a likely crappy climb? (We've been hit with a few bad climbs recently!)
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This video shows our attempt to locate the climb and where it tops out... Amazingly enough we did find it! Haha! |
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So what did we think?
Climb: Prelude
Conclusion WTF? What the FORGET ABOUT IT!
Conclusion WTF? What the FORGET ABOUT IT!
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we actually came and did this climb after we completed the terrible "What the FORGET ABOUT IT" climb at Flight Path called Return to Sender. Return to Sender was truly a really, really bad climb - with no redeeming qualities. Prelude, on the other hand, would've been pretty fun if the rock weren't so shitty!
The bottom half is a protectable lay-back-ish crack Rick and I both liked (we also had rock crumble beneath our hands and feet, so we were glad we weren't leading anything). Then the climb moves into some weak, gritty slabby/slopey terrain (still protectable) and exits on what looks like a potentially fun wide hand crack. We didn't do the last bit of the climb because we set up the TR a little too far to the right.
Because we approached the climb from above, we can't comment on what is required to get to the climb from below - from the Mountain Project description it sounds like it sucks. Nor can we comment on how to get off the climb if you finish up the hand crack.
Our conclusion is that the rock is so poor on this climb, it's truly not worth the effort, so we give it a "What the FORGET ABOUT IT!"
The bottom half is a protectable lay-back-ish crack Rick and I both liked (we also had rock crumble beneath our hands and feet, so we were glad we weren't leading anything). Then the climb moves into some weak, gritty slabby/slopey terrain (still protectable) and exits on what looks like a potentially fun wide hand crack. We didn't do the last bit of the climb because we set up the TR a little too far to the right.
Because we approached the climb from above, we can't comment on what is required to get to the climb from below - from the Mountain Project description it sounds like it sucks. Nor can we comment on how to get off the climb if you finish up the hand crack.
Our conclusion is that the rock is so poor on this climb, it's truly not worth the effort, so we give it a "What the FORGET ABOUT IT!"
Stef at the start of Prelude
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Prelude start- a fun lay-backish-crack that is unfortunately on really bad rock.
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WTF 5.7 Tour Stats so far...
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DATE OF CLIMBS: February 15, 2020 (we did this on the same day as the piece of shit, "What the FORGET ABOUT IT" climb Return to Sender at Flight Path... In case you are wondering Return to Sender is FAR worse than this climb!)
WALLS HIT: 1 (Stick Gully + Flight Path) NUMBER OF CLIMBS ON THIS WALL THIS TIME: 1 NUMBER OF PITCHES HERE: 1 VERTICAL 5.7 FEET CLIMBED HERE: 60' NUMBER OF FALLS: 0 TAKES HERE: 0 DIRTY UNDERWEAR ENCOUNTERED: 0 |
TOTAL CLIMBS SO FAR: 94
TOTAL PITCHES SO FAR: 118 TOTAL 5.7 VERTICAL FEET ON THE TOUR SO FAR: 9,310' NUMBER OF CLIMBS REMAINING: 143 (out of 237 - although we may redo Pre-Skool) VERTICAL FEET REMAINING: ~40,987 FALLS SO FAR: 0 TAKES ON LEAD SO FAR:
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