Intuition and Desire

Suffering loomed on the western horizon. Paul and I were approaching Irene's Arête, our last objective of the trip, and my ideal forecast did not call for clouds, rain, hail, lightning or even doubt. While the clouds blew through and didn't amount to much more than a brief shower, my doubt accumulated. The thought of climbing through, or waiting out, another storm on the side of a route, did not sit well with me. After two relatively big storms on Wolf's Head and the Upper Exum, I really wasn't liking what I saw through the high mountain passes blowing our way.
Of course weather is always an uncertainty climbing on the eastern side of cliffs and big ranges, but add to that our lack of a solid cell signal limiting our ability to get a reliable forecast and the uncertainty in the sky builds in your gut...at least it does with me. When feelings like that surface for me, I tend to over analyze. Perhaps I was just scared. Perhaps I was just exhausted. Or perhaps I was really trying to trust my intuition. I'd had similar premonitions before getting on Wolf's Head and the Grand, but I'd suppressed them enough to allow us to continue upward and push through the adversity we would face. This time, I wasn't ready to do that. I kept hemming and hawing, internally and externally until Paul recognized my reluctance.
"Dude, do you want to bail? Cause it seems like you want to bail." I nodded my head. I was working up toward a decision.
"Yeah," I replied. "I think I want to bail."
We waited it out for another 40 minutes or so, but my mind was already made up. I felt bad for not allowing Paul this opportunity to climb a route I know he really wanted, but it wouldn't work if we weren't on the same page. We started the hike back to camp and into the sunshine. The majority of the clouds had blown through, and the route looked perfect. But by the time we arrived at camp and pulled our sleeping pads out of the tent to catch some rays, a few sprinkles turned into a steady rain for the next half hour and sent us to the shelter of our tent. I felt a little better, but I knew that the rain wouldn't have been a big deal if we'd kept going up instead of down.

Bailing is always tough. I battle with feelings of fear, discouragement, disappointment, and lack of mental fortitude. I try and balance those feelings with other, more positive things though. Climbing, like life, is all about learning-about self, others and the environment. I also know we get caught up in comparing our abilities and exploits to others. I strive to learn more and compare less. Those feelings of discouragement and disappoint really only materialize for me when I think of what other people would do in my situation. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I climb (or don't climb in this instance) for me.

So now that Paul and I are sitting on a bus, heading home on our last leg of our travels, we know there are a lot more routes out there that we want to climb. We will always temper our desire with our intuition, as both are key aspects of staying safe and staying strong in the mountains as well as in our friendship.  B. T.

Photo taken from: Clouds365

Experience: The Best of All Teachers

What we learned...

Packing

We arrived at the Big Sandy parking lot at around 8:00 PM.  The light was growing thin and the mosquitos were growing thick.  Nothing like packing in a cloud of bugs.  A couple of hours earlier we passed a gas station that was free of mosquitos and had plenty of space for us to spread out and pack.  But it never occurred to us that we could pack before we arrived at the trail head.  From now on the pre pack option will always be considered.

Weather

Prepare for the worst and when the worst happens hunker down and wait. This is the best advice I can give concerning weather in the Cirque of the Towers and the Tetons. Weather is difficult to predict in ranges that block the horizon. Always be prepared for rain, hail, lightning and temperatures below 40 degrees. In most of the guide books I read the majority of the rain, hail, lightning and low temperatures happen after 2:30 in the summer time. But there are exceptions to every rule.

Light and fast

The approach into the Cirque is ten miles. The first six miles are easy and the last four can be challenging especially if coming directly from sea level. Since we arrived at the parking lot at the trail head at 8:00 PM we broke the hike into two days. The first six miles we did at night to get to Big Sandy Lake. The next morning we finished off the hike into The Cirque and set up our base camp by noon. If climbers are interested in spending multiple days in the Cirque the load will not be light. Bear canisters, tents, food, fuel and other essentials are necessary items to have back at base camp. We splurged and brought in a one person tent and a two person tent. The two person tent was our bug free hangout area. This made our down time in camp a little more bearable when the bugs were in full force. It was also nice to not have to share a tent for six nights with each other after several days of freeze dried meals...

The approach to Pingora was about an hour. We brought two small packs, two ropes, an alpine rack, climbing shoes, one belay jacket, one wind breaker, two liters of water, and some food. We both wore polypropylene tee shirts, fleece hoodies, our harnesses and helmets and light quick dry pants. We left one pack, a liter of water and our approach shoes at the base of the climb. Since the weather was nearly perfect we never used the belay jacket or the wind breaker. The approach to and from thee climb, the three pitches and our thirty minute summit picnic was completed in under six hours. We packed the same for the next two climbs, but we had to carry extra water and our approach shoes since we would be needing these items for the descent and would not be rapping down to the beginning of the climb.

After two epic weather events (one on Wolf's Head and one on The Upper Exum of the Grand Teton) we took a hard look at what we would bring the next time we went into the high alpine environment. In the future I think we would bring two belay coats and some light weight, water resistant pants and jackets. Although it will add a little weight it will dramatically reduce the amount of suffering involved with waiting out a weather event. The route’s we chose were not technically difficult and we felt that the extra weight would be easily manageable.

Give em enough rope...

Erik's last post is a timely one.  Brian and I have been mulling over the double vs single rope situation for our up coming trip to the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range.  Seventy meter Nano?  Two photons?  One sixty meter workhorse?  Two fifties?  Region, rock type, weather condition, style and route are all variables that need to be considered.

According to Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills the advantages of twins and doubles are: rope friction can be greatly reduced, falls can be shorter, two ropes are less likely to get severed in rockfall or sharp edges, and two ropes are available for rappel.  The book also points out advantages when protecting the second from pendulum falls and when doing traverses.  Another important aspect is that when clipping gear slack can be given to one rope while the other can remain taught.

I started surfing the web looking for answers, but could not find "the answer". 

The reason that there is no definitive answer that works for all climbers is that all climbers are different.  I asked Erik for his advise and he pointed out that the climber is another variable that needs to be considered.  A technical route that might be challenging for me, might be considered extremely easy for someone else.  Some climbers can cruise through the remainder of a route and top out before the thunder storm hits, while other climbers might chose to bail off the climb and rappel down to safety.

After all sorts of searching and pondering I feel like I have made up my mind about what I would like to bring to The Winds with us, but I am still open to suggestions and comments from folks who have climbed in The Winds or similar places.  Feel free to post a comment and let me know what you think.  The more information I have to consider the happier I will be...