Charlotte Dome 2010
July 4-6, 2010
Photos at my picasaweb site.
The family was spending a month in Santa Barbara, mid June to mid July (Annie and I were doing some ice-age work at UCSB) so the 4th of July weekend seemed to be a good time to plan for the one California 50 classic I hadn’t done. John was willing despite my warning about the 12-mile approach and the length of the route.
Getting ready involved many hoops. We needed to do a bit of crack climbing as John had never done much of that and hadn’t done much climbing at all in over a year. I heard about some routes in the Sespe Gorge a bit over an hour from Santa Barbara, so we headed over there one afternoon. This is a cliff where Google’s street view serves as an excellent guidebook photo! We did the very long 2-pitch 5.7 route Ending Crack (probably 350’ of climbing) and it was a good opportunity to review crack technique, as well as belaying and rappelling. Our time on this was a not particularly impressive 3 hours. Projected time for Charlotte Dome based on the same rate of ascent is 12 hours (this proved to be accurate). We had some problems managing the double 7.8mm ropes I had just gotten. (The idea was to reduce weight while preserving the retreat options on Charlotte Dome—but it was hard to find a place to put all the rope and it got tangled). We hoped to improve with time with practice. We continued to do a 5.8+ sport route, a quick 2 pitches in fading light (called Free to Choose).
The warm-up climb showed that John needed some looser shoes for the Dome, and we picked them up along with a decent windbreaker. Backcountry permits were reserved (July 3 was already full). I learned we’d need a bear canister. A second rental car was arranged for Marcia since we’d be gone for 72 hours. And so on.
Finally we left at 5 a.m. for the 5-hour drive to the trailhead, stopping for the permit and bear canister in Lone Pine. A little delay from the 4th of July parade in Independence, and the usual trailhead decisions left us with a noon departure on the Kearsarge Pass Trail. Since I did not have my Lowe pack with me, we had to make due with my alpine rucksack and two cragging packs. John took the rucksack with the pads and bags tied to it, and I took the two cragging packs with the gear, rope, and bear canister—one pack on front and one on back. It was slow going up to the pass with the elevation and elevation gain. We reached the pass at 4 and still had 8 miles to go. We got our glimpse of the dome in the distance. The trail eases up for a while but then after Charlotte Lake route finding becomes more difficult as one has to cross the creek a couple of times and follow an indistinct trail of cairns. We lost daylight with about an hour to go but we persisted and were rewarded with a great camp at the spot recommended in the SuperTopo guide. Nobody else here—dare we hope to have the climb to ourselves tomorrow? The guide made it sound like it would be crowded, but really—how many people are going to make the 12 mile trek in?
We got started at 6 the next morning, still slightly worried about other parties who might have been camped elsewhere. Huge mistake not bringing enough water, we had a liter camelback and a partially filled 2-liter bottle. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe 3 liters would have done it. The descent to the start went pretty smoothly except we were nervous about the slab crossing and we put on our climbing shoes. Turns out we descended to pretty much this point in our climbing shoes because of all the slabs so a better plan might have been to leave the approach shoes here to save weight on the climb. Made a false start and downclimbed before finding the right one. John cut his hand pretty bad before we even started so we got that bandaged and taped up. Once we got going, though, the first few pitches were pretty easy. I had some trouble getting off route on pitch 5. This was the runout 5.5 section followed by a traverse right to a chimney. Pretty much anything could qualify as runout 5.5 face and then I traversed and there was no chimney to be found. I saw some other trip reports where people got lost here. I think I started from the wrong belay because it turned out I was too low and too far left. There was a note about belaying right after the pink dike, I didn’t see that and put the p4 belay at something that looked like a bolted stance but might have just been a rappel point. In any event, after belaying and bringing up John, I lowered down and swung over so I could see the route better. I found the chimney and got back on route but a lot of time was wasted on what should have been a quick 5.5 pitch. Things got interesting as we moved up to the layback flake and then the crux moves through the slot pitch. This was actually a little hard to figure out but at an overhanging section you just kind of get hands set, lean left and move feet up high on the right—quasi layback style. This was only 100 feet so I led on both strands of one rope and hauled John’s pack on the other rope. This was 5.8 and I wanted to give him a good shot at doing it clean, which he did. We were starting to get low on water at this point, moving slower than I had hoped, so I was starting to get a bit nervous about finishing. John wanted to continue hauling so on the long 5.8 pitch I led on the 7.8mm and hauled on the other. This was a tiring pitch and I used a lot of gear. You can’t really go too light with the rack on this climb unless you plan on really running it out on this pitch. John did great on this pitch as well, so we were pretty close to the top. We still had the furrows pitch, real fun 5.7 but steep. I unwisely decided to continue hauling, but this one traversed and then when I started to haul the line got crossed with the climbing line. John was not experienced with the hauling game and I failed to clue him in on it. With the pack stuck, I also could not pull in the belay rope, so I had to lower myself to free everything. This was kind of sketchy as I was anxious not to waste any more time. Also after I freed the stuff I had trouble bringing the coils of rope up without catching on all the features of the rock in the furrows area. But eventually I got things squared away and we were one pitch away. The last pitch was pretty easy and we were feeling pretty good to finish the climb, even though we had only about 45 minutes of light left.
The descent proved a little tricky to figure out. I knew we were supposed to go out a knife-edge ridge and then down the slabs but as light began to fail it became harder and harder to find terrain that we could safely downclimb. Eventually we just decided to start rapping. We came across a couple of anchors, but the problem turned out to be that once we started rapping, we put ourselves too far right (skier’s right). The slabs are shaped like a circular staircase and the center part is really steep. The easier descent is off to the left, but it took a really long time before we figured out the geometry and then managed to diagonal rappel/walk far enough left to get to easier terrain. We were also moving in slow motion due to the dehydration. It seemed like I spent hours untangling the rappel ropes at each station. After topping out at 8:30 it was after midnight before we managed to get off the ropes.
We still had to find our camp which at this point seemed akin to Stanley finding Livingstone. No trail to follow and only a vague idea of where we were or where it was in relation to us. The problem was not being able to see the lay of the land. Luckily we found a little seep after descending the slabs for a while. We filled up the camelback and our energy returned with the water. The seep was also a clue to our route from the morning since we had crossed it before. We headed over and followed the stream up to the spring near the campsite. It seemed like a miracle but we were back at 3am after a 21-hour day. Turns out John got an introduction to epic adventures as well as to 50 classic climbs.
The walk out just seemed like it would never end and we both started to get serious blisters as we headed down from Kearsarge Pass. Perhaps in the future I’ll try double socks if I get into any hikes this long. I had never been a fast hiker but in our condition the 12 miles out took us 10 hours. Dinner in Lone Pine and the 5-hour drive got back home at 3a.m., 70 hours after we left.
Photos at my picasaweb site.
The family was spending a month in Santa Barbara, mid June to mid July (Annie and I were doing some ice-age work at UCSB) so the 4th of July weekend seemed to be a good time to plan for the one California 50 classic I hadn’t done. John was willing despite my warning about the 12-mile approach and the length of the route.
Getting ready involved many hoops. We needed to do a bit of crack climbing as John had never done much of that and hadn’t done much climbing at all in over a year. I heard about some routes in the Sespe Gorge a bit over an hour from Santa Barbara, so we headed over there one afternoon. This is a cliff where Google’s street view serves as an excellent guidebook photo! We did the very long 2-pitch 5.7 route Ending Crack (probably 350’ of climbing) and it was a good opportunity to review crack technique, as well as belaying and rappelling. Our time on this was a not particularly impressive 3 hours. Projected time for Charlotte Dome based on the same rate of ascent is 12 hours (this proved to be accurate). We had some problems managing the double 7.8mm ropes I had just gotten. (The idea was to reduce weight while preserving the retreat options on Charlotte Dome—but it was hard to find a place to put all the rope and it got tangled). We hoped to improve with time with practice. We continued to do a 5.8+ sport route, a quick 2 pitches in fading light (called Free to Choose).
The warm-up climb showed that John needed some looser shoes for the Dome, and we picked them up along with a decent windbreaker. Backcountry permits were reserved (July 3 was already full). I learned we’d need a bear canister. A second rental car was arranged for Marcia since we’d be gone for 72 hours. And so on.
Finally we left at 5 a.m. for the 5-hour drive to the trailhead, stopping for the permit and bear canister in Lone Pine. A little delay from the 4th of July parade in Independence, and the usual trailhead decisions left us with a noon departure on the Kearsarge Pass Trail. Since I did not have my Lowe pack with me, we had to make due with my alpine rucksack and two cragging packs. John took the rucksack with the pads and bags tied to it, and I took the two cragging packs with the gear, rope, and bear canister—one pack on front and one on back. It was slow going up to the pass with the elevation and elevation gain. We reached the pass at 4 and still had 8 miles to go. We got our glimpse of the dome in the distance. The trail eases up for a while but then after Charlotte Lake route finding becomes more difficult as one has to cross the creek a couple of times and follow an indistinct trail of cairns. We lost daylight with about an hour to go but we persisted and were rewarded with a great camp at the spot recommended in the SuperTopo guide. Nobody else here—dare we hope to have the climb to ourselves tomorrow? The guide made it sound like it would be crowded, but really—how many people are going to make the 12 mile trek in?
We got started at 6 the next morning, still slightly worried about other parties who might have been camped elsewhere. Huge mistake not bringing enough water, we had a liter camelback and a partially filled 2-liter bottle. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe 3 liters would have done it. The descent to the start went pretty smoothly except we were nervous about the slab crossing and we put on our climbing shoes. Turns out we descended to pretty much this point in our climbing shoes because of all the slabs so a better plan might have been to leave the approach shoes here to save weight on the climb. Made a false start and downclimbed before finding the right one. John cut his hand pretty bad before we even started so we got that bandaged and taped up. Once we got going, though, the first few pitches were pretty easy. I had some trouble getting off route on pitch 5. This was the runout 5.5 section followed by a traverse right to a chimney. Pretty much anything could qualify as runout 5.5 face and then I traversed and there was no chimney to be found. I saw some other trip reports where people got lost here. I think I started from the wrong belay because it turned out I was too low and too far left. There was a note about belaying right after the pink dike, I didn’t see that and put the p4 belay at something that looked like a bolted stance but might have just been a rappel point. In any event, after belaying and bringing up John, I lowered down and swung over so I could see the route better. I found the chimney and got back on route but a lot of time was wasted on what should have been a quick 5.5 pitch. Things got interesting as we moved up to the layback flake and then the crux moves through the slot pitch. This was actually a little hard to figure out but at an overhanging section you just kind of get hands set, lean left and move feet up high on the right—quasi layback style. This was only 100 feet so I led on both strands of one rope and hauled John’s pack on the other rope. This was 5.8 and I wanted to give him a good shot at doing it clean, which he did. We were starting to get low on water at this point, moving slower than I had hoped, so I was starting to get a bit nervous about finishing. John wanted to continue hauling so on the long 5.8 pitch I led on the 7.8mm and hauled on the other. This was a tiring pitch and I used a lot of gear. You can’t really go too light with the rack on this climb unless you plan on really running it out on this pitch. John did great on this pitch as well, so we were pretty close to the top. We still had the furrows pitch, real fun 5.7 but steep. I unwisely decided to continue hauling, but this one traversed and then when I started to haul the line got crossed with the climbing line. John was not experienced with the hauling game and I failed to clue him in on it. With the pack stuck, I also could not pull in the belay rope, so I had to lower myself to free everything. This was kind of sketchy as I was anxious not to waste any more time. Also after I freed the stuff I had trouble bringing the coils of rope up without catching on all the features of the rock in the furrows area. But eventually I got things squared away and we were one pitch away. The last pitch was pretty easy and we were feeling pretty good to finish the climb, even though we had only about 45 minutes of light left.
The descent proved a little tricky to figure out. I knew we were supposed to go out a knife-edge ridge and then down the slabs but as light began to fail it became harder and harder to find terrain that we could safely downclimb. Eventually we just decided to start rapping. We came across a couple of anchors, but the problem turned out to be that once we started rapping, we put ourselves too far right (skier’s right). The slabs are shaped like a circular staircase and the center part is really steep. The easier descent is off to the left, but it took a really long time before we figured out the geometry and then managed to diagonal rappel/walk far enough left to get to easier terrain. We were also moving in slow motion due to the dehydration. It seemed like I spent hours untangling the rappel ropes at each station. After topping out at 8:30 it was after midnight before we managed to get off the ropes.
We still had to find our camp which at this point seemed akin to Stanley finding Livingstone. No trail to follow and only a vague idea of where we were or where it was in relation to us. The problem was not being able to see the lay of the land. Luckily we found a little seep after descending the slabs for a while. We filled up the camelback and our energy returned with the water. The seep was also a clue to our route from the morning since we had crossed it before. We headed over and followed the stream up to the spring near the campsite. It seemed like a miracle but we were back at 3am after a 21-hour day. Turns out John got an introduction to epic adventures as well as to 50 classic climbs.
The walk out just seemed like it would never end and we both started to get serious blisters as we headed down from Kearsarge Pass. Perhaps in the future I’ll try double socks if I get into any hikes this long. I had never been a fast hiker but in our condition the 12 miles out took us 10 hours. Dinner in Lone Pine and the 5-hour drive got back home at 3a.m., 70 hours after we left.
posted by John Imbrie at 3:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home