The First One Day Ascent of the Streaked Wall
-- 18 hours & 40 minutes --
Ammon McNeely
"Fly'n" Brian had been on lead for almost three hours. We were going on the seventeenth hour of intense, technical and steep, big wall climbing.
My brain shut off hours ago, no longer making rational decisions. I was running on pure adrenaline and survival instinct. We were climbing a route called Latitudes in Zion National Park, a thin line that diagonals out right on the Streaked Wall, put up in 1994 by Eric Brand and Paul Gagner.
Every since I started roping up with Brian McCray, he's always coming up with these "bright" ideas, that leave me wondering, "How the hell did I get into this mess, anyway?"
You know, when your at the point when the situation turns from "uncomfortable" to down-right miserable.
Well, the situation was getting serious..... and passed the miserable stage what seemed like ions ago.
Brian just took a forty foot whipper and was now dangling from the end of the rope, in silence.
His beak stack, blew the placement underneath a drilled hole, ripped a few more pieces out and came upon a solid bolt.
"It's like sugar up here", Brian was saying.
I closed my eyes and saw streaks against my eyelids.
"Well buddy, do you want to finish it", Brian was asking?
Images of past clicked through my mind like a really fast slideshow, as my eyes remained frozen shut.
It was like someone turned their back on the slide projector and some devious kid got his hands on the control switch.... faster, faster, FASTER!!
Trying to click through as many slides as he could before being detained.
The boy was shut down!!!
We slept for six hours and started what would become, the best Zion adventure I've ever experienced. I've had my fair share of them being how I grew up in the area, most of which had nothing to do with rock climbing.
Brian informed me of the definition of the word adventure while we were making our way to the base of the wall.
"The definition of adventure is when the outcome is NOT certain". This is what Jim Bridwell told Brian while in Alaska putting up a new route.
"Ok, I agree with that", I said.
The remark left me with a constant "wonder" of how the outcome would be for OUR adventure.
We had gotten some beta from one of the first ascensionists, Paul Gagner.
"Take one of the two obvious corners way out right", Brian relayed beta.
"One has more bushes in it, than the other".
We got to the corners and picked the right one, opposed to the left. The left corner had less bushes but seemed like harder climbing, after all these were approach pitches to the route..
We looked at the topo, that Paul sent us. "I've never heard of approach pitches", Brian said.
Brian started the lead and I drifted off, in thought. I thought about all the energy it would take to do this route in "wall style".
I was glad I wasn't carrying food and water up here for five days.
Slam!! I was rudely interrupted by a softball size rock in the head, ringing my bell thoroughly. I was glad to have a helmet on. I could still hear a high pitch tone in my ears from the impact as I tore down the next belay
One was easily discharged when I leaned against it.
I led the last pitch to Rubicon.
A chimney, easy enough to consider fun, although my grunting would have told you differently.
Brian cleaned the pitch and we were bushwhacking through the manzanita before we knew it.
We traversed the ledge for eight-hundred feet until we became close to the headwall.
There was a strip of sand, enough room for four couples to bivy, comfortably.
It was a slice of ecstasy. We were untouchable.
This was one of the best camping spots I've ever seen....... Perched, a thousand feet above the valley floor.
The wall above, overhanging for nine hundred feet, swooping in both directions creating an amphitheater. We warmed some food and ate, enjoying the atmosphere.
We awoke, thinking it was 6:00 o'clock, actually it was seven because of the time change. Whooops, we lost an hour.
Less than six hours of sleep. Awesome.
We boiled some water in a left-over tin can from the night before and made coffee. It was 8:15am before Brian was placing the first piece. We still thought it was a little after seven.
The good protection ended eighty feet up the wall, turning directly into A3 placements.
Brian took a little fall while in the middle of a transfer to a thinner crack, right below the belay.
This will be a small dose of what was to come by the end of the day.
A tipped out beak held him.
Brian arrived at the belay, short-fixed and continued to lead.
As I arrived at the anchor and put Brian on belay, he was getting to a small ledge.
Good gear was below him but didn't do much good if he hit the ledge.
The placements were fragile beaks that were anything but, trustworthy.
I organized the belay while paying very close attention to Brian.
This is some REAL classic Zion style shit, I thought.
The only ledge on the entire route with dicey gear above it. We were happy that the wall was steep.
"If I go....., Brian said, "I'm going to push off the wall as quick as I can, and hopefully clear that ledge".
I looked away with a grimace.
"Watch me", Brian said. I embraced for the worst, slightly hunkering down in case he plunged all the way to me, paying him slack an inch at a time.
He got through the harm threatening situation and soon yelled, "off belay...... line's fixed".
I cleaned the pitch, whooping it up, like I do in the Valley.
I heard the occasional horn honking.... we were going for it and our friends below were giving us their props.
It was obvious after the first two pitches that we were in "IT" for the long haul. Hard leads take Brain and I, an hour on the Captain ninety minutes at most.
These were taking two, almost three hours.
Every piece was suspect. Gear would blow frequently. Cleaning the pitch was scary, body weight would rip the gear. Goggles would have been nice, we later decided..
Sand poured in our face while placing delicate beaks, making further movement impossible, until the burning would subside and we could see again.
I remember Brian saying, "Welcome to Latitudes!!"
I was leading my first block, which was the 3rd pitch. We were leading in two pitches per block, an unusual but fiting system.
Our normal blocks on the Captain are from four to eight pitches.
I had a big cam in a flaring crack. I walked up my Yates Speed Aider, grabbing the biner and pulling directly toward myself.
The cam rocked out and I took a daisy fall. "Rookie move", I told myself.
The next four hours became one of those zen-like moments. The kind when you are so focused on the NOW......
everything was really vivid at the time.... but looking back my biggest memory was how intense it was.
My zen got shattered when I hit my thumb really hard with the hammer, while placing a beak.
"Send up the tape", I yelled.
"Is it bad? Cause, it might be hard to get to?"
"Yeah, it's bad", I said, while watching my thumb envelope with blood .
The tape was on the tag line within seconds. I taped my thumb and continued without incident.
The crack was micro thin. The rock was overhanging making every step in your aiders an ab-workout. After a while I realized, it wasn' about getting high into your aiders.
It was a constant reach to the right to get a placement. When I stripped the belay and started cleaning, I quickly learned to reposition my hammer on the left of my harness every time, because of the nature of the traversing route.
My block was over and Brian and I were at the belay together, which only happened three times on the entire route, due to short-fixing.
"I've been thinking about Jose..... a lot today", I told Brian.
"Yeah, me too", Brian said.
Jose was a good friend of ours. An incredible person that we both admired. He recently died from a climbing accident. It didn't seem odd that Brian was also thinking about Jose, after all we had dedicated this ascent to him.
We believed that Jose would want us to continue our pursuit in the love we have for climbing and the mountains, we were here to celebrate that knowledge.
Thoughts became muddled.
The strain of concentrating so hard and the mental energy it took from being in such an extreme situation for so long, started to take affect.
"Ok, I need all of the small cams", Brian yelled down to me.
I clipped all of the small cams to an eight inch runner and double checked the water-knot, the one point that could fail -- causing all the gear to be airborne.
It was bomber."Ok, it's ON".
Brian pulled up the gear, and then dropped the slack in the tag line.
I heard the sound of the rope zipping past as Brian dropped the slack in the tag line. All was quite and calm.
Wooooshhhh!! "Oh No!!", Brian was yelling.
The first thing I thought of was that all of our small cams were heading for the deck, the knot had failed.
Actually, what happened was that Brian lost his aider.
His only aider.
He uses a leap-frog system with one aider w/sub-step. Well, it was gone, so I sent him one of my Yates aiders.
Darkness fell as I started the sixth pitch, feeling tired but strong enough to continue at a moderate pace. I ignored my swollen fingers and hands, cuts and splits in my cuticles. I continued placing micro thin gear into a soft, sandstone crack. The crack ended and continued with a hole ladder.
The topo made it look like a bolt ladder with all the x's but it's definitely a hole ladder. To further progress, we had to gently tap a beak, or stack a few, in these holes and aid upward. I got tired of this and started the leap-frog system.
I was going HUGE!! Before I knew it, I was in a sticky situation. I was looking down at an eighty foot whipper and looking at my next placement.
The placement was totally blown, unable to be used again. It was a drilled hole. The bottom part of the hole was gone, leaving a huge scar. I only had one choice.
I did NOT want to blow it. Crunchy noises were coming from the beaks, it did not make me feel any better about the situation.
I used a couple more beaks in the holes and stepped up to clip a bolt.
WOW!! That was intense, I thought.... and I knew I wasn't done. It went on like this for another hundred feet with only three good bolts in that distance.
"Dicey", we kept saying. The rock was getting wet and the beaks were starting to cut through the holes. I arrived at the belay, thinking "We're almost on top"
Brian set off. At first there were more holes which led into a natural arching crack. It started to rain and hail, to the point where it was pouring down the wall.
It looked as if Brian was getting the full dose of the waterfall, because he had just gained a bulge, just below the summit. The cold water funneled into his face as he looked up to see the next placement. Brian was yelling something about how "We better get off this thing". I had no argument about that, agreeing fully..
Hypothermia was splashing around in my thoughts.
The images stopped...... the slideshow was over - someone must have pulled the electrical cord on the kid.
Brian was dangling from the end of the rope."So, do you?", Brian was asking.
"Do I WHAT" I asked?
"Do YOU want to finish the pitch", Brian yelled down to me?
"Ooohhh, sorry...... UUuuuum..... Yeah, I'll go up there", I was saying. I lowered Brian to the belay.
"Good job, man", I said to Brian "Dude, this route is sick, you were up there forever, it's freezing out, your soaked".
"What are they going to make us do next", Brian said.
A stifling laugh emerged from my throat.
This was our inside joke about how the first ascent was always the deciding factor of what we had to do, to make the summit.
I jumared up to Brian's high-point, a bomber bolt. The rain started to slow down. I was dry compared to how wet Brian was. Mostly because I was under the overhang at the belay.
I pushed on. It was mostly holes and more beaks that led to some free climbing in a corner with lots of loose blocks.
"Wwhhhippp", I totally whipped. Again. I clipped some old sun-bleached tie-off and my body weight ripped through it.
"Rookie", I told myself AGAIN.
Niiiiiiiiiiiiice!! Whhoooooo Hooooo!!!!!
We pulled our haul bag over the lip and stopped the time. 18 Hours 40 Minutes!!! The first one day ascent of the Streaked Wall.
We were psyched. We found a semi-dry area underneath a grove of trees at the summit. We crawled into our sleeping bags.
It felt like paradise!!!
