Birds of Prey (or something to the top of the Squaw!)

Shane and I headed out to The Squaw to climb Birds of Prey -- a route we'd both been meaning to get on for some time. We had no idea the adventure we had waiting for us! I got started on the first pitch which is a 5.8 finger crack. It was a great pitch and I was feeling good and relaxed on lead. The guidebook breaks this beautiful 70 meter crack into two pitches, but there really isn't a good place to stop. So my plan was to just do it all on one pitch. But when I was about 3/4 of the way up (1/2 way up the second pitch) I had exactly 3 pieces left that I knew would fit and 2 of them were nuts! So I decided to stop and build an anchor. I had a hard time getting those 3 pieces to fit near each other so my anchor was a bit spread out, and it was a hanging belay with a tiny ledge to stand on. But it was a good anchor and Shane grabbed the gear off of me and gunned it for the anchors.

We were looking up at the crux of the 10b pitch, which looked pretty hard. And it was harder than it looked. Compared to the soft ratings on The Grand Wall, The Squaw is quite sandbagged in my opinion! Shane got up most of it fine, but then fell near the top of the crux when his hand jam slipped. It was a nice clean fall (which was a relief for me -- I was eyeing a ledge not too far below him when he started struggling). He made the move somewhat desperately on the second attempt and was up and out of sight. When it was my turn, I actually had a much harder time with the lower section. There's a small corner chimney-like feature that I had a hell of a time getting through. Once I could get hand jams in the crack, I managed to get the rest of it with little problem. But I blew out my mythos on this pitch. I'm not sure if I should get them re-soled again or just thank them for 2 1/2 seasons and get a new pair. Once I was at the top of the crux was when the real trouble started for me. The next part of the pitch is a 5.9 airy and unprotectable traverse that starts with a step from one ledge to another with no hands at all. It wasn't too hard of a move, but I was afraid of the swing I would take if I didn't make it so I wouldn't commit to the move and I ended up taking the swing over and down which put me quite a ways off route in this impossible corner. Luckily, I had 2 small aliens and 2 long slings with me. So I managed to aid up the non-climb and get myself back on route. Te rest of the pitch was no problem.

Once we were at that point, we looked around for a bit for the next pitch. We knew it was a 5.10, and we found a corner off to the left that looked like a 10, with bolts below it, so Shane started up that on lead. But a little while he called down to me that the crack ended and there was a bolt ladder of sorts on what looked like 5.12 slab. We figured he must be off route because there shouldn't be any aid moves on Birds of Prey. So he left a biner in one of the bolts and I lowered him down. We went back to another set of bolts directly above the 10b pitch (one of 3 sets of bolts right next to each other) and headed up a cornerish thing. We figured we must be off route at this point because we were supposed to be on a 5.10 crack, but we were doing a traverse with the occasional place to put in gear and a bolt to protect a step-across where there was no place to put in pro -- definitely not something I would call a crack.

And the next pitch conformed our beliefs. It would have been a 5.8 if we were on route, but it was more like an 11 finger crack in a corner. It started out feeling like an 8, but then the ledges for feet disapeared and it was more like a 10. And it got steadily harder as the crack got thinner. By the top of the pitch, the crack was a seem I couldn't even get my finger tips into. Luckily there were some pockets Shane managed to get some nuts in to protect the climb. I actually had to french free a couple of moves and I never do that! So I'm thinking it must have been a hard 11. There were bolts at the top of it though -- which means we were on some route, but we never did figure out which one. We topped out with a really dirty 5.8 pitch and laughed at the adventure the day had become.

And then we headed to the brew pub for some well deserved beer. Now I feel like I need to do the climb again after looking in the book and figuring out where we were supposed to go! It's funny, we had both looked at the actual route at the top of the 10b and both determined that it didn't look like a climb. Opps!! I guess I'll be making the airy 5.9 step across that I took the swing on again. Next time, I'll be sure to have some small aliens with me just in case I slip there again!