April 18, 2008

The Potrero Marathon


So we were attempting to link up a few multi pitches to climb 50 pitches in a day but we fell 14 pitches short........We started off with Time Wave Zero 5.12 which is the longuest multi pitch sport climb in North america. Here I am on the 23 rd pitch, topping out at around 1;30 pm.......We left at 8 am from the bikes.......We were supposed to leave at 6 am but the Alarm didn't go off as planned so we started a little later than we wanted too. It took us 2 hours too rap 23 pitches from the summit of TWZ. It was 3;30 pm at that point and we were thirsty for beer so we hit Chon's up for an Indio and a big bottle of water. After rehydrating ourselves we headed back to the canyon and started climbing Yankee Cliper which is a 13 pitch 5.10 route....Alain was leading the first 3 pitches in one when Edgardo arrived at the bottom and told me he wanted to join us. So him and I did the first 3 pitches close together to reach Alain which was belaying us from the top of the 3 rd pitch. After that we decided to simul climb the rest of the climb.......Edgardo was all fired up and fresh so he started leading with about 30 draws hanging off his harness. He was able to link up the next 5 pitches in one go.......I have to say it was a little scary at some times cause Edgardo was skipping a lot of bolts and the three of us were all climbing at the same time. There was a rope but it felt more like soloing cause if any one of us had fallen it wouldn't of been good.........Luckily all went well and we reached the top of the 13 pitch in 2 hours and headed down emmidiatly. The winds were strong and it was getting dark so we didn't want to waist any time. We reached the bottom and Dane was waiting for us with a little safety treat. It was 9 0clock at that point and we had been climbin and rapping for 13 hours. The goal was 50 pitches but we were exausted and to find motivation to go back up another route was extremely hard so we stopped there. We still managed to climb over 3000 feet in 13 hours which we're happy with. I'll never forget how much pain the feet can actually take.