The Long Climb

On Monday, Roy and I decided to take on Tahquitz Rock, for the third week in a row. By now our confidence was growing and our ambitions were growing even faster. I had invited some non-climbers to come along and was expecting to do a beginner climb, but when none of them decided to join us, I started thinking big. Roy didn't do much to help dissuade me, he kept offering to do some of the leading. As we hiked up to the rock, I started to form a plan and soon we found ourselves at the base of The Long Climb.

At the base of the rock

The Long Climb, 5.7 difficulty rating, was one of my early leads on Tahquitz. The crux is the second pitch, which involves a squeeze chimney and/or some strenuous laybacking, at least it's strenuous for me. Most climbers mix the two. I remembered how difficult I have always considered the squeeze chimney section, so I offered that lead to Roy. Not wanting to avoid doing my fair share of leading, I decided to climb the first pitch of the Wong Climb. Yes, a play on words. The first pitch is part of the crack system that forms the Long Climb chimney, but instead of a 5.7 rating, the Wong Climb is 5.8. Personally I've always thought that this first pitch of the Wong Climb is far superior to the first pitch of the Long Climb.

Our route is in shade to the right

Before I go too much farther, I would like to point out that the Long Climb got it's name because it is one of the longest climbs on Tahquitz Rock. The Wong Climb variation takes parallel cracks for the first two pitches and then the climbs join. The routes cross each other at the top of the first pitch. The second pitch of the Wong Climb is seldom done because there is a lot of loose rock on that pitch, which makes it dangerous for anyone climbing it as well as anyone below.

Back to the approach. We made the same approach as the past few weeks and noticed that the snow bank at the base of the rock (over at the start of the Larks) has mostly melted away. There were two small patches and with the rains we have been getting, along with the higher temperatures I doubt the snow will last another week. 

Snow patch at base of rock

Once we reached the base of the rock, we then traversed westerly towards the White Maiden buttress. The large corner at the east side of the buttress was our destination. The climb doesn't start on the ground, it begins up on some ledges that can be easy or hard to get to, depending on your choice of routes. We took what we thought would be easy, but because we were tired from the hike in, we tried to shortcut this approach and soon found ourselves struggling. We did make it up and found a nice ledge about 150 feet off the ground where we geared up. 

We quickly ran out of excuses to keep from starting up the climb and so I started up. I was a little concerned since this would be the hardest crack climb I've done in several months. I was very pleasantly surprised, the climbing couldn't have gone any better. This first pitch climbs a single crack with most of the climbing involving jaming. A lot of the hand jams are what I consider the perfect hand size, which is why this pitch is one of my favorites. I had been concerned that my lack of climbing at this difficulty and type of climbing would create problems for me. As I climbed up I kept checking my hands, the best way to tell if you are having problems with your hand jams is if you shred your hands. My hands at the end of the pitch didn't have a single sign of rock rash, perfect. The only trouble that I did have was when my foot got stuck in the crack about two thirds of the way up. That problem was easily corrected and I continued up. Since we were raising the bar so to speak, we brought more gear than we have been using the past few months and it worked out great. Things couldn't get much better.

I had remembered the problems I'd previously had with the second pitch, which consisted of trying to slide up the squeeze chimney faster than I was sliding down. With my increase in girth in the years since that first time up the route, I was glad that Roy was going to be leading that section of the climb. He is more svelte than I and so I figured better suited for the job at hand. Well, I have to hand it to Roy, he's a real trooper. He started up the climb and one of the first things I noticed was that he wasn't making it look easy. In fact, he was making it look downright hard. This was something that I hadn't counted on. I had throughly enjoyed the first pitch and thought that I had done it in grand style, but that didn't mean that it hadn't been a good workout. In fact, it was a great workout and I didn't have much left in the old arms. A second item of concern was not just for me, but for Roy as well and that was the fact that he was putting in what I considered to be an embarrassing lack of protection. When the leader puts in protection he then is looking at a fall that will be at least twice the distance of the rope from the last piece of protection to the leader, plus rope stretch and slack the belayer may have in the rope. I would have put in twice as much protection. Much to my surprise, Roy kept going up and up and up and I thought that he was just about through the difficult section when he suddenly came sliding down to his last pro. I was amazed at what I had just witnessed. I couldn't believe that he didn't come flying out of the chimney, it appeared his descent was actually under control. After a little rest he made another attempt, but this time he didn't have the same spark. He again came down to where he could rest on the pro and told me he just didn't have enough gas to lead on.

Well, I was beginning to have some pangs of guilt, watching him struggle up there, so I told him to come on down and I'd give it a go. He agreed, showing not even the slightest hesitation and came on down. At this point there should have been some warning signs telling us to turn back and go do something easier, but we ignored the subtle hints and the even more obvious ones to come. Instead of switching the ends of the rope, so I could have a top rope to Roy's highest protection, I started up on the same end I had when I lead the first pitch, so I was leading from the ledge and just clipping into the pro Roy had placed. This means that in addition to the physical stress, I also had to deal with the mental stress of leading and when the going gets tough, it just compounds. When I made it to Roy's top piece of pro, I was gassed. Of course asking Roy to take over was not an option, so for the next hour or two, it seemed longer, I slowly would climb up a few feet, put in some pro and rest. Climb up a few feet, put in some pro and rest. Climb up a few feet and so on till I made it up the fifteen feet or so of strenuous chimney/layback and was on reasonable ground once again. During this maximal effort I was wondering if I was going to die. My mouth was so dry I was "spittin cotten" and my arms were killing me. At these desperate moments I never think about fainting, just dying, something to wonder about. Of course I also kept thinking about falling and I knew that if I fell I wouldn't have that nice controlled slide like Roy, oh no, I would pitch out backwards, invert and plummet to some terrible trauma, which may be why I didn't fall, too scared.

I did finally make it to easier ground and soon I found myself below the overhanging block which marks the end of the second pitch. Normally I find that this to be scary, like all overhangs, but not this time, I was too far gone both physically and mentally, I threw in some good pro and just popped over, like I was supposed to. I even enjoyed it. I set about making the belay, I had just enough gear left to accomplish that "little" detail and then brought up Roy.

Looking down on first pitch from high on second pitch

One of the things that people consistently tell me about Roy is how nice he is, that they couldn't imagine him saying an unkind remark to or about anyone. Well, as Roy finished the pitch, I was able to hear the dark side. It seems that Roy thought the climb was unreasonable and that we should go down. Well, I figured it was too late to go down and since we had climbed the two hardest pitches, it should only get easier. I was so confident in this that I told him just that and we could count on nothing harder that 5.6 for the rest of the climb. He was desperate enough to believe me and so I started up the third pitch.

Don't believe Roy's smile

One small problem with the difficulty of any climb is that it doesn't remain true to the rating given it, if you go off route and that is exactly what I did. There was a slight overhang at the start of the pitch, but since I was still tired from the previous climbing, I decided to try something "easier". Well in no time I found myself climbing up a steep but not overhanging corner with thin fingers for holds. I quickly started lacing up the crack with pro every few feet and as I took a rest I admitted that I was on something that seemed more like 5.9 as opposed to the 5.6 I had promised. I traversed over to the route I should have been on and then started up a very steep jam crack on the other side of it. This time my hands were getting quite roughed up. Not many go this way and there was quite a bit of lichen which was causing my feet to slip. As my nerves were once again fraying, I started pushing up my number 2 Camalot to protect me as I climbed. I was soon about fifteen feet above my last pro and looking at a grounder on the belay ledge if I fell and the pro didn't hold. Fortunately I didn't do more than slip and made it onto the easier ground above. With the traversing that I did, plus a couple of small roofs and I soon had a tremendous amount of rope drag to pull as I climbed. It didn't take long before I decided to stop, only a half a pitch out. I then set up the belay just above an old dead tree, which made a nice seat while Roy came up. 

View of parking lot from belay on old dead tree

Belaying the other climber is normally thought of as a rest, but often if you are tired and the climber is climbing quickly, it can be tiring for the belayer who is trying to recover from having just climbed. In this case I was suffering from that situation, but I had insult added to injury when my forearms started to cramp. I was surprised, I didn't remember this ever happening to me in the past. The pain was significant, but the lack of ability to move was an even greater concern. My mind flashed on the possibility that my arms would get so cramped that I wouldn't be able to use them, then I'd have to get rescued. That was something I wasn't looking forward to. So I started stretching my arms, working through the pain and by the time Roy arrived at the belay station the cramps were all but gone. That was a close one!

My next pitch wandered and again I stopped after a half pitch. I was beginning to wonder how many pitches we would have to do if we kept climbing short pitches. At least this pitch was easy. We weren't recovering very much at the belays, so I decided to traverse over to the White Maiden and finish off on it. The traverse was easy and I tried to protect it for Roy as he followed, as well as for myself as I led. It turned out that a couple of the protection pieces were very difficult for Roy to clean, since they were "keyhole" placements. This means that a wedge or similar shaped piece of protection is inserted into an opening in a crack, but the crack itself is narrower than the piece except for the opening it fit into. For the cleaner, it can be tough figuring out which spot the piece went into and sometimes it takes some maneuvering to slide the piece to the opening from where it lodged in the crack. The nice thing about the "keyhole" placements is that they are very secure, it's almost impossible for them to accidently fall out.

Looking down on the White Maiden

Looking back at the traverse to the last pitch

The start of the last pitch

After Roy made it to the belay ledge, he recognized the rest of the route up the White Maiden and decided to lead to the top. I gave him the gear, he gave me the pack and a few minutes later he was on top. He brought me up and we quickly organized our gear and hiked up to the true summit.

View of moon from the top of our climb

Looking up toward the true summit

The air quality over Idyllwild, lots of humidity coming in from the coast

 We took some pictures and then it was down the notch to the north east gully and back to the car. We returned to the car shortly after six pm, about eight hours after we left. Truly it had been a long climb.

Flowers on the hike back to the car

Our route in red, belay stances are the yellow squares