White Maiden's Walkaway

Sometimes a name can be deceiving. Such is the case for the climb we call the White Maiden. The true name is the White Maiden's Walkaway, but that's kinda long, so it's the White Maiden for normal conversation. The deception is that I almost never do the walkaway. This climb is a special for me, it was my first climb at Tahquitz Rock(on the maps known as Lily Rock). This is one of the longest climbs on the rock, going up the northwest buttress of the rock. It has great views by virtue of being out on the buttress proper, beautiful rock and great climbing.

Roy and I made our normal approach, from the Devils Slide trailhead, across the creek, up the talus slopes and then along the base of the north face to the buttress. Once at the buttress, I've seldom followed the original route, instead I take a variation that provides a direct route up to the top of the prominent gendarme on the buttress. This is slightly more difficult than the 5.1 version of the climb, but it's great crack climbing and truthfully, for many years I didn't know that this was a variation, I didn't know there was another way to go. In order to do this start we had to do some scrambling, in fact at the belay ledge Roy asked me if we could use the rope yet. We started off and the climbing was good. A little higher I continued climbing cracks off to the left of the regular route, more difficult, more better. I ran the rope out almost the full 200 feet and set up the belay. Roy came up and made some comments about the party climbing the Long Climb, which almost shares the same start. I assured him that they were no doubt better climbers than us and not to worry about them.

Moving up the first pitch

The next pitch was on easier ground up to the top of the gendarme and then up to some beautiful fine grained white rock. By this time we had bypassed the walkaway portion of the climb. The walkaway is some very fun and easy climbing, almost like a staircase. That's the way we take beginners. The white rock has some large flakes and blocks that seem to be loose, so climbing in this area takes a little more thought. One thing that I noticed was that there were several newer fixed pitons. This area can be a little tricky to protect with normal pro, so the fixed pins are a nice touch. Too bad you always have to question if the fixed pins have worked their way loose. So much for mental calming. Thank goodness the moves are easy, fun and have some nice exposure. I was soon up on the belay ledge, a big one, and had my belay anchors set with some bomber nut placements. Roy climbed up and I noticed that he was laughing. I asked him why he was laughing, had he thought of a good joke and he said something about being afraid. It's terrible to watch a mind fail before your eyes.

On top of the gendarme

The next pitch is one of the most famous on the climb. The route traverses the ledge and then heads up a large crack, that gets progressively narrower until it reaches a ledge, where it becomes a seam. The rock outside of the crack is good quality and has lots of features for feet and handholds. Once you reach this ledge, you can make a great nut placement on the right hand side, cross over about 8 feet to the left and then look around the corner. This is doubtful corner. At this point the rock is overhanging below you, the outside edge of the corner is trying to push you off the rock and there are no good handholds as you make the step around to the inside of the corner. When I first did this climb, almost 35 years ago, you could reach out and grab the branch of a large Mountain Mahogany and pull yourself around the corner. Now that I have more experience, it's probably good you can't reach the branch, since so many accidents over the years, many with fatal results, have been due to the failure of vegetation when used as holds and anchors.

Looking down doubtful corner

I have learned the trick of stepping down low around the corner and one can reach a finger sized crack behind a small flake that makes it quite secure. Once around the corner, it's up on the tree and set up the belay. Then up came Roy, who was kind enough to pose for a video shot at the corner.

Looking down the north face

The next pitch was another 200 footer. The climbing was easy and the location fantastic, it's hard not to have a good time when conditions are like this. I only put in 2 pieces of protection, but had a lot of rope drag towards the end of the pitch. On one ledge there was a columbine with two pretty flowers on it. Other than penstemons in abundance on the hike in, there weren't very many other flowers to be seen.

Columbine on a high ledge

The end of the fourth pitch brought us to the same belay that we used for our last pitch of the Long Climb. Since the climbing had been fun and not very difficult, I decided to finish the climb with the 5.7 overhang variation. I hadn't done the variation in a number of years and I found out why. The protection was adequate, which was fine for me years ago, but now that I have to put forth more effort, I like to be able to add excessive amounts of protection when my reserves run low. In this case, that was a luxury that I wasn't afforded. I hemmed and hawed and finally stalled long enough to hear Roy muttering something about how it doesn't look that bad and I made the moves. I think I turned a 5.7 into a 5.9, but maybe I flatter myself.

Once over the roof, it was some delicate climbing across some broken ledges till the next belay. The broken ledges had a lot of loose rock which was a concern, since the party on the Long Climb were below us at that point. We didn't want to knock any rocks down on them. From the belay we had one more short pitch, about 30 feet and then we were on the top.

We hiked up to the actual top of the rock, changed our shoes, drank our water and split a power bar. We also watched a glider that was soaring above the peaks. I mentioned to Roy how the pilot is no doubt the same one we saw a few weeks ago and how special it is that he is so interested in us that he comes out to watch us when we climb.

Checking us out

As we prepared to start down we noticed a long line of debris in one of the gullies coming down of Tahquitz peak. This debris is from a recent avalanche, it had been more or less green earlier in the season, but now it has turned brown, we took a picture and commented on how much force there must have been to create so much of a debris path. Nature certainly is non-stoppable. Then, it was back to the car.

Notice swath of debris running through the middle of the photo

On the way down we stopped to look at a rock that had fallen off the rock formation behind Tahquitz a few years ago. We had our usual conversation regarding wether or not the rock had moved since our last visit, including documenting the rock with photos. Then on down the trail. Once again another good day on the rock. To view some video we took go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxGEQmGBf28

Has it moved?