Class 5 shinanegans on Moonlight Buttress

Zion
9/21/11-9/25/11

So this trip actually started a few years ago. I was climbing in the gym when my lanky acquaintance, Evan Horvath, asked if I wanted to climb a big wall in Zion a few months from then. Not really knowing any better I said yes. The wall Evan had picked was a classic, Touchstone, going at C2 5.9 over 8 pitches. Generally the first half goes at nice easy aid and the second half goes free. We trained a bit, I’d say we had a grand total of 6 pitches of basic aid under our belts by the time the trip was upon us, but in reality it wasn’t nearly enough practice to get up the wall with grace and style. Needless to say, things didn’t go very well. After a little scuffle between frustrated partners at the cramped hanging belay of p4 (just picture us hanging hip to hip with all our crap 400 feet off the deck shoving eachother and throwing punches) , down we went with our tail between our legs, humbled by big rock. This was back in early ’09.

Fast forward to earlier this year. Spring in Yosemite. The biggest stone around. The plan was to go entirely for free climbing, and to cheer on Wally and Greg on their successful bid at a proud line on El Cap, Mescalito. Sean and I tagged along on the trip with Dave and Tori and got on some amazing single day free climbs, it was a fantastic trip. Being under El Cap and gazing up was surreal. The wall was so huge and the top was so far away that it looked like a painting, except you could trace it down from the heavens and end up down where your hand was touching the base of it for real. This definitely rekindled my desire for big walls. It apparently inspired Sean as well, because by the end of the trip he was asking me about my experience in aid climbing. I was psyched to have Sean as a bigwall partner. He is pretty much my mentor on trad climbing. Besides being a strong cool and collected free climber, he is always organized at belays and is thinking one step ahead. This is crucial on walls, as at least half the battle is seeing clusterfucks before they happen and preventing them (the other half is hauling the pig). On the plane ride back to Colorado we made a list of all the gear we would need to get our hands on and some of the goals we wanted to reach before returning. The major milestone and benchmark would be returning to Zion and conquering a wall there in the coming fall.

While the conditions in Zion are radically different than Yosemite, it is a good gauge for bigwall competence. The walls are a little less than a third the height of El Cap, taking 1-2 days rather than 3-6, but you can get the full experience. Strong and hard aid teams can usually get up and off Zion walls in a day using the light and fast ‘fix and fire’ method. No hauling, no ledge, you climb 2-4 pitches the first day, fix your ropes to the base, sleep on the ground, and then the next day you jug your lines and fire to the top in one push. For us however, the plan was to get the full experience of the bigwall and everything it entailed; Hauling fat pigs, shouldering huge racks, climbing into the night, and portaledge shinanery. I felt like we were really well prepared. Well, at least compared to my last trip to Zion. We had been practicing with the full haul system for the past few months and things had been going fairly smoothly. We had even spent a night on our ledge on a local crag just to get the feel of it and work some kinks out before doing it for ‘real’. So, we picked a date, got the time off work, and waited for the temps to drop, and then headed out for Moonlight Buttress.

Only they didn’t drop. It was supposed to be mid-low 80s as a high. Historically at least. Our 3 day climbing window was looking clear and sunny, with a high of ninety bloody seven degrees. 97, who climbs in 97 degree heat? These guys. At least it wasn’t going to rain on us right? Thoughts of sunburn and heatstroke were in the back of my mind, but we were committed. Sean couldn’t push the trip back another week from work, so we went. Wednesday morning at 5:00AM we left Denver and had a thankfully uneventful trip. We casually discussed some possible streamlining and efficiency tricks from our kit, alternative routes in case the line was busy, and we made really good time. At 3PM we rolled into the visitors center in Zion, snagged a campsite, packed 80% of our gear and hightailed it for the shuttles. We still had 5 hours of daylight, we could hike our gear to the base of the climb, heck, maybe even fix the first two pitches to make things more relaxed the next day! Super double A+ awesome man!

I think this is where we got ahead of ourselves.

We felt like heroes getting onto the tourist laden buses. Oh hey, that’s a nice Camelback and walking stick you have there. Yeah all this gear? Yeah, it is heavy, you’re right. Yeah see that wall over there? We are going to climb that… Over 2 days. Sleep? Yeah we have a ledge *points to ledge*. No, we’ll be tied in so we don’t roll off and die. You can come shake our hands when we are done, maybe even carry some of our gear down for us, that would be great, sure.
Bad. Asses.

So we get out at the Big Bend shuttle stop head down to the river, make the ankle deep crossing (very refreshing) and start slogging up the trail. Umm Sean, is this the trail? I dunno, it looks more like a deerpath. *looking up* that’s our climb right? Uhh looks right, I don’t actually have a picture of it…Hey lets ditch our stuff before we get any higher and make sure we are in the right place. Good call.

So we make a pile of gear and head up unencumbered. There is no trail. The bushes are very angry and very pointy. We finally get to the base of the buttress and start wandering back and forth like lost Japanese tourists with our topos out trying to pick out our line above us. It should be super obvious, it’s the most coveted line in Zion so we really weren’t expecting any trouble picking it out. After a good hour of tomfoolery we decide we need more beta. Maybe an actual picture. So we head back to our packs and hide them. Because some tourists were going to come and steal 90lbs of gear in the dark that was a mile off of any trail. Right. So, go down, cross the river, go up, get on bus, back to town. Not heros anymore, just tourists with wet socks. Oh FUCK, my goddamn headlamp AND backup headlamp are in my pack that we just *hid*. Sean has his backup lamp in his pocket, thank god.

Back in town, we find a place with wifi and I quickly scour mountainproject for a picture of our actual buttress. Hey Sean *squinting at 3” screen*, this doesn’t look like what we were just under… Yeah no it doesn’t.. You know what it looks like? What? The next one over that we scoped out while waiting for the bus. Hey you’re right, it sure does, yeah here’s that big dihedral and roof and….oh shit, THIS is our climb. *facepalm*

Oh well, better figure it out now than tomorrow morning eh? So by now its around 7pm, the sun is rapidly dropping behind the canyon walls. We grab the last bit of gear we didn’t drag out there the first time and get back on the bus. It’s empty this time. The driver inquires. We tell our tale, she laughs “I could have told you which one it was the first time!”. Yeah, thanks for that. “last shuttle is 10pm, don’t miss it!”. Its about 8:30. So we bust ass over the river again, god I wish I had a light sour….ahhaa my phone! I brandish it like the last piece of the Triforce. So Sean has his lamp, I’m clutching my iphone, and we make the short hike up to where we think our packs are. So it was like a clearing with a tree, and then a bigish rock right? Yeah they should be right up here…..ok maybe it was the next clearing over?

Cue clown music.
...

• An hour later*

We finally find the bloody things. Thank god for the reflective strips on our packs. Pile everything on, race down to the river, race upstream to the *actual* base of the trail, dump it all, race downstream, and catch the 9:45 bus out. Scarf down some tasty fish tacos (questionable decision?) at Oskars recommended by an outrageous French waiter. Back to the campsite, roll out bags, sleep. Or at least try to. It’s a gorgeous night, shooting stars, milky way, buzzsaw snoring neighbors, a mild amount of sleep. 6AM rolls around.

Day 1
Breakfast: Tuna salad bagles, a really crappy apple, Starbucks doubleshot.
6:45 shuttle, down, river crossing, upstream, uggggggh heavy ass packs, hike hike hike. Hike. Base of climb.

Pitch 1: By the book there are two options. The classic 5.8 low angle well protected dihedral, or the 5.10R direct start. The only problem with the 5.8 is that it introduces some problems with hauling and rope drag, as you leave your haulbag at the base of the 5.10 but then belay from the 5.8 start 40 yards off to the side and up a good bit of 3rd class. Thus starts the shinanery for the day

First pitch Belay

Pitch 1

The topo lies! At least our topo lies. On our topo, there is only 1 anchor at the top of p1. In reality, there are two. There is an accursed evil tempting anchor that you can see as you climb, and then the real anchor 10 feet below and to the right of the evil anchor. Sean was lured by this succubus. And it sucked his soul dry. The evil anchors mean a semi hanging belay and a haul setup from the depths of hell. Its also exactly 60 meters from the pig, which is not a good thing, as we had a 60 meter haul line and you need a little slack in the line to set up the haul and account for knots and whatnot. It was going to be tight. So I’m jugging away, cleaning the line, about ¾ the way up.
Sean : Hey, wheres the haul system?
Double shitballs! I had left it on top of the pig allll the way back down. So, I rap down my line, grab the system, jug. Back. Up.the. line. About ¾ the way, Sean lowers a loop, I tie the system on. He finally wins the battle and gets the haul line loaded and starts pulling away.

Pitch 1 mid haul

The pig inches its way up. Slowly, slowly. And then, it gets stuck. Seriously??? Goddamnit, so I rap down AGAIN free the pig from the micro roof it got stuck under. Scoping it out from below, it looks like clean sailing the rest of the way so I jug up to Sean (for the third time) and find the ledge and real anchors that he should be at. Oh hay sean, heres some anchors and a nice ledge. Really? Yeah, *checks topo* yeah this is definitely where we are supposed to be, not up there. So we discuss it for a hot minute, and make the call that we should lower the pig to a ledge, have me make an anchor, get me the haulsystem and then haul from my ledge. So we execute, and of course, on commencing hauling, the pig gets stuck under that same godawful roof. This time Sean goes down and frees it up. We finally finish up and have everyone and everything on this nice ledge. Ready for pitch 2! Its close to noon I think. Oh yeah, its flipping hot.

Pitch 2. 80ft, of 5.10c fingers or C1.
This was another place with a potential for some class 4 shinanery. Directly above the belay is a very tempting crack, it even had some gear sticking out that someone had left behind! Very tempting indeed. I do love me some booty gear. However, diligently studying the topo and reading the big ‘NO!’ with an arrow above it right where we were, I instead correctly traversed right 20 feet to a little roof with the gorgeous fingercrack above it. A littlebit of tomfoolery with small gear, finally abandoning that and using a stupidly obvious hook placement and I was through the roof and cruising C1 fingers above to the belay. Best belay evar. Nice shaded ledge with 3 big ol bolts. Heaven. Munch on a bar, suck down some water, Haul, and sean is off on P3.

Pitch 3. 110?ft of bolt ladder.

Bolt Ladder

Whats to say, it’s a bolt ladder. Fun, quick, traversing. I’m chilling in the shade, Sean cruises up it, hauls the bag, I follow. Someone left a quickdraw. Awesome, score. The belay ledge is the infamous ‘rocker block’. Basically it’s a refrigerator sized rock teetering back and forth, held to the rock by some giant chains and a bolt or 6. You have to climb on top of it and hope it doesn’t pick *now* to go for a ride on you. Exciting!

Pitch 4. 180 ft of c1. The Grand Dihedral.
So I got the long money dihedral pitch. Its getting dark, but we have climbed in the dark, so its ok. Its actually kind of relaxing because your whole world is just your headlamp. You can really focus on just what you see and forget about how high up you are and how you should be shitting in your pants from fear. So this pitch is long. Super long. By aid standards its super super easy, I mean you take a finger sized cam, plug it in, and go, and then repeat for 180 feet. The problem becomes conserving gear so you actually *have* those finger sized pieces to plug in. you end up leapfrogging cams and running it out, placing in a nut or other sized cams when you can to protect you if somehow the cam you are sitting on blows (which it wont). Or at least that’s what you should do, I wasn’t quite that wise at the start, so I ran out of gear and gas about ¾ the way up it. Luckily there is a belay ¾ the way up. 2 beefy bolts just to the side. Total hanging belay, but its what we got. So I set it up and start pulling up the haulsystem on our tagline. I get it up to me, clip the line into the belay, I can feel the haulsystem dangling in my legs and I hear that dreaded *clink clink*and I felt something hit my shin and drop. FUCK FUCK FUCK ROCK ROCK ROCK!!!!! I scream down at Sean as I see with horror as it wasn’t a rock, but our pulley and microascender that actually give us the hauling mechanical advantage plummet into the depths. It free falls for 400 feet before smashing into the base of the cliff and ricocheting into the bushes below. I panic. We can’t haul, we can’t go on. We are so humped. We can’t even get down now! *panicpanicpanic* Oh wait…..*thinks* we can get down just fine, duh. Ok. I start to breath again. Ok wait, we have options, we can haul. We can use our personal ascenders to replace the microscender and then just a biner in place of the pulley. It won’t be nearly as efficient, but it will work. Oh even better, we have that DMM revolver biner (a really expensive biner with a tiny built in pulley). That should work. Whew, crisis averted. So I set it up, and haul away as Sean cleans the route beneath me. What had happened was Sean accidentally untied the stopper knot on the end of our haulsystem pull cord. Without the knot, the pulley/ascender setup just went off the end of the rope. Whoops.

Sean gets up, we organize all the ropes, pull out the ledge and have it up and mostly leveled out by midnight. Its another gorgeous night, probly 65 degrees, we wouldn’t need sleeping bags if the wind didn’t pick up occasionally. Clear skies, the brightest 1/8th moon I’ve ever seen and stars forever. We whip out the jetboil, get our MountainHouse Meat Lasagna on and turn in, setting the alarm for 6AM with high hopes that all of our shinanegans were out of the system. As far as supplies we were a bit low at this point. We had rationed for 4 liters of water per person per day (so 16 liters total) and were down to 6.5 or 7. So not great, but not in trouble.

Yet.

DAY 2
Pitch 4 and ¾. More Grand Dihedral

6 AM

Breakfast: A bagel, another starbucks doubleshot thingy and a another crappy apple. The bagel was singularly the hardest thing to eat I’ve ever forced down. Ever try eating a bagel with a super dry mouth? Good lord that was a trial right there.

By the time we tear everything down and actually get to climbing, the sun has already started to creep down the route. I cruise up to the true 4th pitch belay and do a short haul. No issues.

Pitch 6ish. 130 feet of C1 punctuated by a super awkward roof slot, followed by a super awkward closed book chimney, and then more awkward slotted C1.

afternoon day 2

Sean’s lead. Thank god XD. I remember seeing his ass sticking out of this slot, his feet flailing around looking for purchase on anything while he wriggled his way into the chimney slot. Goddamn hilarious. Other than that, uneventful. Easy jugging, easy hauling. The top of this pitch is where we wanted to bivy the night before. It’s a nice 2’ ledge with 4 or 5 beefy bolts to facilitate hauling/ledge setup/whatever rather than the 2 we had. Oh well. Its hot hot hot. We are officially running low on water. I’d say 4 liters left for 2 very long pitches and the descent. I’ve also kind of lost track of time, and don’t think because I’m summing these pitches up in 1 small paragraph means they are going quickly. Its still aid climbing, so its still slower than a snail’s snotrockets. It is probably around 1 or 2pm by this point. Actually no come to think of it, its later, because I remember it going into the shade when I was 20 feet off the belay, which means it was closer to 3:30 or 4. So we also need to be down (not just done, but down) by 10pm to catch the last shuttle out. I do some quick mental math, 2 pitches at 2 hours per pitch plus the 1-2 hour descent….we might just make it if everything tips our way…

Pitch 7. 160 feet of C1.
Another marathon pitch. I’ve gotten better at leapfrogging and conserving gear. I dubbed this the ‘orange mastercam’ pitch, because goddamn, every placement was an orange mastercam or red alien. They are my new best friends. I ‘fly’ up this pitch, and get to the belay for pitch 8. I’m pretty blasted by this point. The past 2 days have caught up to me. I’m dehydrated and I can tell my thinking is impaired by how long it takes me to figure out how to make an equalized masterpoint to tie into. All I’ve had to eat today was that crappy breakfast and then 2 shotbloks (strawberry and orange are flipping delicious btw). So I slow things down and start triple checking everything I do, no reason to do something stupid and die up here eh?

So this whole time we have been in full view of all of the shuttle busses filled with tourists going up and down the valley. They have a little pre-recorded audio thing that babbles about the park, but if something of note comes up the driver can stop the bus and interrupt it and say ‘ohh and on your right are a pack of common deer grazing about, everyone oohhh and aweeee at how cute they are…on your left, way up there, are a pair of freaking morons climbing in 97 degree heat, everyone point and laugh!’ Once we got high enough, you could actually hear the loudspeaker coming out of the open sunroofs. At one point: “and what he is doing now is called hauling the pig! It might be the hardest part of wall climbing”

FUCK> YOU>!

So. I haul everything up with an audience and dig into the pig to get the last of our water on top for easy access. I drink half a liter, fill my personal Nalgene halfway up and leave the last liter for Sean’s final push to the top. He arrives. Its around 7, the sun is starting to plummet. “lets get off this rock eh?”.

Pitch: 8 160 feet of C1 followed by 30 feet of unprotected 5.7 slab.

final belay thoughts

Sean drinks half the water, fills his Nalgene with the leftovers (maybe a third a liter?) and sets off. I lose sight of him quickly.

You start to think of weird shit at times like this. So if you are discombobulated, you are all confused and mixed up etc. So then are you normally combobulated? Combobulated. Its my new favorite word. I was just sitting there muttering it over and over for a while I think. I try to use it in a sentence every day now. Combobulate that!

Forever passes. Its full dark. The rope is moving impossibly slow. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it stops, yay the halfway mark! Oh shit he’s only halfway? Fuckballs. Up down up up up inches, up up up…….. Finally, FINALLY! Sean calls that he is off belay. I’m worried because he sounds way closer than he should. Are you at the top? ……kind of! Is the response I get. Well great. Haul Haul Haul, Jug Jug Jug. I clean the pitch, Sean has run it out REALLY far between pieces and the rock has gotten kind of crumbly up here, it’s a bit sketchy. I get up to the belay. Holy shitballs, what a huge huge huge huge HUGE mess. Sean had stopped at a decent ledge at the end of the aid and the beginning of the 5.7. He had to make an anchor and used about 14 kajillion cams to do it. It’s a positive rats nest, but at least its solid. Then, instead of piling or coiling ropes, he has just let them do whatever the hell they want on the floor of this ledge. The rack is UNDER all the ropes, they are all tangled in each other, I’m quite sure it couldn’t have been more of a clusterfuck if he had hired some devious lawn gnomes to make it so. Its 9:30, there is no chance in hell we are making the 10pm shuttle. To punctuate this fact, I saw a shuttle stop, the driver get up, and flash a torch up at us seeing if we needed help. I flashed back that I saw him, but didn’t give an SOS, so he drove off.

We are getting a little short with each other at this point. Both understandably exhausted, dehydrated, malnourished and frusterated. I goosfraba a few times to clear my head and we start to uncluster the fuckage we are standing on. A solid hour later we finally have the 2 haul ropes coiled and in the bag, and we start to coil up the lead line. We get to my cleaning loops which are still hanging over the edge. Tug tug tug *stuck*. Fuck. Me. *TUG TUG TUG TUG TUG REALLY REALLY REALLY STUCK*. ARE YOU SHITTING ME RIGHT NOW? We try all sorts of flicking and lowering and oscillating and counterflicking. Nothing. I untie and we drop my end and then try to pull up that way. Still stuck. I can’t believe I wasn’t more flustered, but it was like ‘yeah, ok sure, of course this happened’. So the plan was I would rap down on the other end and see what was up. We made a TR backup from the haul line and I rapped back off the cliff. 20 feet down the rope had gotten sucked up into the crack and crossed itself. Physics be damned, this was not coming loose. Glad I have my knife, first time to use it! Little Trango piranha was a lifesaver, sharp as hell too! Cut both ends, I thought I tied the loose end to a biner and strapped it on myself, but there is no sign of it now, so I guess I just tossed it into the dark (oops, sorry LNT ethics). I jug up, and we organize for the final mini pitch of 5.7.

Pitch: LAST FUCKING ONE. Painfully short 5.7 slab.
Sean walks up this thing real quick. I can almost grab his ladders from my belay when he is anchored in. Ugh. Minihaul, but it still takes forever. I jug up to to him and beached whale myself over the rim tie into the fixed line attached to the summit tree and we shuttle all of our gear up to terra firma. Its about 1AM. So, we have definitely missed the shuttle. We have options:
A) sleep up here.
B) leave all our shit here, run down to the Grotto shuttle stop where I’m 90% sure there is potable water and then come back up and get it in the morning .
or
C) shlep everything down tonight.
What we know about the descent: “3/4 to 1 ½ Hours”. Is this with packs or without packs? Is this moving slowly because you want to die or not? So realistically its 1 ½ to 2 hours, down ~1000 feet vertically and I’d say 2 miles horizontally.

We went with C and it was a good call.

We pull my ultralight pack out of the bottom of the haulbag and load everything up. At this point we are both lightheaded, cottonmouth to the extreme, dryheaving etc. I make 20 steps and I see a gleam in a bush nearby. Is that…? OH MY GOD IT IS!!!! I dive headfirst into the bush and there is a stash of 4 not so ice cold ancient beers. Now science kicks in, but not hard enough. Alcohol dehydrates you, we would both be hammered off of one beer right now, and our heads worse off than they are right now. I really REALLY *REALLY* wanted them, but we left them to the next fortunate enough to find them under better circumstances. After doing some research on the matter, we should have had them. Some studies have shown that beer actually hydrates BETTER than water (due to the vitamins and nutrients in it) after extreme exercise. But what we REALLY should have done was boiled it for a while to get rid of the alcohol and then drank it. Nasty for sure, but liquid nonetheless.

So, the rest of a long story shorter, we made the descent, it was straight flipping down over millions of switchbacks for the first hour and then a mellow hike for the second hour or so. We got into the Grotto around 3:30AM or so, found the working drinking fountains, gorged ourselves and passed out until the shuttle came by at 7AM.

Breakfast of Smoothies, water, and sausage egg and cheese croissants at Café Soleil (deeeelicious). We even ran into the ranger that sold us our bivy permit there. Chatted a bit about our trials. Then off to the gearshop for a shower, nap in the park, lunch and a milkshake, and a 10 hour drive back to Denver getting in around midnight.

All in all, we got up the bitch. I wasn’t turned away a second time. WAY more shinangans than I would have liked, but I think we learned a lot from these. I just hope it didn’t turn Sean off from the whole bigwall idea, as we still have the Big Stone ahead of us, just on the other side of winter…

Great TR! Sounds like you accomplished your task of lots of big wall prep... aiding, rope & belay mgmt, etc.

Good luck on your next big wall project!

Good stories are not fun to make but sure are fun to hear! As an aspiring wall climber I really enjoyed your TR. Thanks, Phill.

Guys-
Thanks for the trip report. Moonlight is a good route, and you brought back vivid memories.
Trial by fire is a hard way to learn. Bummer about the haul system.
Hang in there.
What did you think of the adjustable daisies?

Entertaining trip report.
I was in Zion that weekend, doing some canyons, it was hot in the shade, it would have been brutal up on the rock. Nice job.

What's the big deal? Isn't Moonlight a free solo these days?

Good job though....

Mike Storeim wrote:What's the big deal? Isn't Moonlight a free solo these days? Good job though....

Moonlight goes free at 12d... If you want to free solo it, go for it. I think I'll opt for the 5.9 C2 version when I make it out to Zion.

Thanks for the detailed and graphic account of your climb. There's much to learn from your experiences.

Kyle Judson wrote: Moonlight goes free at 12d... If you want to free solo it, go for it. I think I'll opt for the 5.9 C2 version when I make it out to Zion. Thanks for the detailed and graphic account of your climb. There's much to learn from your experiences.

Ya, but I hear it's bomber tips.

Never pass up beers stashed in the bushes when you are tired and thirsty, and JUST TOPPED OUT!

It might dehydrate us? What would Ammon have done?

Way to persevere. Continuing when you were slow, it was hot, and your haul device bailed? Many of us would have practiced rappelling with the pig, but you stuck it out for the send!

I liked reading that, thanks. Sounds rough but also awesome. There's no way I could pass up those ancient beers-NO WAY! I hope to try a big wall sometime... Zion sounds like a good place to give-er-a-go.