Friday, July 3, 2009

The Electric Pepper Grinder

Ok, so...I am lying on my belly on the Green Line. Around my neck are a trad rack, a drill, and what feels like 50 other things. I am crammed into the last 20 feet of the Green Line and I can't move. And all I can think about is...Stovo's electric pepper grinder.

At breakfast, Stovo-- who remains fodder for all of our status-envy yuppie-cunt jokes-- busted out an electric pepper grinder. It whines, it grinds, it looks like a sex toy, and of course he got a really good deal on it, otherwise he would never have bought the damn thing. As I am lying on the ledge, I want an electric pepper grinder to clean the masses of bush and munge that are clawign at my waist. I want this to be quick and easy but instead I have Dilly laughing as I crawl thrash and snip.

"Hey are you sleeping there or what? How's that nice comfy ledge?" as he plays with his new iPhone. Fuck, they should make an iCleaner that deals with iLedges. Here's the view.





I took the rack off, hung it on a bolt, and thrashed forward. Looking back this is the Green Line munge-fest.




After a buttload of snipping, I fired in an anchorand brought Dilly over. It looked
something like this. Come to Papa, Dilly-boy! Yea baby. WORK that cave!




Dilly then started up the next pitch, the left-trneding overhanging hand crack. Whiel he led, the gri-gri belayed him and I clean the Green Line. There is a pleasant rhythm to the day-- you scrub, heave, trash-talk your partner, swig water, repeat. It's not the adrenal thrill of sending, but it's engaging. As Dilly neared the top of his pitch, I looked back, and the Green Line was clean. Satisfying. Good necessary work done.

Dilly fixed the newest static which belongs to The Filth, Dilly's brother in law. The Filth is currently travelling with his wife (hard to believe but this wonderful woman married him) in Nepal. The Filth's Patagonia organic hemp static line twanged down to Dilly as he pendulumed back and forth trying to get to the dihedral belay. I jugged an A1 probably 5.11+/12- pitch which other than a wee bit of moss is basically ready to climb.

At the belay I craned my head back as far as I could and saw only possibilities...up and left into a long corner? Up over an overlap into blocky cracks? The great joy of ground-up is that every day is new discovery. We could be doing this top down, but then it would just be filling in the obvious blanks. Colouring inside the lines. Following a blueprint. This way feels like we are going somewhere new.

Finally here is Dilly on rap at the middle of the 50m handcrack.




We rapped down and packed up. How awesome a feeling-- a traverse pitch drileld and cleaned, a new pithc led, mostly cleaned, and fixed. We now need only 3 loooong jugs to our high point, we have probably 2 mid 10 pitches to easier ground, and then it's wonly traversing to the V-slot. Stay tuned-- more on July 25th and 26th.

1 comment:

  1. Ha! You guys are iWanks. My static line looks great.

    I now have two hemarroids. Fred, the original, is external and about the size of a small grape. He's generally pretty mellow, and we've learned to live with one another. Simon is about the size of a pea and resides just inside my anus. He's a grumpy little bitch, like Soltzy in the morning.

    It's strange to grow things out of one's ass. I need an iAssExorcism.

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