Before I start writing about my experience climbing this CLASSIC. First, I need to point out that Ashley and I are in no way “professional climbers”, but we took precautions and did a lot of studying on the climbs we had set out to do. So, if you are climbing outdoors on your own, be sure to look up Mountain Project and read up on the climb on other blogs or YouTube channels. My recommendation: Do not solely rely on Mountain Project… it is not always (or sometimes ever) accurate on the instructions of the pitch and the approach. It is even better if you can get a guidebook but not everyone can do this, and it is not always practical if you are just around the crag for a climb or two. Thankfully, we did a classic route, and it was pretty well documented online.
This climb is called Big Bad Wolf. It is a classic 4 pitch climb, or some like to call a 3 pitch (the last one is short). It starts with a 5.9, then a 5.8, 5.8, then a 5.0 (scramble), and in total, it is 67m long.
To start, the approach itself was tougher than we thought. Its instructions were “Look up and find the largest rock, and the black part is where the climb is…” I mean, this could be the vaguest thing ever. However, funnily enough, maybe it was really as it said, because that was how we found the climb. The whole time scrambling up, we were hoping that we legitimately found the largest rock there. It was funny because we saw a TV personality promoting this place and talking about climbers multi-pitching here, and we were just in the background approaching the climb. I wonder if we will get to see ourselves behind if the video gets released.
Well, the scramble was not that bad, but it felt extremely random, and we were just blindly going up to the point. I think it really helped that there was already a party there so we just headed to them and hoped that they were climbing something nearby. (Turns out they were climbing the very route we wanted to do.) So, we actually had to wait about 1.5h for them to cross the pitch, and because the person who led could not send it to the anchors, she had to come back down and swap the leader, which made us wait so long just to start the climb. However, they were sorry about it, so meh.. maybe it is part of the experience of multi-pitching.
Anyway, if you want to go to this place. These are the coordinates for the base of that pitch, I don’t know why it’s not already out on the internet (or I just cannot find it), (36.1474444, -115.4287778).
After all that waiting, we were pumped to finally get on the wall. I led the first pitch and I was lazer focused on getting us up to pitch 1’s anchor, it was a good level of leading for me, where it is not too easy or too hard, it was just at that level I was comfortable to lead at and enjoyed. It was supposedly a 20m pitch but it honestly did not feel like it. The crux probably would be this one sloper I had to trust to clip the draw but Thank God I was feeling fresh.
After reaching the first anchor, my adrenaline was high and I belayed Ashley up. She had to go up the next pitch which was a little longer about 24m, and after some hyping up, she found the guts to go up the route. I still remember when she had asked me to lead both P1 and P2 and I looked at her and said: “What!! Then are you going to lead P3 and P4 Hahahah”. Ashley is such a skilled climber (if I can say so, better than me) and I still wonder why she gets afraid to do these easy climbs, but I’m proud of her because she did lead it in the end :).
P2 had no specific crux but the whole first part of it was pretty blank, though it was a slab, it still felt sketchy leading on though there were some good chips but it was still a whole lot of smearing.
Moving onto P3, I felt excited that we were nearing the end, and P3 was somewhat our last proper pitch. I looked up and the wall goes from a slab to a vertical and then to a slight overhang before the anchor. I get a little nervous but I say a little prayer under my breath and I go for it! It turned out to be really okay; I belay Ashley up, and we celebrate our win. P3 was not difficult at all, but it definitely looked harder than it was, it took some intentional climbing to not overthink it too much.
Then the last pitch which was a 10m climb with 2 quickdraw points, but it was pretty much a scramble, and I think Ashley did not find the draw points and ended up running it out quite a bit.
When we both reached the top, it felt amazing looking at calico basin at this angle and we celebrated with a gummy bear packet I had forgotten I left in my pocket.
Here was where things went sideways.. as every “fun” adventure has it. We were supposed to walk/hike our way back down, but we could not seem to find the way and we seem to end up scrambling higher and higher with no idea which way it was to go back down. In our heads, we had expected the hike down to be “obvious” but this was when we realized we had f*cked up, and we sat down thinking of a plan. At some point, we had to downclimb a really sketchy and exposed part just to get back to the rap rings (I really did not enjoy this), but I had to find Ashley who wandered above and I could no longer hear her at some point.
We start to hear some voices from a pitch below and hoped that a party would summit and show us the way down, but after some contemplating, we decided the safest way down would be to rappel. The reason we had not planned to rappel down was because people online had been saying that the angle of the wall made it hard for rope to be thrown down easily, this meant that our rope could get tangled or stuck while we were rapelling. However, we decided that even with this, it would be safer than getting lost up on the rock where visibility or direction was unclear.
I throw the rope down and of course, since it was a scramble to the top from P3, the rope would not go all the way down to the anchor and it landed on a ledge. I took the initiative to rappel down first with my ATC instead of our usual plan — which would be to simultaneously rappel down with our gri gri’s. This is better as if anything should happen, I could still be belayed up by Ashley.
So, I go ahead down and as I am flaking the rope a little before throwing it lower, I realize that one side is way longer than the other and it was uneven, so I had to find a safe spot on the ledge where I could kind of even it out.
At this point, I still could not really see P3’s anchors, but I throw the rope down once more and go for it. I rappel even lower and this time I can see the rings. I rap down and secure it before shouting to Ashley to head down as well.
I look down again and I cannot seem to find P2’s rings but we try this time to ensure it was as even as possible but the problem was mainly because we could not find a midpoint of this rope! I was not sure how we did not manage to find it but again I found myself rapelling down an uneven rope but this time I did not have a ledge to stand on to adjust the rope, and the rope was not only uneven, but the shorter rope was above the anchors of P2. At this moment, I think to myself: “Oh my gosh, I need to come up with a plan and fast, without reaching that end and unable to reach the anchor.” So, I think, is there a way to adjust the rope while hanging on it??? I almost want to laugh at how ridiculous it was but then I actually was able to do it, by yanking the rope of the longer side up to the anchors above, while holding tightly on the shorter end of the rope with my braking hand, but still holding lightly the longer end of the rope with my braking hand. Of course, I would never recommend this to anyone, as it is not safe. Slowly by doing this repeatedly, I was able to even out the rope and the ropes were able to touch the anchors.
At P2 anchors, we were both tired not physically but mentally because this was draining — every time you think you are well-prepared, somehow life will show you if you really are, and I think this time we tried but it was not good enough. Either ways, we pushed through and we had maybe 2 rappels left, this time I threw the rope down but due to the weight of the rope, it actually cascaded down the wrong face of the rock and this meant that I was rapelling on the side of the wall that was far from the anchor. This was because we really could not remember which side we climbed up from, and only after rapelling down past an edge could we see the anchors of P1 and the best thing I could do was stop rapelling, as it would be harder to get over to the anchor, with one hand, I hold onto the braking end and the other, I try to finesse my way to the right side of the face before continuing to rappel down.
There is no easy way to explain why I could not just “run” to the side of the anchor while still being at that same elevation, but the rock wall dips on the side that I was at and I had to kind of hoist myself up a bit and climb to get past the “dipped side” to get to the slabby side and continue rappelling down. After reaching the anchor, I thought how great a time Ashley must be having being able to rappel without worries haha.
Anyway, as you would think that things must be getting better, but we honestly were so numb and just wanted to finish up this rappel. We had one more last rappel to do. However, this was when Ashley almost broke down. The rope we were pulling down to use for our last rappel got stuck on a rock. We tried nudging it but it looked like it was caught on a jagged edge.
Ashley looked over to me with shock and then later turned into despair. There was 2 options: Either we somehow finesse the rope to be unstuck, or I had to climb up somehow to untangle the rope. All in all, I had to stay calm for the both of us, I could feel Ashley almost losing it but this was when I looked at her straight in the eye and say: “Ashley, calm down, take a deep breath, and whip the rope in this direction.” She does it and with great gusto I must say, and the rope moves. I almost want to scream, but I hold it and I tell her to pull it in the opposite side to unstuck it from the jagged edge and by a miracle, the rope falls down. We both take sighs of relief and get to setting up the rope for the last rappel.
I had no idea how much I missed flat ground. The moments my feet touched the ground, I almost wanted to kiss the very soil I was standing on. With a great smile, I shout: “Off the rope! I’m on the ground”.
I remove all my gear and sit down.
This climb gave me some new insights into multi-pitching that I never really had thought about, and for us, this first climb was not so much about the climb but almost everything else; From the approach, to the rapelling and even to the equipment.
Here are some things I had not thought about, and maybe you can learn from: Firstly, we did not bring enough water. Intially we just did not want to bring that much weight up the wall, but man you get thirsty REAL FAST. Uptill P2, we had to drink sips of water to get by and we were real thirsty at the end of the climb. I tried to drink my own saliva but there was not any left. So first tip: Bring like a litre each if you’re doing 3 pitches or more.
Secondly, do more research on the approach and deproach if you’d like to call it, and also if the climb is meant to be rappelled off or walked off. Even our hike from the base of the climb to the car was another huge mystery, because we did not remember how we scrambled up and everything looked the same — just a bunch of red rocks. We could have went the wrong way and ended up on a cliff with no way down but by God’s grace we took it a step at a time and just went the way that looked the least dangerous. It is something we definitely would want to work on for future outdoor climbs.
Lastly, have a plan B. We had a lot of confidence that we knew how to walk off the climb and we also were more focused on the climb, that we did not anticipate to rappel down. Though we had the proper gear, we did not discuss this well and it led to a lot of issues like being unable to find the midpoint and rappelling down the wrong side of the wall.
All in all, we learnt so much from this crag and this climb. I genuinely had a good time (in hindsight, haha jokes) but it gave us so much more to work on and we will definitely remember this climb for years to come
Written by Anthea Yip (MIR 22)
Originally posted at Anthea’s Substack here
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