TheBigNose

I think most of you have heard about my adventure with Bryan on the weekend of April the 23rd and as usual here is the story - this time of epic proportions:

I will probably never be able to live this one down and I am starting to worry about my reputation a little bit as quiet a few adventures have amounted to epic proportionsby now. This one started with a plan to climb in Bryan's words "something easy." I regret that my idea of something easy was slightly different to Bryan's and decided to head out to Pierces Pass to climb a new Mike Law line called Big Nose.

The climb is officially classified as an all ring-bolted multipitch 24. It sports 8 pitches with the first tree pitches being the crux at 21, 24, 21 to the half-way ledge. From here on things eased off a bit and 4 pitches of grade 20 would get us out. Unfortunately Bryan (my apologies) was not privy to these facts completely? So he was in for a bit of a surprise! He needed any easy day .....

We spend Friday night at the parking lot at Pierces Pass and had an early night. The next day started at 5:30 with breakfast and gearing up. We took only quickdraws since it was all sport and minimal clothes since it was warm. Supplies were two platypuses for water and 3 bars each. We left just before 7:00AM and moved the car further up the road for a shorter trip back later. After a beautiful walk in, we abseiled down the mirror ball and everything was perfect when 3 basejumbers sailed passed us in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Life was very fine!

We reached the base of Big Nose at 8:30 after 90 minutes approach time which was a little longer than expected. On our left was the mighty line of Hotel California and Big Nose was very impressive. I new that the business part was to the halfway ledge and then things would get easier, little did I know. First pitch 21 was 35 meters of plain sailing for both of us although it got us pumped and sweaty since
we were still cold from the morning. Then came the Business Arete, 45 meters long grade 24a traverse over a big roof to a steep and loooooong fingery arete. I started freeclimbing the traverse and got bumped senseless to get to the arete. No falls I was feeling confident and was going to give it my best shot. 5 meters up the arete all holds disappeared suddenly, I was crimping like hell and took my first fall. A rest, and I started again this time I noticed the long sling dangling from one of the rings above me and by the time I got to the crux I was gone completely. I tried the crux once and new immediately I had no chance. I started aiding on the sling till I was three meters above the last ringbolt but the next one was miles away. I dyno-ed out of my aid sling to a hold out right and took my first winger 6 meters straight down. I haven't fallen for a while on lead so it shook me up a bit and I had no idea how I could get to the next ring! I took several huge wippers before I managed to stick the right hold, just before giving up. The it was still another 15 meters of complex traversing before I got to the anchors 1 hour later. Now it was Bryan's turn and he climbed superbly until he fell of the traverse under the roof.

"Roman I fell under the roof !"
"So get your bloody Prussic Slings out and get going, we haven't got all day"

Poor Bryan.....

He was great, he made it up and aided the line in record time. My hip belay was killing me after he slumped on the belay ledge. One more pitch of difficulty I thought....
The next 40 meter, 21 start was hard, straight up a might overhang and then plain beautiful exposure to a tricky headwall. Bryan climbed valiantly to the final tricky headwall, he had several falls so far and the headwall moves were starting to do some damage. By the time we slumped on the half-way ledge just before midday Bryan was very tired. As I revealed to him the mighty 4 pitch headwall looming above us, jam backed with roofs and traverses he didn't think I was funny! I did the first pitch of the headwall for practise which was a colossal
roof on buckets. After that we decide it was getting too much.

We didn't really like the idea of rapping down the three pitches and a little deep gully to the right of our line looked very inviting. I aided up the first pitch which was reasonable and after Bryan joined me started on the second narrow off-width. Now the going got tougher and I went from squeeze-chimney to off-width with only slings as protection. Every 5 meters a threat or a sling around a dodgey branch. The climbing got very hard and I was stopped by another gigantic roof above which appeared to lie freedom within arms reach. But I had brought no gear for protection ! That was the end of the road I could not justify to go on....

So we had to retreat down our ascent line after all. It was 16:00PM by the time we slumped back on the half-way mark and now time began to run out. Retreat was easy at first until the 24 which was a traverse and almost impossible to reverse and back clip over the big roof. So I opted for an exposed traverse left to some tree rap points. Lucky for us the few branches we abseiled off into the unknown held and we made it down to the ground but this took a long time. We touched the base at 18:00PM.

We were exhausted, it had been more than 12 hours and light was fading fast now. We hurried to the mirror ball pinnacle for an easy 3 pitch grade 18 escape route. When we arrived at 18:30 the sunset was miraculous but we realized that we only had brought 4 bolt plates ! That was not enough for climbing in darkness. We still had some light left and decided that we could make it to the base jumper trail across the valley floor which would link to the Pierces Pass trail and safely home. So we raced the disappearing light to find the trail. Within minutes we were surrounded by complete darkness. The faint trail vanished immediately and Bryan's head lamp which I told him to leave behind since we won't need it, came out. Again we fought as hard as we could, because the trail was only an hour away. This was by far the most intimidating part of the day, huge boulders, big gaps, vines with razor wires and dense jungle in zero visibility. We fought for 2 hours until the inevitable became clear, a bivy.

In the Blueys ?, how disgraceful, we went for another 30 minutes and gave up. Supplies were gone, no water left, we each had one T-shirt. Legs were faltering, Bryan's legs were bleeding we were very tired. We made camp were we were in the densest part of the forest. Bryan had the great idea of using bark as a sheet to keep the moister away from us and we made a blanket from the ferns to cover us during the long night . It was 21:00PM when we started hugging each other on the chilly ground through our soaked T-shirts. We didn't feel hungry or thirsty just exhausted....

The next day came slowly and we still had no clue were we were. We started again about 5:30AM and after one hour of searching we found the base jumper landing sight and a trail . Immediately our spirits lifted and within an hour we were on the Pierces Pass trail to the car park. We ate the last quarter of Musli bar that Bryan had saved for the steep ascent up the pass and arrived back at the parking lot around 9:00 AM. After we rang our loved ones that we are okay we began the journey home.

There is quiet a few lessons in here for each of us, I will let the future be the judge and ask you all to join me on the next great adventure.

Roman