Waterton Slabs
Looking up at Inland Fishery
The upper slabs on Crandell's south face have quite solid rock - a relative rarity in the park. There are two bolted routes on this face, and two rarely done corner climbs. Approach by bashing north from the start of the switchbacks on the Bear's hump trail.
A few hundred meters to the left of the slab lies another slabby arete - Scrambled Eves. This is one of the nicer long routes in the park. It is mostly a scramble with a few technical moves down low. Just make sure to stay on the top side of the arete, if not you will wind up on another climb (eyes above (5.7) )
Labels: climbing
posted by chris g @ 4/18/2008 03:01:00 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I think Inland Fishery (the left route) is still missing the bottom most hanger. Last Sept. I replenished the missing hangers on Wavesport (right route).
Funny story about this area. A number of years ago I took my 12 year old cousin out here to practice climbing. My rope was rather short (45 m 12mil in diameter). As a result the only thing I could top rope was the face just to the right of the left corner. After setting up the anchor my cousin went up. He was a bit nervous about climbing - despite having done numerous exposed scrambles.
Well after getting up 1/2 way he decides he has had enough. Unfortunately he doesn't really want to put his weight on the rope (despite having done a dry run at the bottom). It takes about 15 minutes to get him to let go of the rock so he can get lowered. Unfortunately there is a bit of rope drag. This means I can't just lower him down - he has to push with his legs. However, he is still a bit panicked. He won't lift up his legs so he can push. He is just hanging there unable to go up or down. After an additional 30 minutes, I figure something needs to get done.
I tie the rope off to a tree, unclip from the belay, and get my other cousin - who really hasn't belayed much to take over lowering duties (I figured it should be easy since there is no weight on the rope). I solo up to my poor cousin to try to help him push down on the rope. Talking to him doesn't help much so I end up having to yank on the rope. Now normally this wouldn't be so bad - I could just clip in from my harness to the rope and do an improvised recuse technique - however I had to hand over my harness to my other cousin down at the base so he can lower my stranded 12 year old cousin. This makes me a little nervous yarding on the rope 1/3 the way up the slab.
After getting some movement, and having me there to help out, my younger cousin managed to get his head back on and pushed a bit on the rock so he could get lowered back down to the base.
All in all - a thoroughly Goble adventure. Aside from my Aunt, the rest of the non-climbing family thought it was a pretty mild day out in the mountains, and wondered if we were going out for some more before dark.
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