The Grand Wall
Sept 10, 2005
The last major route on Ryan and Dave's tick list. I had been anxious about getting on this route for a long time. Finally we just booked a day and did it.
We started up Merci Me after walking along the ledge. Then we traversed over to the base of the Split Pillar.















Here is Dave red pointing the Pillar. A great job on a sustained pitch.

With some well needed beta I managed to red point the Sword.

Here are a couple of pics of Dave seconding up the sword.



After a painful stint in the awkward hanging belay we ascended the bolt ladder.

I was sure glad we had brought the aiders.

Next was the fun and strenuous Perry's layback. Dave was pretty bagged but valiantly took the lead. The ascent wasn't pretty with lots of yanking on draws and stepping on hangers but he got the job done. Unfortunately Dave had the camera so I didn't get any pics of him.
I followed and made a good effort but fell half-way up. Some arm endurance would have helped.
Next was the 5.9 - 10b face. Somwhat dirty but no problems.
Then came the Flake. I took the honours and managed to onsight the pitch with a lot of rope drag.

Notice the number of cams without draws.

The final trial was traversing Belly Good Ledge. Dave actually did a belly slide on this section. Again he had the camera so I didn't get a shot of that.

The exposure was intense and I can see why you could be tempted to do a belly crawl.
After that section it was a nice easy jaunt back to the parking lot. We ran into another party who had dropped a pack off the 5th or 6th pitch of Millenium Falcon. I was belaying Dave up the sword when it happed. Luckily it missed a party on a lower pitch. Needless to say they weren't impressed. The Arc'teryx pack was surprisingly in good shape. The contents were rather battered and crushed though.
The climb warranted a fancier dinner that Wendy's so we made a stop at Quiznos before camping for the night. We had a fantastic time.