This is an awesome multipitch that I knew I wanted to turn into a cool ? 2 ? sprint solo (hard scramble) since 2018 but the slab section always continued feeling wrong.
This time as I projected, Doing laps, it felt cleaner (still greasy though). But after checking in after being on the road, with all the updates regarding coronavirus and its affect on hospitals, I couldn’t bring myself to climb the slab pitch without some kind of safe-guard in place. So, I swallowed my pride in “style points” and will take a “self-supported style” on this one as I left a fixed line in place on the route that I attached a trailing gri-gri to during the slab pitch and just above, then disconnected in the chimney pitch and soloed the rest without back-up.
THE BAD:
The system ended up producing a ton of drag (which tells me I could have climbed it quite a lot faster without, but that is no matter because it felt wrong which is my end all be all when considering soloing) and even locked-out once eating up about 2 minutes. ...probably lost 3-4 minutes on this total :(.
Ended up having 2 snags, one minor and one bad, during the Rappel. Lost about 5-6 minutes.
The Good:
It’s done ✅!!! There is a run + hard scramble FKT in Joshua Tree now. Someone come beat me soon! I want to do this again!
IT CAN GO FASTER!!! Way faster!
Even with all the snags and hiccups I mention in my “bad” section, it is still a respectable time for nearly 400’ of slab and chimney climbing.
- 4:33 on run in + scramble to base of the route
- 19:00 to climb the route (should be 9-11 min)
- 1:36 on top (should be 15 sec)
- 7:52 on rappel (should be 1-2 min)
- 5:47 for longer down scramble + run out
-> 38:50 total time HWY-HWY (since I didn’t want to make any future attempters solo the route just to get hit by a car while bolting the last 30ft to the actual Trailhead)
Summary:
All in all, I am super glad I gave this a solid go. I would come back after this whole coronavirus outbreak ? thing passes.
For future attempters, I think ? just on technique and elimination of mistakes, if one goes “self-supported” with the Rappel already set cleanly, that this route has 10-13 minutes of “soft time” to be improved, I could see it going in around 25 minutes or just under by someone who isn’t dramatically stronger than me (and I am pretty slow).
Going to leave the J-tree area today to not inadvertently put undo stress on their system here even though we are staying completely self-contained in the van (other than grocery shopping and stepping out to climb and hike)
???