Copying from my strava post:
Super goofy day and honestly got exactly what I wanted out of it. Not sure I'll come back to it again too soon. Not bc it was bad, but bc a lot of the fun was the adventure and ridiculousness of it all. Day was going fairly smoothly until I sprained (not TOO bad I think?) my ankle about 5 miles and 4000 feet of vert from the car and got to limp home.
In summary: Lots of vert. Lots of wobbly talus. Lots of saying "ow" in a squidward voice as yet another branch sliced my leg. Lots of scooting down wet moss and loose dirt.
Lots of details I could share, but here are the cliffnotes from someone who had only done mailbox, p3, and defiance before today.
- Mailbox: 1:04
Some intermittent bootpath and easy schwacking to Dirtybox.
- Dirtybox: 1:17 (+0:13)
Getting to Dirty Harry's was not as bad as everyone made it out to be, but definitely glad I had some warning going in. Did a couple sections that would probably go 4th class, but when you're routefinding and everything is dirty, 4th class can be spooky. The "hardest" downclimbs actually had some pretty solid boulders to hang onto the whole way, so felt totally safe. Took fixed lines to the top of Dirty Harry's.
- Dirty Harry's: 2:00 (+0:43)
Some nice trail then back to some talus-y, schwack-y vert
- Web: 2:56 (+0:56)
Kept getting sucked onto the ridge then getting cliffed out. Easiest to just stay ~30 feet below the ridgeline.
- Putrid Pete's: 3:08 (+0:12)
- Defiance: 3:37 (+0:29)
The climb up to West Bandera is where my legs first started to feel TIRED. Saw some paragliders. Super pretty peak.
- West Bandera: 4:30 (+0:53)
Idk if I missed a trail or something (I see a trail on the map), but I schwacked a lot through here and was on all fours more than I would have liked. Eventually I emerged from the schwack and found a nice trail.
- Bandera: 4:51 (+0:21)
This descent was probably the goofiest part of the day. Lots of falling down on my ass on wet moss and using thickets of blueberry bushes as natural fixed lines when it got too steep. Not so bad, just long. When I reached the bottom and gained a bootpath I let out a THANK GOD.
- Pratt: 5:46 (+0:55)
I swear the climb up the tusk felt as long as mailbox. Was getting pretty worked as this point and the constant navigation of wobbly talus was pretty draining.
- Tusk O'Granite: 6:52 (+1:06)
Met up with Doria and Maggie on the tusk summit. We descended together for a bit and like 1 minute after I decided to run ahead (bc I'm a tryhard) I rolled my ankle on a log and was in a lot of pain :(. Ibuprofen and rally, but from here on out was pretty painful.
- Granite: 7:20 (+0:28)
Ow. Mega ow. Was petrified of rolling my ankle again so was taking it pretty careful.
- Parking lot: 8:14 (+0:54)