Last weekend Ron, Esther, Dan and I went over to Smith to climb Monkey Face. While Ron and I did the Pioneer Route they did the West Face Variation. I made Ron, me and Esther some aiders with webbing as we're not sure if aiding is our bag or not.
First pitch
On the first pitch of the climb I pulled on some rock and showered Ron with dirt and rocks. Well, mainly rocks. He says I just yelled "Don't let go!!!", but I'm pretty sure I yelled "Rock Rock!!!! Don't let go!!!". This set the tone for the climb so I had a hard time leading the rest of the way up. I ran out one section a bit too much so that if I were to fall my last protection would just stop my body from hitting the ground not from crashing into the notch we just came through.
Bolt ladder
The aid section was really awesome. It took just a few moves to get into the rythym of clipping, standing, using Fifi hook and resting. I screwed up a few times and would get it backwards and fall onto my daisy chain, but that's why it's there.
Aiding
Once I was in the mouth of the Monkey I belayed Ron up. He cut his hand on the route and started dripping blood, so that was cool. Once we were both in the mouth we went over to the beginning of the 5.7 pitch. I kept telling myself to not look out and down, just to look up. That didn't work and I got freaked out. It's called Panic Point for a reason.
It took a while to get up the balls/nerve to step out and start the route. I would make it to a bolt and yell at Ron. I thought it came out as "Ron I'm clipping now. Okay now take please." Or as he says it came out as "Clip Clip Clipping Clip SHIT!!! CLIP!!! Shit Take TAke goddamnit TAIEEEKKKEEE! shit fuck shit shit." Then I'd slip down a 1/2 inch and continue yelling at him.
5.7 pitch
I eventually scrambled up and belayed Ron to the nose and we jumped over to the summit. We nerded out and called people on our cell phones and ate M&Ms once Dan and Esther got up. We hung out for a bit but started to get cold so we headed down.
Esther was brave enough to be the first to do the rappell down. I say brave because it's about a 200 foot free rappell. As she went down some guy hopped up onto the ledge after clipping his rope into a quickdraw like a ninja. He didn't say anything as he walked by in his loosely tied AIRWALKs. Dan, Ron and I stared at each other wondering if we saw that right.
A minute later his partner came up to our ledge wearing jeans and no real equipment besides her wonder bra'd cleavage. She at least had real rock shoes on so we didn't feel like complete nancy boys. I thought it'd be bad form to take her picture, but I should have anyway - for you people.
We did our rappell as fast as possible, which meant it took me 5 minutes to get down as it's a bit airy. Once you were committed to the rappell it was pretty cool - 200 feet straight down with nothing around you but your adrenalinized sweat and air.
The Airwalk Ninja and Cleavage used our ropes to come down. Of course they showed us up by doing a simul-rappell. Then they walked out in the dark without any lights and beat us (who had lights) back to parking lot.
