When David
Adams asked if I wanted to join him and his friend Jake Croft on a trip to Jacks Canyon
after school ended, I was a little skeptical.
It wouldn’t have been the first time I would have gotten ready for a
trip and had it cancelled at the last second.
However, as the date approached I grew more and more psyched- I was very
ready to break out of the slump I had been in since finishing up Hebe up at the
Beaver Wall.
June 1
st rolled
around and, despite some delays due to Jake’s SAT, we headed out for Jacks.
After a few
wrong turns along the way, we rolled in to the Jacks camping area on the rim of
the canyon around 8:30PM. We set up camp
in the dark, and got to work grilling our delicious bratwursts by the light of
our headlamps and Jake’s gas lantern.
They were not of the pre-cooked variety, but we took our chances by
grilling them until they appeared very well done. Calculated risk and all that, right? None of us acquired salmonella or botulism,
so we must have done something right.
Once our meal
was finished, I decided to give David and Jake (both Jacks Canyon
virgins) their first glimpse of the canyon.
As it had already gotten dark, Jake elected to carry his gas lantern
with us as he had forgotten his headlamp in Tucson.
We walked the 2 minutes to the rim and both were impressed by the inky
darkness and apparent depth of the canyon before them. Unbeknownst to us, the adventures of our trip
were about to begin, before we even entered the climbing area itself. Having only walked two minutes from our camp,
we expected no challenges in returning safely and quickly. This was apparently misguided. We retraced our steps back toward the
campsite, but it was nowhere to be found.
Jake’s lantern would have provided much needed illumination of our camp,
but it was with us. We wandered,
completely lost, for 20 more minutes before stumbling into our site from the
opposite direction that we had left in.
A bit confused, we went to bed.
I woke up
from a very uncomfortable night at 4:45AM the next morning and contemplated
getting up and trying to get some golden hour sunrise shots, but I decided I
was too lazy (and had forgotten my tripod in Tucson).
A few minutes later, Jake and David both woke up as well, and after a
quick breakfast of bagels we were the first to head into the canyon.
Our first stop was Casino Cliffs, as it was
close and still early enough that it wasn’t in the sun.
David led Mickey Goes to Vegas quickly for a
warm up, but I decided to have a little more fun with it.
I had brought my trad rack with me and I
racked up and set off.
I skipped the
bolts and protected in the cracks that vaguely follow the line of the route,
making sure to avoid any placements that would destroy crucial holds if I were
to whip on them and break the limestone.
The gear through the first half was great, while a semi-sketchy #3
around left up high provided decent peace of mind getting to the anchor.
Jake, the tricam addict, attempted a
tricam-only ascent but ended up clipping the last 2 bolts.
We’re calling Mickey on gear Mickey Goes to
Eldo… just kidding.
 |
| Racking up under Mickey Goes to Vegas. |
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| Placing the first piece on Mickey. |
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| Mickey Goes to... Eldo! (just kidding). |
With that,
Casino Cliff was headed into the sun and we moved ourselves over to Main
Wall.
I hopped on Power Trip 11c and hung
the draws, Jake fell between the last bolt and the anchors and David had a bit more
trouble with the pocket climbing very foreign to him.
I took another lap to finish warming up,
cleaned the draws, and we moved on.
I
gave Jake and David a quick tour of the area.
I was glad to see the Evil Offspring area had a ton of draws already up,
while David and Jake were psyched to get on the area classic Swiss Arete
5.12a.
Needing to answer the call of nature, I
determined the best way for me to do so was to return to the pit toilet in the
camping area as the fire had cleared out most of the mid-height vegetation in
the canyon.
I bid my friends good luck
on Swiss Arete and set out, running most of the trail back up out of the
canyon.
Unfortunately, there was a bit
of a line for the toilet, but everything worked out and I was soon on my way
back down to Main Wall.
Seconds after
leaving the toilet I took a “trail” which wasn’t and was promptly lost,
again.
10 minutes of searching for the
campsites, the trail, anything, really, were fruitless and I walked toward the
canyon and followed the rim in the direction the trail down should have been in
given where I thought I was.
10 minutes
later, I had not hit it, and I jogged the other way along the rim and finally
met up with the real trail.
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| Jake at the start of Power Trip. |
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| Jake on Power Trip |
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| Jake on Power Trip. |
|
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| Jake on Power Trip. |
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| So close... |
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| ...No! Jake falling off the last move of Power Trip. |
When I
finally returned to my friends, David was just lowering off of his
attempt.
His performance was less than
he had hoped for and was consequently a little depressed.
I tried to cheer him up while Jake had some
success on the route and decided to leave the draws up for another go.
It was my turn and I decided to give Evil
Offspring 12d a flash burn (I had seen a video of the climb 2 nights
prior).
We hung the 2 draws necessary
(most were already hung) and I set off.
Despite a little bad beta along the rail, I managed to pull through and
flash!
We cleaned our two draws and
returned to Swiss Arete, where Jake made another run and got pretty close.
Another party had hung draws on Heart Shaped
Box 12b, just nearby, and I asked them if I could hop on.
They replied in the affirmative, and I hopped
on.
After missing some big holds in the
opening sequence and doing some horrifying choss wrangling as a result, I
managed to pull through for the onsight!
Jake returned to Swiss Arete and, again, barely missed the redpoint,
this time lightly brushing David’s nose with his foot while airborne off the
crux.
David asked if I could lead
something else so that he could not have to deal with hanging the draws, so I
obliged and we decided to get on Total Lack of Jump 12a, having been assured of
its quality by Luke back in Tucson.
I
pulled on, almost missed the second pull on the drilled pockets, but managed to
keep it together through both of the dynos (which I made statically… sometimes
being tall isn’t as fun!).
I was
surprised by the difficulty of the slopey, technical face climbing that
actually constituted the crux of the route, but managed to finish it up for
another onsight.
David decided to
toprope, but almost immediately nearly tweaked a finger on the drilled pockets
at the start.
Convinced he was done
until we had lunch and he could recover his psyche, David lowered off.
With Jake resting for another burn on Swiss
Arete, I ended up running another lap on Total Lack of Jump, this time on
toprope.
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| Myself heading out the rail on Evil Offspring. |
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| Evil Offspring |
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| Heading for a flash on Evil Offspring. |
With that
cleaned, we headed back to Swiss Arete.
Jake pulled off the ground and snagged the redpoint on this burn, making
it look easy in the process!
With the
sun encroaching on Main Wall, I asked if I could give an attempt on the classic
Zone of Exclusion 12a towards the far right end of Main Wall before we headed
over to the Swiss Wall area.
I’m a bit
of a Chernobyl
buff and the route name was too good to pass up.
The ground below the route had risen a great
deal following the fire and subsequent spring flooding, and as a consequence
the first bolt was now at chest-height.
Evaluating my abilities, I asked for a loose belay so as to not get
short roped and that Jake run down the hill if I were to fall.
I skipped the first bolt entirely (it was truly
pointless) and, while surprised by the consistent difficulty of the moves,
stuck through it for another 12a onsight, this time with only 2 bolts and an
anchor.
Jake quickly led Sandman 11b
nearby (no send, unfortunately) and as the sun fully hit us we packed up and
moved to Swiss Wall for its all-day shade.
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| Jake sending the classic Swiss Arete. |
Once at
Swiss Wall, we had lunch, and it was here that we got our first taste of the
flies.
Annoying clouds of the insects
swarmed out faces and bodies when least appropriate.
Running low on both water and food, we were
all moving slowly, but I got on the 12 Step Program open project, did all the
moves and hung the draws for a possible redpoint burn the next day.
We lazed around, but David (now reenergized
from lunch) made short work of Yarlsberg 5.10a, Feta 5.9 and Gouda 5.9 while we all admired the other
party’s 36 foot maximum stick clip.
More
hydrated, psyched and energized than either Jake or I, David decided to go
check out Cracker Jack Cliff while we hung out in the shade.
I had hit a wall following the 8 pitches of
5.11 or harder and took a nice nap on top of the rope underneath 12 Step
Program while Jake slept on a jumble of our packs.
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| Myself in the huge roof on the 12 Step Program project. |
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| Pulling the lip on 12 Step Program. |
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| David belaying on 12 Step Program. |
David
returned an hour and a half later (the sun was hotter than he expected and
found some shade to nap in as well) and we hung out for a while longer, waiting
for as much of the canyon to be in the shade as possible. Around 5PM we moved to Casino Cliff and hung
out below Mickey, but did not climb.
Here is where the tarantula wasps began their assault. While sitting around, I heard a deep buzzing-
much deeper than a typical fly, bee or wasp that we had seen all day. Jake and David pointed at a large insect
headed straight for me from behind and I ducked while it passed overhead. Dubbing it the megawasp, it would return to
buzz me several times, including one pass in which it knocked the sunglasses
off of my forehead. Unnerving, but it
hadn’t tried to sting any of us yet, at least.
We headed
back to camp around 7PM to maximize our shade on the way out, and cooked some
hot dogs.
The shape shifting Jacks Canyon
struck again, with Jake getting slightly lost trying to find camp after going
for a short run on the dirt road.
That
Jacks was actively attempting to get us lost was becoming a little eerie, and
coupled with the fact that everyone but us had cleared out of the campsite other
than us (it was a Sunday evening), we stuck close to camp.
We cooked hot dogs and bacon for dinner and
soon after David decided to lie down for the night.
Jake and I decided to do some photography and
ended up getting some great shots of us sitting around the gas lantern, along
with some not so great ones.
I used
Jake’s rope as a pillow instead of my jacket as per the night before, and the
difference was massive.
I slept very
well and awoke much later in the morning to some strange noises nearby.
I assumed more people had come in during the
night and were responsible for the weird moaning noise, but upon further
inspection this was proven to not be the case.
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| Jake and I sitting around the gas lantern at the campsite while David lies in the tent after a hard day in Jacks Canyon. |
We attempted to make eggs for
breakfast, but after much time spent attempting to cook them on both my grill
and Jake’s pocket rocket stove, we decided it was a waste of time and resorted
to various junk foods and the remainder of my bagels. David walked to the toilet (visible after
walking 10 feet from our site), walked back in a straight line towards us and
walked into camp from the opposite direction.
While repacking our climbing gear, Jake and I realized David and his
things were missing, and a half an hour of fruitless searching left us quite
worried. On the chance he had headed in
without us, we left several notes visible around the campsite and headed down
to Main Wall. We found him there, and
got set to warm up on Genesis 10d, a classic to many but in my opinion very
mediocre. David belayed Jake, and we had
a strange accident. Jake asked for slack
while clipping the anchors, then yelled take and sat back immediately instead
of waiting for the rope to go tight. He
dropped 15 or so feet and jerked David into the wall, which smashed his shin
and broke one of his toes. After
lowering, we analyzed what happened, and decided Jake must have sat back onto
the rope while David was still feeding slack, resulting in the fall. We sat around for a while, and I got on with
Jake belaying and cleaned the draws.
With David convinced he could still climb given a little time to
recover, we moved to Under Attack 12a. I
managed to onsight hanging the draws, but when David attempted to climb, he
couldn’t fight through the pain and decided not to continue. His trip was done. Jake got on once and thought it was possible,
so we left it up for more attempts later.
We started getting attacked by multiple megawasps, including one pass
when I had to dive off of a small boulder in the streambed over a crouched Jake
to avoid being stung. We posted whoever
was not belaying or climbing with the stick clip nearby to fight off the
megawasps should they attack again.
My turn to climb. I thumbed through
the guidebook and walked the base of Main Wall.
When I saw a route called The Thin Thin 13b, I knew I had to get on
it.
I’m a bit of a crimp addict,
especially living in Tucson
where the name of the game is thin granite crimps.
I knew the route would be on thin pockets,
not crimps, but the name and the beautiful pink rock were so alluring I could
not resist.
When I reached the crux, I
realized this was going to be the most powerful sequence I had ever done while
roped up.
With some work, I felt okay
about the sequence, but was secretly pretty nervous about it.
A short, juggy roof led to a perfectly round,
shallow hueco.
Matching into it as an
undercling with your right arm, you have to lock down this at your waist (all
bicep) with poor feet under the roof and stab for a quarter pad, 2.5 finger
pocket (I can get 3 in, but I have very thin fingers).
Switch feet, move your right hand to a
sloping, half pad 2 finger, then bump the right hand six inches into another,
slightly more positive half-pad 2 finger pocket.
Move the feet again and set up for an
insanely powerful and desperate stab with the left hand into a deep 2 finger
pocket.
This 4 move crux is followed by
tricky and tenuous vertical climbing with bad feet on more natural pockets and
pinches to the anchors.
Almost every
hold is natural (a rarity in Jacks), with the only questionable hold being the
deep 2 finger (though it might just be comfortized around the edges).
I skipped an obvious drilled pocket just
after the crux as there was a natural pinch and shallow 3 finger pocket very
close by.
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| Jake working Under Attack while David belays. |
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| Myself working The Thin Thin. |
After I tried The Thin Thin, Jake
tried Under Attack again but didn’t send because the sun was in his eyes
pulling the lip. I gave one more burn on
The Thin Thin, but missed on the final stab and fell. We cleaned both routes and headed over to
Swiss Wall, where I high pointed in the giant roof on 12 Step Program. Shortly
thereafter, I took a large and rather humorous fall after breaking a hold
pulling over the lip. I tried yelling
“rock!” but only got half of it out before “falling!” as I fell 15 feet or so
completely horizontal (I had been heel hooking) with a shower of dust and small
rocks surrounding my right hand. I got
back on after a laugh and went to the chains to clean the route- I was too
tired for another attempt. I ended up
only being able to clean the top half on the lower and was forced to TR the
bottom again and take a huge swing to clean the lower half. Jake tried to climb Feta on tricams only
(again making it halfway before starting to clip bolts) and I led Gouda in my 5.10 Guide Tennies,
which was very exciting with the large bolt spacing up high.
Soon after, we packed up and
checked out Cracker Jack Cliff and headed back to Casino to hang out in the
shade. Again, we didn’t climb, instead
feasting on fine cheeses and meats (as we had done earlier at Swiss Wall as
well). Around 6:50PM, we decided to head
back to Main Wall so Jake could give Under Attack another go. We hung the draws we could with the stick
clip, gave the rest to Jake, and he tied in.
He then proceeded to walk all over it, making it look like 5.8 and
easily sending for another 4th go 12a redpoint. After cleaning the route, David said I should
get back on The Thin Thin. I agreed, and
we headed over. I blasted through the
bottom and entered the crux, making it to the final stab quickly. I thought there was no way that I could possibly
stick this move in my current state, but decided to give it everything
anyway. I stuck it, and quickly made my
way through dicey terrain to the anchor shuts and a third go send of The Thin
Thin, 5.13b.
We packed up and headed out shortly
after. Moving slowly due to David’s
broken toe, we took in the scenery on the way back. Unfortunately, this included a glimpse of
motion in large cave atop Casino Cliff (directly across from the trail back to
the camping area on the rim). Convinced
that Jacks was trying to kill us (and that it might be successful this night,
given our isolation and poor physical condition after 2 days of climbing), we
decided to head out. We packed up camp and drove to Winslow for gasoline
(Clint’s Well had been out of gas on the way up and we weren’t sure if we could
make it to Payson). We stopped in Payson
anyway to switch drivers and grab some food, and we arrived back in Tucson around 2AM. Even David, with his broken toe and bad day 1
of climbing, was psyched on the trip, and Jake and I were clearly
satisfied. They dropped me off at my
house and I showered and went to bed with a great trip behind me.
Mickey... photos credit to David Adams. Power Trip and Under Attack photos credit to Alex McIntyre. All other photos credit to Jake Croft.
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