Climbing Naked in the Moonlight

9138 - Moonlit Night at FC



Friday 9128 after work Tami and I drove to Ashford, WA, at the SW entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. The next morning we attended an annual festival held at Whittaker Mountaineering, where the first item of business was the 'Post Monsoon Sale.' II picked up a down parka, a moutaineering jacket, gloves, mittens, 20 dollar ice screw, his- and hers- snowshoes, and La Sportiva Lhotse mountaineering boots (never worn). Dave Hahn, who has logged 250 summits of Rainier and 10 of Everest gave a slide presentation. He told us he travels annually to Denali and Antarctica. In fact, his last cruise to the 'real' land down under was on the cruise ship Ushuaia. That happens to be the ship that my father and I are scheduled for on Feb 2 - 12 2009! Afterword's, I chatted with Hahn afterwards, and he said he was going again on that ship in January - the trip before ours! Also present were Jim Whittaker, Lou Whittaker, and Ed Viesturs. I finally met the genius behind the tent I had selected: the EV-2. It was a great opportunity to see some of the biggest names in Mountaineering today. We did a couple of small hikes in the area, and drove home Sunday evening.





Monday 9158 we drove to Frenchman Coulee, arriving just after dark. We parked in the second lot and set up camp in a flat grassy bowl just in front of Zig Zag wall, where we climbed earlier. We were surrounded on three sides by fifty-foot cliffs [http://www.rockclimbing.com/images/photos/assets/1/283291-largest_1361.jpg], The west was open to the larger coulee, flowing south (now dry) into the Columbia River. The full moon was rising over the eastern wall of the box canyon. I left Tami to hold down the tent and went up to Zig Zag wall. The sky was clear, the wind was calm, and the air was warm. The scene reminded me of a similar night when I was 14 in Zion National Park, Utah. My brother and I left our father at the car and hiked alone up a smooth inclined granite rock in the moonlight. It was beautiful and magical for me be alone, and with my big brother, following him up a slope I did not have the courage to climb on my own. We bonded on that friction climb (one on a uniform surface of varying incline, without hand-holds or foot-holds).



I stripped naked and put on my climbing slippers and waist harness, and faced the cliff. I tied into the end of our blue (8 mm) climbing rope with a Yosemite bowline and held the line in my right hand. My rack of passive protection was over my right shoulder, emiting 'bongs' of various tones at my waist. My slings (on top) were over my left shoulder. In addition, our belay device (a tube ATC) was attached to the locking caribinner on my harness and thus I was in a position to belay myself - but how? I had never done this solo.



I chose a vertical crack that looked promising; unfortunately it was in the shadows such that the moonbeams illuminated the rock three inches to the right side. I hoped that as the moon rose, the rays would come to fall into the depths of the crack. I grasped my largest piece of pro - a three inch wired hex - and jammed it into the dark recess at about shoulder height. It held. Then I grabbed the rope coming from my waist harness, up through a 'biner on the hex, and back down to the belay devise at my waist. I could support myself by using my left hand as a brake on the rope by wrapping it around my left buttock. I could hold myself, but not climb.



To hold myself onto the rope without my hands, I tied a 5 mm accessory cord in a 24-inch loop from another 'biner on my waist harness and made a prussic knot (like a python around a bull) gripping the 8 mm climbing rope. I hoisted myself on two foot holds until my waist was at the level of the hex and locked in the prussic. Now I was suspended off the ground and my hands were free to place the next protection higher up. I used my two-and-a-half inch hex for this one and with a camming motion, wedged it into the darkness. Then I hoisted myself up to my higher anchor and locked in the prussic.



Just then Tami approached me from below and I decided it was too crazy (to coin a phrase) to go on like this. So I came down and we hiked back to the tent. We slept the night away as the moon made its majestic traverse of the welkin, and woke up as the sun crested the cliff to the East.