Pine Creek Canyon & Bishop

[lizolas]

Eastern Sierra

August 30 - September 2, 2019

Climb	Grade	Pitches	Type
Sheila	5.10b	1	Trad (follow)
Flame Thrower	5.11c	1	Sport (toproped)
The Main Line	5.10b	10	Trad (swapped leads)

(In which I don’t take a single picture the entire weekend)

Maybe someday I’ll find more Bay Area partners to split the cost of gas with on climbing trips. Anyway, I drove to Bishop to meet up with Tyler and Nick, who were both on the east side. Since we were a group of 3 the first day (before a 4th showed up), we did single pitch stuff. We started off with Sheila, which Tyler made look very easy leading, and which Nick and I did not make look very easy following. After that we moved on to Blast Furnace, which I’ve led the initial 5.10b portion of. Between the two of them, Nick and Tyler eventually got the rope over the roof (5.11c for the entire route) and to the top anchors. I toproped it and I could kind of see how most of the moves worked, although I think there was some unintentional hand-of-God belaying on the crux move that I fell on several times. We were not terribly motivated after that, and headed back to the camp area. From there I drove back to Bishop to stay with George.

The next morning I met them back at the camp area and we got stuff ready to climb The Main Line. Someone had told Lani and me about it the previous summer when it had fixed lines on every pitch. Now it’s up on Mountain Project with more detailed beta. Evidently not detailed enough, as we got lost, but that might be because we only know how to follow what immediately looks like the path of least resistance. There are two 10b pitches on the route, although we didn’t do the second one. The first one is the first pitch, on which Tyler pulled on some cams and got up it, while I pulled on some cams and was worried I’d never make it even french freeing. I somehow got up it and led pitch 2; Tyler linked 3 and 4.

I was the first one to get off-route on pitch 5, where I missed the (obvious as we were rappelling) second bolt on the face of nice flakes described on MP. I took a more awkward but still not too hard chimney to the right, ending up still at the correct anchor bolts. After that I took pitch 6, which ascends a very obvious crack that’s a little more awkward than it looks. I was hoping there was just one 5.8 bit to pull over the steepest bulge, but the whole thing stayed awkward because of how deep the crack was. I eventually had to do a butterfly hand stack irl (which I guess is what I’ve been practicing in the gym for, after all) and made a good active cam placement which turned into a good passive cam placement after I kicked it pulling myself over another bulge.

Pitch 7 was where we got off-route for real. Unlike a lot of places in the Sierras, Pine Creek is still being developed quite extensively. Where we were expecting there to be just one option - the correct one for our route - there was actually another partially bolted pitch that Tyler took up a corner (but an arete-type corner, not a dihedral-type corner like the correct route). Once there, it was clear that the bolts ahead of us were not on a 5.10b pitch that even remotely matched the description for pitch 8. Tyler led it anyway, aiding a fair amount of it, and I eventually managed to follow it after having to get out a sling to stand in because I can’t mantle that well. There was a bail biner on one of the bolts mid-pitch, so maybe we’re not the only ones to have made this error. From there, Tyler and I were preparing to rappel when Nick and David arrived at the belay and enthusiastically asked if we were going to go get back on route. Tyler apparently couldn’t say no to that logic, and set off traversing around a corner and across a brushy ledge. We prepared for him to lead another pitch to continue finding the route, and just as he was about to set off, I saw a bolt. Then I saw two more bolts. Then I got the idea to look for an anchor, and found one just 3 feet from where he’d built his gear anchor. At that point we were ready to be done, so he just linked pitches 9 and 10 to the top. Part of me wishes I’d led them like I planned, but I’m not actually sure I could have led the chimney part of pitch 10.

Since all the anchors are bolted, the route is easily rappelled without worry of having to leave gear. All the pitches are 35m or less, so it can be rapped with a single 70m rope (possibly a 60, but we had a 70). On the way down, we saw what was supposed to be pitches 7 and 8, and the “eye feature” was immediately obvious when we passed it, although it was more like “eye of a needle” than “eyeball”. That was also when I saw the bolt that I’d passed on pitch 5 with my tunnel vision assuming I needed to go up the protectable crack. The rappels went smoothly and we were back on the ground in less than an hour.

Sunday was spent mostly spectating. I went with George and a group of his friends to June Lake where they all worked on V5s - V7s. I touched some rocks and made a couple moves up a V0 offwidth. Mostly I hid in the shade though.

Monday we didn’t actually manage to get outside before I left at noon to try to get back to the Bay Area at a reasonable time with all the Labor Day traffic. I still ended up having to wait in line at the Tioga Pass park entrance for half an hour, but it was a lot better than Sunday’s line.