The other side of Little Si

Yesterday Laura and I headed out to Little Si with Jimmy and Lisa. But unlike the other fifty or so times I've been there over the last few years, this time I took my trad rack. Yes there is trad at Little Si, don't tell anyone though cause its pretty sweet. Instead of being crowded on the Ledge at World Wall I, we had pretty much the whole of Repo I to ourselves down below, it was awesome. We started out warming up at Blackstone, where Laura and Lisa onsighted a 10b and 10c respectively. Before Jimmy and Lisa headed up the path to hang on their projects at WWI, and Laura and I took in some easy trad at Repo I. I did a 5.5, 5.6, 5.6, and 5.9, which were all excellent except for the 5.5, don't do it, its a chosspile. Laura cleaned all the routes, getting a feel for trad placement again. Laura has led a handful of trad routes in her past, but like me its been a while. In Scotland she led a VDiff and a Severe (5.6 and 5.7) at Reiff, although it was more a case of placing gear down low then run it out to the top. And in Squamish a couple of years ago, she led a couple of 5.5 and 5.6's, although she had an epic on the last route she led and has been scared to return to trad ever since. She felt up to trying a route today, so she led First Things First, a really fun 5.6 with great gear placements, all her gear was bomber, and I think this gave her a lot of confidence for getting back on more trad routes.

The easy routes were just a warm up for my main objective of the day, to onsight Mambo Jambo a classic 10b trad route. The route starts out easily in a finger crack going up a short dihedral to a ledge, you place your first pieces here and go up the slightly overhanging crack that starts out with ring locks then gets wider to hand and fist jamming. I was feeling good on lead up to this point, I placed my biggest cam above my head and it looked good, but there was another 20 ft or so of wide crack that I knew I couldn't really protect, but I figured I'd just go for it. I climbed up past my cam, to really insecure hand jams, in fact I was pretty much just holding onto slick slopers in the crack. I was really sketching out, both legs were shaking uncontrollably, then I realized I had a big hex I could throw into the crack, I jiggled it around in there but it didn't really settle, I was getting pumped fast, and I knew if I didn't keep moving up I'd be coming off, so I clipped the rattling hex, jammed my feet in and sketched my way up, to what looked like a ledge, it was just more slopers, so i kept on going until eventually a jug! Phew, that was scary, I threw a sling over the jug spike, and looked down, that would've been a big fall, there was no way the hex was holding, but the cam below would have prevented a ground fall. I climbed up on to a ledge above the spike, the route wasn't over yet, I still had another 20ft of tricky slab climbing before the chains. The slab was protected by two bolts, but I knew I couldn't clip the bolts after getting this far on trad gear. I managed to fiddle in a sideways nut in a small undercling flake, it didn't look amazing but when I gave it a tug it held. Ok just trust it I thought to myself and you'll be on top before you know it, a few precarious high steps and rockovers later and I was on top. Yes! It was a sketchy lead, but I had done it, this is what onsighting trad is all about.

Although it only gets the lowly grade of 10b, (6a+) I felt this is one of my hardest trad onsights to date. I have onsighted routes that get harder grades, but this was definitely not my style, because of the wide cracks, and the mental aspect running it out during the crux and at the top on the slab. If this were in the UK, I would think it would probably get E3 5c, since it is both physically quite hard, and you could take a big fall especially on the top section if the nut on the slab didn't hold. I came down feeling great, but both physically and mentally drained, Laura was sure glad to have me back on the ground, I know she wasn't looking forward to having to catch my fall.

We headed up to WW1 to join the masses of sport climbers and see how Jimmy and Lisa got on, sounds like they had a pretty good day, Jimmy managed a repeat of Psychosomatic 12d, and Lisa made progress on some 12s. I gave Girls in the Gym a quick repeat, and watched Jimmy onsight End of the World 12a, then we headed back to the car, and I slept the whole ride back to Olympia, looking forward to being back safe and sound and ready to climb an other day.

Lisa going for the flash of End of the World