The Battle of the Bulge Buttress

Unfortunately, there was a young couple just setting up for "Binous" when we arrived. I suggested that we wait, Leon eventually agreed. They were a very friendly pair and we got to talking with them almost immediately. After a while Leon's brains must have fried in the hot sun. He got the craziest idea thinking that he could do this huge almost-but-not-quite off-width right-facing dihedral crack just to the right of "Binous".

What was this climb? No mention is made of it in our guidebook, or in anybody else's for that matter. Is it really a climb? Leon was absolutely positive that it was doable.

"Look man," he said, "I can walk the big camalot and the big trango up there no problem."

He's mad, I thought. Two days of good weather has driven him around the twist. I argued strenuously against the attempt. "We don't have enough big gear."

Leon fantasized a bit more and I poo-pooed his suggestion adamantly. A group passed by and one of its members, hearing our argument, piped up. "I think that's a 5.10 or so, not sure but it's a hard one."

Then, amazingly, from around the corner came the words that Leon was surely hoping to hear. "They can borrow our big cams."

Ok, fine. Let's all help Leon kill himself. But, seeing as Leon was about to solo the thing anyway, I raced around and accepted the loans as graciously as possible.

"Here." I said, passing them over. "Good luck mate."

So up he went, first onto a ledge and then placing one of the loaner cams as high as possible. He laybacked hugely and grunted upwards. To my horror, he bumped that piece with his foot and one of its lobes flipped up. It was slightly twisted and, most probably, useless.

But Leon was already up there and committed. He jammed in John Peterson's big #4 camalot and moved on, obviously having some trouble with the sustained nature of the layback. Again he knocked the piece with his foot and it walked slightly as it swung from vertical to horizontal.

He's going to die, I thought. Oddly I was reminded of a terrible action flick which starred John Travolta and Christian Slater. I believe it was called "Broken Arrow". The scene I remembered in particular was the one where Travolta and Slater are blazing away at each other with hand guns on a speeding train and one of Slater's bullets ricochets off an atomic bomb (stolen by Travolta and which Slater was trying to retrieve). In the breathless pause which ensues, where both parties realize a disaster has just been narrowly missed, Travolta remonstrates Slater through clenched teeth "Please do not shoot the nuclear weapon."

"Please do not kick the protection." I muttered up at Leon.

Higher still, above two pieces that I thought sucked mightily, the mexican miestro placed his giant trango #10. Fluent cursing from above. The damn thing had twisted as he put it in, and he was deadly tired. With difficulty he maintained his grip and repositioned the piece, all the while swearing as only a mexican can (loudly).

He must have done a good job, because he had to hang and rest from the piece. Ye gods, I was so stressed out below that my hair was turning white. After a short break he moved upwards to where the crack widened into a chimney and he could jam his body into it and rest there.

Leon's original intention was to continue straight up to some anchors that we had seen located about twenty feet directly above him. But that looked, too hard. About thirty feet to the right, however, was a set of anchors marking the top of a 5.12 bolt-fest sport climb that was adjacent to us. To get there he had to follow a diagonal crack up and along the right face of the dihedral. This was really, really hard and there were very few footholds. But the pro here was good.

It took a long time and Leon cursed himself bitterly for occasional lapses in style. At least he was pretty safe and no longer sketched to the max. He sort of fell only once, but it was small and the protection was good. At the end he reached a tiny ledge where a sling through an old piton and single new hanger served as the anchor.

After quite a lot of discussion we decided to lower him off, figuring that the rope was long enough. But he would have to clean his own pro on the way down. This presented a small problem as his pro was mostly way off to the left. But we hit upon the brilliant idea of using a quickdraw to clip into the rope going "up" through the pieces, and this enabled him to follow his original line down and remove all the cams. Back at the base we returned the loans with many thanks (John Peterson eventually got his stuff back from us too). I got Leon to come up with a name for this climb and a rating, he decided on "Estamos condenados" (Spanish for "We are the Condemned") and a 5.9+ rating.

Later in the year (July) Leon, while reading a climbing magazine, would come across a story about a woman who fell to her death while soloing (climbing unroped) a route in Indian Creek. From the placement and description of the route Leon thinks it was most probably "Estamos condenados".

We packed up our gear, hiked back to the car and drove away. We stopped to check out the 2000 year old etchings on nearby Newspaper Rock and also did some off-roading just south of Moab in the Nissan (well, we followed a dirt-track thinking it would take us to Lopez Arch, it didn't but we managed to look at a couple of small caves). We stopped to photograph the roadside Wilson Arch before continuing back to Moab.

We checked into the Lazy Lizard Hostel before finding a beer plus food joint. Back at the Hostel we bumped into a couple of Swiss Germans and a young Yank who was trying to chat them up. We didn't hinder his style too much, so the five of us ended up driving into Arches National Park at around 11 pm. The idea was that the young bloke had heard that we might be able to see the Northern Lights. But no luck there. Still, it was an entertaining evening nonetheless.