My First First Ascent

 I’ve been seeing lines EVERYWHERE! Even before I started climbing I noticed lines I could ski or ride my bike down. I finally got the chance to create one!

I had hiked up to the crag, a nearly untouched plug of welded volcanic ash, a few weeks before. I hadn’t expected much, but I was excited at what I saw…

I badgered my mentor, an experienced developer. He had a drill and bolts. He tasked me with acquiring chain. An annoyed hardware store employee later (why would someone want me to cut so many 5 link lengths of chain?!) we headed up to the proposed cliff.

The original line I had spied, an offwidth, already had chains that I hadn’t been previously noticed. We went for the next one that had captivated my interest, an interesting tube-like feature. So began my new appreciation for route developers…

To reach the top of the cliff we had to bushwhack through a thick maze of boulders and brush. After stepping off a boulder onto a chinquapin bush (finding myself several feet in the air) I bulldozed myself and pack to the rappel. The wall had many tiers of differing height, the one which we had spied being below the others. To rap to it we had to run the rope 25 feet through some brush over one of the tiers, span a sloped ledge in the gap between them, and climb onto the top of our desired line. 

My friend bolted the anchor, clipped into it, and I joined him. After sketchily crosssing the gap and joining him we attempted to pull the rope. It didn’t budge…

Many shenanigans ensued. Eventually my mentor ascended the rope on his ATC (with a backup) a few feet and then pulled down with all his body weight, eventually freeing the rope. After repeating the process several times we rethreaded through the new anchor. We rapped to the ground, a thicket of chinquapin. After many apologies for dragging my poor mentor up there, I freed the rats nest caught in the brush and we setup the belay. 

I toproped the route, marking with a little x in chalk where the bolts should go. Then I was armed with a drill, hammer, blow tube, and sunglasses (a must considering that there was no time for cleaning the route). I hammered out the spot for the first bolt, drilled the hole (after much whining about how I couldn’t get high enough), and blew myself purple cleaning the dust with the blow tube. 

Being a short climb it took little time to bolt. My mentor was patient and selfless, giving me the opportunity to give it the first (and only) lead. After a reach and some laybacking to wedge myself into the pipeline-like hollow I awkwardly wedged myself into a position to clip the chains. 

The route was easy, but picking a name took some time… this was an experience I had been waiting to have for a while. I finally settled on The Key Word Being Maybe, an allusion to a statement (speaking of whether we would be able to pull the rope and reach the ground). “We MAY BE able to…”

This amazing experience was possible because my mentor was willing to teach me, and I thank him greatly for it. I feel that everyone should try creating a new route, to learn how they get up there in the first place, and how see just how crazy those nuttters who bolt ground up are!