After an amazing streak of good weather things returned to a slightly more regular (not that there is regular pattern) for the later part of January and into early February.  As mine and Kate’s trip was nearing its end I had all but given up on getting another route done this season.  Thankfully just a few days before our planned departure another good little weather window appeared.  After nearly 3 straight weeks of bad weathered I figured the mountains were going to be pretty plastered with new snow but for some reason they turned out to be fairly free of snow and ice.

When up on the South Face of Poincenot in early December I had plenty of time to look directly south on the north face of Innominata (also know as Aguja Rafael Juarez).  Before our ascent there were only two routes (and a short variation) up the north face proper.  The face is quite narrow but it appeared there would be room for another route shooting straight up the middle, well thats at least what I hoped.

We left Niponino camp sometime just before dawn (i’m sure it wasn’t to early because getting up isn’t something we are good at).  The approach took a casual 3.5hrs to base, with  a little bit of cramponning and post-holing required, but nothing to unpleasant.  I’ve gave Kate the fist block knowing that it would keep her a bit warmer, and well, I of course ended up getting pretty cold.  Our first few pitches followed Jon Walsh’s variation to Artebelleza, called Como No! The climbing was quite enjoyable and fairly straightforward.  And YES, the rock was actually really good.  After dealing with some shitty rock on my last two routes I wasn’t in the mood to climb any more choss.

Kate made quick work of the Como No pitches and took us to a nice ledge underneath the splitter crack the went up the steep headwall.  I wish I could say I then started to dispatch of the headwall cracks with speed and grace, but no, that is not the case.  I was feeling a lot less than great.  Maybe it was the lack of any actual crack climbing in the last few months, or maybe it was just me being lame.  Anyhow I still managed to keep the rope moving upwards though it was with a fair bit of hanging on gear.

After a few shenanigans and some off widths the climbing eased up a little bit and I was actually able to jam some amazing cracks on an amazing shield of rock.  Kate was able to follow a fair bit of it free but had to resort to some bat man technique here and there.  After 4 pitches the crack peter’d out and I was forced to do a large pendulum to the right to an amazing left leaning hands to finger crack, which I mostly A0′d.  This brought me to a ok sloping ledge and a good spot for a block change.

The sloping ledge ran up and right to a nice left facing corner with good rock that eventually turned to a right facing corner.  Great 5.10 on jugs and cracks led to another ledge and the point where we intersected Blood on the Tracks. Kate continued leading on through amazing splitters running the rope out nearly 60m.

For some reason every route we do down in Patagonia it seems to get dark on us before we are done climbing.  I’m starting to think we are actually slow climbers… But hey we maybe slow but we are good at climbing at night, keeping the rope moving upwards and most importantly we are good at getting to the top.  At some time way past sunset and a lot closer to sunrise Kate and I stood on top!

Like any good outing in the mountains getting down can be just as hard as going up.  On our third rappel we got our second rope stuck, ended up pulling on it real hard and managed to pull of large block off.  Thankfully the block exploded on a ledge just left of us by about 10ft but our second rope turned into many little piece of rope… We cut off the blown sections and continued down through the night doing shorter rappels and re-building lots of anchors.   The weather was nice and we weren’t dangerously cold which kept the descent from being to painful.    Just as the sun came up we reached the base of the route and our packs.  A quick snack and we started the long slog back to Niponino with content smiles.

But our adventure still wasn’t over, our flights out of town were quickly approaching so we broke down camp in Niponino, shouldered our packs and started the 7 hour march back to Chalten.  We arrived at 10:00pm just before closing time of our favorite restaurant, La Senyera, and gorged our selves with beer and meat!  We were approaching the 45hr mark without sleep at this point and I seriously considered the option of the forced bivi in the restaurant.  Though we managed to pull it together for one last 5 minute hike back to our place.

The next day involved lots of packing, selling gear, and running around town.  All we wanted to do was sleep but we that wasn’t an option.  We managed to get everything packed back up and our selves to the airport in time for our flight out.  The next 5 days were a blur of travel…  El Chalten to El Calafate to Buenos Aires to Atlanta to LAX to Ventura back to LAX to Guadalajara, MX to Mexico City to Hualtuco and finally Puerto Escondido and the BEACH!!!!

We fittingly named our route Timepo Para La Playa (Time For The Beach).

Route Details:

Tiempo Para La Playa, North Face of  Innominata

5.10 A1, 450m (250m new)

Doubles to #4, plus #5 and maybe #6…

Descend straight down north face with two ropes.

I hope everyone enjoys the show!

Here’s the trailer.

Nat Geo also put together a handfull of behind the scenes videos that they are hosting online. The one below is of the crew filming Dean while he solos the upper part of the Freerider route on El Cap. I’m the one in the green jacket often right next to Dean. This was definitely the most exciting thing I’ve ever shot. Being so close to someone without a rope nearly 3,000ft. off the ground is an absolutely gut wrenching experience. All I kept telling myself was don’t f*%k this up and don’t drop anything on Dean. Thankfully all went smoothly…

Dean Potter slacklines on Cathedral Peak

NG Adventure online decide to pickup the image for their Extreme Photo of the Week to promote the TV show which put a nice smile on my face.  There are a few paragraphs over there talking a little bit more about the image.  Check it out here:  http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/extreme-photo-of-the-week/#/dean-potter-human-flight_48311_600x450.jpg

My desire to climb runs deep in my veins except for right now.

Below are some pics from mine and Kate’s new route on St. Exupery, called Astro Choss. Not much to say about it. We started and the bottom, jammed some clean rock, climbed some icy rock, aided some chossy rock, and then stood on top.

Kate in front of St. Exupery after our failed first attempt

Rapping from pitch 3 after our first go at it

Me crossing the schrund via a cool bit of face climbing

A bit of good climbing on pitch 3 before the rock gets bad

More photos after the break.

Kate at the start of the choss

How fun! Loose, wet chimney climbing!

The last good pitch of the route. (just above half way)

Icy choss

Good rock but awkward aid climbing

Alpine aid climbing trickery! Using the ice tool as a mini stick clip.

What epic isn't complete without climbing at night

um ya that was… fun… kinda… OK not really

On the ridge where we joined the

Cumbre

The route line of Astro Choss on the South Face of St Exupery

The shot of Cerro Torre, in Patagonia was taken last year while hiking out after climbing St. Exupery with Kate. We briefly stopped on the hike to have a look at Cerro Torre as it was getting engulfed by a pretty serious storm. I had with me my Panasonic GF1 which is a great camera but I only had my fixed 14mm lens on it, which was to wide of an angle for the shot. So I asked Kate if I could borrow her Canon S90 point and shoot which had a decent zoom on it. Thankfully she said yes! I snapped off 3 pics and kept walking not really thinking they were anything special. Turns out I got one decent shot.

Patagonia's 2012 Mountain Catalog

Nearing the end of our month long climbing trip to Slovenia and Croatia, Brittany Griffith, Kate and I decided to check out this amazing cliff just outside the mouth of Paklenica. The climbing was great though we were all extremely tired after climbing for to many days in a row. We had already packed our bags up and were about ready to head down the trail when some epic light started to pop out behind some clouds. I pleaded with the girls to unpack their bags and do one more pitch for me. They weren’t exactly enthusiastic, but thankfully I managed to persuade them. Just so happens this was the last route I shot and one of the last frames of the trip. I owe the ladies for this one.

Patagonia's Euro 2012 Spring/Summer Catalog

So to entertain myself I hiked around town and setup a few different cameras. I’ve got a project that I’m working on that I need to doing a bunch of time lapses. A couple of the cameras sat for 3 days. The cool things about time lapses is not only do they make a cool video clips but sometimes the individual frames are worth themselves. Below are two of the better frames I got as well as gross pic of my finger!

Click on the pics to have a better view of them, they deserve it.

El Chalten and Fitz

Some peeps rapping Cerro Torre right before the weather closed out

Really gross and very painful

Fast forward another month and this time to El Chalten, Argentina, the small cozy town that lays at the foothills of the massive Fitzroy massif. I arrived early December with my sights set extremely low knowing that climbing a 35ft 4 bolt sport climb at Smith Rocks hardly got me ready for climbing in alpine. Or maybe it did? At least thats what I had to tell myself as a weather forecast started to appear that I knew I couldn’t miss out on.

Cerro Torre on the approach to the Torre Valley

Thankfully for me Jens Holsten and Joel Kauffman offered to take a gimp along with them (that would be me). What I lacked in fitness though I made up for with a good plan, which be might arguable looking back… But never the less they were sold and the bags were packed. Our plan, take a new steep and direct line up the 900m south face of Poincenot.

Like any alarm that goes off at 3am, this one came way to early for me. We took our time getting out of camp waiting for a faint illumination from the sum , wanting to avoid crossing the loose moraine by headlamp that guards the entrance to the Poincenot-Inominata couloir. Slowly we picked our way through huge loose boulders and up into the couloir that leads to the base of the massive and steep south face on Poincenot.

steep and clean

The south face is split into three parts, the first being characterized by lower angle cracks and larger open dihedrals. Joel took the first block, which involved stellar climbing in clean corners. Jens and myself followed free in our approach shoes laughing about the quality of the rock and the climbing. Little did we know it wouldn’t last. We arrived at the ledge cutting across the lower 1/3rd of the route at a civilized time of 5pm, had quick brew and Jens took over leading up onto the headwall. It quickly be came apparent though, that laughs were going to be replaced by grimaces and fear. As the angle of the rock increased the quality decreased. Jens quickly had to resort to aid and the use of a few pins. After battling away for a couple hours he fixed the rope and came down. We snuggled in for a fairly comfy bivi with great views of Torre’s

Not a bad place for a nights rest

The warm early morning rays of the sun coaxed us out of bed which was quickly followed by a healthy early morning dose of steep granite jugging. Jens continued on leading another pitch, which again required mostly direct aid in funky kitty litter rock. Soon enough he had enough and kindly passed the lead onto me just below a pitch littered with large loose blocks.

At this point I had to draw deeply on all of the training I’d done for this mission in the last few months. I just kept telling myself it wasn’t that different than sport climbing at Smith and Chain Reaction. Clip a few bolts, drop knee, slap up the arete, dyno for the top and lower. Though, in reality the similarities to the South Face and Chain Reaction were glaringly in-obvious…. Fortunately for me, to many years of aid monkeying around El Cap has always left me prepared for this sort of climbing. I slowly made my way up tricky but not as difficult as it looked aid climbing around one large chopper block after another. After a few body lengths it would appear the rock was improving but briskly those hopes were whisked just like the rock being cleaned with my ice tool.

rope monkeys

I continued on aiding up a short pitch that lead to what a appeared to be a beautiful and clean corner but like before I was disappointed. After lots of cam leaping and back cleaning I started to run out of options. Our double set of cams wasn’t enough to aid climb on and build anchors with. I spied a thinner crack out right that I pendulum’d to that offered a more varied crack and possibilities for an anchor. Jens and Joel followed what would be one of the more exciting maneuvers I’ve seen in the alpine. Without a piece to lower out on they were forced to simply take the swing (sport climbing style) that I had pendulum’d across. Fairly high on the pucker factor scale.

This last maneuver would mark the end of the technical difficulties, as I was now in a fairly clean A1 corner that got cleaner and better the farther it went. Slowly still, I managed to get the rope up which took us to a much needed ledge (this being the first non-hanging belay in 7 pitches!!!). At this point I was cooked and the sun had slid preciously low into the horizon but the ever exuberant Jens took the rack and rope and ran up the moderate 5.10 terrain. The rope quickly came to the end and Joel and I sluggishly followed on jumars. This went on for a couple more pitches till Jens hit what was a much more than acceptable ledge for us hunker down on. This ledge also marked final point of new terrain for us. From here on up we’d be following the ’68 Fonrouge-Rosasco

click on me for the full affect

With little effort I passed out on a pile of uneven rocks as the thought of making a nice smooth comfy spot was more than I could handle. I could of slept on a bed of broken glass and not noticed at that point. The 4 hours or so of darkness quickly passed and we were up at it again with the rising sun, however this morning we only had a short distance to the summit and a long ways down.

Cumbre!!!

Joel took over the leading and navigated us through meandering moderate terrain veering up and right toward the Whillians route and the summit. With a few extra credit steep pitches and some route finding issues we gained the summit in just a few hours in nearly dead calm and warm conditions. What a treat. Little fan fair awaited us on top as we still had a massive 900m wall to rappel below us. Quickly we switched gears and slid back down the ropes. Instead of reversing our line which would be a costly affair we opted to follow the Gerberding-Smith route, Judgement Day, down. There is something a bit unnerving about dropping into a huge wall but my fears were unfounded as the rappels went as smoothly as one could ever expect in the alpine. We touched down into the couloir just as the light faded.

In the end maybe I was initially right Chain Reaction and Poincenot weren’t that different, you start at the bottom, do some weird monkey trickery, hang on the rope, lunge for the top and come back down. It’s all just climbing.

Check out Jens’ take on our climb here: jensholsten.blogspot.com

And Joel’s blog here: joelandneilsclimbingblog.blogspot.com

The Details

Dates of ascent: 12/13-15/2011
900m (650new) 5.11 A2+
Doubles of Cams to 3″ with triples from .5 to 3″ plus one #4
Handfull of pins

follow the red line to the top

Today was my first day climbing in 5 weeks.  Definitely the longest duration I’ve gone without climbing in a really long time! (hard to recall exactly but probably 5 years).  5 weeks ago I sprained my ankle in a pretty serious way coming off of El Cap.  I knew when I hit the ground that is was going to be awhile before I was walking let alone climbing.  Walking is pretty easy these days though I’ve still got a limp.  Climbing is just barely doable…  I used my heal a lot as putting weight on my toes is still fairly challenging still.  But regardless I managed to climb 3 pitches of 5.easy at Smith Rocks today.   The climbing was great but equally as cool was just being at the crag hanging with friends.  That is hell of a lot more fun that sitting in my van watching movies!!!!

Now I just need to not over due it and make sure I’m ready for the upcoming season down in Patagonia.  My Dec 5th departure date isn’t that far away.

This should be a cool rock climbing pic but I haven't taken any lately... so here's a pic from the parking lot.

Another pic only a 5 second walk from the van

This one was maybe 2 minutes from the car... Big day for me.