r/climbing • u/AutoModerator • 3d ago
Weekly Chat and BS Thread
Please use this thread to discuss anything you are interested in talking about with fellow climbers. The only rule is to be friendly and dont try to sell anything here.
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u/ref_acct 1d ago
Bailed off the nose recently, got to el cap tower but realized we were running low on food and water for our pace. Learned a lot though. I am curious though, how often do parties actually sleep on their portaledges at the full hanging belays? Or does everyone stick to the natural ledges to have at least some horizontal surface to walk around, sit on, even if theyre crappy and not totally flat (such as sickle, camp IV)? It seems like it'd be incredibly hard to hang all of your gear, go through your pig on just one of those 3 bolt anchors on a sheer part of the route
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u/BigRed11 1d ago
Natural ledges are many times more convenient than hanging ledge camps. I haven't been on the Nose but comparing my experiences on the Salathe and Mescalito, even the smallest ledge (Long ledge) makes life so much more bearable as compared to having to coordinate your movements and deal with the cluster around a ledge. We felt like idiots on Mescalito because we also inadvertently missed the scant few ledges and ended up at hanging camps the whole time.
Idk how people manage the Nose given there's a real risk that there's no space on the natural ledges. Would suck to not have a ledge but it also sucks to haul a ledge for no reason.
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4h ago edited 1h ago
My first time up el cap was soloing Virginia which has essentially zero ledges or stances the entire way up, and pretty much every day I wasted an hour or two dealing with some sort of anchor shitshow and struggling to setup my ledge or get into my haulbag. It’s crazy how big of a difference it makes having even just a tiny stance to work from.
I’ve seen people with portaledges setup in the middle of the stovelegs and stuff like that but it just seems silly to me, the nose has so many good ledges that it’s very reasonable and well worth it to make sure you stop at one every single night, even if you still sleep in your portaledge because it’s busy with other parties
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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 3h ago
Several people have told me that taking a ledge up the Nose for a slow (3+ day) style ascent is a good idea, for two reasons:
Natural ledges might be full. Everyone knows that the Nose has plenty of good ledges, but if you end up climbing it during a cluster, you might find yourself dangling feet off the wall while you shiver in your puffy next to somebody in a sleeping bag who got their earlier.
With a ledge you can focus on grinding out the climb and not worry about getting to the next place you can comfortably stop. You hear stories of people setting up ledges in the middle of the Stovelegs or in the Grey Bands or whatever. These people might seem silly, but they usually don't end up bailing.
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u/sweatytiddies6 22h ago
We’ve all seen and heard of the breast or belly or thumb webbing sucked into and pinched by the grigri or atc or whatever. But did you ever hear the sad tale of Big Sack Sam and the pinched scrotum?
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u/MuddledPostponement 3d ago
girl i just spent 20 minutes reorganizing my bookshelf by emotional tone and my cat sat there judging me the entire time like i was rearranging his kingdom without permission