Spaceshot- solo

Spring of 2020- Covid

Spring of 2020 was supposed to be something different. It was supposed to be long days in Boulder Canyon climbing the slippery granite at Castle Rock, Touchstone in Zion, and ultimately climbing The Nose with Jon. Instead, Spring of 2020 turned into Covid-19. It became social distancing and stay at home orders. It became keyboard warriors trashing others for climbing outside, and for doing anything “non-essential.” I can only imagine the amount of hate I am about to receive for this trip report.

I embraced the social distancing in my own way (which is probably not up to snuff for others). I picked my one partner I’d interact with, in addition to my wife and kid brother who lives with me. I cancelled my gym membership before they ended up closing down anyways. I stopped running little errands, stopped eating out, stopped going to crowded crags. As things started deteriorating I could see the writing on the wall well before it became official. Nevertheless, I held on to the Yosemite Dream up until the moment it closed.

I held on to that date, April 15th, for quite some time as a way to mentally persevere in harder times. Everything would be ok, because in April I was going to Yosemite, and what else mattered? And then I wasn’t. First world problems, I know, but my problems nonetheless.

Zion was still open, amazingly, and likely to close yesterday. My partner was out on Touchstone for the time being, opting to ride out CoronaVirus locally and responsibly. I, on the other hand, had a bone to pick with the overreaching government, goals to pursue, and a 3 day weekend from my essential job. And so I decided on a whim to solo Spaceshot for what would be my first “big wall” solo.

I jumped in the car after 3 hours of sleep and drove straight to a rest stop about 45 minutes outside of Zion. On the way I stopped for gas several times, never once going into the store, and using gloves and hand sanitizer to pump the gas. While I was determined to defy the stay at home orders, I was less keen to actually contribute to anyone getting sick.

Before going to bed in the back of my car, I filled out my online bivy permit, which was still allowed at the time. The plan was to do Spaceshot in two days, while sleeping in my ledge on the wall. Ideally, I would not interact with any people, and would be entirely self sufficient. The one flaw in this plan was the fact that Spaceshot is a fairly popular route, and I knew there was a chance I would have to walk away from it if it were too crowded.

Day 1

I woke up and made myself some breakfast in the back of the car. Breaking the climb up into two days, and having the luxury of a small ledge, meant that I did not feel rushed in the slightest. Knowing that I was not pressed for time, I scrolled through my phone and stumbled across an email from Zion National Park. They had cancelled my bivy permit, and shut down all future applications. There was no 5 dollar refund either, but the park was still open. I went back to bed and sulked for a bit, thinking I would just wake up later and drive back home.

After hemming and hawing for a bit, I decided to head into the park and check it out, just to see. Once I was at the bottom of the route I decided to see how far I could get that day. I would decide later if I was going to fix lines and fire it the next day, or if I would just rappel down and head home. This was not the style I envisioned, and was not the experience I was hoping for, but I wanted the route, and it was still a solo “big wall.” Might as well try and see how it goes.

I free soloed the first pitch which has a few moves of 5.5 off the deck and is then largely 4th class to the base of the second pitch. I no longer had the weight of a haul bag full of food, water, bivy equipment, etc. so I was certainly moving fast in comparison to what I would have been if I had to haul. The next two pitches consisted of free climbing a really fun chimney and a chossy groove. I think on Pitch 3 I may have gone the wrong way, but it felt roughly 5.7 and wasn’t too terrible.

I was now sitting on a good ledge system at the base of the steep aid pitches. I had to decide fairly soon if I was going to fix and fire, or retreat and head home. I wanted to get the 4th pitch done if I planned to fix, but didn’t have enough rope to reach the ground from the top of that pitch. I would have had enough rope if I was willing to solo pitch 2 or 3 the next day, but I wasn’t feeling quite that brave. Perhaps I would have felt differently had I found the right way for pitch 3, but I wasn’t willing to do the choss fest that I climbed without a rope.

As I sat there pondering my choices, eating lunch, and simply enjoying my position 400 feet above the valley floor, a head appeared. Another group had climbed up while I was lazily hanging out on the ledge. I was sitting on the far end of said ledge, and so they had plenty of room to work at the anchor, and still maintain our 6 feet of social distance. In fact, Plenty of jokes were made about that exact thing. They were planning on fixing the first 3 pitches and finishing the route the next day. This gave me an idea! I could fix the fourth pitch that afternoon, and then use one of their ropes to jug up a pitch in the morning. I was planning on starting an hour ahead of them, and I would be a pitch ahead. I knew that I was likely much slower than them, being fairly new at the aid rope solo thing, and would allow them to pass once they caught up. The one obvious downside was that using their rope to jug up could potentially lead to a cross contamination of Corona germs. They didn’t seem to mind, and the risk seemed minimal to me, and so it was decided. The only potential snag that I could envision would be if Zion decided to close their gates that night. Then we would each be out two ropes. A risk I was willing to take.

The other group took off, leaving their ropes behind, with a promise to catch and pass me in the morning. I stared up at the bolt ladder above. It looked like a decent sized stretch to the first bolt from the anchor, and then a fairly casual mantle to the third bolt. From there everything looked spaced fairly close until a thin crack graded C1 or C2 depending on what topo you are looking at.

I started off and got to the first bolt, top stepping fairly easily. I quickly found myself fifi’d in to the second bolt, looking up at bolt 3, which was 2 body lengths away. There was no way I could top step up to that thing, and the mantle move was much harder than it looked from the ground. I realized quickly that if I had brought any hooks the move would be fairly simple, but alas I did not own any hooks (This has been remedied). So where one would usually hook, I had to crimp and step out of the aiders. I spent a solid 45 minutes hemming and hawing, climbing and down climbing back and forth on this move, terrified of the factor 2 daisy fall that would ensue if I blew it. At one point I ended up mantled on the ledge and in a panicked state, I stuck my finger through the bolt hanger. Of course with my sausage finger filling up the hole, I was unable to get any gear in there. Finally, I was able to free climb past the hook move, and get a draw into the third bolt.

From that point on it was a cruiser bolt ladder to a mostly easy crack. There was one completely blown out placement that had me stumped for a while. I ended up solving it with a 2 lobe totem placement. I felt pretty cool for using that trick. In all, I think the pitch took me at least 2 hours, and possibly 2 and a half. I was glad to have it out of the way for the following day. I fixed my lines and rapped back to my car. I drove out and found a pullout on the side of the road, just outside of the park, to sleep in.

Day 2

I wound up back at the base of the route around 8 the next morning. I had to Jumar up the 3 fixed lines to the base of the 5th pitch, the C2 Crux of the route. Based on Mountain Project comments I knew that I was looking at a decent sized section of small nut placements with big fall potential. Jugging up to my high point (approximately 500 feet up) was slow and taxing. It would have been nice to have left all my gear up there the night before, but with the threat of the park closing, I wasn’t willing to risk that much gear being left on the wall. As I was jugging up I stopped at a ledge to do some rope maintenance. As I leaned over to grab the rope I watched as my cell phone hit the ledge at my feet and went crashing to the ground hundreds of feet below. There wasn’t going to be any pictures, and more importantly, I was not going to be able to check in with my wife or friends when I completed the climb. This was less than ideal, but there wasn’t much I could do about it at this point.

As I was hanging in my harness, looking up at the crux pitch and preparing my gear for the climb, I heard my name shouted from below.  “We’re coming for you Tony!”  My friends had arrived and the clock was running.  The crack was around 100 feet of fairly easy C1 and ended in 30 feet or so of tricky C2.  The change came at an intermediate anchor that you skipped and tensioned right into the crux seam.  As I neared that anchor I saw the group below me was absolutely cruising.  The hook move that I had to skip took them less than 30 seconds and they were nearing the crux on pitch 1. 

At the end of each pitch I had to rappel the line, break down my anchor, jug back up and clean all my gear, and then get the ropes situated. All of this had to be done by the 2 man group as well (with the exception of rapelling the pitch), but with twice as many hands they were able to do it much faster than I. I was adamant that I did not want to be the reason someone else got hosed and had to sit around waiting on me. Additionally, I was concerned that I may rush things and blow it if I was worried about another group nipping at my heels. I made the decision to stop at the intermediate anchor and clean the pitch below, breaking the crux pitch into 2. This would also have the added benefit of never having all 3 of us stuck at one belay (which almost never consisted of a bolt, and only angle pitons pounded directly into the soft sandstone. )

While cleaning my half pitch I managed to drop my nut tool. This did not bode well for the upcoming crux section, which I knew relied heavily on RP’s (tiny offset nuts) that could be near impossible to remove without a nut tool. Luckily, it landed near the other group and they were able to retrieve it and bring it up to me. I was extra grateful, as I had borrowed a friend’s RP’s and they aren’t the cheapest piece of equipment to replace. After breaking down and setting up for the next pitch I ended up hanging around (quite literally!) for 2 hours or so. In hindsight, I think it would have been wiser to finish the crux pitch and do a swap somewhere up higher, but at the time it seemed like the wisest, and kindest, decision to make.

The crux pitch I found to be thin, but fairly straight forward.  I actually found the blown out placement on the first aid pitch to be much harder.  There was one fixed blue ball nut on the pitch that made it slightly easier, but not drastically so.  I used a blue ball nut of my own and could have done with one more.  I used several tiny RP’s and did have a piece or two rip when I tested them.  The last difficult move was a high step where I placed a good offset cam placement that signalled the end of the difficulties.  My time in the Fisher’s earlier in the year had definitely paid off! 

As I completed that pitch the others were well on their way to the summit and we were no longer waiting on each other. The next two pitches were easy C1, however they leaned drastically to the right which would make retreat extremely challenging. With zero thoughts of retreat I was unconcerned. They would have made excellent free climbing pitches, though I think the first of the two would have been exceptionally difficult (long sections of .4 and .75.)

I brought doubles of black totems through purple camalots and triples of green camalots through blue camalots, as well as one number four. I found this rack to be plenty adequate, even though others called for more number two’s.

I was running low on water, having only brought one bottle worth (big mistake). I had to ration water at each belay to try and make it last until I hit the ground. I was also running low on food. I brought 6 Cliff Bars (1500 Calories) which I thought was actually too much. On big days I typically bring 4 and usually only eat 2 or 3. The 6 Cliff Bars should have proven plenty, but I couldn’t eat enough to keep up with my output.

As I started up the last pitch of climbing it was becoming fairly obvious that I was going to be forced to descend in the dark.  I was hoping to avoid this, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.  If I had my bivy equipment I would have just spent the night on “Space Orbit Ledge” and finished the route in the morning.  Alas, it was not meant to be. 

The last pitch requires you to traverse 30-50 feet to your right before heading up a bolt ladder.  Following the traverse you pull over a roof section, and the whole of the wall drops away 800 feet straight to the ground.  There are two easy to reach bolts before you hit a roadblock.  Where there used to be a third bolt there is now nothing.  This has been well documented, and I knew it was something I was going to have to deal with.  I tried top stepping to get past the blank section to reach the “fourth” bolt, however I was coming up around 6 inches short.  I think it would have been possible for me to step out of the aiders and do a free move to complete the section, but I just wasn’t feeling it this late in the day.  I tried tinkering with some gear in some small cracks and holes without much luck.  I had read that a hook would get you past the section (I was crimping where the hook would have gone) or perhaps a C3 placement.  I was hoping to at least finish the pitch without a headlamp and so my patience was wearing thin.  I pulled out my stick clip (a flimsy 2 foot tent pole from my bivy sack) and began taping a draw to the top of it.  Given the limited length I still had to get fairly high in my aiders to make it work.  The problem was its flimsiness combined with the fact that the next bolt was a spinner.  There was no way I was going to be able to force the draw into the hanger.  I came back down and decided to take off my fifi hook and attach that to the stick clip.  I was then able to hook that in the hanger and aid up off of that.  I thought myself pretty clever for that little trick I thought up on the spot.  I’m sure it’s been done by many before, but I had never read or heard of it.  Some may say the use of the stick clip invalidates the entire ascent, but I was at peace with my decision to “cheat” my way to the top.  All of Aid climbing is “cheating” according to some.

I finished the pitch with some mandatory free climbing that I had forgotten about. It was fairly easy so no big deal, but that headlamp was on in full force. When cleaning the pitch, you have the option to take a running swing at the section where the roof juts out over the ledge, doing the namesake “Spaceshot”. If it had been daylight I would have gone for it, but considering I couldn’t even enjoy the exposure I took it a bit more mellow.

Descent

There is another 20 feet or so of 4th class climbing between the last ledge and the top of the climb which I free solo’d while shuttling gear. Now it was time for the descent. In the pictures I had seen there was a very obvious pine tree that marked the start of the rappels down and left a couple thousand feet from the top of the climb. In the black of the night I was unable to see anywhere close to that far, so I just began wandering in the general direction of where I knew the pine tree should be. The descent was fairly easy, but slabby at times. I have a damn good headlamp, so good it requires an external battery pack, but it was not good enough to see far enough. I kept coming up to down climb sections that appeared to cliff out in the black of the night. I wandered around for a while trying to find a way down, without much luck. By this time I was out of both food and water and severely dehydrated. At one point I found a cairn that signalled I was on the right path, but it eventually ended in nothing as well.

I got tired of hauling around all the gear and ropes as I wandered around looking for a way down. The gear was on my harness and in a backpack, whereas the ropes were in my hand held rope bag. Needing use of my hands for any down climb sections, I opted to set the ropes down and continue searching for my way down. I should have thought about that decision a bit more critically than I did. While I would not say I was delirious by any measure, I was certainly exhausted and my decision making was a bit impaired. I had felt something similar on El Capitan last year. After a half hour or so of searching for the way off I wasn’t finding anything that was promising and wanted to go back to square one, where I had left the ropes. The only problem was I didn’t see them. I had been walking back and forth, and up and down, while looking for a way to the rappells. Now I found myself wandering in a circle, aimlessly, looking for my pink rope bag, that I thought should be fairly easy to spot, even in the dark. I began to panic mentally. What an idiot I had been to set the ropes down. How would I get off the damn mountain without my ropes. I thought it was possible some animal had knocked my rope bag off the mountain and now I was stranded up here. Perfect. No food, no water, no bivy equipment, and in need of a rescue. During a pandemic in which I wasn’t supposed to be climbing. I’m that fucking guy. Beautiful.

After what felt like 3 hours, but was probably more like 30 minutes I managed to find the rope bags, still holding my ropes, by some bushes that had obscured my view. I was elated to have found my ropes, but was still no closer to finding the way off the rock. I began to weigh my options. I could continue to wander around searching for the way off, and potentially try down climbing in a few sections I had found that look fairly precarious. But the thought of blowing it and falling off the mountain seemed less than desirable. I had to be honest with myself and realized I didn’t even know where to begin on where to go at this point. The other option was to wait it out on the summit and descend in the morning, with the guidance of the sunlight. But I had no food or water. And the bigger problem was my lack of bivy equipment. No sleeping bag and no insulation. I knew from the weather forecast that the temperatures were going to drop to the mid 20’s overnight. I felt fine at the moment, but it wasn’t even midnight yet (I actually had no idea what time it was due to the lack of a cell phone.) I was fairly certain I could survive overnight, but would I get hypothermia, or frostbite? I was kicking myself for not educating myself further on this topic. What temperature does it have to be before you start losing phalanges? Why didn’t I know the answer to this?

Ultimately, I decided to wait it out and try to sleep until the morning.  I figured if I got too cold I could just get up and resume my search for the descent.  If I was moving around I was fairly certain that I could stave off the cold temperatures until the sun returned and brought its warmth with it.  My clothing consisted of a pair of thermal pants (thankfully?), Nylon climbing pants, a Thermal long sleeve shirt, and a Patagonia Nano air jacket. 

When I fell asleep it felt like it was in the 40’s.  It was beautiful.  I found a flat, 2 foot wide, sandy spot where I laid everything down and just crashed.  Again, I have no idea what time it was at any point, but when I awoke it was completely different.  I was shivering uncontrollably.  It was fucking cold!  I quickly unpacked one of my ropes and laid it down on the ground for insulation.  I curled up into a ball stuffing my hands into my pants to keep my fingers warm.  There was a slight breeze, but luckily the wind was not howling.  Had it been I think things would have been much worse.  My hands and fingers stayed warm all night and were not an issue.  I had to alternate sides because the side that was “up” and exposed to the breeze would get very cold.  Every so often I would use my hands and quickly rub my legs back and forth to create friction.  This seemed to help, though whether imaginary or legitimate I’m unsure.  The side that was on the rope was ok.  And I could not stop shivering.  I should have brought the sleeping bag just in case.  Idiot.

My Toes were frozen.  They didn’t feel cold in the way that I expected them too.  The sensation was more akin to when a part of your body “falls asleep.”  I was constantly trying to move them and regain feeling.  Both by moving them on their own and by using my hands to forcibly move them back and forth.  I experimented with different body positions, trying to sit cross legged and stuff my toes in behind my knees.  Nothing worked, I couldn’t warm my toes up.  I started to become fearful of frostbite and potentially losing my toes.  I didn’t know if this fear was legitimate or irrational.  I was scared to take my socks off and look at my feet.  If I saw my toes were purple or black I might lose all the fight I had in me to make it through the night. 

Eventually, I decided to get up and try and find my way down.  I stood up, took a step, and fell down.  My feet didn’t work.  Everything was so cold, and my feet were asleep.  There was no way I could get me and all my stuff down those slabs safely.  I crawled back to my rope bed and took my socks off to assess the damage.  The toes looked fine.  Slightly pale, but no major discoloration.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if my feet didn’t work in the morning, but I figured the sun would warm them up and get them working.  At that point I laid down, completely disregarding my feet, and just tried to get some rest. 

I felt like I slept a total of 0 minutes, but I know that I had to have slept somewhat because I remember waking up to the sound of birds.  I was shivering like a mad man, with my face obscured by my hood, but I heard birds!  It had to be nearing dawn.  And sure as shit, when I looked up I could see ambient light all around me.  The sun would be up soon, which meant the temperatures were going to rocket up and I would soon be able to see that damned Pine tree. 
I willed myself up and began walking slowly, focusing hard on my feet.  I began pacing back and forth, trying to get the feeling back.  After 20 minutes or so of walking back and forth over the same 15 foot section I could feel the sensation returning to my feet and I could sense my coordination and balance coming back with it.  I walked back to the top of the route to get a better look at the lay of the land around me.  I was able to see the Pine Tree that marked the start of the rappels.  As I scanned the slabs leading down, it was obvious where the best way down was.  It was by that damn cairn I found last night.  I thought the cairn was marking the correct trail to walk on, and in fact it was marking the spot to step down the slabs. 

I went back and grabbed my gear, and made my way to the cairn.  The slabs that just the night before appeared to be treacherous and cliffed out, actually appeared pretty mellow with cush ledges below them.  I easily found my way over to the pine tree and began the rappells.  The entire descent probably took me 2 hours and was fairly straightforward.

As I finally found sweet Terra Firma I heard a familiar voice. One of the 2 from the night before had returned to check on me. He had received a call from SAR reference my status. My wife had called SAR overnight after I did not make contact with her. They found my car, with a note left by my friend containing his phone number. They made contact with him to get an update on my status and whether I knew what I was doing or not. He correctly advised them that I likely ran out of daylight and made an emergency bivy on the top. There was no active rescue for me, just a note on my car from SAR asking me to call and let them know I was safe.

We drove out of the park to signs that the park had been closed. I had managed to squeeze in the last adventure in Zion for the foreseeable future. And what an adventure it was.