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Show Russell Jacobs 2 December 2009 Uh, there was, uh, Pingora. I think those were the two main, uh, mountains that we took our students on. Uh, there's a formation called the Hourglass on the south side of Pingora that we managed to get a half-dozen students on. And then, then the big classic is Wolf's Head Traverse, which is only .. .it's a medium grade difficult climb that you start out on a little, tiny saddle, and you run up, you climb up sort of a walkway that's very steep, but it's .. . you need your hands and your feet on the rock at all times. But it's easy. But it's very, very narrow and it drops off severely on both sides. And then it winds, uh, around pinnacles that are broken loose on the ridge itself all the way to the very western end. And then you circumvent the western end towards the north and then you .. . there's a couple of rappels and then a hike back to camp. MD: Um-hum. RJ: And so those were the two major, uh, climbs. There was one also that me and another, uh, instructor wanted to do, um, that was more of a mountain. But it was a long Grade IV climb. But as we ... Mitchell, Mitchell was the name of the mountain, which was part of the cirque. But once we got to a point where we were about to rope up a very, very large, uh, Volkswagen-sized boulder came sliding down very close to both of us. I don't if we really had to maneuver away and out of its way at the time, but we realized that this is probably, you know, not gonna happen today ... so .... [Russ laughs] We abandoned that climb, went back to camp, regrouped, and did something else in lieu of that. But those were some very good times back in the cirque. MD: So to what degree were you still learning at this point? I mean, you're an instructor, but um, obviously you're a newcomer, too, to rock climbing so ... 14 |
