Crimson Chrysalis, 5.8+, 9 pitches, 1000’ ultra classic.
Any ideas of going big may be behind me unless I get a huge cardio base to survive the approach. Scooby and I started hiking at 5am in 40 degree temps. It took about 1/2 hour until I started to warm up and get me away from the edge of shivering. Although I’m not a fan of waking up early, it’s fun hiking with headlamps and we got one of the best sunrises. There’s nothing like seeing the soft pre-dawn light make the walls glow. I took pictures every 5 minutes as the light got better and better!
It rained 5 days earlier so I felt confident that the rock had enough time to dry. What we didn’t know was that it snowed on the trail and wall so the last 45 minutes was navigating dirt trail, snow, ice, getting off route and finding the trail again. Somehow it didn't dawn on us about the wall condition although we could see snow on the upper portions of the wall on the hike in. We were thinking that it would be cold but at least no other party would be on the route. It took 2:45 to get to the base of Crimson Chrysalis.
At the base, there was about a foot of snow and we could see the rappel route was damp but CC looked dry. I started to rack up and the ice above started to shed from the route and fell on us. Both Scoob and I quickly put on our helmet without saying a word. While racking up, we heard a huge roar up canyon from rockfall. I registered the sound but was too focused to process it. I started up the route and 15 feet up I was already trying to warm up my hands. The rock was cold and sucked any heat I had in my hands and feet. By 20 feet when I got to the first bolt, my hands were frozen, passed a wet section of rock and heard more ice whizzing by. I decided to bail because of the cold, ice, being tired and I was getting scared. All this happened as Scoob was getting pelted by larger pieces of ice. When I got off the wall, we grabbed our stuff and moved away from the wall and ice fall before finally laughing off the stress.
It still took us 2 hours to get back to the van since we had to navigate through the snow and ice. Basically we spend the morning doing a sunrise hike with our climbing packs. Not what we planned but still not a bad way to spend the day.
