Summary

Description

After caving near WVACS the day before, Lisa and I stopped by Iron Gate on our way home. We had planned to do more climbing -- both Sunday and Monday - somewhere else, but after looking at the weather forecast for various other locations, we decided that the chance of getting rained off was fairly high so we opted for just one day of climbing and stopping along our route home so that if we did get rained off it wasn't a big deal.

We were a little slow leaving WVACS (about an hour away), and got to the pull-off near Iron Gate around 11:30. We were thankful that the hike in was only 15 minutes not only beacuse it got up to the crag quickly, but also because the trail up the hill is quite steep, thin, and unstable. There were lots of leaves down on the trail and all along the base of the cliff band which made for slippery footing. The good news is that since we were there in early winter, there was no poison ivy in evidence. (Unlike our previous trip there which was in May, and there was poison ivy everywhere.)

We got setup at Whiney Butt down at the left and of Fetish Wall. The grond is steeply sloped. There was a big, beefy rope that we tied our packs and rope bag off to, and I set a 2-piece anchor for the belayer to clip into so as not to slide down the hill. I led. The rock was cold, but it felt good to lead. The route was pretty squarely in my comfort zone. I put in one cam low just so I wouldn't roll as far down the hill if I came off, and the rest of the route is a 4-bolt clip-up. Lisa followed and cleaned the gear, then she climbed it again to do a varaiation up a crack on the left.

We then moved over and down to the right to the corner with Leather and Latex and Roasted Dude. It was very nice to be able to stand on flat ground at the base of the route. I started up thinking I would left the 5.7 Roasted Dude face, but after putting in one cam low in a horizintal and getting up to the first bolt, I decided that face was a little too thin for my liking, and there was a loooong way from the 2nd-and-last bolt to the anchors. So instead I led the 5.6 corner crack, Leather and Latex. I was a pretty good lead. I felt a little sketchy in a few spots so I sewed up the crack. Looking at it as I came down, I was very safe.

Lisa climbed and cleaned the gear. Then we each climbed the Roasted Dude face a couple times on top rope. My first time up, I hung on the rope at the thin part above the first bolt before finishing. My second time up, I was able to climb all the way up without weighting the rope. Lisa had no rope-weighting issues. [Note: when we got home, I found some older route and topo info on Iron Gate, and Roasted Dude was originally rated as 5.8. That makes me feel a little better about deciding not to lead it.]

We had thought we might be able to put in a redirect and also top-rope the 5.9 to the right, but the corner the rope would have to go across was very sharp, so we decided that was a bad idea. So instead, I decided to have another go at The Catwoman that was just to our left. I had led it when we were there 3 years before, but I had struggeld with the transition between the broken face climbing at the bottom and the first bolt.

This attempt was not much better. I didn't particularly like the face climbing since it's vertical to slightly-past-vertical, but I got in a couple of solid cams. THen at the transition above the last horzontal crack there's a somewhat blank, solid section before getting to the first bolt which is on the arete. I struggled and swore and swore and struggeled and swore some more. I hung on the rope a lot while trying to figure out what to do and trying out a few different variations. (Big thanks to Lisa for holding me the whole time and not getting impatient and cranky like I was. She did comment that she wished she'd been belaying with her Cinch rather than her B52 to make it easier to hold me.)

Eventually, I gave up trying to find a good way up since I don't believe there is such a thing. I finally found a stance where I could pull in and just touch the bolt. THat meant I could also just barely clip a 'draw. Pulling up slack to clip the rope was a bit nerve racking since it was a precarious stance. After that I and grovelled my way to the bolt, hugging and humping the rock, using all my limbs and joints, and swearing a bunch more to get to where I could stand. Beyond that, I was fairly straightforward slabby climbing. I bit of a long way from the second bolt to the anchors, but the climbing wasn't too hard. I was quite happy to be lowered off once I'd set 'draws for a top rope.

Lisa climbed and cleaned and tried to find a way through the crux that had nearly defeated me. (And had defintiely defeated me from climbing with good style.) She couldn't find anything there, either, adn also ended up grovelling through it. Although, to be fair, her grovelling looks much better than mine, and she didn't do any rock humping.

After cleaning and rigging this last route to rappel down, we decided were were done for the day. It was about half-past 4, and the light was starting to fade a little. We might have been able to get in one more route, but neither of us wanted to try the descent trail in the dark.

The day had been cloudy with the cloud cover getting thicker and thinner at various times. It felt a few times like it was about to rain, but it never did. Once we got back to the car and checked the radar via smartphone, we saw that we had gotten lucky. The radar showed what looked like bands of rain both north and south of where we were, but we were in a rain-free section. Win!