Mar 20th, 2006

I prefer the west side of Pinnacles because walls are bigger and more foreboding, and for the bats, falcons and foxes (4-legged) I’ve met. I also invested more of my climbing energy there than at the high peaks (with its long, long views on clear days across California, it seems) or east side (with its intricate caves, friendly, rough campground running with wild pigs at night). No matter where one climbs, the place fills you with a sense of another world: seeing big tarantulas on the road; thinking of bandits hiding away and early Spanish explorers stunned by the odd formations; feeling a warm, gently moving air sounding in wispy digger pines. Add twittering, big eared bats in a crack peering out at the stranger you are, the missile sounding dive of a falcon going for a bird hit (or is it to stop you hammering on your damn drill), a good Mexican meal and beer on the road home and joy is complete.

A few west side favorites:

Machete Direct:

A tribute to the quiet, proficient Barry Bates and partner Glen Garland, the first pitch of this route humbled, fooled and nearly benighted me. An old aid line up a big, brown, rambling wall promising a few hours of up and down (to the top), the Direct first pitch has a little of the feel of a sport route, but with a nagging rich history of a good style first free ascent I wanted to emulate. Barry tried it free one weekend a few times, then came back the next and got it in 1987. No seiging, no rests on the rope. He rated it good 5.11 which I knew I could do at the time, but then why was I going up happily, hitting a befuddling, cockeyed crux, not figuring it and falling, lowering to the ground, pooped and starting over for the third time? Why was the sun going already? Was this another of Barry’s specials, like Mechanic's Delight, his 5.10 overhanging 5.11? Last try I got it, finally figuring how to span hamstrings just so and use that handhold, not that one, and don’t jerk, just creep and ... It’s a fine mental machination crux worth fiddling - 5.12 in my book. We added an evening descent without flashlight (again), rappelling, sliding in some gully and drinking dinner in the old Porsche, snarfing the curvy road, windows down and screaming out some song.

Lava Falls and Shake and Bake:

Sometimes you don’t want to go up a wall, yet you do. Both these routes follow black gullies on a high, near vertical wall. Outside the gullies, the rock is suspect, so why not the gullies too? We presumed the worst when venturing up the first of the gullies to go, Shake and Bake, finding the darker the rock the better. The staining seep of water in the gullies hardens the rock with minerals making climbing scary but feasible (5.9). With Chris Vandiver in 1976, up and up we went, barely able to drill without tipping off, but having to go on because there was a pretty good size knob right up there, and another, and another, like a siren beckoning us toward one of those clipping, bruising tumblers only the rubble of Pinnacles can provide. Of bolt placements, Chris said I would climb into a desperate situation far enough out to need protection, force myself to stop only because going any further was really dangerous, and frantically start drilling, clearly more to get it done than any pleasure of the moment. He was exactly right; yet, at the belays, I would look out utterly washed with pleasure as the falcons roared, pines swayed, the last pitch done after all, meaning the next just might, might go. Then, I’d turn my head up to scope the black squiggle above winding out so sweetly like a road at night. “Up rope, Higgins!” he’d yell, breaking my reverie. But besides, it was getting late. We had to get this thing. And so, we’d start the next pitch, fearful, hopeful, rushed, mashed.

I can’t speak for the creators of the other multi-star route up another witchy, dark gully, Lava Falls where Holmgren, Matthews and Vandevere (not Vandiver) also placed all their bolts from stances, getting sucked in like us, I’d guess. I started Lava (one bolt) but left the route alone too long and they, rightly, grabbed it. My guess is they too got the twisted pleasure of stemming up a wide open Balcony’s dent, legs splayed, hot and sweaty in the morning, cool as the sun goes off, emotions whipsawed, feeling like approaching a harlot, lust and angst drawing you along, or maybe like getting a sharp whipping, the sting just enough to keep you tense, pumped, on, but not so much to push you down into a weeping lump you know very well this wall could bring. S&M? I don’t know, even now, 30 years smarter.

Resurrection Wall, Regular Route:

This one reminds me a little of the north face of Sentinel in Yosemite, not because of any resemblance in rock type of course, but because like many north walls, it broods darkly in the right light, with a sickly yellow cast here and there which one learns is trouble, akin to English cliffs I remember that sink you before you even can start. Hiking toward it, saying Juniper Canyon over and over because the mantra helps somehow, I still wind up on the first pitch asking, ‘why again?’ First climbed with aid by Kammerlander (same partner as with Fresno Dome first ascents), a sparkling eyed, energized, laughing man who loved climbing in soft hushpuppy street loafers, but whose love of recklessly riding a motorcycle killed him.

Frank Sarnquist and I approached the wall in 1978 for our free attempt. Immediately we knew we were in a Pinnacles shoot out. Munge on the first pitch was so thick each step brought a little compression as the brain started its fevered calculus to distribute weight no not there, but there, no here, no there. Fortunately, the growth was dry and strangely beautiful, like corral (if wet, stay away), actually almost fun to go over, but Christ where is that protection (no question, R)? Then we hit the bolt ladder, a series of maybe thirteen or so starting with a little light 5.10 or 11, you judge, then going to 9, then pacing up to 10 or 11 again just when you think it’s done. Unlike Machete with the warm wide ground awaiting your retry, here a fall means (if you torture yourself the old way) lowering a long way to an unfriendly stance, getting off tension, barely able to shake out, then going again up 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 back to the last 10 or 11. “Got it, Frank!” I call in squeaky, dry voice as I haul onto a fat knob.

But the full adventure was yet to come. A meandering pitch up one or another way (7 or 10 or something) brings one to a dome summit where, if you have our luck, a fox meets you and stares you in the eye: “No, this is my place, not yours.” “OK, we’ll go over here, then.” “No, that’s mine too,” and she moves over there also, completely ignorant to our superior firepower (rocks would it come to?). “OK, we’ll head this way.” And on goes our little dance until we slink away off a far edge wondering what den she was protecting, what gorgeous cubs perhaps, as golden late light floods the summit and surprise, fatigue, quandary, love, wonder and kicked up dust swirl around us.

Power Tools and Power Corrupts:

Created by rappel bolting and hooks in the late 80’s, early 90’s, these two star routes ascend a majestic, 400 foot formation called the Citadel. Tools is light 11; Corrupts is the direct start to Tools (if I remember right) and is light 12. My mind roamed toward sour on the approach, noting the scrubbed Citadel Boulder, carved trail and sawed limbs (still visible?) making a climber’s path, helping to ignite ranger rage. As Dave Rubine’s complete and instructive guidebook history tells (Climber’s Guide, Chockstone Press, 1991), “Because of these actions, the Park Service considered closing the monument to climbing altogether.” Power Corrupts indeed.

Then to the climbs. The direct seemed not so much calculus as hard grip, then excellent, clean 10 and 11, but somehow the initial holds didn’t look right. Chipped? Higher, the brain goes off: let’s see, I think I could have got this bolt in no aid, well maybe not that one, but maybe a run to this area ... hard to say. Quandary clouds rise, a little sadness. Why not leave a big beauty like this for a younger, bolder powerhouse who wouldn’t need as many bolts and could place them where us yesteryears couldn’t? Neurons hum. The beauty of the wall and place soothes. Still, skating down, next time I want back to a Bates route where the historical choreography is ever more fulfilling.

Pinnacles: when you long for the strange and the wonder of all the when and how.

Tom Higgins