It seems the theme of May was revisiting failed attempts and finishing routes.
After the ambitious but ill-timed outing to climb some rock back in March it was time to head back to Kid Goat wall and climb a multi-pitch route to really get this season going. I headed out with Jordan after a rough night of very little sleep and it looked like I was going to have to cancel but in the end I troopered on and in 45 minutes we went from rush hour in the city to trailhead in true Calgary fashion.
With the recent snow over the weekend we were worried that the routes would be wet but they looked in fine condition from the trailhead so we went for it. If you’re familiar with this crag you know that the first 15 minutes or so of the trailhead involves walking past a garbage dump. Not the most aesthetic approach but it’s over quickly. From there the trail is obvious and in about 30 minutes we were at the base of the routes. It was quite busy on this morning but we were game to climb any of the four routes so we just picked the one that had the group furthest up. We started out on Grey Waves (5.8) and because the party ahead was on this route we planned to finish on Keelhaul Wall (5.6) which intersects Grey Waves at the second belay.
We debated taking packs or not, we also debating rapping the route or walking off. We had a single rope but we didn’t want to carry packs and shoes so we decided to rap and if anyone started behind us we always had the option for an uncomfortable walk off in rock shoes.
Jordan set off and linked the first to pitches which included the crux. He did a great job of route finding and in no time had me on second and I was climbing up. I was moving confidentially but probably a little too fast. Around 10m up my feet gave out and I fell onto the top rope before I knew what had happened. It wasn’t even a hard section but like I said I was trying to move too fast. This is a bad habit I developed ice climbing this past winter. I spent so much time following routes that I stopped paying attention to technique and treated every pitch like a race to the belay. Obviously things got better once I started to lead on ice and I started to pay attention again on second. I need to do the same on rock. I also need to lead on rock soon.
I got to the crux and it took me a few minutes of trying different holds and feet placements before it went for me but it went without hang dogging so I was pleased.
The rest of the climb was a lot of fun and unremarkable. Jordan really did a fine job leading every pitch and soon we had topped out. TO save some time we decided to tandem rappel. It was something new for me but Jordan guided me through the setup and soon we were rappelling side by side. We decided to rappel past the first set of bolts from the top and try to reach the second bolts from the top. Bad idea. We were 2m short with a 60m single rope. We stretched and cajoled until we could clip into the anchors from above then one of us got good footing and unweighted the rope by climbing up a bit to allow the other person to down climb the last metre. We decided not to skip anymore rap stations.
All told we were just around five hours from car to car and I’m guessing just less than four hours on the route. Pretty leisurely but it was a great day out in perfect weather and company.
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