Mystery on MysterZ

There I was inside this narrow crack 120 feet above the ground, and my chest was jammed between the two flakes of rocks and I was stuck.

It was the 1st of January, I was supposed to hike in early and meet up with Paolo and Jeremy at the foot of the climb before sunrise, and we were to do a multi-pitch.

In climbing, a pitch is a section of climbing covered just short of one 60 meter rope. A pitch starts at the base of the climb, or an anchor point, and ends at another anchor point above. A single-pitch climb are ususally 80 feet high or less to allow the climber to be lower back down to the ground, so the climb has to be less than half of the length of the 60M rope. In multi-pitch climbing, since the climbers are continuing the climb after getting to the anchor, the climb can run as long as the length of the rope.

By shining light from a low angle, fresh prints becomes visible for tracking. The harder and cleaner the edges, the fresher the print.

Any time someone I trust invites me on an adventure, I do the minimum amount of research, I try to come into the trip like a piece of canvas. Naturally, I asked for the coordinates of where they are camping and the gears I need to bring, but I have zero ideas on what route we will be climbing, what is the difficulty, how much climbing, and where it actually is.

That morning, I barely convinced myself out of the bed and I get there late and had to run through the desert. I got to the coordinates I last received, but they’re nowhere to be found. Red Rock has terrible cell signals, so I had to stop and flow the freshest footprints, hoping those are the right ones. Eventually, after playing Marco-Polo for a while we found each other at the base of the climb, and we finally set off.

At first, everything went off pretty smoothly, then, 120 feet up, I got stuck inside this crack, my chest was jammed between the two flakes of rock.
This was the very beginning of pitch-2, I knew heading into it will be difficult as I spend 10 minutes hearing the sound of Paolo struggling through it. The crack was less the one and a half feet wide, smooth front and back until to very nice 2-3 inch deep ledge a few feet up, where space opens up again.

It was my first day ever crack climbing, and I was not aware that I can get stuck inside one. That section of the crack was so narrow, my helmet was constantly bumping front and back. There was no slightest feature for my feet to stand on, and I was pushing against the wall desperately, inching my way up. I spend over 15 minutes at the tightest spot, trying to pull through, but I just cannot move any higher.

I made one last to pull myself over the small ledges inside the crack, but I just could not fit through, and I wedged my chest in the tightest section of it. I realized that if I don’t get yank myself out immediately, I won’t be able to soon. After some more exhausting pushes, I got my chest un-stuck, but I had nothing left and I got lower back to the anchor point.

Jeremy and I discussed how the camera bag and other packs I had on my waist probably prevented me from fitting through the smallest section, so he opted to hang his backpack 5 feet from his waist… …He clear the narrow crack section without much fighting.

So I am no longer trapped inside the crack, but I am still stuck underneath it. I am at the end of the rope, there was no easy turnaround at that point, I have to send it.
A huge problem for pitch-2 (and pitch-3) was the difficulty of communication between the leader (Paolo) and the belayer (me and Jeremy). The wall curves back in such a way that when Paolo is at the next anchor 150 ft above us, we can’t hear each other. The sound just bounces away from the wall, and either party is sheltered from the sound on the wall (we can hear climbers on the wall across just fine).

While barely able to make out single words, we communicated the idea that I was to jumar up the rope instead of actual climbing. I quickly set up my jumar system, so I can leave the crack and climb up the rope on the face of the wall.

Jumar, or a rope ascender, a device that can move easily up one direction (up) of the rope but not the other direction (down). It is use to climb up the rope without directly climbing on the face of the rock. The rope is loaded at all times and should be fixed at the anchor.

I realized that since my rope was still clipped to the pieces inside the crack, that will prevent me from making it far up the face, and I will have to be inside to crack to collect them on the way up (each cam is worth like $70).

Jeremy belaying Paolo on the 3rd pitch, you can’t see the belaying device, but it is there coverd by his right hand.

I tried to jumar up from within the crack…I cannot jumar within such a small space…I have to climb it. I lowered myself back to the start of pitch-2, and attached all my bags to my camera back, hung my camera bag 5 feet from my harness so it was out of the way. At this point, I thought I was off belay and the rope was fixed above me, and I was left with my own knowledge to get me out of this crack and back with the party at the next anchor. I thought to myself, “I am going to rope-solo this because I am not going to get stuck HERE, AND I AIN’T leaving my camera behind!”

Rope-solo, the climber climbs the rope and belay themselfs at the same time. Uncommon technquie with more risk involved.

Belay, the act of controlling the length of the rope through a belaying device, so if the climber falls, they don’t fall through the entire length of the rope and hit the ground. This is usually done by another climber with all attention.

I squeezed myself up the crack again, and to my surprise, I slip right through the narrowest portion like nothing…all the bags I had by my waist was the only reason why I couldn’t fit through in my first attempt! I quickly climb through to a secure spot, pull the slack out of my rope, and took a huge breath. “That was the hardest part?” I thought, regaining my momentum and confidence. I ended up rope-soloing the rest of the pitch until I was within talking distance of Paolo and Jeremy, where I took off the jumar and finished collecting the gears on-belay.

Me cleaning a tricam (red) with the nut-tool.

The rest of the climbing went smoothly…actually, except for that 10 feet of narrow crack, the rest 800 feet of the climbing was super fun!! At one point climbing alone the crack, I ran out of places to put my foot, and so it was the first time I used a foot-jam! I climbed with both my hands and my foot inside the crack, it felt super secure, I am never going to fall from that!

This was also the first time I was protected my trad gears and not bolts in the wall, so I learned to clean (retreat) the gears off from the crack and how to use a nut-tool! I always had an obsession with multi-pitch climbing and big-wall climbing, so I read a lot about the techniques (highly recommend “Big-Wall” by John Long) and it is really cool to actually put some of the knowledge to use.

Anchor above the pitch-5.

I also find it very fascinating that there are no bolts on this entire climb. I thought at least the anchors will be bolted, but no! Every single piece of protection we had were gears that we (Paolo) place along the wall, and we left nothing permanent on it when we left! I am fascinated by this “cleanest.”

Although, the lack of bolts at the anchors did throw me off my comfort zone a bit when I had to belay leaning off the wall with the anchor supporting my weight. The anchor was built with 3 pieces vertically along a crack, and I was leaning out from it because it was too slopped where I was standing on it. With the anchors holding 1/3 of my body weight, I kept looking down to the 550 feet of rocks. “Just don’t wiggle too much,” Jeremy said, he was afraid that I will wiggle the pieces out and fall, taking him down too (as he is also connected to the anchor). I can tell I was a little nervous subconsciously because my hands started sweating a little during the belay.

Summit picture, I was in orange on the left, Paolo in green in the midde, and Jeremy in blue on the right.

We topped out at around 3:30 pm, after spending 6 hours on the wall. With all the beautiful and fun climbing done, now we have to find our way to the back of the Jackrabbit buttress and down hike. This is where I took the defining shot of this adventure.

As we hiked towards the back of the mountain, away from the face, and deeper and deeper into the valley, I was truly amazed.

It was a scene I can only imagine from a fantasy world. We were surrounded by layers and layers of sheer rock walls, painted with stripes of red and yellow. I have been to Zion maybe 10 times now, but this hit me harder. The sense of trekking through the valley completely unmarked by civilization was truly immersive. There was no path for use, but cairns (little stacks of rocks) here and there to guide us through the rocky slopes. These cairns were left behind by the pioneers before us, I felt a sense of connection to these little stacks of rocks, as they were also a bit lost too but found the right path, and we were following their journey was well as creating ours.