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Gary Olsen posted this in the Wasatch History thread: (Gary, I know the night shift sucks, but I was hoping you might continue with the shift so we could get more great stories......)



Boissal, tell us a missing link story........

yes do tell.

I was there...

On belay I could actually hear some of the holds pop and rattle down the slab as they kept breaking off... then there was a blood curdling scream...

Well, if you read that post replacing Vuarnet with headlamp and sketchy pro with bolt, then you got a pretty good idea of what happened to me last week...

I was pretty rattled when I got to the slab section since the route is very heads up and R at first. I thought things would improve but it was without counting on the fact that the next bolt is about 20' up and the route exfoliates as much as the upper pitches in Bells Canyon.
I poked around a bit with my nut tool trying to find spots that sounded solid, then proceeded to pull every other hold off. Things started to look pretty grim so I went for it before the rest of the holds fell off on their own.
I got myself to the sloper that Gary mentions (not bad actually), spent a while skating on the face breaking more choss, got pumped, threw a heel on the sloper to mantle, and as I finally thought I was home broke the hold my other foot was on. My heel stayed on the sloper just long enough to turn me around so instead of falling feet first I went for a gracious dive.
Some say I screamed and since the reports came from as far as Lizard Head wall I will have to believe them
I head butted the wall when the rope caught and my headlamp took the beating. I ended up a bit below the piton (about 30' lower) with a good view of Sam who looked as shaken as I was.

I imagine Ellison fell on the piton, which is maybe 12' below the bolt. That's a loooooooooooooooong ways to go no matter what catches you. The worst part is that he probably shook it off and went back for it, whereas I shook it off, went back for it, broke another hold, and promptly decided that it was too hot to be on a slab anyway and bailed.

Lessons learned:
1. Les Ellison's routes are all hard, heady, and sandbagged. No exceptions. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after Arm and Hammer, but not any more.
2. When grk tells you a route is terrifying, it is probably deserved.
3. The gear list for Missing Link should be expanded to include wire brushes and your choice of steel balls or diapers.


As a side note, we tried to finish on Lazarus but hadn't looked at the topo. I got on the 5.10 variation and thought is was freakin' hard and scary for 5.8, especially around the detached granite "handle". At this point I was so psyched out that I traversed left, over the chosstone route, and probably pioneered a new way up the buttress by finishing on a 60' runout slab (Sam loved it). Belay at a dead tree that threatens to pull if you tug on it, then scramble up the loose and wandering 4th class gully to the anchor of the Final Link.
1.5 pitches, 200', 5.4+ X. FA Boissal & Samg, 09/2008. Will be posted on mp.com soon.
And don't try to claim that some old timer did it back in the day. I guarantee you have to be really desperate to get on it!

I knew something was up after Boissal casually ran out the groove section up to the first bolt (yikes!) when his attitude changed once he got to the arete. Holds were popping off left and right and you could hear the desperation in his voice- "It's like 20 feet to the next bolt!" Pop pop pop. And he almost made it too...

BTW, to get to that easy slab, the second has to do the stepover move of doom to get onto it, pitch and you'd take a really nasty tumble down onto sharp rocks in the gully below. Good thing I didn't know what he was belaying off of either.

Tons of fun!

Just glad I took the hated chimney pitch instead of the crux lead is all.

I thought you fellas would have learned from my experience: do NOT try to onsite runnout hard slabs in the dark. Its a very bad idea.

remember when I said dark of the moon was the best protected .10 slab in lcc and you guys up and did it in the dark? Missing Link is soooo different. Not saying it can't be done but I am saying you could take a really long, nasty digger in the process. As grainy as the rock is over there it really pulls the flesh off of you

Is that where you took your mean fall?
My plan was not to do it in the dark. It never is... But then you leave work late, can't find your randomly scattered stuff at home, hike slowly, take forever to rack up, climb like a slug, and before you know it it's getting dark. I had plenty of daylight left when I took the digger but was getting concerned about the upper section. Who knows, I might have taken a bigger fall higher up, or I might have sent fine...

This is how I got on most of the hard slabs I did this year. Unprepared, late start, borderline too hot. So far I had managed to pull all of them without a fall. Now I know what I'm facing, and I'm happy the price was only a bruised heel/sprained ankle. Lesson learned.

But, I'll probably end up running more of these slabs in poor conditions. I've never been accused of being very smart...

tis prime sending temps in the shade in LCC right now. Shoes will stick to anything!

Thanks for the story Bossial, Lizard Head heard ya huh? Musta saw Jeebus....hahaha

Yeah dammit, and I have to work almost every evening this week! Guess I'll have to try and get out mornings.

Tenesmus, didn't know the details about your experience, but since this is a story thread, let's hear it! Let's face it, everyone loves scary climbing stories.

Yes and from now on there will definitely be an effort to keep the runout slab experience in the dark to a minimum! Probably a bit my fault too, usually I climb fairly quickly but not when I get sucked into squeeze chimneys.

I wanted to do the Pearly Gates before work. Its not like its killer hard or anything like that. The fall is perfectly clean, the slab pure friction the night pitch black. That was probably the issue more than anything. You can't really see features on featureless rock with the dull light of even a really good headlamp. Overhanging jug hauls... not a problem. Bouldering... not a big deal either.

no warmup but its not like you really need to get a ton of juice flowing for slabs anyway. There is a piton, then a bolt then a bit of space to a bolt by a blob where I thought would be an edge or chickenhead or something. It was obviously drilled on lead in fantastic style. Looking at it from below, getting psyched to do the moves and pad my way up, I was sure the shadows indicated a great stance.

But when I got there... nothing. Classic empty plate chickenhead. I lost my cool, blew it and took the 30 footer. Somehow I rolled to my right side and slid into second base. Thank goodness I'd put my hat in my pocket or it would have ground my hip bone to pieces. My elbow got a good scratching up but I didn't think anything of it. We waited half an hour for the light to come and I hiked it. But you really need to know the crux of that route is the crack pitch up high. Only met one guy who knew a guy who's done it and they said it was hard .11 and not .11a. damned hong.

The realy injury came a week to the day later when I thought I was warming up on a 5.8 slab that was really that unnamed .11 on the waterfront. Again, don't do slabs in the dark unless you really know them well. landed on my elbow again and the trauma weakened my immune system locally and a couple of days later I was in the ER.

Great stories!

In the 80's Missing Link became notorious because of the sloping mantle and sparse protection. Les sprayed heavily about it..."it's the ultimate...I was in total delirium...you gotta do it! " etc...daring us to try, and attempting to scare us with talk of whippers. It became a rite of passage for all aspiring hardmen. Others had also fallen from the mantle. Tales of the big plunge were not easily forgotten. The runnout off of the Great Chockstone, also had a reputation. It was the quintessential Ellison route!

Sounds like I failed the hardman test then... Oh well, I'll be at the gym stick clipping bolts if anyone is looking for me.
Brian do you know what the original hardware was on missing link? Were some of the bolts added after the FA?

How about doing weird dirty cracks in the dark Just another fun night last night in LCC huh shaft
Hey the moons getting back out again..!

Good stories to tell the grand kids fellas! Hope I never have one to tell... Course I could always tell the story of the dreaded Finkle drop , but I won't go there...

LOL...I like the stick clip idea. You didn't fail the test, especially with all of the wild climbs your leading. Lots of climbers have done what you did, except it wasn't in the dark.

Since I don't know the current status of the climb, I don't know if the original hardware is the same. Don't think any bolts have been added. This route rarely gets done.

classic.


is this where i get to say...