I just went out and jumped on the streaked wall in Zion, while doing so I found quite a bit of trash and junked ropes discarded all over the place…
It kind of gave me the mental picture of 1950’s era big mountain expedition style climbing had been going on here, but fact is this stuff was not from the 50’s or even the late 90’s because I was up on this wall climbing in 2007 and it was a rather pristine picture of desert wilderness at that time.
I spent a day cleaning the place up and ferried a plumb full grade 6 pig of rubbish down to the base of the approach pitches.
My original plan was to hop onto one of the more serious nail-ups and camp on the wall for about eight days, but my water situation was not cooperating with that idea, so I scrapped the plan and ditched the entire wall camping kit on Rubicon ledge and went over to Tails of the Scorpion with a few liters of water and my rack n’ ropes.
I wall stalled till a bit after high noon when the sun fell behind the wall and gave me some shade. It was blast off time now! Immediately I found it to be super cruiser walling compared to my prior experience on the formation.
The smile on my face shifted early that night when I got into the chimney pitch and I found it to be the physical crux of the route, but like all things it soon ended and I was smiling and jamming up overhanging diagonal splitters.
At just about thirty hours after my departure from the deluxe Rubicon ledge system I was doing the final mantel over the summit lip of the wall, completely exhausted and at the point of hallucinations.
I made a primitive camp among the summit pines, washed my hands and passed out till 11AM the next morning.
I would like to call it a near perfect solo onsight push of the route, but fact is I climbed the last pitch some years ago while topping out on Latitudes, but other than that I was free of beta, took no falls and had no clusters during the climb.. its all went smooth and was easy sailing.
I pulled more trash off the top and down in town recruited my local friend Zach to help me get some of remaining junk off the top of the wall.
I used no other pitons on the route other than 15 #3 peckers and 5 #2 peckers. I would give it my Sandstone nail up rating of: No need for goggles.
-Zephyr