So I met up with Ray the Butcher at 730am in the Chief parking lot, Ray is a fellow aspiring big wall aid climber, and we set out to push for a new high point on Cannabis Wall, a wall we had both had our own separate attempts on. On my previous attempt I went solo and made it a bit past the the 3rd belay(Baby blue tack). On Rays previous attempt they made it to the second belay.


Armed with a triple rack of cams , a haul bag full of snacks, water, layers and a hammer N' heads incase any of the fixed gear had blown out. Our goal; 5 pitches to Cannabis ledge according to the Maddaloni guide book, its a 2 day mission for most beginners.


Ray swung the first lead up the bolt and rivet ladder thats accessed by a bat hook to a grappling hook and then a few cams In this expanding flake!!



The first time I came to try the route I had no idea about the C2 hook moves to get to the flake to get to the bolt ladder, all it says in the 200l Mclane Guide book is 'A bolt ladder marks the start of the route' As you can see in the photo of ray its quite a way up where the bolt ladder starts.

After Ray Reached the anchors he fixed the lead line for me and set up for his first haul, I jugged up the rope using my gibbs ascender and my petzel shunt, having finally found my rhythm I managed to race the haul bag up to the belay and started racking for pitch2.

Slowly but surely I led pitch2 for the second time, this time with triple pecker heads for the technical crux,(I have no idea how I made it through this part with only one pecker last time) once through the crux I bypassed the hanging belay and proceeded to a set of chains on a ledge in the middle of pitch 3, fixed the lead line and set up the haul system for a body haul. As Ray jugged and cleaned the gear I set up my belay seat and flaked the haul line.


The last few moves to this belay on lead involved a cam hook above that nut, to a grappling hook, then a free climbing mantle off of the grappling hook onto the soaking wet ledge. Cleaning the last piece proved tricky for Ray as it was about 8 feet left of the belay, I'm not even sure how he got it out...

Back to Ray for leading duty and he got right amongst it in the shallow corner of pitch 3 and got down to business hooking.


Was I ever stoked on having my fancy new belay seat as it took Ray 3 hours to link the 3rd and 4th pitchs together, while I hung out belaying, and eatting sangys, and smoking doobies!


By the time Ray reached the top of P4 it was nearly 5 o'clock, he fixed the lead line for me to jug up and haul up the 'pig', mainly for hauling practise also to get our lunch and doobies up.



From here we did 3 2rope rappels out I tried out a new rappel method using my metolius personal anchor with the shunt on the end loop and then 2 loops closer my ATC and the haul bag hanging from the same loop on a shoulder length sling, It worked awesome!

Hope ya'll enjoyed, smoke em' if ya got em'