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Laura was having a blast with her new Pippi Longstockings socks and pigtails :D
Sunday morning we decided to head to Manure Pile Buttress as a party of three. A guided party was on After Six, and a group was milling about the base of After Seven and of course there were already parties on Nutcracker. But I was interested in CS Concerto.
It was still chilly in the shade of the trees, and I headed up the first 5.6 pitch, which had a bit of an awkward move, but easy above that.
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 Me leading the first 5.6 pitch of CS Concerto Credit: Laura Molnar |
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Soon I was clipping the piton and moved out onto the face, to the right, then the left. In the sun it warmed up quite a bit. I got to the tree and brought Laura up, then Sean.
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What a nice little pitch ! IMO Much easier than the first pitch of After Six. We were treated to a view of the moon over El Cap.
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From there I traversed a bit past the tree and headed up the second pitch of After Seven, to the base of the wide crack where it joins up with After Six.
The guided group was going up this thing, so here I thought to do the third pitch of CS Concerto, supposedly 5.7 / 5.6 R -
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 Third pitch of CS Concerto - a bit too runout for me Credit: Laura Molnar |
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I was a bit unnerved. Later when I got home I looked at the Reid guide -- it said there is a 5.9 move at the start with a 5.8 step in the middle somewhere .. glad I backed off =:-O
We waited for the party ahead to finish with the wide crack, and then I headed up. Instead of stopping at the first alcove like I'd done before, I clipped the stuck cams there and kept going up to the optional belay, which is more comfortable for a group of three and has a nice horn for slinging. Sean and Laura followed expeditiously -
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The next pitch was quite easy and I made it up above another short wide crack with some 5.6 liebacking, but below the usual tree. With 60m ropes we'd managed four pitches. I'd done the final pitch the same way the last three times I'd done this, so I opted for the 5.6 face this time. Laura and Sean seemed to enjoy it -
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At the top the wind was howling as usual. We packed up our stuff and headed down.
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