Lost Arrow Chimney 5.10

Lost Arrow Chimney Trip Report 9/19/09

This is a climb I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I went up to take a look at it in 2006.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=145597&tn=0
And I’ve collected beta over the years.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=372567&msg=372567#msg372567

I’ve had some injuries over the last few years but this year I’ve been climbing well and more or less healthy so I started aiming for a Lost Arrow Chimney attempt. Chad was looking for someone to go up with him so he could replace the rotten protection bolt at the crux. I told him I was game and the trip was on.
Here is a link to Chad's fine Trip Report of his first climb of this route.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=594613&tn=0

I cut the gear loops off one of my older harnesses to facilitate the expected thin chimneys. This worked out well. I also bought some climbing pants that had no belt loops in the back. We took a 9.6 60 meter rope and a 8.1 60 meter rope. We took a, for me, very small rack. One set of DMM peanuts, which I don’t think we used at all. On set of BD stoppers #4 to #13.We used these all the time. The big one was very useful. 0, 1 and 2 C3s. One each .4 to .75 C4s. Two each #1 and #2 C4s. This was my contribution- I said we should double up these two. We took a #6 C4 and a #4 Bigbro. We used the #6 a lot. We didn’t use the #4 bigbro. This rack was a little small. A #3 C4 would have been nice but not mandatory. Doubles of the other small cams would have been handy especially when building belays. We had twelve shoulder length slings.
We met at the entrance station on 120 at 4:30 am. We didn’t get racked at the base of the climb until about 8 am.
Here is a pic on the approach.
The route goes up the left side chimney of Lost Arrow Spire.

I took the first two pitches, when the rope came tight Chad simulclimbed about 70 feet. The 5.9 on P2 is very reasonable. I was totally out of gear and the anchor was one old button head and what looked like a rusty #5 Chouinard stopper. I got one other stopper in and just kind of braced myself on the ledge. When Chad came up we put in a good yellow C3 to augment the belay. This belay can go all gear when the bolt rots.
Here’s a pic looking down the first two pitches.

Chad was able to link P3 and P4.
Here’s a pic of P3
The 5.9 move around the roof turned out to be tricky for me.

Here’s a pic looking up P4.
The two lower chockstones turned out to be harder for me than the “safety valve”. The “safety valve” protects with the #6 so these bolts can rot in place too. The “safety valve” is more of a short OW than a squeeze. You can keep your head out of it. One of the hangers had no nut so Chad took it off. Here’s a pic of this relic.

I lead P5. First there is some cool stemming with good pro. Then you do the OW for a while and I made the mistake of leaving the #6 behind in that section. As I got higher I got some good pro and then started running it out again on 5.9 OW. Eventually I said the hell with this and climbed and lowered back down to get the #6. The other side of the chimney at that point may have been easier to climb but when I looked over there I could see no pro at all.

Heres’ a pic of P6.

You can see it starts with this 10a or so flake, very slippery, I almost whipped following, to the strange but not too hard climb out to the right. There seems to be two options at that point. Reid shows you go right for a while and climb back left 20 or 30 feet higher. some have had trouble with this in TRs so Chad went right back left into the chimney after maybe 10 feet or so. This is a hard strange move but I did it clean so it is probably no harder than 10a. This is a great pitch.

The next pitch is supposed to be one of the easier pitches and if continuous 120 foot 5.7/8 chimneys are your thing, it is. I enjoyed it and there was just enough pro. Here’s a pic.

Here’s a pic looking out at absolutely dry Yosemite Falls.

P8 is the technical crux pitch. It’s a pretty cool pitch actually. Chad pulled and patched the two manky bolts and put in one new 3/8” so the crux moves have bomber pro now. Here is a pic of Chad drilling.

And if you are getting tired by now I found the bolt makes a convienient foothold at the crux.

Here is a pic of the bullet pack being hauled. It is free hanging, which gives an idea of the steepness here.

Chad fired off the real crux squeeze in good style. By now I was beat. I managed to worm my way up the first 10a flare section before completely running out of gas. Fortunately I had a couple of Tiblocs and ascended to the belay.

Here’s a pic of Chad on the last pitch in the fading light.

We managed to get two out of the eight rappels done before the light went out. With Clint and MAD BOLTER's rappel chart we easily found the rest of the raps by headlamp. By the time we got back to the car it was around 10:30. Another good day in the valley on a classic route was done. Chad, thanks for going up there with me!
Climb on!
Zander

(Edit- Chad added his TR of our climb on post 53.)
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=965110&tn=53