Mescalito A3 5.8

Currently 5.0/5

El Capitan

Yosemite Valley, California USA

Trip Report

Mescalito Gumbies

Wednesday June 29, 2011 1:06pm

http://germanguitars.com/trips/mescalito/
Over-documented, and probably a little long-winded. 147 photos: lots of butt shots along with excellent Tom Evans photos. 8 videos.
Enjoy.
-gg

Trip Report Views: 4,845

Greggonator

About the Author
Greggonator is a trad climber from Broomfield, CO.

Comments

BASE104

Social climber

An Oil Field

Jun 29, 2011 - 03:22pm PT

Great job! Man, somebody needs to take a punch and some other stuff up there to knock that mank out.

There is a lot more damage than I thought. You should have seen it when it was cherry!

Mark Hudon

Trad climber

On the road.

Jun 29, 2011 - 04:11pm PT

A great TR and awesome photos! I loved the photos of Gumby flying around!

JEleazarian

Trad climber

Fresno CA

Jun 29, 2011 - 04:12pm PT

Wow! Wall Gumbies and Mescalito in the same sentence would normally have a "not" somewhere in there. You've certainly exceeded Tom Patey's definition of a beginner: "someone, often dead, who should be kept from the mountains at all cost."

Well done, both in climbing and in reporting.

Thanks.

John

Captain...or Skully

climber

Boise, ID

Jun 29, 2011 - 06:39pm PT

Good stuff, man. I can dig it.
Check out Gumby!

johntp

Trad climber

Punter, Little Rock

Jun 29, 2011 - 09:42pm PT

Thanks for sharing the fun. Back to the front page.

Mark Hudon

Trad climber

On the road.

Jun 30, 2011 - 12:47pm PT

Greg,
Did you do the route all clean (clean using fixed gear)? I didn't notice if you mentioned you did or not.

wbw

Trad climber

'cross the great divide

Jun 30, 2011 - 01:16pm PT

Right on Wally and Greg. I´ve been wondering about you guys. Way to send!

Brad
a.k.a. Team Gumby - Cordillera Blanca

Sonic

Trad climber

Golden, Co

Jun 30, 2011 - 04:03pm PT

I did he exact same thing on my knee back in November! Haven't done a drop knee since. Hope your partner is alright!!

nutjob

Sport climber

Almost to Hollywood, Baby!

Jun 30, 2011 - 04:38pm PT

Great report! And I like the web layout with contiguous text, pics on one side, vids on the other. What web framework do you use for the pics?

Auto-X Fil

Mountain climber

Jun 30, 2011 - 05:28pm PT

Greg,
Did you do the route all clean (clean using fixed gear)? I didn't notice if you mentioned you did or not.

Looks like they did:

We hoped to keep this a ‘hammerless’ ascent. We had pitons and copperheads in the haulbag, but we didn’t want to use them. (Clean aid doesn’t damage the rock, while whanging in pins certainly does.) At 5:30am on Tuesday, the hammer came out. We used it to crush a stubborn protein drink bottle. We put it back in the bag for the remainder of the trip. [I guess a true ‘hammerless’ ascent would avoid using existing pitons and copperheads in addition to not adding more. We did our best.]

Major bump for the clean, the gumby, and the send!

Ezra Ellis

Trad climber

North wet, and Da souf

Jun 30, 2011 - 09:52pm PT

Nice job gumbies!

Greggonator

Trad climber

Broomfield, CO

Author's Reply

Jun 30, 2011 - 10:21pm PT

On the expando pitch I tapped a #3 BD stopper with my nut tool a few times to make sure it set. Wally still got that nut out with a jerk. That was the only hammering we did. (I wanted to tap that Tomahawk in, but held my breath as I stepped up instead.)

Photos - Thanks for the layout compliment. In another life I did web design and animation. Dreamweaver for the layout and a pretty common Javascript plugin/script called Lightbox for the photo slideshow.