Sun Ribbon Arete

Temple Crag, SRA is the arete to the left of the pointy thing on the right.  Make sense?

   
          Well, once again the weather struck and instead of spending a continuous push in the Sierra's we got to do Sun Ribbon Arete and then had to walk out.  There was a 25% or more chance of showers, and after the epic day on SRA it just wasn't worth it.

I love approaching....

 So what made SRA epic....here it goes.  The route is an 18 pitch climb , mostly 4th and low 5th class, to include rappels and a tyrolean traverse.  There is one 10a pitch, but most of the route checks in at about 5.7 to 5.8ish.  The day started at 3am.  No I didn't stutter.  We had walked in the day before and camped, so we would be right by the lake.  Well, according to Supertopo you cross between 2nd and 3rd lake....not so much.  Kristina and I spent the next hour and 1/2 trying to figure out how to cross the lake.  After finally finding the crossing between 2nd and 1st lake, there was even a bridge!  We continued approaching and finally got to the base of the route at 730am.  We got started up the route.  There was a chance of rain that day but the sky was still looking inviting.  The first pitches up to the tyrol went fast. 

Things were still cool at this point. Looks a bit chossy? Wouldn't disagree, lots of block testing before standing/pulling on crap.

I stood there trying to lasso the boulder for about 20 mins.  FYI, this is how you construct your own personal tyrol (picture to follow).  Kristina got it after a few tries.  The skies began looking less inviting and time was not on our side.  We were way behind schedule at this point.  I knocked out the 10a pitch and linked the 5.6 pitch trying to move as fast as I could given the rock conditions.  I made a belay and about 5 mins later it began to rain and sleet.  This continued for the next maybe hour or so.  Instead of getting to simul-climb the easier parts, we had to rope up due to wet rock and pitch it out.  The weather finally subsided and it began to clear.  There was another front off in the distance, so we tried to keep moving, but it was hard to be fast being so off schedule and given the conditions.  After getting to the last bits of 4th class.  We unroped, and started up what had to be at least 500 feet of additional 4th class.  The topo did not indicate this.  We got up to the end of the ridge at about 7-730pm.     
     The summit would take another hour or so to get to.  Given the time, the descent, and the conditions we decided not to run over to the summit.  This was a super hard decision for me.  I kept trying to weigh the fact that I probably wouldn't be back here again and weather I could count the ascent without summiting.  I also was trying not to be neurotic and unsafe.  i decided with much pain that I had done the route but just not summitted.  We headed down and got back to camp well after dark.  I don't know what time it was.  I do know that I was so tired that I ate enough to fight off the hunger pains and then went to bed.  The next day was uneventful with good weather for the walk out.  We decided after driving back into town given the weather for the next few days, that wee would crag and head into Mammoth.  Then head back into the Sierras on Sunday.

End of route, long day.

This was an interesting learning experience for me.  It brought a lot of questions to my head as well.  What is finishing a route, how important is the summit, what is rational and irrational?  It's always easy when the conditions are straight forward, but once you have to start speculating then it becomes a bit less obvious.  It's always hard to figure out what the safe thing is to do.  When to stop and when to keep going. I always wonder if I'm not pushing hard enough or if I'm allowing my pride to dictate a decision.  Being in the mountains is a serious endeavor and I guess there are no real answers.  I wish there were sometimes, I wouldn't have to face my humanity then.  Examine why I am doing things and what the purpose of them was.  But then again, I guess that's why we do this stuff, to challenge ourselves personally, to grow, to learn, and to make decisions that keep us alive. 

Gotta love sunsets!