We arrived in the early afternoon and headed over to the First Pull-out. Our destination was in the Oasis area. We climbed the route "Approaching the Oasis" (5.3).
The beginning of which, was an easy chimney that we all just free soloed up with our packs. For some reason, Emily had a bit of trouble with it and Christian had to go down a bit to help her. She hates to climb with her pack on so that might be part of it. We roped up for the next part. While we worked on getting all our gear on, Emily went back to work the chimney several times. She was fine after that and was able to lead the rest of the route up.
At the top of this route was our next climb. It is called Diamond Dance (5.7). It is supposed to be a short (25') finger crack and then, it traverses up and over to the right to the anchor. The climb was not too bad, but the crack was not very useable being too small, flaring and shallow. Caitlyn opted to not climb this route. When I was lowering off of the route, there was a small white tricam, placed as a directional, that got pulled. Apparently, the rock broke and I dropped over a little. Luckily, there was one other directional piece put in, so I did not swing out too far but it was a bit startling.
We cleaned up to head out to find our camping spot after that. Luckily, our usual camping spot was available so Christian set up our tents while I heat up our dinner for the evening. We never spend too much time or energy on our food. It is usually just something that we heat up like soup or other MRE type foods that we just need to warm and eat. Almost no dishes to even clean up after.
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We woke up early for day 2 of climbing. We planned to get up a 5 pitch route (540') up the Solar Slab Gully (5.3). We got up pretty early, but then we went to the visitor center to sort our gear, use the facilities and have breakfast, so that took a while. From the parking lot of our climb, it took us over an hour to hike to the base of our climb so it was well after 9:am by the time we actually got our gear on and started climbing.
We ran into some difficulty at the very start. The rock is unlike anything we have climbed so far and Christian found that it was really difficult to protect.
In addition, we found that the first pitch was significantly harder than the claimed 5.3. There were overhanging bulges that we had to muscle over. Christian lead as usual. Emily went next, sport leading on a second rope while Caitlyn belayed her. We ended up making an anchor only part way up the pitch to reduce rope drag. After belaying Christian, I cleaned the gear as I moved up. My gear kept getting caught on the rocks. I was not having a very good time of it to say the least. At the bulge, a cam that was hanging off my harness got caught on the lip of the bulge below just as I was trying to hang on for dear life while pulling myself up over the hump. I tried to free myself to continue up but it was very difficult. By the time I got the gear loose, I could not hang on anymore and slipped and scrapped up my arm somewhat. As I proceeded up, more gear kept getting caught and I got a bit bruised up along the way. I barely remember the rest as I was so frustrated and exhausted. It took us two hours in the end for all of us to make it up one and a half pitches.
Christian decided that we had better just stop for a breather and have some lunch in the shade and see how we felt after that. We did feel much better after our break but it didn't look too good for us as we were not even up to the top of the second pitch.
Luckily, the climbing got much easier after that and we did not have any more trouble.
We were moving much faster but it was still taking us quite a while to manage both ropes for the four of us.
Since we had fairly large ledges at our belay anchors, we should probably have just dumped the rope down instead of trying to coil them up nicely. Emily and Caitlyn needed to get ready to move once Christian was on his way so that Emily was only a little behind her dad. As it was, we would wait for him to get some distance, then Emily would get ready but Caitlyn and Emily would have some trouble untangling themselves from each other and the rope and by the time Emily would actually start, Christian was already up and making the anchor.
They got the hang of it much better near the end and Caitlyn even took a turn sport leading up on dad's pieces while Emily belayed from below. We ended up breaking the 5 pitch route into 6 pitches to cut down on rope drag. That added some time to our climb as well and by the time we got up to the top of our 5th pitch, we were running out of time. We had a long way to get back down and a long hike back out to the car. The park closes at 8:pm and the tickets are expensive if you don't follow the rules.
We had a small snack to decide what we were going to do. In the end, only Christian went up the last pitch to check it out as we planned to come back to complete it. At the top of this route is the beginning of the next climb that we eventually want to do. It is another 5 pitch route (somewhat harder) for a total of 10 pitches in all that we would want to complete.
Once Christian got up and made it back down to us, we had to hurry up and start the long process of rappelling back down all those pitches! The first rappel was a bit scary but the rest were easier and we got into a rhythm and all made it back down. Then we threw our gear in our bags and hustled back down the trail to our car. The sun had already set but twilight and then the moon provided enough light for us to mostly make it back to our car. The girls had to use the facilities and then we made it out of the park with only 1 minute to spare!
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