Yosemite - Book of Job 6/16/02  with Joel

On Saturday, we took a go at our hand traverse project,
after warming up on the corner.  Joel gave it 2 good efforts,
and then realized he was not going to recover enough to have
a good chance of success on further tries.  That's a difficulty
with extreme endurance routes - you may only have the strength
for one good try per day.  I also looked closely at the overhanging
thin crack, but after careful inspection decided it is way too
hard for me to even toprope.  It is just too smooth to get any
action with the feet, so it is a pure power sequence; out of
my range.  It was warm, so we drove up to Tuolumne and ran
up the Regular Route on Fairview.  Joel hadn't repeated it in
16 years, and enjoyed it.  I was feeling a bit tired; perhaps
due to the altitude or some lack of sleep.  But I've been a lot
more tired on it at other times.

Sunday.  We planned to do Book of Job (right of Braille Book
and Perfect Vision).  We had been curious about the route and
at this point, the idea of climbing all the routes on the Braille
Book buttress seemed like it could be done readily.  We knew
that Steve Annecone had done it when mistaking it for the Braille
Book, and had described doing a lot of fully split stems.
Plus there was a posted trip report of doing the first 1-2
pitches by Inez Drixelius which I found with Google.  So we
had a little beta to work with.

We had slept in leisurely and started up the route at around noon,
after doing the approach up the Spires Gully and taping our
hands.  A red helicopter came by and hovered at a couple of spots,
no doubt investigating the accident there during the Braille Book
rescue attempt a few days earlier.  It did not seem windy,
and the helicopter seemed to be able to hover smoothly.

p1 5.9, Clint led.  Easy 5.6 face past an old fixed Tech Friend
(all trigger wires broken), to a short 5.9 hands section at
a block.  It introduced us to the standard technique of the
route:  get a high handjam, get your feet high, then reach as
far as possible past the 4" section to where the crack is narrow
enough to hand jam again.  I stopped at a small stance with a
slung fixed pin driven between 2 flakes.  I backed it up with
2 wires and a small Camalot.  I could see booty fixed gear ahead
on the next pitch.

p2 5.10b, Joel led.  This started with an overhanging flaring
section with a 3-4" crack.  Joel reached up to place a #4 Friend
as high as possible, then tried stemming out to the holds.
This was one of the other standard techniques on this route.
After a couple of tries, Joel grabbed the Friend to get past
this section.  I was able to free it on toprope by having my
body further out, but such are the luxuries of toproping.
Right after this section, Joel reached 2 fixed wired nuts;
a sling with 2 rap rings was on one, and the other (wired #7 hex)
had a bail biner.  From here it is a long section of overhanging
hand and fist (when the crack is not 4").  The dihedral angle is
perhaps 70 degrees, so stemming is effective at times.  The
left wall has featured black undulations, while the right wall
is fairly smooth with gold polish.  So the favorable position
was to use feet on the left wall and butt on the right wall.
Joel cranked upwards with hand jamming past gaps and stemming,
making use of the double Friends #2.5-4 and one #4.5 Camalot for
the 4" bits.  Above a fixed Tricam with bail biner, he eventually
ran out of gear and lowered to back clean enough to finish the pitch.
The crux was a rare fist jam to reach an incut "ledge" (12" wide
jug with 2 good parts) on the left wall.  The crack above the
"ledge" was 4", but Joel employed an interesting mantle technique
to get his knees (and then feet) onto it.  When I was following
here, I dynoed to the "ledge", then inserted my right leg deep
horizontally into the crack above me.  I then twisted my leg
to lean back from it and started the mantle with my left hand.
I chicken-winged a bit with my right arm.  Quite a wild section.
The belay was at a couple more big fixed wires and a bail biner.

p3 5.7, Clint led.  This was a tight chimney (back to knees,
nearly a squeeze).  After perhaps 20' of this, there was a crack
on the left wall which took a good wired stopper for pro.
I then traversed horizontally to the outside of the chimney
where the width was friendly (back to feet).  Eventually I reached
a big overhang and the highest fixed sling on the route (draped
over a 3" thick flake with lots of bird poop).  The overhang
was supposedly a 5.10a move, but the main crack was 4-6" (ow)
above it, and the right crack was overhanging thin and I
didn't think that could be 5.10a either.  I placed the #4.5
Camalot and #4 Friend, but knew I couldn't lead the ow.
So I made a belay at a stance deep under the overhang and
brought up Joel for a look.  Joel followed easily, and
managed to avoid the narrowest part by going quickly
to the outside.  He then cleaned my wired stopper by
getting above it and flicking it out with the byte of rope.

p4 5.10c, Joel led.  Joel did a very wide stem and reached
higher in the right hand thin crack, where he found it would accept
fingers and gear.  He aided up it with a couple of pieces of
gear, and then switched back left to the main crack.
Here it was a squeeze and then back to knees chimney for a ways
above his last gear.  He uttered a few occasional moans of
desperation, and also the phrase "I am a Valley man."
[i.e. I have the experience to deal with this; I can get
it done somehow].  This phrase was also dusted off on a couple of
of other hard and improbable sections of the route.  He eventually
got a #2.5 in and moved it higher.  More chimneying followed
to below a chockstone.  Here the "long reaches between hand jams"
technique (5.10a) was used to gain the crow's nest on top of the stone.
He tried to grab a piece of old perlon here to help make the move,
but it was just sitting loose in a nest.  A mantle to the next nest
and he belayed there with 2 #3.5 Friends.  On toprope, I managed to free
the right thin crack at the start at 5.10c, after removing the
gear to enable hand and finger jams.  I had a very difficult time
in the squeeze and knees section.  Joel had been in the wider outside
section of the crack here, using his left foot on a few holds on the
left wall.  I tried this at first, but my left foot seemed too tenuous
on them.  So I tried to chimney it direct.  It was painful on my
knees and elbows.  Possibly part of the problem was the haul line
fully hanging free in space from my shoulder sling rack.  So I tied
it to my tie-in to partially unweight it at times (depending on how
hard Joel was pulling on the belay rope).  Another slight problem
may have been the metal buckle on the shoulder sling, which grated/caught
a bit as I tried to alternatively inch my shoulders up.  My knee
pads are also too crushed from years of use, and my knees were
feeling some pain from the rock.  I tried all kinds of techniques
to make progress, like chicken winging with my right arm and
regular palm pressing with my left arm, rotating my hips to rest,
bringing my thigh up horizontal, etc.  Eventually I got to where
I could heel-toe jam with both feet above the squeeze constriction.
But I still struggled in the knees to back section here.  After
a fair amount of cursing, I rose high enough to where I could
get a partial hand jam and started making progress at normal
speed again.  The section gaining the chockstone was friendly
on toprope, and I sat at the edge of the crow's nest with Joel.

p5 5.9, Joel led.  This was another steep chimney with jams,
to a belay at big flake/block with a 3' space behind it.
Joel actually climbed higher than this, but ran out of gear
on hard climbing, so he lowered to here and brought me up.

p6 5.10c, Joel led.  This starts with a 5.10a face right off
the flake, on the right wall.  Here there was a slight moment
of pain for me, as I got kicked in the mouth as Joel was
struggling to quickly get his left foot onto the wall.
Fortunately I didn't lose any teeth and it was not too bad.
I figured it was a small price to pay, relative to those
desperate leads.  The chimney had widened to two facing corners,
but the right corner was vegetated above the initial face,
so Joel traversed to the left corner and went up a
steep 5.10c thin crack section, using some aid.
Above this, the angle eased a bit, and he face climbed up
good edges on the middle wall (5.6 but R with no pro).
It steepened below the final headwall, where there was a sharp
white flake (bird poop).  Joel struggled to place a #4 Friend
here, while not pulling too hard on the white flake (as it
seemed fragile).  Here he was over at the right corner,
as the left corner had become a doubly overhanging seam.
The right corner was overgrown with vegetation, so he aided
up on Friends and cleaned it (15').  At the top of the
corner, he stood in slings on a #1 wired Rock in a small crack
on the right wall to reach a big bush.  After clearing some
holds on the arete and testing them, he was able to free climb
past the bush and up a few good, though questionably loose
holds to a belay ledge atop the difficulties.  I was
able to free the pitch on toprope, by virtue of the cleaned
holds and of course the security of the upper belay.
The final 15' overhanging corner was 5.10c, quite overhanging
at the first moves, but fortunately there were a few freshly
cleaned footholds on the right wall and arete to make it
doable for me on toprope.

At the belay, I recognized exactly where we were, and led
an easy 40' traverse left to reach the chain anchors above
Blinded by the Light (our route on the right wall of
Braille Book).  We made short work of the 4 rappels
back to the base.  Then hiked down the Spires Gully
in familiar darkness.  We joked about how the 5.10c
sections were misrated or completely unlisted on the
topo in the guidebook.  And we chuckled about how I had
originally been asking "what will we do in the afternoon,
after we've done the Book of Job?"!