Pinnacles - Machete Ridge new route (second day) - 12/14/2005  Bruce

Bruce led p1 of the West Face, as before, although we used the new
belay anchor this time.

I aided up to the high point, donned swim goggles, and wirebrushed
the moss/lichen from the nearby holds.  I tried free climbing out of my
aiders.  There were some big knobs, but they were rather sloping, so
I didn't find anything to hang from for drilling the next bolt.  So I
announced that I'd have to take a fall.  Bruce took up the slack as
I tried to downclimb as close as possible to the last bolt/aiders.
While trying to reverse the initial move (a sidecling on one of the
few positive holds), the hold blew off suddenly and I took a nice
soft fall into space.  I pulleyed back up the rope and proceeded to
drill the 5th aid bolt off the high point.

It was not so hard to free climb off this bolt, so I went up and
right past the big "basketball" knob and investigated some loose-appearing
knobs on the right edge of the streak.  Surprisingly, the biggest and
most positive one was solid, so I downclimbed back to my aiders and
prepared a sling for hanging from it.  I climbed back and hung from it;
after clipping up a little higher on it, I could get a fair amount of
weight onto my left foot, although my right leg was mostly hanging or
using my knee.  I reached up and left to drill the 6th bolt.  This
one took quite awhile, as I got fairly tired of hanging in my harness,
but eventually I got it in.

Bruce swung into the lead and was able to get a wired stopper placed
endwise between 2 knobs to hold under testing.  So he aided on it with
his left foot and daisy, plus his right foot in this aider on the
previous bolt.  Nice job of stretching out the distance between bolts.
He then drilled the 8th and 9th bolts on aid, with the 9th being a
particularly long reach.

The sun was getting low, but big knobs were beconning above, so I
jumared up to the high point and got ready.  The knobs were positive
and solid, and after a couple of moves I had the big ones, which were
also good.  I climbed up a bit further to stand on the biggest knob.
I slung one incut horizontal knob with the "dental floss" sling,
and also got the Fish hook on a postive knob above.  I was basically
standing in balance on the big knob with my right foot and didn't
need to really weight the slung/hooked knobs, but I clipped the rope
into them to unweight the rope, which was nice.  It was an easy drill
directly overhead into smooth rock to place the 10th bolt.  I used
a hanger with lap links on it, then set up an 80' rappel from it and
cleaned the draws from the pitch.

We rapped/downclimbed/hiked out in the dark with headlamps.
Bruce barely coasted around the S-turn and up over the little hill!  :-)