When I climbed Zeppelin in El Chorro gorge
4 years ago my eyes were drawn to a series of enormous roofs to my right. Los
Tres Techos (The Three Roofs) is a 300m aid route which blasts straight out of
these tackling the final dizzying roof head on. This year I decided to attempt it as my first rope-solo. I was nervous but excited for an adventure. The thought
of spending two days up there completely alone was something I found quite hard
to imagine.
One of the things I love about climbing is
how multifaceted the sport is, I’m constantly finding new ways to enjoy myself
on the rocks.
I mostly used a method of rope soloing called the
continuous loop method, with my 80m Edelweiss Curve 9.8.
I had a gri-gri, backed up by a clove-hitch with a big loop of slack between. Before setting off I
spent a couple of days going up single pitch sport routes by myself. I
practiced paying out enough rope on my gri-gri to free climb to the next bolt,
where I would clip in again and pay out more rope. I practiced taking
progressively bigger and bigger falls to convince myself that the system worked.
I spent Friday night between 9pm and midnight fixing the first pitch. It was spooky hanging by myself in a near horizontal roof that
late at night in the gorge, especially when trains would roll past directly
underneath me every hour or so. Most of the pitch was a bolt ladder with bolts of
varying quality, although there was a short section in the middle with some
uninspiring rusty pegs. The next morning Bron came to see me off and took a
photo as I jugged up my fixed line from the night before:
Rope-soloing is slow, mostly due to the fact you have to ascend each pitch twice, once on lead and then again to clean the gear. I
aimed to bivy on a ledge above the second roof and complete the climb over two
days. Instead of hauling I opted to
clean each pitch with a backpack containing my sleeping bag, food and water. I coiled my rope into an ikea bag so it
would feed out nicely with no-one at the belay.
I got to the bivvy spot and had enough time to fix three pitches up the wall above before dark.
Actually the process of climbing alone was a lot less nerve-racking than I
expected, absorbed by the moment I didn’t have much time to get scared or over-think things. That night I listened to my ipod and stayed up late reading Lynn Hill's book Climbing Free, I tried to keep my mind from worrying too much about sheathing my rope over a sharp edge or dropping something crucial. The next day I woke early and continued upwards, every now and then I would stop and look around me, just empty air and vultures below my feet. It was extremely windy for the last two pitches, any strand of rope I dropped would blow out almost horizontally to my side. The final roof was wild!
Rope Solo 1.0 from Jacob Cook on Vimeo.
Hey dude, long time no see! Congrats on getting married :D
ReplyDeleteAny chance you could give us a recommendation for what gear to bring along? We're planning on doing it in Jan. I was planning on taking:
- 1 set nuts
- Full set totems
- Couple of hooks
- Other normal bigwalling gear
Do you think we'll need any rivet-hangers etc? And also, how bad is the death-gully?
Cheers buddy!