Atlantic - 5.7

belay before the chimney instead of being a hero

This was harder than i expected. i guess i didn't understand what a "chimney route" really was. It was fun after i got the hang of things. probably should have broken it into two pitches because the drag sucked. found some neat gear placement, using tricams and a bomber hex placement. pretty fun route all in all.

Great route with a fantastic finger crack and a bombay chimney. NOTE TO SELF - Next time traverse face up top instead of crawling through tunnel setting every piece of pro on the way, including the nut tool!

Atlantic seemed like a silly choice, as it had rained all the previous day and all the water-streak routes were still wet. Berkly led the first pitch in style, but getting up into the chimney pitch looked hard and we could see from the belay that it was good and wet in there, in where all the good placements were. After checking out the face-climbing options straight up, which didn't look too good, I finally made my way over to the undercling moves, and up and in. Once in, things started looking more doable, with plenty of features on the dry roof-side of the chimney. I kept the feet up on the roof and wasn't too sorry for the wetness of the main slab, as it made wriggling upwards pretty easy. I sewed her up good including a pre-placed black (brown?) tri-cam which would have been booty but berkly concurred with the previous pickers on its fixedness. 'Twas a welcome clip at any rate, so I don't mind leaving it for another.

Once I got up to where I could see through the "horizontal squeeze chimney" over to the Amazon belay, I hollered at Mike who was over there & he assured me I was at the belay, so I set a hex and a big silver tri-cam, equalized them, and slung a boulder, linked 'em all with the rope, and put berkly on belay. He made it up no problem, only one or two squeaks of surprise, and then once he made it up the fun began. He didn't think he could make it through the chimney, even with me tucked out of the way in a side-chute, so I went through first and managed to climb right out of my harness & outer layer . . . easily replaced of course. Dang silk drawers! The pro on my gear loops kept setting itself, which held true for my new chock-pick on berkly's loop which he moved to his helmet-strap, which was a good look.

The weather had gone from cloudy & cool to blue skied & plenty warm, on a day where the predicted high was but 46 degrees. That big heat-sink is hard to chill off! We set a TR anchor to rap off Amazon Woman and slingshot-belayed her. Amazin'.