Matt and I completed our project on the Sail a few days ago.
We decided to name it “Call Me Maybe” because all joking aside I love that
song. I can't help it, it's just so freaking catchy! Also, the slab crux was
really, really challenging for us. A combination of greasy foot smears, cryptic
body positions, delicate shifts of balance, and just straight crimping like
your life depends on it; this section of the route was a real question mark in
our heads, call it a “maybe” if you will. But we got lucky one morning and sent
all four pitches cleanly; claiming the first ascent and settling on a grade of
5.13a for the entire climb.
Coming off the high of completing a new super cool line, we
set out to find another. This time, however, we were hoping to find something a
bit more physical - maybe a little steeper with a more powerful sequence? We
could only hope. We drove up the old road that lines the most impressive cliffs
above Foros (the town we're residing in), keeping our eyes peeled for something
spectacular. We spotted a steep-looking wall in a section of the cliff that is
nearly 700 feet off the ground above a seemingly endless blue slab. The pitch
looked like a section of Spain, a gem of blue-streaked overhanging preciousness
implanted above the less than vertical abyss that characterizes a majority of
the cliff band here.
“Let's approach from the top and rap in to see if there are
holds” Matt suggested.
“Ok. But how to we find it?”
This is a really good question. The top of the cliff is
blanketed with a thick rolling forest and chossy scree. The landscape winds up
and down each pinnacle of cliff, interrupted by thorn-choked gullies and
crumbling limestone boulders that are unstable and dangerous to navigate. Even
when a route appears easily accessible, the path there can be convoluted and
disorienting.
We decided to go for it and came up with a loose plan to
spend the afternoon and evening finding a way to get to the top of the route to
at least scope it up close and see if it's worth putting in the effort to bolt
the line. We started out casually enough, up a hiking trail through a gully
that was well established and mellow, a good starting point. I started calling
it the Fern Gully, after the Disney movie, meaning it was innocent and friendly
in a PG-rated movie kind of way. We were hoping that 3 hours roundtrip would be
enough to find our way there and back. “A marvelous hiking adventure!!!” I kept
telling Matt as we set out. I was trying really hard to be psyched about the
epic I just knew we were getting ourselves into.
I wrote the the rest of our adventure like a fairytale,
sprinkled with pop culture allusions, just for fun and because that's where my
imagination was throughout the journey. After the Fern Gully, we split off the
trail and ventured into the Forest of Flying Ticks. There were crazy numbers of
these flying bugs that looked JUST like ticks flying all around and landing on
us. I don't think they were ticks, but they were freaky and we had to walk fast
or we'd be covered in seconds. Not so fun. But as Matt reminded me “sometimes
adventuring isn't fun”. Wise words....
We stumbled upon an old dirt road in the middle of the
forest and decided to turn right and follow it since it seemed to lead in the
direction of our cliff. But the forest just got thicker and deeper, and it was
creepy and weird and reminded me of the Blair Witch Project. At one point we
scared ourselves and dove off the road and hid behind some trees when a car
came rumbling by. It wasn't the kind of road you'd expect to see cars on – or
maybe only in horror films that end badly for the protagonists. So we cut off
the road and back into the woods in an effort to get away from the road and
also to find the cliff edge and maybe gain some perspective.
We walked for a ways but somehow ended back on Blair Witch road even though we
didn't mean to. This time we stayed on the road and it eventually turned into
more of a trail. At this point we'd been walking for over an hour and felt really
out there, until we happened upon a group of campers randomly settled in the
forest cooking an early dinner over a campfire. We couldn't speak to them
because we don't speak Russian or Ukrainian and they didn't speak English but
they smiled and were nice enough so I nicknamed this portion of the journey as
the Camp of the Wandering Friendly Gypsy People, trying to stick to the
fairytale theme.
We came to a clearing where we could finally see the edge of the cliff, into a
meadow where a big wooden structure resembling a gallows rested in the middle
of a field. It reminded me of that play The Crucible, about Salem and the
witches; although I think they burned witches back then not hung them, but
whatever, this is my story. So I called it the Crucible structure. From there
we juked right making a beeline for the cliff edge and down some scary loose
Death Slabs, like the ones below Half Dome in Yosemite. We had to be extra
careful to not slip and trundle off the cliff, which nears 700ft tall at this
point.
After nearly two hours of walking, we thought that we had finally found the
right wall and got ready to rappel off the edge to scope our new potentially
awesome Spanish-style mega route. We set up a rappel off of a half-dead gnarled
tree that reminded me of the alive talking trees in the Lord of the
Rings. I thought it looked a bit sketchy so I told Matt that the tree was
at least half dead and therefore maybe dangerous to rappel off of. So he
put in another anchor to equalize it with the tree, but that proved difficult
since most of the rock is crumbly and the cracks don't hold super solid gear.
In the end however it was really pretty safe but it didn't matter anyway
because we were in the wrong place. Oops.
So we scrambled back up the Death Slabs and out onto a pinnacle from which we
could see the old road we drove on from below the cliff. And there it was just
across from us, maybe 30-40 ft away; our clean steep wall. It was beautiful and
exposed and looked potentially hard. All good news!! But we didn't have time to
rappel down it from the right side because darkness was looming and I was
already dreading being caught on the Blair Witch road in the dark. So we
stashed a rope, and dropped bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel (i.e. made some
cairns) so we could return the same way the next time.
On the walk back, we were in good spirits. We'd successfully found our wall and
it looked cool! How exciting. We saw an amazing sunset through the thickness of
the trees. The sun was blood red and the woods were "lovely dark and
deep, but we had promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep" to
quote the great Robert Frost. In an effort to be literary and compare our
modern situation to the poem, we had a promise to keep to the rest of our team
to not let them worry about us being out in the dark and lost; so we hurried
and only took 5 iphone photos each instead of a 100 in order to get the perfect
instagram shot.
BUT as is the nature of most marvelous adventures, there is always a snag at
the end. we took a wrong turn on the Blair Witch Road and instead of going back
down the Fern Gully to the safety of the old road we went down a different
gully - a Gully of Despair. I thought it would be alright because “it's a
riverbed and rivers always flow down the mountain.” I actually said this in an
effort to reassure Matt, who was wavering on the decision to keep going down.
“Em, there are such things as waterfalls!” Oh yeah. In the waning daylight and
our tired state, the thought of scrambling back up the Gully of Despair was
daunting. So I pushed to keep moving down. Until we found ourselves lured right
into a trap - a waterfall! A lesson to take from the late great pop group TLC:
Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls. Really. Dont do it. “But, I was going to have
it my way or nothing at all, even though Matt told me I was moving too
fast.” In case you didn't know, I just unsuccessfully tried to quote the
lyrics to the 1995 hit song. I was only 9 when it came out so I didn't get to
appreciate it fully but since this experience I've listened to the song
multiple times in a row just so I could memorize all the words.
Having no choice, we scrambled back up the Gully of Despair in the dark and
eventually found the Fern Gully where we were so happy that we sang Don't Go
Chasing Waterfalls the rest of the way down (I'd gotten it stuck in our heads),
even though I hadn't learned the words yet I just repeated the title and it was
satisfying. We made it home, recounted our story to the others, and went out
for pizza at our favorite restaurant. It's our favorite because there's a
television that plays awesome Russian music videos.
Tomorrow, Matt and I are
waking up at 5am to repeat our journey. Only this time we'll be carrying a
drill, bolts, and more ropes. Another Epic Adventure awaits.
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