One hundred feet off the ground I looked up at M.S., 30 feet above me on the 5.6 crack. Beyond him I could see a disturbingly gray cloud growing ominously darker with each passing minute. The winds were picking up and throwing dust in our eyes, making it hard to see. We had learned the previous day that strong buffeting gusts of wind under a slate gray sky preceded rain showers.
"Doesn't look too good up there," I shouted at M.S. over the gusting wind.
"Yeah, it looks like it might pour," he shouted back as little drops of rain began floating down.
"You want to come down to the belay station with me? It's under the overhang and should stay dry." I asked.
"No, I'll put in some gear and huddle under this shelf, it covers half of me. Maybe it won't last long enough to soak the rock," he replied.
The rain quickly spun up from scattered sprinkles to a full on downpour and I watched with dismay as the ground far below became veiled by a white mist. Any thoughts of getting off the rock quickly were cast aside as we watched rivulets of water form and stream down the cliff. I was safe and dry in my little alcove under the 4 foot overhang, but I could hear M.S. cursing above me as the rain found him under his little shelf.
Ordinarily one can get off any climb by simply rappelling from the belay stations. Unfortunately, the Moscow route at Smith Rocks is one of those very old climbs that have been intentionally left without bolted stations. There is some kind of misguided "keep it pure" mentality that forbids the placement of belay bolts.
The only way to rappel off would be to leave some of our gear, or tie slings around a couple stacked up boulders, hoping that our weight would be less than the boulders and they would stay in place while we used them as anchors for a rappel.
Twenty wet minutes later M.S. called down that he was going to pull everything but one piece of protection and downclimb to my belay station whereupon we could decide what to do.
After thoroughly soaking the cliff the rain backed off to a steady drizzle. We hung out, me in my dry little alcove and M.S. in another semi-protected chimney off to my left. We'd left the ground at 4 PM thinking we had plenty of time for an easy 3 pitch route. Neither of us had brought our watches, but we knew that a rain shower this long would make the rock unclimbable for at least thirty minutes after it stopped, which it appeared to have no intention of doing. We had also neglected to bring headlamps, and our margin of safety was rapidly disappearing.
We talked about the merits of rappelling off versus going up, assuming it ever dried off. The boulders looked pretty manky for a rap anchor, which meant we'd have to leave some of our expensive climbing gear at the belay station. We were also too high on the cliff to get down with one rope. We thought we might have been able to reach a bolted belay station at the top of Peking, sixty feet below, and then rappel to the ground from there.
As we were discussing our options the rain finally petered out and a small growing patch of blue sky appeared above us. I was in favor of going up, but M.S. wisely pointed out that the blue sky could be a brief break between rain squalls, and we would be safer if we went down. He pointed out that we could come back in the morning at first light and probably rescue our gear before anyone else snagged it. Climbing gear abandoned on cliffs is treated like abandoned ships at sea: first one to find it owns it.
I argued that even though we were on a North facing cliff and couldn't see the weather approaching from the southwest, the current rain squall was the last one of the day. The weather was predicted to get a little drier each day, with only localized thunderstorms that day. I also argued that we could still bail from a higher position on the cliff, it would just be more expensive.
Eventually M.S. agreed to go up, but only if I took over the sharp end of the rope. He said that getting caught in the rain, on lead, had sapped his nerve. I didn't blame him, I mean, how could I argue? I'd been sitting safe and dry under a big overhang tied to 4 bomber protection anchors.
We waited until the rock had completely dried out before swapping ends and gear. I headed up the second pitch, casting nervous glances toward the sky, which remained mostly blue. The pitch follows a not quite vertical open book up mostly solid red rock. It's broken up into a series of blocky sections that are quite easy, intermixed with a series of 20 foot cruxes that can be challenging. There are no bolts at all, and on some of the harder sections the protection is not as good as one could hope for. Still, I had gear every 15 feet or so and was able to place more at the cruxes.
The hardest part was when the corner bottomed out into a 5 inch groove, almost vertical for about nine feet. The last good pro was at the bottom of the groove. I muscled up to the top of the groove where the crack widened out to a body sized chimney, thinking that there would be bomber holds in the chimney allowing an exit onto rest holds above.
To my surprise, the chimney had nothing but a miserable sloping knob for a handhold. My feet had very little to stand on down in the vertical groove. I found I could do an elbow lock in the chimney, and it was quite secure, but without a foothold to stand on, I was unable to move upward.
I forced the panic back and stuck a small friend behind a rotten flake for moral support while I tried to come up with a plan. After much grunting and thrashing I decided that the sloper hold was a red herring and what I needed to do was combine the elbow lock with a mantle and lever my knees into the chimney.
With a quick "watch me!" shouted to my belayer fifty feet below, I made the move and stepped onto easier ground. After that came a lovely two inch hand crack with sinker hand jams and I arrived at a nice 6 inch ledge where I could belay. I found 4 good placements for gear and brought M.S. up. He followed it quickly, but once again declined the lead, saying he was feeling tapped out. We exchanged rope ends again and he gave me the gear he'd cleaned out of the pitch below.
He'd climbed the scary looking offwidth crack on the pitch above more recently than I had and I asked him how hard it was. He said it was larger than fist jams, but because it was leaning back a bit it wasn't terribly hard, and was actually a relatively easy pitch, the middle one (second) being the hardest one.
We talked once again about the iffy weather. Should we continue up, or would it be safer to go down? This high on the cliff, if the rain caught us we would've had to leave at least one hundred and fifty dollars worth of gear to get down, and we'd be placing gear in the dark, with the distinct possibility of having the rope get stuck in one of the many cracks, leaving us stranded for the night.
The light in the valley around us was beginning to wane as twilight approached. It looked like we had about an hour of climbable light. Rappelling would have taken a couple hours, and you can't safely place gear in the dark. It was either climb up, or spend the night on the cliff in shorts. I had long johns on under my shorts, and a windshirt, but we would have suffered badly, with hypothermia a distinct possibility.
In short, it was go up or nothing. The delay caused by the rain had reduced our safety margin to zero. Any other delays would mean climbing, or rappelling in the dark. I cursed my stupidity in going up the damn cliff in iffy weather, then started climbing the last pitch, praying for easy moves.
After all the stress of anticipation, the climbing was actually very friendly and I blew through the thirty foot, four inch crack in 5 minutes. A few more moves put me over the top onto the exit ramps which were nothing more than a steep hiking trail. I let out a great hurrah! as I realized that we'd made it to safety.
As the last light faded from the deep blue sky, we walked down the aptly named Misery Ridge trail to our packs, had a quick bite and some water, then hiked down to the car in the moonlight, arriving at the campground at 10:30 PM. Smith Rocks is beautiful in the moonlight and I found myself singing as hobbled down the steep trail.
The next day I led a 5.7, a scary 5.9 and a 5.8 (five gallon buckets) before we hit the road for home. M.S. said he didn't feel up to leading anything but was happy to follow and did a great job belaying me on the scary nine. All things considered it was a great trip. I met a new climbing friend and got my sea legs under me.