Equinox crag and its local potential…

Around the formation of the stellar crack Equinox, there’s much potential. Some of it has clearly been done, but much has not, or seems to have not, been touched. The small satellite formation north of the famous crack has some development on it, and an obvious squarish block sitting just next to but south of it, has a few chalked lines up that impressive boulder. The boulders that reside around the northeast corner on the main formation have also most likely been done. I’ll list all that we climbed even if they’ve already been climbed. The ones we thought were FA’s I’ll also mention.

On the north end of the main formation resides a small boulder with a distinct vertical crack on the south side (actually, from memory of an older visit, that crack goes all the way through but is short on the north end). These we talked about here. Around the eastern corner (NE corner of the formation) from this crack boulder are a nice cluster of boulders that I’ll call the Nox boulders.

Our previous visit here we did only 3 lines, all of which may have been done before. This time we added 4 more lines, all of which we think are FA’s. First up is what we had called the Shield boulder: a plate of harder and finer stone not unlike the face of Alexandria, but MUCH smaller and shorter! There’s a left and right line called the Left Shield and the Right Shield that we posted about in the last blog before the summer break here. The slab may not have been done though. It’s quite thin.

The obvious shield on the Shield boulder. The arete, called the Sword Arete, in the background on the left was also done this time around as a low start.

Here, I'm confounded by my inability to stand on my feet. I think my toes got tired. Jon didn't rate it but maybe v4-5.

In this next image, i’m about to climb the corner line, but in the background to the left is a cool short crack called Bikini Chainmail. We did that line a year ago on… 11-14-2010 reviewed in the above link.

about to do the moonshine arete with the Bikini Chainmail at the left behind the moonshine boulder

And here I’m climbing the Moonstone Arete:

And the image and video below is of our afternoons’ crowning achievement: the Nox Mantel, v3.

Jill testing her reach on the first move. It's definitely a feel-good problem to send. The "downclimb" is equally worthy!

After the Nox, we traversed around the formation to another potential line on stellar rock, doing stellar moves in a shallow corridor. As night arrived, we donned the headlamps and started work. We’ll update you with images and some video hopefully during the month of december. We were pretty tired and no one wanted to pick up a camera as we exchanged attempts, move by move, on what appears to be a rather difficult line.

One last bit of media to offer you shows Jon on the second of the Sword Arete, v5?. I can’t say much about the rating as I did it second or third try during our warmup and Jon had to work it a fair bit. Jon thought it a tad harder than I did; therefore, I’m basically guessing. Of course I couldn’t stand on my toes as Jon fired the Shield Slab second or third go, so I was probably a bit angst and wanted revenge! 😉  The video, though, shows what you’re dealing with. Nice line, nice rock except for the heel hook I cleaned and the right smears,  all at the start.

The file sizes for the videos are rather large, or so it seems to me. If you prefer smaller file sizes, let me know and I’ll make sure there’s a small one for viewing too.

~ by r. mulligan on 2011/11/24.