some friday dave and i set out to do the curious Cube the original static point route
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dave needs to be home early for an intramural basketball game he's the captain shouldn't be a problem we'll cruise the Cube most of it's 5.7
we dump our stuff at the base of online then head out over a couple of solo/exposed moves to the lost charms tree we rope up there head up the familiar approach pitch up and right to spencer's spaceport
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p1 of the Cube leaves from the next named tree the old milwaukee tree there's a fixed pin and a purple tcu in a corner about 40 feet up then head out left over the corner and out into the blankness i tiptoe back and forth between committing on a no-holds pure-friction move and retreating to the marginally better dish back and forth back and forth sorta like that dance you do when you really gotta take a shit
probably half-hour forty five minutes no lie i finally go for it no hands balance balance to no hands balance balance to a hold ahhhhhhh after the blankness it's easy and soon i'm at this shitty awkward belay on one pin in a corner
the rope on the next pitch draws a big backwards C a couple of marginal bolts sketch out a backwards L then pinching some flaky overlaps back left completes the C dave leads the next pitch to the great relief of my frazzled mind dave's pitch actually has some good pro but his feet are well above it at the blank-move climax just below the next belay
now i'm doing a pitch i've been on before i know the first move which pulls through a small roof to a stance at a bolt i remove a bail sling from a past foray then contemplate the unknown once more it's a steep blank spot with black lichen and some bitty flakey things out right above the roof the since this hard move is right at a bolt it's relatively casual done with that i wander up a black slab with two bolts over the next 120 feet it's pretty heady but i'm able to keep the lid on
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now we're under this big roof under another big roof i traverse down below the first roof and find these cool razor-sharp granite cracks and a tiny wafer-thin flake leading up to beneath the other big roof a burly move onto a big chickenhead on the vertical bulge and there's this black bolt hiding in the black lichen you can see about 1/4 inch of its rusty 1/4 inch shaft exposed beneath its rusty leeper hanger clip it and hope this move feels like the crux of the climb the watch beep reminds me it's getting late and i'm hawing so i yard on the bolt to a knobby crack load it up with tinypro before heading out again into the blankness up and right dishes about 5.9 last pro is that garden of tinypro about 30' down this climb is mind bending
we get to the top the wind is howling it's butt cold up at that fabulously curious Cube it's getting late we're eight raps up there's gonna be one uncaptained IMA team tonight the rapells go pretty smoothly and its not that windy below as we rap down online back at our packs the light grows dim we prepare to head down the 1000 vertical feet of forest with one headlamp between us those big washington forests can get pretty dark inside well we're about 200 feet in dave's heading down first with the headlamp and i'm following when he slips on something lands on his butt and poof we're in the dark luckily we got the headlamp working again after that i wouldn't give it back to dave and that cheezed him off a bit
i gave it back a bit later
Epilogue: the Cube altered
pictures by david yanez