The weather has been threatening all day. No bright sunrise like yesterday.

It was actually TOO nice yesterday. No clouds and the bright east-facing granite of Liberty Bell made for a fryingpan morning. We got up to the sixth pitch but down to a pint of water. We bailed but fixed two ropes.

Overnight the weather deteriorated, but the fixed ropes drew us back to the base. Since it hadn't rained on us yet, we figured that we should at least give it a try.

releading pitch 3, the one with the hook move

"What the heck", we figured.

So now, many pitches later, I'm standing at an infamous anchor. The two bolts, THOSE bolts, featured in many an innernet 50-classic trip report . Talk with someone who's climbed Liberty Crack lately and they'll know THOSE bolts of which I speak. A couple nasty-looking, old, rusty, quarter-inch, spinner blah blah blah. I could back 'em up with the mongo Camalot down in the flake at my feet; but, in all the confusion, I haven't clipped into it just yet.

It's just too much trouble. THERE'S TOO MUCH SH*T HANGING IN DISSARRAY AROUND HERE! And where is it all hanging? Clipped to THOSE bolts.

So anyway, I'm hanging around (HAR!), trying to untangle the lead rope before Jeff hits the snarl, and I realize that the rope management is much easier on this pitch. This fact alerts me to the fact that Jeff's not clipped to the trail rope. Crap! Which means that now I gotta strap a damn rope to the damn pack that is already a behemoth. And it's hanging where? At THOSE damn bolts.

So anyway, things are pretty hectic,

and it starts to sprinkle.

Funny that just recently all was totally right with the world. Just one belay previous, at another notorious anchor, I'd been lounging magnificiently. The "Rotten Block", unlike THOSE bolts, did not live up to its innernet hype. The infamous "shit-covered ledge" of the Presho report was easily the most cush belay of the climb. I sat on the big, flat, level, (clean), block, leaning back against the big fat soft backpack, and dangled my legs in space. Looking to the East, I noticed that Liberty Bell and other nearby spires were casting shadows down in the snow.

Liberty Bell group casts shadows in the snow

"Right on!"
"The sun has come out, we're moving well, and I'm in a goddamned easy chair."
"This climb is the coolest."
"It's totally in the bag."

High on a climb, the weather leads your mood from a nose ring.

When the sun comes out, it feels as if everything is clicking. The appearance of your shadow on the rock brings out an aura of invincibility. You are manic. Stuff that seemed faraway now seems near. You're all,

"we are so bad", and
"I am so smart."

When the clouds pull in, the bubble begins to melt away. The cold wind starts to peel up the edges of your fallibility. Suddenly, you're questioning why you spent so long dicking with that stuck Friend, and why you hauled on pitch 5. Calculations begin on necessary pace to avoid nightfall.

"It gets dark around nine.
"If we simul the last two, we got seven pitches to go..."

When the sprinkles hit, you hit a dark low. When the second, third and fourth confirmations land on your face, tunnelvision arrives (maybe it's the rainhood) and all memories of the cool climb (that you were cruising fifteen minutes ago) are displaced by bivy/retreat calculations. As a now highly sensitive precipitation gauge, every sprinklet hammers on your psyche and makes you wonder why you are such a gumby. Stuff now seems a long, epic, ways away.

"What clothes do I have in the backpack again?"
"This belay sucks."

When you're pushing the weather, nothing toys with your sense of well-being like scattered showers.

So anyway, I'm at this stressed-out belay. I'm clipped to THOSE BOLTS. It's sprinkling, and I'm standing on this big flake that's pasted onto the side of this steep sheer wall. Jeff's pulling up the slack in the lead rope, and I'm thrashing around getting all organized to climb. I reach down to clean the Camalot at my feet (the one that I never got around to clipping into) and I can't get it out.

Funny thing is, it's not the cam that's stuck. It's the biner. That biner that I never clipped. It's stuck, wedged in the flake.

So, I grab the mongo cam and start tugging. At first delicately; then, with more deliberate yanking, back and forth. Something (the flake?) starts to squeak. Just as I start really yarding, the biner pops free. The flake doesn't peel from the wall, but the #4 mashes into my wet knee.

awesome pitch at the end of the difficulties

You-know-what I yelled.

****

I add the load of the evil purplecam to my harness and make final preparations to climb. Pull back the rainhood, down a doublecaffeinetangerine Gu, and chug some water. As I unclip and lurch my load up onto the slab, I'm happy to notice that it isn't really that wet yet. In fact it seems, as I'm escaping THOSE bolts, that the rain is beginning to relent. I spy many PNW suckerholes.

Though it's awkward with the pack, rocking up over the little roof is pretty manageable. Still, I'm dreading carrying the load across the exposed traverse. As I stand up above the roof I get a better view of the traverse. The exposure looks wild, but now I see, flickering in and out of view, BIG HOLDS. Sunbeams are punching through the rapidly reproducing sucker holes. The jugs are hard to see when in the flat light, but are highlighted invitingly when struck by direct sunshine. Aaah, sunshine.

"The climb's in the bag."
"Life is good."
"We are fast."

Scattered showers, with sunbreaks.