dagibbs | A bit more adventure than planned!

Kate and I decided that yesterday wasn't climbing weather, that we weren't motivated to clean rock, but that we were motivated to rappel into the big cliff on the left wing of Lac Sam and take a look. We first rapped down the 2-pitch line on the upper left section that we'd cleaned, and it was dry enough to climb. Damn -- we didn't bring draws or enough gear. Then we set up for a 60m rap into the main face (the largest visible face at Lac Sam). It ended up being somewhere between 35 and 40m down -- so more than a standard single-rope rappel.

The line we ended up rapping down looked like it would have a couple of long, consistent, 5.8ish sport climbs on it. The might be a trad line off to the left of those lines, too. And some interesting stuff to the right, though it would need a lot of trundling.

At the bottom, we wandered a bit rightwards first, since the logical hike out was to the left. As we wandered right, I noticed a scramble to an easy-looking corner, with a possible ledge traverse where the corner got steepest, and suggested this as a fun "4th class" way out, rather than the original walk. This was not the best idea.

Kate managed to slip at one point on the scramble section, sliding about 2m before catching herself -- and it would have been a nasty fall if she hadn't. As we continued upwards, it got steeper than expected, the holds were worse than expected, and the ledge out wasn't what it looked like.

I got to a point where I wasn't willing to go any further in my hiking boots, reversed a few moves to where I was more stable and could get a tricam in. Then I used this stability to switch to my climbing shoes (which I did have with me). With climbing shoes, it was a lot more comfortable, but still free soloing around 5.2-5.3 at the hardest bits. I got to the top, though, without further incident.

I retrieved the ropes from our rap point, setup a new anchor, rapped back down to Kate who had been waiting on a stable stance in the middle of the cliff the whole time, then belayed her out on top-rope. She did manage to take one slip & fall on the rope -- so having the rope was a very good idea. Once on belay, I climbed out a harder line than the original one I soloed, and it looks to be a good 5.5-5.6ish line, too.