 Day Two... Starting OutUp and at' em!... When we first got up (in the middle o' the night) the weather was still a bit iffy... Strong winds and the peak of the Grand wrapped in nasty looking clouds. Now there are two ways of making this climb, the Owens-Spaulding route and the Exum route. The Exum route is the more technical of the two, with more time on the ropes and exposed rock face. Given the weather, all of the other groups (with Exum guides) opted for the O-S route. We opted to give the weather a bit more time to clear before making the decision as to which route we would climb. And at least one of us (OSCAR - not to mention any names!!!) really wanted to do the Exum climb. Since none of had any obligations that would interfere with a late arrival back at the trailhead we decided to wait a bit. |
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| So, we got an extra hour or so of rest and didn't leave the camp until closer to daylight... Six O'clock or so... This first picture is looking back on the saddle after an hour or so of climbing... You can't really see the base camp in the top picture so I enlarged a section of it here... |
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Not far from where the top photo above was taken is where the ACTUAL
climbing begins... Wall Street...
Since our early morning discussion, nothing more had been mentioned about which route we were going to take... We left that up to George to make the call (and both routes follow the same path up the slope in the top picture). But when we got to the point where we had THIS view, I knew which way we were going. And from this point forward, there's not much walking - just climbing... |
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- Last Updated 09/20/03 by Jonathan Bales
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