Church Family: Patience is a Virtue

150 feet up White Maiden's Walkway (5.4), I was flabbergasted to see a foursome with three ropes between them leaving the second belay ledge above me. They had been hidden by the huge flake of granite I was climbing towards and this revelation, along with the bad manners of the guy who had just cruised up the slabby toe of the buttress to cut me off, was more than I could take. "Bail!" I yelled down to Cousin Ed, sitting at the first belay. He nodded in agreement.

I thought sleeping in and slowly wheezing my way up the approach would have given the crowds time to dissipate, allowing Doc Rock and I to dash up all 700' of "The Maiden" double time. I was sorely mistaken. The route looked like the Hwy 101/US 405 interchange (well maybe not quite that bad, but I'm pretty sure I saw a guy selling oranges on the side of the route on the fifth pitch). Ed got to try his hand at rappelling as we beat a (somewhat) hasty retreat.

We grabbed the packs and headed to The Trough (5.4) and found it clear of climbers. Still fuming over our aborted "maiden voyage," I started straight up the West Bulge approach rather than hiking the additional 150' around the corner to the traditional start. The result: a direct start to The Trough that I would rate in the 5.10- range, which means if it ever makes it into the guidebook it'll be rated 5.8. It was slow and difficult. After clearing the direct start, we ran the balance of the route in two rope-stretcher pitches instead of the typical four and soloed the final, easy slabs to the summit.

Despite topping out before sunset, we were not back to the car until well after dark. The sun sets quickly at such low latitudes and we barely made it down the "friction descent" and around the south face of the peak before dusk gave way to dark. Once again, the word of the day was "bail." We headed down the approach trail leaving the packs rather than climbing the class 4 terrain between us and our extra equipment.

Alas, our intended route will remain a maiden (for us) until we manage to get back up to Tahquitz. Nevertheless, we bagged 650 feet of vertical rock between the two climbs and Ed was smiling when we got back to the car despite the a loose, dark descent. In retrospect, waiting an hour and a half for the yahoos to clear out above us on the White Maiden's Walkway would have been the sensible thing to do. But, hey---we wouldn't have found that hard direct start to The Trough and we would have missed out on an epic nighttime descent from that sacred place the natives once called Tak-wish.