McNamara and McNeely do first one day ascent of Never Never Land

Tuesday Ammon McNeely and Chris McNamara sent the first one day ascent of Never Never Land. 16 hours even!

Hans climbs El Cap wall and does NOT get record!

Brian McCray and I had quite an adventure on EML. I'll just jump right in:

We started at 6:29am on Tuesday.

The bolts on the first pitch have been chopped. I free soloed the pitch (5.10), not recommended unless you have Bacher or Schneider like prowess on thin granite. The bolts at the second anchor were hammered flat, we tried to pry one up but it broke the hanger. ( see picture.)

The first bolt on the 3rd pitch was hammered down, albeit it looked old and beat anyway. The first fixed head in the crack on this pitch appeared to have been hammered on until on one very small dapple of wire was holding it there. Brian and I admit to being paranoid sometimes if warranted, but not in this case, we really think some one left this head there purposely fucked up dangling by one metal thread.- meaning it looked like someone hammered the wire until it was down to just the thread.

Although rivets do break occasionally it appeared as though they had been purposely chopped in a few places on the route. Brian and I placed six rivets on the route, but only because that is all we had and we were very imaginative in other spots and got by.

We replaced two rivets on the 3rd pitch bringing it back to doable.

On the 8th pitch going over to Mescalito I ran into rivets with the heads just sitting on their shafts as if someone had cut them off and just lightly glued or mashed the head back on to have it sit there. Here there was four or more rivets removed, I had to pendulum over to Mescalito and climb that pitch leapfrogging and back cleaning for 40 ft.

On the 12th pitch I encountered a place where three rivets in a row appeared to have been chopped. I could not get through it by adding one rivet, I had none. I climbed up Reticent to a belay and then pendulumed BARELY enough to lasso the next rivet in line.

At pitch 13 the route joins New Dawn to the top. From there up there was plenty of hard climbing but we did not encounter anything that seemed to be purposely whacked. Except the Supertopo should be improved on the drawing of pitch 18/19, it wasn't super.

I dropped my helmet from the anchor at pitch 21, presumably all the way to the ground. My name is in it, please return it if found! ( love to send it back to Petzl if it's not in working shape.)

Brain led three times and I led three times, Brian led for about 15 hours and I for 12 hours. Kinda cool - I led 12 pitches and Brian led 15. - we kept to an hour a pitch. We topped out at 9:29:57 am. And stopped the clock where a "normal party" would have walked off.

Route record is 25:05 by Bengsten, Stowe, and Gerberding, presumably with the route in better condition.

Hans

At it again...

Brian and Ammon also set the record on Eagles way in august with a time of 9 hours and 8 minutes.

They climbed Sunkist in 19:58 the second time it's been climbed in a day.

Third Flatiron Race Produces New Record!

In Dave Mackey's debut at the annual Third Flatiron Race, he smoked the fastest field every (7 racers under 39 minutes!) to finish in 33:17, breaking the previous record by 91 seconds.

Race report here.

Incredible Linkup at Red Rocks!

Don't know the date on this one, but here's a marathon of hard classics and heavy hiking by Ivo Ninov and Renan Ozturk, car to car in 20:07: Levitation 29 (5.11c) in 1:40; Cloud Tower (5.12a), 1:45; and Epinephrine (5.9), 4:05.

McCray and McNeeley chock another speed record.

Brian McCray and Ammon McNeeley climbed Lost in America 18 hours and 4 minutes.