Yankee / Boltergiest 2/18/13
I was getting ready for work Monday morning and my daughter asked if I would take her a couple of friends hiking instead. Lets see, go to work on a semi-holiday or go with her? So 3 of her friends show up to my house at about 9:00. 2 of them don't own harness and never even rappelled, one is wearing 'Vans', and the other a brand new pair of 'Nike'. The third is one of her friends that she climbs with a bit so I know he is fine, but I know it's going to be a long day. I fit them with a couple of my spare harnesses, a pair of home depot gloves, make sure they don't care if they get wet and we head to Leeds. When we get to the head of Yankee I am surprised to only see 1 car there being a holiday.
We head over to the first rap and decide to just break them in and do the 100' free hang entry. I let Lacey set the rope up with the clove hitch biner block, tie the pull cord on and toss it over the edge. I was paying more attention to making sure they were set up good in their harnesses and comfortable going over the edge, because I was going first and once I was down I didn't want to have hike all the way around to push them off. I clip in and head over the edge, get about half way and take a look at the landing. I had forgotten that the last time I used my 100' rope that I had a bad spot about 6' from the end and had cut it off. So with the excess rope tied to the pull rope, and a little more tied in the bag, it was sitting there 10' off the ground. :lol8: Now are the times that I am happy that I try to teach everyone that goes with us on how to do the rope setups, and not always rely on the trail leader. I was able to push off the wall and swing over to a ledge to stand on. I pulled the bag up, untied it and threw it down. I then yelled up to my daughter to set up the rope again and make it as long as possible and to just tie the pull cord to the biner block. After the few changes and reassurances that it was set up correctly, I clipped in and continued down. The rope stretched to about 3' off the ground so in the end it actually looked like we planned it that way. :haha:
Even with the inexperienced kids, we downclimbed all of Yankee and made the loop in 1:45. We then headed over to Boltergiest and made good time through it also. I think it was about 2:30 car to car. We weren't trying to hurry, but all went well. There is water with ice in both canyons, one of them in Yankee is mandatory. I wore neo socks and waded all the pools and was fine. I forgot my camera, so there are no pics. Sorry
