Imlay Zion conditions 7/29/2012

[ratagonia]

My buddy BJ went through Imlay yesterday - here's his report (I set him up with a bolt kit to get that second bolt in at the penultimate rappel):

Hey Tom, thanks for the gear in Imlay, but we weren't actually able to use it (we did haul it through with the best of our intentions though). After eating up some time dealing with some conversions to lower because we missed the bolt station before the last 175 ft rap in upper, we were racing weather as best as we were able (and still had to sit out on some high ground above the Terminal Narrows before we felt like it was "safe enough" to blast through.

Four of us went through Imlay from The West Rim yesterday (7/29/12).


There was certainly no need to suit up until the crossroads. Much to our surprise, the potholes were far from full. Pretty much each pothole required a pack toss or partner assist of some kind. That to say, the bottoms are up pretty high- we were able to toss up a good climber to assist from above, or we climbed out of the drier/easier ones on our own (no hooking) The water was generally plenty warm- with wetsuit johns and jackets we all felt warm (and often hot) for most of the day. I felt like many of the anchors could use new webbing more so than new bolts. We had some, but we were of course "saving it" for theworse ones lower down (that got pretty relative pretty quickly). Sorry to say, we didn't feel like we had the time to work on bolt improvement/replacement.