Simul-climbing

Two weeks ago, after finishing Egyptian, we had difficulty deciding what to do on Sunday, and I had threwn in the air a thought “how bout we do the 9-pitch multipitch twice, either Wangmeixinqing or Waigualiezao?” after Torsten talked about simul climbing on Saturday evening. Well, on Sunday morning I was telling the places where I could go, but didn’t have a strong urge to do anything in particular. So Torsten said “how bout we do the 9-pitcher Waigualiezao simul-climbing?”. I say “ok, why not!”.  He had done it this summer already simul-climbing.

(You can also read this story in Finnish here with some pictures).

The grade of the route was 5.10c (6a+), so nothing too hard. Plus, I had also climbed the route before already – or half of it. That time me and Fabian somehow managed to mix the two routes and ended up climbing 11 pitches, doing a variation of the two. It wasn’t anything hard so I figured simul-climbing would be fine. Only two pitches were 5.10c, one 5.10b, one 5.10a and the rest was about 5.9’s. 

Waigualiezao is the one in blue.

When Torsten climbed the route before with Xiaohe, they did it “true simul-climbing” style; without a belay-device in between. This time, we didn’t do it the “true” way; we did tie 8-knots, but also a grigri to our harnesses. This way, if the other person was going too fast or slow, we could adjust the amount of slack in between in our ca. 15m rope. It also allowed us to belay the other person safely through difficult sections – we did it three times during the route. As it wasn’t a long ago, Torsten remembered the harder sections well. Torsten led the first three or four pitches, I led the next three or four (didn’t really pay attention as we just climbed as long as we didn’t have any draws left or had just a few and stopped at an anchor) and Torsten led the last bit. So we did 2 changes of the leader during the route; last time, Torsten and Xiaohe needed to stop only once as they had about 10 more quickdraws to use.  

The piece of rope we used.

I forgot to check from my Suunto t6d if the topo was correct about the route being 245 meters long – I remembered it when we descended to the road, where it showed 222 meters, so I think the topo was quite exact. It took us a minute or two over 2 hours to finish the route.

For me, simul-climbing was an awesome experience. I could feel my heart beating while climbing, focusing on where I put my feet, just enjoying climbing without the feeling of pressure of achieving something. I really, really enjoyed it until I broke off a handhold while leading, and fell (because I was clutching to it with my both hands). Until then, I wasn’t scared at all because the route was easy – after that, I became a bit paranoid. As at the point where I fell I was going first, it was ok. Had the second person fallen at an inconvenient place, the leader might have been hurt even quite badly (well, this is what made me paranoid after that as when I was going first right then it made me think about what “could” happen if the leader well just then when I was meters above the last clip and just clipping the next one – until then, I didn’t really think about it). But, as said, we had already belayed the other person through the more difficult sections just to be safe this wouldn’t happen. But now I started checking almost every hold I was touching and that is not a fun thing I enjoy doing while climbing...

Anyway, I would definitely do it again; but still with the safety of a grigri just to be sure.