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climbing Zoncolan

climbing Zoncolan

As usual @jingyunwong makes poetry in motion of any climb she does, however, this shot was close to never been taken. This day started at 9 am and it was suggested to abseil to the base of Ben Trovato Wall instead of walking down there. This was my first time in this area, so I was just following the more experience people there. The idea also appealed to me since that would have given me the opportunity to fix the rope for the shot, instead of having to climb. So around 9:30 am we started our way down to the rap anchors. The person with more experience started setting up the rope. I was close to the person setting up the rope but not next to him. I asked if the rope was going to get to the ground and he replied: no we are gonna have to make two abseils, which I said, cool, that is fine. At the same time I was looking when he was setting up the rope and I was wondering if he had with him some prusiks or ascenders, but I said to myself, “I guess he should have, maybe in his bag, it should be right”. turns out that when he descended he was not able to touch the wall, so he could not set up the second abseil and he did not bring prusicks or ascenders with him. We try to send him some prusiks but these were getting stuck between a ledge and a rope. To make matters worse the first person took the climbing rope with him, so we could not use the extra rope to abseil and release the prusiks. At the end we use severals slings to descend and release the prusiks and also there was another climber who was able to make it to a ledge near the abseiler and provide assistance. So then we were able to walk down and he was able to abseil to the ground. At the time when we got to the base of the wall the sun was almost setting on my face, but I was lucky to take this shot couple of minutes before the sun hit my face. As a lesson, please make questions even if you think they are dumb and always take extra precautions when making long abseils (i.e.:take prusiks/ascenders with you)

Thankfully all came out great, but could have been a different story, so always take care.

In the photo is @jingyunwong climbing Zoncolan (28/7c+) at Ben Trovato Wall

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