I’m collecting errors on a new platform! This is from Mac OS X 10.3. I’ve gotten the debugger up and am far enough to see that the error happens when the program tries to create a big (512k) chunk of shared memory. Smaller chunks work.
In 10.2 I had upped the shared memory from 4MB to 256MB in /System/Library/StartupItems/SystemTuning/SystemTuning, but that no longer works.
This Argentinian film is about the slickest con artist movie I’ve seen. I’d say it outdoes The Sting. It gave Ann involved dreams about being swindled and deceived.
I went to a yoga class with Ann after work. Yoga makes me feel undisciplined, stiff, and weak. It requires a big effort. But my body is thirsty for it. It wants more.
Ann rejoins us and we take off for the climb Ted’s been talking about all weekend, Run For Your Life, 10b. In the book it’s the only bolted route on the prominent face of the Tumbling Rainbow formation, so Ted doesn’t bother even bringing the guidebook. On the approach I experience nervousness for the first time from Ann wanting to climb something that looks dangerous to me. It turns out to be fine – I haul her pack up, she puts her shoes on and does it easily. But it’s a new perspective since I am usually the one scrambling around and making her nervous.
We get to the belay ledge and there are two bolted routes. After some debate Ted chooses the left one. He has to step on a loose rock to reach the first hold. Some hard looking moves follow, and he hangs on the first quickdraw before he sees a crucial hold. Then he sends the rest of the climb without a hiccup. Ann gets on next, and makes some progress but is stopped by those tough early moves. On my turn they take me a few tries, but I work something out. The rest of the climb is a relentless crimpfest. It never gets too much harder, but it also never gets any easier. At one point I weight the rope a bit in exhaustion, but muster some juice to continue. There is some semblence of a rest, then a secondary crux at the top. I finish feeling very impressed with Ted’s lead.
Later I ask Daryl at Nomad Ventures about the route, and he’s heard it is a 5.11. Rockclimbing.com lists it as 11b. Ted swears it can’t be more than 10c. I’m uncertain. I wasn’t feeling at my best, but it was hard for me. I might give it 10d. Regardless, it’s an excellent, sustained route, and is not Run For Your Life.
I’m still feeling off, but agree to go with Ted to Echo Cove to TR stuff while Ann makes a run into town for ice and beer. First we play on a steep, thin crack with just a couple of pockets for holds. Ted works through it, I don’t quite get it. Then Ted leads an overhanging route with big holds on the north end of the same rock. I follow that OK, and we play on the route next to it as well. Fun jug hauling.
Ted has never led Double Cross, and Ann wants to climb it, so we make it our pre-breakfast climb of the day. On the trail to the climb, blocking our way, is a big hairy tarantula. I remember the last one we saw at Wagon Wheel – Ted poked the ground in front of it with a stick and it pounced, lightning fast. Today he steps quickly over the giant spider. I don’t feel quite so brave in my sandals, and hop up onto the rocks.
Ted leads Double Cross well, but I’m happy to see not entirely easily. I like to think that even a strong climber has some work to do on this climb. Ted is happy with my beta on the first piece of pro – the big #10 hexcentric. Ann and I both enjoy following him. I try to stay at least half in the crack all the way up, which is more work still.
Ann graciously goes back to camp for beer while Ted and I set up a TR on Big Moe in Echo Cove. Ted sends it twice. I get a bit further on it than last time, finally getting a foot into the big divot, but come up a few inches short of the next hold. I feel weak and almost feverish, like I’m fighting off a flu bug.
I suggest we have a quick lunch and go looking for a place mentioned in the guidebook, the Bighorn Mating Grotto. It’s not at all obvious how to get there, and we have some discussion before agreeing to start up the Wonderland Wash. We pack a buch of gear for the extra exercise.
Five minutes in Ted spots a rattlesnake, and we all dance to get by it. Inevitably we go up a wrong wash and have to turn around. It’s really hard to keep a sense of direction in the Wonderlands, and I’m always trying to track the time and direction of shadows. Finally we find ourselves scrapping through bushes, rocks, and cactus. I break a strap on one of my Tevas just before we hit a wall. Not wanting to give up, I put on my rock shoes and climb over. The grotto is on the other side, grassy and cool with some imposing-looking cracks rising up at one end. I find another possible entrance, then rejoin Ted and Ann. They suggest that I was gone long enough to live up to the grotto’s name.
We turn around, vowing to return another day and perhaps sample the grotto’s climbs, but today the light is short and beer is beckoning…
After breakfast Ted and I look at Dogleg and Double Cross, but they are both busy. So we wander over to The Flake and he starts up. The beginning chimney looks a little scrunchy even for him, then he exits right and puts a piece in that provides plenty of rope drag for the rest of the route. Following, in the hard part of the chimney I feel like my knees are in my ears. I move an inch or two at a time, grunting excessively. “What a strange thing we do ourselves getting on climbs like this,” I think. After I take out the rope drag piece though, the rest is gravy. Sweet featured hand crack to lumpy friction finish. At the top, Ted is in trouble for belaying off the rap station. Then, when we rap, Ted yells “ROPE!”, throws it, and hits an English tourist who complains loudly. I hear him tell her, “Yeah, that’s why we yell ROPE!” Then, when she is paralyzed with fear on the walk-off, he helps her down, step by step.
Ann has agreed to head out early, before tea, to do this popular climb, provided we return for tea immediately afterward. It works well. We arrive around 7:30 and have Echo Rock to ourselves. After I clip the first bolt Ann persuades me to try climbing some edges to the right, which ends feeling like a 5.10 move. When I’ve done it I insist that she follow the same way (which she does). The climb follows this bumpy sort of arete bulging out of the face. One side of the arete is a slippery-feeling black patina. There’s an exciting mantle on a a sloping hold on this before the final clip and easy runout to the top.
Afterward I mention that we could do one more climb if she wants, but my offer is interpreted as an attempt to weasel out of our agreement (which I promptly keep).
