New FA? at Upper East Fork

On Friday Dylan and I headed up to Upper East Fork in the Jemez Mountains to climb with Chris E, his doggies and Matt Moore. I'd been putting some effort into a project on Monster Wall as had a couple other guys from Los Alamos. There are 2 ways to climb through the crux section and the first time I got on the route i was trying the holds to the right of the bolts which are nasty and thin. The second time I got on it about a month ago the right line of holds had chalk on them and it seemed way more doable. Nice moves compressing on an arete.

It took a month before I was able to make it back up to the wall and we were hiking in through snow which I was happy about because it had been too hot just 1 month ago and the wall bakes in the sun. I hung the draws after warming up and re-learned the moves. There is a long sideways move at the top that had me a bit worried and on the send I barely caught the hold but managed to bear down on it and fight through to the top. Here is a shot that Mat Moore took on his iPhone, the only camera we had, of the send when I was just above the crux. While there are several people that were hoping this route would be 5.14- since it is a relatively appealing line and would be one of the longer routes of the grade in the state making it easier on the body it is likely 5.13c or d, I'm not really sure which, others can decide when they do it.

Matt did the 5.12c, Godzilla Meets Bambie with ease on his second try, only one move kept him from doing it on his first attempt. Chris managed to do all the individual moves on the new route even though he has not really been climbing. Dylan had a blast playing with the dogs and making apple sauce (snow and dirt) and even got to swing a bit.

Now I don't know if either of the other two guys working this had climbed it clean or not. Since there were still quickdraws on it through the hardest section it is safe to assume that one of them was still working on it. So I think that the name of Mike Wazowski (the little one eyes guy from Monsters Inc) is a good name since it is on Monster Wall, for now anyway. Thanks to Josh Smith for bolting and cleaning the line several years ago even though he could not do it himself at the time.