Mental Blocks 12a C1

Wallface Mountain, located in the Adirondacks, is one of the tallest unbroken faces of rock on the northeast, standing at its peak around 600 feet tall. It's 1/5th of El Cap, but its remote nature makes it a damn good adventure. After a relatively tame summer, I somehow got it in my head that climbing Wallface would be a good time, and that maybe a rope solo adventure on the diagonal would be a great time. It seemed like a really great opportunity to get out of Brooklyn, have an adventure, and keep my rope skills sharp. Flipping through the guidebook, I saw Mental Blocks, an aid line that not only goes clean, but also free at around 12a. I quickly decided that I was going to try to rope solo and free every pitch, and started gearing up for the weekend.

I thought about doing the climb overnight. I really wanted to, as the idea of topping out, bivvying on the top, and rapping off the day after seemed really nice.

The approach for Wallface is about three hours each way. You spend most of your time wading through shallow rivers and mud beds that get called a trailed. I wish I'd brought spare socks for the approach, as no matter how careful I was I stepped in water or mud that was much wetter than I thought pretty often. There isn't much elevation gain until you're in the last 30 minutes of the hike, when you start heading up old wooden ladders. Finding the turn off for the wall face approach is also pretty tricky. The guide mentions cairns but there were none to be found off the trail. There's a waterfall and campsite on the right side of the trail. When you look left, you'll see some incredibly faint trails. Follow those maybe 50 yards down until you see a cairn, and start finding your way through the boulders. This was fairly unpleasant since if you get off the standard path, you'll punch through a moss crevasse or two. Not that I did that. The rest of it is steep through lots of foliage and shrub.

The start of the climb involves a pretty chill 5.7ish flake/chimney if I had to guess. However, it was completely soaked and slimed up, so I went to check out the alternate King Can start. The cracks were filled with dirt and grass, but it seemed like it would go. I flaked my rope, attached it to a tree, and flipped my grigri upside and got going. I embarrassingly had to aid some bits so I could get out my nut tool and dig out placements. Due to all of the shrubs and traversing nature of the pitch, I had to carry the rope in my pack instead of the original plan of having my rope stay at the anchor. This ended up being kind of a heavy pack, because I totally forgot to add attachment points to my water and various other bits, so that all had to stay in the pack.

I got to the top of the pitch and underneath the lightning bolt crack. I rapped back down, cleaned up the anchor, threw on my micro and ran up the pitch. However, I forgot something on the ground, so I had to do it all again.

The lightning bolt crack is more of a hands/fist sized flake. I onsighted this lead rope soloing, and my god it was really really fun. Doing it again on the trax was as much fun. Seriously a sick little pitch.

The 5.11 traverse ended up being a fun aid pitch, however it was completely soaked. Getting out of the traverse was the tricky. I actually ran into an issue here. I didn't realize that rapping and cleaning traverses solo was not that easy, and in reality you sort of need to down aid the pitch, or use your tagline to rap to the anchor. I did not bring a tag line so yeah, ended up being a huge PITA. I left a lot of gear at the top belay, so when I got to the base of the roof, I had an oh shit moment. I didn't have the pieces I needed to re-aid the roof. I put a biner on a fixed nut and lowered out.

From here you're at a semi hanging belay, and you get right into a 5.10 up and right hand traverse. The crack starts pretty small, mostly taking nut placements. This was a pretty quick aid pitch, built an anchor, and this time rapped fairly gracefully as I left a lot more pieces in.

The 5.7R pitch that followed was completely wet. I was climbing in a pair of approach shoes with some pretty aggressive climbing shoes in the pack for the harder pitches, and the idea of trying to knock out the pitch with a heavy pack on just didn't seem that fun. After staring at the slab for a bit, I decided that it wasn't worth the risk, especially since I didn't have service, was alone, and a sprained ankle with a 3 hour approach seemed not great. One mega 60m rap got me to the ground. It took a lot of tugs to get my new beal escaper to release, but that piece of kit was really nice to have.

Overall, I'm really happy with the experience. It was remote, adventurous, got my brain going, and I had fun. I got to play with a lot of new toys, and took home some cool learnings about rope soloing (specifically, traversing pitches really need more thought).

Short list of thoughts

The Arcteryx FL40 pack, while light, sucks to pack. It's especially trying to flake a rope into the bag with that internal rolling collar.
Connect Adjust sucks for aiding, should've brought my evolv adjusts instead. Really hard to release under load.
The kong futura ascender is not that pleasant when trying to jug over a bulge, Without the hand guard, you kind of scrape your knuckles a lot. Might just be bad jugging technique though.
Climbing with a tag line would've made the process of rappeling and cleaning pitches much simpler. I opted for lightness, but next time would gladly take something I can fix and jug on.
Edelrid Swift Protect is a really really nice rope, and fed perfectly through a grigri+ for lead rope soloing.