| Had quite an experience on Stripe Rock. It was evening and I talked my buddy into climbing it via Cruel Shoes even though we realized we might have to rappel at dusk. The climb up all three pitches went smooth, and my buddy told me how glad he was that I talked him into it. Neither one of knew where the rap down was, and for some unknown reason we didn't think about just rapping down the route (we were the only ones on it). So we wandered south as the sunset and noticed a shrub with some webing around it. We tied our two ropes together (giving us 62 feet of rappel length) and down went my buddy in the failing light. As luck would have it he barely reached a ledge about 40 feet about the ground that was down climbable. When I reached the ledge I tried to pull the ropes but they were stuck; too much friction. In the dark my buddy climbed back up, and found nothing wrong, but for good measure he reset the anchor and rappeled back down stopping every once and a while to see if he could pull the rope. Reaching the ledge at the button of the cap E on the east face of Stripe Rock he stopped and pulled the rope. Then he wrapped the rope around a large rock and dropped back down to the orginal ledge. Again, we couldn't pull the rope. It was after 11:00 pm by now, so we had to leave the rope and come back the next day to get it. The walk out to the car in the dark was fun!!!
Long story short, use the single double rope rappel on the west side. Avoid the east aspect rappel from the shrub at the south end. |
