Ah Finally no server full error message - this was last weekend:
Well we made it but it wasn't without a
string of ill-starred incidents and bad decisions by the Andy (me). I
guess I'll look at it as a character development day...
So lets get started... we first got confused on where to park, and ended up
parking in a giant mud pit, nearly getting stuck off of the right side of the
eastbound highway, right after the bridge over moffett creek So
anyway we got out and headed up to trail 400. I saw a well defined route
heading what looked like up the east
ridge of moffett creek branching off of trail 400
before we got to the creek and ofcourse I had to investigate. Maybe it
was a new trail bypassing the creek that would lead us to wahe? Soon, it
began to climb too much (I think this turns out to be the Munra Point trail,
doh!) and I decided we best just head down to the creek. So the
bushwhacking began down to the creek. Soon, and about 20 yards to late we
realized something very bad - we were swimming in poison oak. It came out
of nowhere and about 10 steps later nearly every single plant was poison oak,
yikes, EPIC!
Swimming in urushiol anyone?
Desperately trying to get away I began to bomb down an impossibly muddy and
crumbly slope to the creek. 20 feet down I realized there was a 30 or so
foot cliff I couldn't get around, and back up I would have to go, luckily Linds
had not followed me (Smart girl!) Well, I can't remember being stuck
worse than I was for a few minutes there. I could NOT move upwards,
everything crumbled and slid. It was about 3 inches of mud caked on a
giant slab of basalt, and to make it even more entertaining there was all that
poison oak to dodge. Ugh I screamed and swore so loud that no bear within
5 miles would have been surprised to see us! I eventually, barely managed
to shimmy up the slope, and back into poison oak land. I cannot describe
how much PO was on the east slope of moffett
canyon, DO NOT GO HERE!
Ok, finally we just went like previous trip reports said we should to the
moffett creek bridge and began our journey, after a short bath in tenu of
course. The creek, with all that snowmelt is running nice and high, the
going with the brush and crappy creek crossings was more difficult than I would
have thought given the well worn paths that are supposed to exist from
geochachers (no sign of these by the way), and also we refused to get more than
about 10 vertical feet about the creekbed as we were now absolutely horrified
by how much poison oak we had run into up on those slopes! Anyway we made
our way upstream without incident.
First, and probably the easiest creek ford.
When we reached moffett falls it was time to really tecnu and rise in the
splash pool. It was direct sunlight at this time, so I did my best, but
was mainly hoping to get to and scope out the chute.
Well, the chute, it really looks pretty easy... but we had a problem, it was
wet. Most of the left side was dry/maybe a bit damp but not slippery wet,
but the right side... it was a dripping, soaking wet and mossy weeping wall,
just as slippery as any rock in the stream. To make a long story short i
stood basically underneath lindsay, held her feet in place and sort of pushed
her up, of course she still had to do some serious climbing. The top part
of the chute can definitely be characterized by a dramatic lack of hand holds
and foot holds. Surely advanced rock climbers could figure it out, but it
was rough for us, especially with the wetness, the entire right side was
unusable.
Here is lindsay paused and barely stable as she it she is getting out of reach
for me. A few more inches and I can't hold her feet anymore, so she had
some major work to do. Note how both hands are on the same non-gooey/wet
handhold on the left, that's basically it for the next few feet. I gotta
be honest and say I don't know how she did it from here!
She made it up and I tossed her my rope, but of course since I don't ever use
it it's just sort of in-emergency rope, it's 1/5" plastic marine line,
used to tie up boats! Slippery, and nothing to grip. Well... no
details, it was terrible, but i basically pulled myself up the chute with that
rope wrapping it around my red, then white, then purple, then green hand.
I was wobbling in fear and hanging on for what felt like dear life most the
time!
Then we learned the joys of pulling our packs up 50 feet, what a bicep workout.
For the next error, I went exploring back towards the north on top of the
chute, trying to find that easier route of the east slope that we could use to
get back down, avoiding the treacherous chute. As I could have predicted
I ran into prohibitive, like neck high epic poison oak... there would be no
going back this way! In my attempt to dodge it I took off my camera bag
for balance, set it down, and just like Greg, subsequently watched it tumble
down and over the cliffs surrounding Moffett
Falls. Goodbye
camera I thought, I just hoped my $$$ GPS unit Garmin 60Csx survived!
The cliffs of doom were a cakewalk, but of course plenty of poison oak, right
in the places you have nowhere else to go! I was sans camera from this
point on, sorry for the lack of photos. The only camera was packed deep
in Lindsay's backpack at this point. Some more bumbling later we reached
wahe falls! Shorter than I thought but very enchanting and
refreshing. By stitching 4 shots together at times and extensive
photoshop I got some decent results out of Lindsay's little point and shoot
here. Boy, I wish I had my big camera though!
Lots of water moving over the lower tier of wahe falls.
Well we then made our way back. For the next in our string of bizarre
incidents as I was hopping across the creek and heard one of my water bottles
fall out of my pack and dunk into the creek.
It was full so I turned around to pick it up off the bottom but I
turned, surprised to see it had fallen into the main flow and was now floating
downstream. I chased it for a couple of
seconds but soon it was gone, I watched from a rock perch as a bright orange
floating water bottle floated away, down, and then over the brink of Moffatt
falls! I have no idea how far it ever
went, so if anyone finds a distinctive nalgene-like bottle that is shaped like
and easter island
stone statue sometime later this year in the Columbia, it’s mine!
Back along the cliffs of doom I had had ENOUGH with the
poison oak and picked up a stick and basically beat a couple of the most
annoying/tall pants to a pulp. I was pleasantly surprised to find poison
oak is rather delecate and after 20 swings or so I had successfuly cut it down,
with a few anger smacks for good measure.
At the top of the chute I removed some rope leftovers from previous parties and
prepared for a wild ride down the chute. I have read a hundred times how
to gonzo rappel without a harness thinking "one day I will need to know
this." Well what do you know - I never actually practiced it - I sat
there for 5 minutes trying to remember and basically got nowhere, as I stared
down the 30 nearly vertical feet to the bottom I guess I froze up and couldn't
remember what to do. Terrible terrible I know, that sort of freezing up
is what gets many people killed in survival and outdoors situations, I am quite
disappointed with myself honestly for failing to remember what to do but oh
well... I clutched the rope, took one step and promptly went into near free
fall. I had wrapped the rope a couple of times around my wrist so at the
expense of an extreme rope burn at least my fall was stopped halfway down the
chute. I loosened my grip and on the slippery rocks... bam next step
another fall straight down. This time though I was clutching the rope
even tighter and fell a bit slower. My shin slammed into a rock at the
bottom and before i knew it I was miraculously unhurt standing at the bottom of
the chute. Badly bruised, but ok. Now it was Lindsay’s turn, and
her adventure was nearly identical to mine down the chute. But this time,
I was at the bottom and was able to catch her. She came out uninjured
too. Luckily the rope came off the tree up there with an bit of tugging
and we were on our way back, successfully having left no trace, awesome.
One thing is for sure, the chute was much more challenging than we
expected. Bring a rope and an experienced climber/scrambler! It was
definitely outside of our skill level and the crappy equipment we had. We
were VERY lucky to not have an injury.
We found my camera and low and behold it worked, thanks camera bag!
As we made our way back to the car we began seeing some wild, majorly obvious
pink and black striped ribbon flagging going up the munra point trail. We
must have just missed the person we thought, as that surely wasn't there on the
way in. As we approached the car, all we could see was the flashing
lights of a sheriffs car pulled off the road, right next to our car. OH
S*** we thought, damn, knew we shouldn't have parked there!!! As we came
farther up though we saw a scary scene:
Turns out someone going up Munra point was having severe, incapacitating chest
pains, or something like that. Anyway we wanted to drive away before the
sheriff got off his cell phone so we said thank you and drove off. Hope
that guy turns out to be ok!
So anyway if we just would have made some smarter decisions and not been so
traumatized by the posion oak all about it might have been a nicer trip but in
the end we made it there and back in one piece and thank you to tecnu, niether
of us are itching (yet?)!
It's been said in every thread about Wahe falls but one must take the warnings about it seriously. The chute is nearly vertical and made out of moss and dirt just waiting for you to grab hold so it can crumble, and you could certainly hurt yourself badly if you had a fall whilst negotiating it. It's definitely a no problem obstacle for even an average rock climber or scrambler, but Lindsay and I aren't even begginers, hence our situation! The cliffs of doom on the other hand we thought was easy, really no drama there. In any case, go prepared, stay near the creek, bring a rope, secure your camera, tie down your water bottles and enjoy your trek to Wahe!
Andy