Vietnam-Cat Ba-Ha Long Bay-Tiger Beach PART 2 (Day 55)

Multi pitch on Slo Pony Wall time!

Screw Loose 5.10c goes from the big dark cave above the water to the high dark cave “4 pitches” i.e. about 80 meters.  To get to the multipitch route we had to take a kayak again which after the Ao Nang Tower mess I thought I might never do again.  Oh well, hope we don’t go for another swim.

We got over to the base of the climb in the cave and there was a little rock with about a foot of water on it we could stand on.  Anja flaked the rope into the boat and I climbed to the first bolt in my crocs and hung on it to put my shoes on.  The I climbed another one or two bolts up an belayed from a bolt and a tread I made and brought Anja up.  She climbed all the way to there in her crocs.

Since we were already 1/4-1/2 way up the first pitch I told Anja to look at linking the second pitch in so of course she did and only had to back clean the bolt on the first pitch anchor.

The second pitch was amazing!  As I climbed from the first bolt anchor we traverse out left and up until the to the top of the “cave” where the walls came in and met and then I chimneyed a little and came out the top of the cave.  AMAZING!

These two pictures where pretty much the view from mid way in the second pitch.  Looking forward it is only about as wide as body width and looking down I could see the kayak between my legs while standing on both sides of the wall.

Urs took this picture you can see me in green jacket just come out of the cave while Anja belays from above.  At the top I clipped the anchors and lowered back to the top of the third pitch to belay Anja.

At the top Anja stopped and took these pictures of the view.

Anja lowered off the top pitch down to the belay with me.

And grabbed a couple pictures of us then it was time to rappel down.

Since I didn’t want to get into any rappelling issues, we decided to use every available anchor.

Getting back to the anchor at the top of the first pitch took some difficult backclipping but I got it done.

At the first pitch anchor one more rap to go lets hope the rope doesn’t get soaked.  I hung from our improved boat anchor and Anja stood on the little ledge of rock and we manage to only get the last 5 meters of rope wet.

Into the kayak to paddle over to Tiger Beach where Urs and the sweds were waiting to get picked up.

Surprisingly the junk boat pulled all the way up to the beach and we were able to walk straight onto it.

The trip back through the bay was nice end to the day.

On the boat we had made friends with the other climbers; Tony & Max from the SF Bay area (although Max had been telecommuting from Bishop, CA) and Adam & Carla from Seattle.  We went to Bamboo where this guy was giving massages at the table.