Vietnam-Cat Ba Island-Butterfly Valley (Day 59)

Anja was excited to get back out to Butterfly Valley to climb again.  We’d have a full day of climbing and our little USA climber family of Tony, Max, Adam, and Carla would all be out.  We rented a motor bike and set out from Cat Ba Town.  At the normal gas up stop we got pretty annoyed because we opened our gas tanks too quick and where not yelling at the attendant so when in the blink of an eye instead of putting in 1 liter of gas he put in 2 liters in each bike.  This sort of thing was really starting to annoy us.  Tomorrow we would be smarter.  The trip out to Butterfly Valley went really smooth.

We warmed up on Pond Wall on the three smiley face classic Mother Butterfly 6a which some one was always on.  It was ok but not really classic.

Next we headed up the 6a+ which shares the start with the 6a.  It pretty cruiser up a slanting ramp until the top of the climb with a hard finder crack lieback more.

After that we were both ready to push the grade and headed to the super cool looking 6c on the left edge of the Dragon Cave. 

Anja led it first and pulled through to the anchors without much problem.  Since there were so many bolts I gave it a short but I pumped out two bolts from the anchor and hung.  It was a good push for me on a 6c and I would have been excited to have on-sighted it.

After her success on the 6c Anja was feeling vindicated from her heavy gravity day three days ago and let me talk her into trying the 7a Urs had led the previous day.  She fired through the steep tuffa and stalactite start no problem and made the rest on top of them.  She headed up from there with no beta and when she hit the face crux she with a fall potential she backed off and hung.  It too her a couple of tries before she figured out the sequence and finished out the climb.  I  followed the route and was happy to get through the start without hanging but was gased out after that.  I failed up the rest of the route and set to lower.  While I did Adam and Carla came over and Adam was giving the route a shot so I clipped to a bolt to get some shots from above.

Adam on the start.

Adam flashed it for the on-site and was pretty happy.

Back in Cat Ba Town we got Pho with Adam, Carla, and Tony.  It was pretty good and cheap at 40 dong ($2).