I climbed Orbit with my buddy Peter Chapman. Orbit is described in the guides as an 800', 8 pitch, 5.8/5.9 climb on the Snow Creek Wall near Leavenworth, Washington. The route runs quite close to the more famous "Outer Space" which is described as a 5.9/10 climb.
Peter led all the pitches on Orbit: I was just not up to it (my excuse is that I still haven't recovered all my upper body strength since Denali, but the reality is that in my best shape I wouldn't be able to lead the tough 3rd, 4th and 5th pitches).
I fell on the 5.9 pitch, as well as in an awkward chimney on the 2nd pitch, which is a 5.8 move. Quite humbling.
On the OTHER hand, Peter did an awesome job leading. On the 5th pitch (which is described in the guide as 'a little runout'), which is 5.6, Peter was at least 30 feet above his pro. You can say, 'it's only 5.6' if you want, but *I* sure as hell wouldn't want to climb it: if you fell, there's all sorts of chicken heads and ledges that you'd hit on the way down for 60 ft.
It was a brutally hot day - predicted temperatures were in the mid-90s (35 C.). I don't know if it got that hot in the valley, but I'm sure that next to the rock, where we were, it made that easily. Both Peter and I got extremely dehydrated. We both took brought 2 literes of water and took 1 litre each on the climb - 3 litres each for the climb would have been a more reasonable amount, but there was no way we wanted to carry that much up (even if we'd brought the extra amount). Oh well, nothing beats an ice-cold coke when you get back down to town ( or two or three - I drank 3 litres of liquid within an hour and a half of getting back down and I didn't feel bloated at all - my body had turned into a giant sponge).
These pictures are an experiment: I used a cheapo digital camera I got
at Costco. I still haven't got into the attitude of 'snap a pic', so there's
not that many. On the OTHER hand :-), Peter's got some terrific pictures here:
Peter's Picts
