Mars attacks, first attempt

 We've wanted to try mars attacks for a while but I was always worried it was going to be above my skill level. This time L, me, and our partner JD felt like giving it a shot after this very wet early spring.

We parked at the mescal trailhead. It was crowded even at 8:45am and we could barely snag a spot just because someone had just left. Next time need a better parking strategy.

We hiked chuck wagon to the devil's bridge fire road and then turned and followed mountain project approach directions. In hindsight we should have taken one gully up after the one we did; we took this second gully on the way down and it didn't involve any bushwhacking.

The dot is on the bottom of the good gully and the yellow line is what we did on the way up.

The approach was mostly uneventful and very scenic. You could see the climb most of the way.

It gets specially nice once you leave devil's bridge foot traffic behind.

I lead the first pitch. I originally brought the stick clip to see if I could avoid the run out to the first bolt but it was hilariously high. About 10ft up on the left there's a dihedral with a pocket that takes a good 0.75 camalot in passive mode. It would have held I hope.  I tried stick clipping from there but though I could reach with full extension it was too floppy to succeed.

So I faxed the run out. It was about 5.7 up until clipping the second bolt, which is ok but very scary on the friable Sedona rock. From the third bolt onwards at least you're not worried about breaking holds because there aren't any. The crux move for me was this impossibly slippery smear that only held because of pressure from a very sloping side pull. Oof. I am very happy that went clean.

The first pitch is in the shade the whole morning this time of the year and it was windy so it was shiveringly cold in the belay cave. The two others struggled and fell multiple times on the pitch, I'm very happy i didn't.

At first I saw L scared on the second pitch and wondered how bad it could be. It was worse than i expected 

Most of the time you don't see your feet and the positions are gently overhanging and the holds aren't great. Many are hollow flakes that you could easily pull off the wall if you tried. The beta is often not obvious since you can't see the feet.

I ended up pulling on a few quick draws and asking for two takes while I figured out what holds to use. When I got to the belay neither of the three of us felt like leading the third pitch. You could see a cruxy looking bulge that would have required overhanging jams with no feet outside the crack.

So we rapelled. One 60m would barely make it, a 70m comfortably does. We had two ropes so used them both just in Case.

Next time we'll be better prepared for being scared and hopefully will not chicken out of the overhanging bulge jam.