Mark Pratt (1997)

I attempted this route in my first year of climbing.  My partner, Patrick, had even less lead experience than I.  This was my first wall of any size and I was pretty impressed by the horizontal as well as vertical scale of the face.  We didn't know any better so we did the chimney first pitch which was scrambly and strenuous as I recall.  The second pitch is still pretty vivid though.  I traversed out right onto the slab from the top of the pinacle and ran it out a ways to the first bolt - a horrifying bent thing that I could wiggle by hand.  At this point I was looking at a 40+ foot fall followed by a pendulum into the pillar.  I just skipped the bolt and traversed up and left to the pillar again where I could get in a cam.  Then with an inordinate amount of rope  drag I traversed back onto the pitch and soon found myself at the crux, a 10' section of thin face climbing.   It isn't immediately obvious that this is the route since there is a bolt up and left.  I climbed a crack/lieback to the bolt, clipped, then downclimbed and had a partial TR for the crux.  The difficulty quickly drops and before you know it you're at the anchors.  The next pitch was a 5.10 traverse which was a little difficult to protect with our skimpy selection of gear.  Patrick took a fall following but the gear held.  There was some effort expended getting him back up to the route since the face is rather blank below the traverse.  The next pitch was a straightforward lieback on shiny new bolts.  By this time Patrick was pretty much into the swing of things and wanted to take a shot at leading the 5.9 pitch.  After clipping a fixed pin right out of the belay, he managed to get a small stopper which shortly came zinging on down the rope.  That was it until the crux right at the end of the pitch.  He took a while getting through the crux and we could not hear each other as the wind was blowing pretty steady.  I did catch enough of his yelling to know that he was looking at the full tumble if he popped.  He didn't.  The next pitch was more thin face.  I took a short fall onto a rivet.  Finishing this pitch with a hand traverse put us at the base of the Split Pillar.  Our progress had been slow and it was already mid-afternoon.  Although it's fairly straightforward, the Pillar is a little intimidating.  Escape from below the Pillar is very easy but it become more difficult above.  We decided to back off and try again another day.

I didn't get up to Squamish to try the Grand Wall again until the summer of 1991.  I went with Eric, a lunatic with whom I'd had other adventures.  We decided that we would travel light and just make sure to finish the route.  We took a modest rack and a single rope so that retreat wasn't an appealing option.  We swapped leads every two pitches which sped things up a little.  I had the first two pitches which turned out to be much less trouble than my first try.  We bypassed the chimney with a 10- lieback pitch and the second pitch had a couple of new bolts so the serious fall was no longer an issue.  Eric polished off his pitches with the greatest of ease, leaving me with the easiest pitch followed by the crux pitch on Cruel Shoes.  Both were uneventful and we were at the Pillar in good time.  Eric led the Pillar in good styled,  using only natural pro (avoiding the bolt at mid pitch).  The Sword of Damocles slowed Eric down a little but he pulled through with no falls.  In 1991 there was a ratty old rope over a short A0 section.  Climbing this put us on a ledge where we had a choice to either ascend an A0 bolt ladder straight up or traverse left and free climb a slab undercling, one of the 5.11 cruxes of the climb.  We opted for the latter and both took a fall near the end of the undercling.  The next pitch was a little marshy to start.  My memory isn't completely clear on the remaining climbing to Bellygood Ledge.  I recall two 5.10 undercling sections, at least one of which I led - I remember feeling some exposure at the time.  We arrived at Bellygood in about 8 hours climbing time.  We didn't have the drive to press on with the Roman chimneys but we did ditch the gear and scramble to the hut and scope them out.  We returned to the gear and exited the climb off the ledge via an airy third class traverse.  The scramble down was uneventful and we arrived back at the car with enough daylight to get some climbing in at Little Smoky Bluffs.