Anyone that wants to jug up in the rain on an anchor that consists of two fixed pins is welcome to go for it...
Kevin, thanks for a great day. I haven't felt that committed to a lead in a long time.
BTW, I just did what I said I would do; I looked at every other 5.9 in the guidebook, and I don't recall any one of them scaring me that much. Perhaps Cleaver Buttress - Direct and/or Happily Married Bachelor come the closest.
It wasn't the fear of dying - the replacement bolts took care of that. I think it was the length and steepness of the possible falls combined with the amount of loose rock and the totally unknown nature of the climbing (it looked so much harder than 5.9, yet the way I went only felt like stiff 5.9).
I'll never lead that pitch again, that's for certain. And to think that Denny and Colliver called the route 5.8! Talk about being bad-ass bad-asses, those two were the cream of the crop. It's a shame that so few people seem to know of their exploits there (the routes Daedalus and Denny-Colliver Direct, both also on Machete, are of the same nature).
Great work on the A3 pitch so far - you didn't have all that much to work with. I'm pretty confident that we'll put this one to rest on Saturday or Sunday.
(And those two pins at the anchor are backed up by one bomber cam and one good cam.)
