Mike Schmitt and I folllowed our noses to the sweet granite again this weekend, but this time it was of a slabbier variety. We hiked up the logging road (blocked by some fallen trees a half-mile before the boulders described in Nelson's guide), eyeing peaks across the valley, and then turned onto a faint trail, covered in soft pine branches, that leads up to the base of On Line. The huge clean slab of Static Point suddenly appears at the top of the trail, an amazing sight.

After sorting and packing gear, we scrambled down and right toward the approach pitch, which leads from the start of Lost Charms up and right to Spencer's Spaceport, a wide U-shaped ledge. From the Spaceport, we kept simulclimbing up the right side to the Old Milwaukee Tree and the start of our route, Fuddhat (see Nelson vol. II).

It took a little while to get reacquainted to slab climbing, but after a couple pitches, we were smearing and balancing pretty well. Falling on lead wasn't as bad as I thought it might be (on the pure slab pitches) and there were more bolts than I was expecting, given Static Point's reputation. Each pitch was exciting and thought-provoking, to be sure.

The first three pitches to Long Ledge (Fuddhat) are clean slab climbing, but above that the rock steepens and becomes more featured. I thought pitch four, the first pitch of Kill da Wabbit, would be relatively casual after the insecure friction we had just climbed, but it turned out to be the scariest lead I've ever done. Big runouts above rusty bolts, dirt that necessitated constant shoe-cleaning, smearing traverses, thin face climbing, and mantels onto small ledges combined to give me the heebie-jeebies. A ten-foot-tall, thin, hollow, flexible flake topped it all off. I felt somewhat ill as I brought Mike up on belay.

The last pitch was wild! It started off with a steep face move and mantel right off the belay and never really let up. Every time Mike thought he was done with the crux, another hard move would appear. In the interest of time, I heartily applied la technique francaise to a couple of the bolts.

It was an incredible climb, but one that sapped my mental energy. We had moved more slowly than we had hoped to and it didn't seem likely that we'd be adding Lost Charms to the day's itinerary. After a few snacks and a welcome rest, we started rappelling into faint shadows.

On the first rap, we swung to climber's left and ended up at the Total Fudd anchors, below the big roof. In hindsight, this was probably a good idea, since rappelling down our ascent route would have put the creaky flake atop pitch four right in line with our pulled ropes. We replaced some ancient webbing with a bit of cord, added a rap ring, and got to Long Ledge on the next rappel, from which we followed our line of ascent back down to the Old Milwaukee Tree. A bit of scrambling led to another rappel station on the left side of the Spaceport.

Mike's 8mm static rap cord had been tangling more with each rappel, but it gave us a real hassle by getting caught behind a loose block as we pulled it down from the last anchor. Mike saved the day by leading up on the other rope to retrieve the cord, then downclimbed some slab moves back to the ledge.

We passed a curious bolt again on the scramble back to our packs: it was placed smack in the middle of a groove that you have to step across and sported a fat new hanger. The moves getting down to the bolt were scarier than those protected by the bolt, so it seemed a bit out of place.

Hiking out was pleasant, as evening fell and cooled us off. The forest trail was soft and springy with pine needles and we caught glimpses of alpenglow on the peaks upvalley. We got back to the car just after 8pm, 11 hours after we started, and Mike raced down the road toward Mexican food and beer.