The Golden Toad descent...?

[wr_mizzard]

Hi everybody!
My wife and I finally made a trip out to The Balls after lots of drooling over all of your awesome posts about the place.

With the Spencer guide in hand, we made a cannonball run up there on a Saturday morning from our place in Oakland. We got there around 1pm and decided to run up the Golden Toad for our first route in the Balls. We took the West Face route as it seemed the most obvious line to get up. Nice, easy climbing with good belay ledges and beautiful weather. Once we made it to the summit we found the plethora of shiny bolts without any rings at the summit.

We made our way to the NE looking for the "4th class descent" described in the Spencer guide. Eventually we found the single glue-in with a quick link above what looked to us like a pretty dicey downclimb/descent. We ended up rapping off the single bolt (which I am loath to do) when we couldn't find anything easier to descend. I backed it up with a cam under the flake next to it for my wife's rap, but ended up using the single bolt for my own rap opposed to what looked like a spicey downclimb at the time. From the small boulder pile in the gully below we made the descent to the bottom of the NE side without any problems.

So, my question for those of you who have been up there is whether you guys use this bolt to rap or simply downclimb below it? Or, is there another descent that I was not able to find? We made it down safe and would love to climb the toad again and would appreciate any info on a safe(r) descent.

Thanks in advance,
James and Rhona

[John]

The scrambling descent is complicated to describe and not 100% safe but better than rapping off one bolt.

There is a kind of via ferrata on that face used by the same guiding company that has the million anchors and no rap hardware up there. They string a bunch of fixed ropes between the few bolts on the NE Face and hope no one dies. Seen it ourselves, there were like 50 people all over that face! Looked chaotic. I am guessing the glue-in is one of those bolts.

As you try and scramble down the East side, right about where you start go question if you are going the right way there is a narrowing ledge that heads the opposite direction from the North Face and goes under a boulder at some point. You soon cut back to the North again after a short scramble down a dozen feet or so ( I think you are coming back North now below the boulder). Then once back on the NE shoulder you kinda scramble down overlapping plates and flakes and stuff all the way to the ground. A little unnerving at one point since you do a short low-angle layback but not really dangerous if you have climbing shoes on.

.....or bring a few bail biners for the two dozen bolts up there. There are a ton of sport routes on the North Face now and you could easily rap to one of their anchors from the top with a single rope.....if there was hardware at the top.

Stoked you guys got out there the Balls rule!!

[splitclimber]

Yes, going under the boulder after a couple downclimb moves gets you down. 

All those bolts up there 

did ya climbing anything else? 

[mike a]

Yes there are a couple bolded routes on the toad now, they are pretty fun but they sure squeezed in a lot of bolded routes there, not sure that many climbers will go there and climb them for all that work put in to it, but it gave me something new to check out this season, was at the balls this Wednesday climbing and man the weather was perfect!!! snowing up there today, I sure the road will be blocked by Saturday.

[splitclimber]

I was referring to the scattered bolts on the summit.  It's a head scratcher.

Wished I could have got some days here.

Hope you're well Mike.

[wr_mizzard]

Thanks for the input guys, it'll help us figure it out next time we're up there. I assume the ramp/boulder is to the E/NE of the summit with the shiny bolts, yes?

We didn't get to climb anything else up there this time... it was more of a reconnaissance trip/keeping the spark alive after our annual Rocktober trip to Joshua Tree. I looked at some of the climbs on the north side of the Toad during our walk back to the west side. The rest of the west and the south faces look fun too. And then, everything else up there... yikes! We ended up camping at the curve in the road below Nightwatch and I stared up at that thing all night. We will be back, for sure.

That said, we also had a couple of nice weekends up at Fresno Dome this summer including a couple times up Mike's "Whiskey Bill"... thanks for that Mike.

-James

[susan]

Sweet photos James! Gosh, so nice to see someone else post photos!!!!

Yeah I'm not crazy about one moment in that descent off the Golden Toad, but it has worked out so far w/out epic... Hopefully you'll have a chance to go get that piece of gear before winter takes hold.

I think you are right on as I recall regarding the directional question you ask E to ENE: "I assume the ramp/boulder is to the E/NE of the summit with the shiny bolts, yes?"

[larsj]

Always figured the climb down the back side of the Toad was part of the climb up.-lars