Not the B-Y

The Bachar-Yerian, for those who don't know, is regarded as the classic hard frightener of California, if not the usa. Despite some effort, Dan and I did not climb this. Which came as quite a surprise to us, given the bold wall climbing we've done and the handy supertopo grade table making it sound about French 6c. This goes to show how wrong I can be.
Persuaded by the guide that the sun would be on the wall from mid morning, we decided an early start would not provide any better conditions. The sun was just coming onto the wall when we arrived at 11.30, having evidently wasted the primo conditions of the day. Dan won paper scissors stone and took the first pitch. He split a tip (more a surgical gash than a split) and had to lower off. Using Dan's beta I got through the crux and kept going through the dangerous part, which felt a good E6 in its own right. I lowered off the second pitch, having climbed down after scaring myself high above a bolt, lost in a sea pc knobs. Some of these weird identical protrusions are tiny crimps, but most are only there to deceive you into thinking they may offer a hold. Ryan P, we later found out, took a 70ft fall from this pitch when he went off route and snapped a hold. We beat a hasty retreat.
Neither Dan nor I took this particular failure particularly well. It's obvious that failure is the essential contrast that makes success meaningful and stops victory from being hollow, but i find this cold comfort when I want to do a route. For me, post failure blues is brought on because I assessing my climbing ability as not good enough. However, sat in camp 4, I realised the futility of basing an evaluation on a route I have no prior experience of. It's a bit like choosing the yardstick against which to measure yourself without knowing how long a yard is. By getting on the route I learnt some of its idiosyncratic challenges. If the route then turns out to be too hard for you, it only disproved your preconceptions. Our perception of the B-Y was wrong from the start, and we are still the same climbers.
That route deserves some respect, and I have been left strangely proud to have been on it. It was still a great experience, but one that starved the ego to feed the soul.