People often ask how we could have possibly spent 39 days and nights on this route.  There are many reasons, but one of them is that 1982 was an amazingly wet year.  Water ran down the slab almost constantly, which seriously impeded our free climbing efforts (and we were determined to try to free climb any section that looked promising).  So, we sometimes had to wait until the afternoon when the water dried up before we could work on a free section.  We also lost many days to storms.  Here is a view of the fifth pitch bivy just before a massive gust of updraft (as the next picture will show) brought in sheets of rain.

Because we were already rationing food by this point, we adopted a new policy: rain days were lost days, so we would not eat at all on rain days.  Lying on your back in a porta-ledge with rain pouring down all around, and not being able to eat, felt very much like the typical punishment, "Junior, go to your room."  Except that the "room" was pretty Spartan indeed.