I agree. I climbed borderline a couple of years ago and rather than finishing off by continuing up Angel’s Crest, we rapped down the gully. big mistake. Loose rocks are scattered at every ledge. We rained rocks down. The first rappeler had to seek umbrage before the second could descend. To make it worse, there were many rappels.

Not a good decision.

i had my own adventure doing the very thing about 19 years ago. my buddy Al and i were climbing the angels crest route, and we managed to get off route in the dark way up high maybe a pitch or so below the top. the two of us were sitting on a little ledge and trying to eat a sandwich, but having run out of water well back, we couldn’t get anything down. i chewed the same bite for 10 minutes for spitting it out puh. i recall looking down as the lights from the squamish 7eleven came on and bitterly dreaming of big gulps. we rapped off from some precarious gear and gladly headed for the gully escape. we hadn’t heard any rock fall for a while and scrambled in. instantly we had dicey rappels. slinging a boulder, i rapped off into the darkness, not knowing if the rope would get me down or not. looking down into the darkness with my headlamp, i just saw rope going straight down til the light couldn’t penetrate the dark any further. my backup plan was a couple of prusiks, not the best situation but dehydration was driving me downwards. The ropes reached, barely… Al joined me and we went to pull our rope.. no chance. i ended up tying the rope to my harness and taking runs down the gully til it started to move. Then we began several scrambles followed by rappels in the pitch black off the edge into no man’s land. we were a little rattled but once you do the first rap, you’re committed. and there was 7eleven, getting a little closer. finally after one of the rappels, i found water dripping off the rocks in the back of a cave like feature. i scraped out a little pool from the rocks and in a few minutes was drinking delicious water. Screw you 7eleven you bastards! To pass the time we came up with many different thoughts of how we’d sell all our climbing gear and take up wind surfing or something flat. we finally crawled out of the gully of doom at dawn. i remember that day we went and bought beer and just lay down at the base of the chief and got drunk.
definitely a memorable night but one i wouldn’t recommend to anyone. always thought the inclusion in the guide books was a sandbag, and it is.

Yeah, Boyd and I almost got nailed at the base of Polaris on Saturday when some bumblies were rapping into the gully. They sent down 3 or 4 softball/football sized chunks to within 1 metre of the base of the route (where we were sitting).