friday, should have been a rest day. spontaneously met up with justin at the quarry... I really wanted to get on redrum. ended up wiring ground zero. really really good dihedral. randomly met up with old old friend seth lindeman. stoked that he is stoked on climbing too.
trip to joshua tree.
went out to joshua tree early saturday morning with michael hass. we met up with his aunt, uncle, cousin, and two other friends--at painted cove. got up 5 trad climbs, and one face. face was technical, slabby, and i felt like i was desperately geckoing up sandpaper. all day i belayed mike as he led the cracks, and then followed him up and cleaned the cams and nuts. the highlight of the day was thia 5.10 finger crack called the v crack i think. i got pUmped. that thing munched my finger bones!
that night his aunt made us a great meal, with spices from nepal, a chicken curry dish out of this world, or country at least. we burned wood and chatted/laughed it up around the fire for more than a couple hours. thank YOU daylight savings.
sunday was really fun.
first thing we hit was this full pitch 5.9 called dog leg. most fun i have ever had on TR. funky start that was hard to protect led to handjams, and then a heady lieback. props to mike for leading that. and for that matter, the other dozen pitches he hauled me up! topped out, and saw ariel walking down the path, hollered, and met up, day couldnt have gone better. from there we climbed a few more cracks, and ended the day on this really balancy and technical sport face called grandpa woolsly or something. this was all located at intersection rock.
forgot to mention that mike's family had a beefy turbo diesel truck that was running off of vegetable oil from pick up stix in poway. inspiring.
i learned alot this weekend. i used to think that agro heelhooks and overexagerrated backsteps were the epitome and end-all of climbing 'style'. no. crack climbing is sick. offwidth, fingers, ring locks, finger locks, chimneys. it is soooo not deliberate, and not straightforward. it truly takes intuition, loads of skill, and experience. watching somebody who knows how to crack climb well, hike up a burly crack, placing pro wisely and efficiently, smoothly transitioning his techniques, is truly amazing, exciting, and beautiful! it is wild that both pulling on 4 move plastic boulder problems and cruising up a runout splitter, are considered the same art: rockclimbing. the comparision is more drastic than comparing a 12 year old playing nba2k to baron davis. i am in no way trying to demean or futilize -word? the former, in anyway, i partake, but am merely attempting to illustrate the vast stark difference.
apart from sharing good conversation and good recreation with close friends ariel and mike, the most fun i had all weekend was cleaning the cracks. i learned a shload from analyzing and removing each piece of pro that mike placed on each route. that was priceless in and of itself.
some end thoughts. joshua tree is still intimidating. sustained cracks are beautiful. i do not share mike's fixation with off widths, and never will. roomy synthetic sleeping bags kill goosedown, thanks for the reality check heggi and chatigny. dont buy a basspro cot unless you can bench fly with 90 pound dumbells, and have shoulders of steel. belaying from above aint all that bad. 2+ foot rabbits exist. climbing is so BA.
1 comment:
You have a blog? Cool.
I am going to climb with you soon.
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