But we did have the weekdays to "rest" (haha, school=rest, yeah right...) after our Indian Creek trip, which if nothing else did help my knuckles heal a bit and stop oozing whenever I touched something.
The agenda for this weekend was to take my sister Maddy to do some fun outside rock climbing, as she was visiting for a couple days after her junior year college tour trip with my dad. She's stuck in the gym most of the time up there in Bremerton, so visiting SoCal at this time was a perfect opportunity to return to JTree, which she'd been to a couple years ago (3?).
We were going to drive out and camp on Friday night, but when we left at 7:30, traffic going out of Pasadena still seemed a little heavy and Luke and I were worried about reliving our previous Friday night experience - small campsite wedged between very noisy neighbors. So we went back home, watched a movie, and resolved to get up early (5:30am) the next morning.
We did manage to get up, so we arrived at the Split Rocks parking lot at around 8am. We walked out to the Future Games Wall to climb Bendix Claws (5.11a), which Luke and I had both done on TR before. Everyone toproped it - Luke and I were both thinking about going for the lead, which I didn't because I wasn't quite feeling my granite mojo after a week on IC sandstone. Luke, however, did go for the lead and got the redpoint! A cool route for sure - I still want to redpoint it some day.
Then we headed out to a boulder problem we'd seen walking back from Equinox last time - Slashface (V3) - a tall, nice-looking problem with a series of horizontal crimp rails (that look like slashes) running across it. Luke sent the problem, while Maddy and I struggled with the crux - a long reach off a pretty crappy crimp.
Maddy and Luke working Slashface:
After this we went over to the Rusty Wall so I could try to onsight Wangerbanger (5.11c). Unfortunately, there were a bunch of people already over there, with the route in question occupied for several more climbers. Luke and Maddy TRed O'Kelley's Crack (5.10c) and then we decided to go work on Gunsmoke since it seemed silly to waste Maddy's singular day in JTree waiting in line for a route I could come back and do any time.
So, to Gunsmoke we went. Luke did some laps, Maddy fought with the short person crux (she's a little shorter than me, so she was trying some different beta) and I got the closest to sending I've ever been. I got through the short person crux and to the corner (before jumping off to save energy) after starting not at the beginning, then linked the short person crux through the normal crux before falling - so close to the send! But by then I was getting tired, so the send will have to wait for another day.
On Sunday, I had to go play in a frisbee tournament with my team, so Luke and Maddy went to Stoney Point with Julie to do some more bouldering. I think they had a lot of fun and I hope Maddy enjoyed the taste of SoCal climbing that we were able to give her in the short time she was here.
Maddy and Julie bouldering at Stoney Point
Next weekend will probably find us in Tahquitz climbing some more granite cracks!
1 comment:
Ha ha I love how Maddy was here for 2/3 days and climbed at both JTree and SP. Way to be efficient. :)
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