Maine Wedding

Adam, one of my best friends and climbing partner from Bucknell got married this past weekend. Lizzy and I flew out to the east coast for the ceremony and a bit of pre-wedding climbing.

We were able to see my mom in Boston on Wednesday for dinner and then drove up to Rumney Thursday morning with Rebecca who flew in from Detroit. A nice storm on Wednesday night dropped the temps about 20 degrees and made the summer a bit more bearable.

It was still a bit humid during our day in Rumney with a large helping of bugs. Regardless it was a great day of climbing and I was able to finish off some projects. More posts about that later once we get all the photos together.

The wedding up in rural Maine was spectacular and it was good to see many friends from Bucknell. We are scattered all over the country now and it is tricky to get everyone back together. From California to Texas, Maine to Michigan, Massachusetts to North Carolina, everyone has spread out from humble Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
I just wanted to give my best wishes to Adam and Kearah Donato who are off in Hawaii enjoying the Sun, Sea and Sand!

You two are great and I am sure the years to come will be amazing!

- Luke

Fourth of July at The Needles

It's Monday again and we're again recovering from another trip to the Needles. This time, we headed out with Stein, Luke's friend from the gym, and Stein's visiting friend Traian. After a brutal 9+ hour drive from San Diego (complete with horrendous LA traffic) and a stop at Bakersfield's sketchiest grocery store and gas station, we arrived at the trailhead camping just before midnight. Luckily for us, Traian's friend Olivier, who had driven down from the Bay Area, had already arrived and staked out the last campsite for us.

The next morning, we packed up the gear and water and headed off on the long approach (the first hike is always the hardest because there are more hills on the way in and you have all the gear the first day). Luke and I left with a little headstart so we could rest and wait at the base of the Fire Lookout stairs.

Taking a break on the hike in.

After finally reaching the Charlatan/Witch notch, Luke and I racked up and walked up to the top of the Charlatan, where we rapped in to the base of Spooky, a classic, wild 5.9. Stein, Traian, and Olivier headed up the 3rd class approach to the base of the 2nd pitch of Airy Interlude, which they planned to do as a warm-up since their objective on the Sorcerer was still in the sun.

Luke at the base of Spooky.

Since we managed to rap to the base of Spooky in one 60m rappel, we figured we could probably climb it in a single pitch (although it's usually 2 pitches). Luke headed up the initial handcrack/layback corner, grunted up the offwidth, and had a blast on the money part of the pitch, wild climbing between granite tufas. I struggled on the offwidth, but still enjoyed the upper part - quite unusual climbing for granite.

Looking up at Spooky from the base.

Meanwhile, the trio made good time on Airy Interlude. We had a great (though distant) view of them from our position on the Charlatan. I was pretty tired from the approach hike and grunting past the Spooky offwidth, so we relaxed on the summit of the Charlatan for a bit to eat our sandwiches.

View of the Witch from the top of the Charlatan.

Chillin' atop the Charlatan after climbing Spooky.

Afterwards, we all met back in the notch and headed over to the east face of the Sorcerer to try 2 classic routes. Stein and crew planned on climbing the Don Juan Wall (5 pitches, 5.11b), which had a reputation for being challenging and sustained. Luke and I wanted to do Ice Pirates (2 pitches, 5.11b), a dead-end variation to Thin Ice, which we climbed last weekend with Gordon. The first pitches for both rope teams went well and Stein and Luke set off on their respective crux pitches. Stein powered and finessed his way through a pumpy layback for the send! Traian took a big whipper on the next pitch (pulling out a cam), but Olivier finished the lead for him. After this, the route took the trio around the corner, so they were out of view until summiting. Meanwhile, Luke was making good progress on the crux of Ice Pirates, managing the fiddly gear and balancey layback moves. However, near the top, the gear became sketchier and more spaced out (the flake becomes quite thin and fragile) and Luke became worried about falling and ripping pieces, so he pulled on cams a few moves until he could do the last move to the anchor, a crimpy sport-climbing-ish move. I was able to follow cleanly until this move, but fell here once before reaching the top. The route was definitely challenging and a little weird and intimidating (with tricky, questionable gear).

Olivier leading the first pitch of the Don Juan Wall.

Stein, Traian, and Olivier on top of the Sorcerer.

The Don Juan Wall was a much longer route, so Luke and I finished early than the other three. We waited for a while in the notch, which was getting quite cold, before attempting yell-o-phone communication with the other party that we were taking the car keys and hiking back so we could start cooking dinner (tofu and veggie stir-fry, one of my favorites!). It was a nice time to be hiking back - not too hot anymore and beautiful, pre-sunset views!

Beautiful view on the hike back to camp.

After struggling a bit on Ice Pirates, Luke and I decided to take an easier day on Saturday. We started the day with Witch Doctor (3 pitches, 5.10a), a route recommended by some other climbers we met. Although we were wishing we had brought our 70m rope, the pitches were fun and varied. Luke struggled a bit with route-finding on the last pitch, which wandered through crazy, often questionable rock. As we were summiting on the Witch, we saw Stein, Traian, and Olivier, who had left camp a little later than us that morning, topping out on the Wizard after climbing Yellow Brick Road, which is a classic 5.9.

On top of the Witch after climbing Witch Doctor.

Luke and I ate our sandwiches and headed back down to the notch to wait for the other three. Stein had gotten a look at the classic Tony Yaniro route Scirocco (5.12a) from the Don Juan Wall and had wanted to climb it with Luke while I took a midday break and photographed. However, when the trio finally reached the notch (they had decided to climb Spooky on their way back), Stein said he was too tired for Scirocco today. Since I had gotten a break and a short nap anyways while waiting, Luke and I decided to go for our planned 2nd route of the day, Fancy Free (3 pitches, 5.10b) on the Charlatan while the others squeezed in one last pitch (the first pitch of Thin Ice). Although the first pitch of Fancy Free was a little weird (there was some oozing at the base of the crack), the crux pitch was amazing! After a weird start, the pitch ascends a beautiful thin hands crack in a corner. The corner then changes (from left-facing to right-facing) and the crack shrinks to fingers (yellow and grey aliens, so big fingers for me) and powerful moves with only smears for feet lead to the anchor. My calves were so pumped from pushing on smears! It was definitely nice to climb a normal jam crack after doing so much laybacking on all the other routes in the Needles. The last pitch was a little weird, but it brought us to the summit just before sunset. As always in the Needles, it was beautiful.

View just before sunset from the top of the Charlatan.

Although tired, we were both psyched to have climbed such a cool route. We headed back towards camp with full packs and arrived exhausted. We were excited to find Traian and Olivier still awake, with warm dinner ready for us (returning the favor from the previous night). We enjoyed a relaxing morning of sleeping in on Sunday while Traian and Olivier woke early to hike out for one last route. Thankfully, the drive back was much less traffic-y, taking only 6 hours.

Overall, it was a pretty good weekend. I didn't end up doing any leading, which I think was due to me being especially tired from the altitude and the hiking and especially intimidated by the Needles (I do hate being so easily intimidated - I really need to work on this), but I had a lot of fun on the routes we did.

Also, I recently got a new camera to replace my dropped Olympus. I got a Canon Powershot SD1100 IS Digital Elph (in pink!!) and a sturdy waterproof and shockproof hard plastic case for it (the kind they make for kayakers). Although I still have some work getting used to the camera, we're pretty happy about the quality of the pictures we took. Hopefully this camera will accompany us on many adventures to come.

Best,

Lizzy

Queen Creek Canyon

For the long MLK weekend we ventured east for warm temps and to visit a new climbing area. Rebecca, one of my friend's from Bucknell, was visiting Phoenix for work and a climbing trip was born. We picked her up from the airport on Friday night after driving over from San Diego. Highway 8 is pretty desolate and we ran out of gas since the only service station in 80 miles was closed. We almost made it to the next one but ran out of gas just 10 miles short.
A night in Phoneix meant an hour drive in the morning to the crag. When we arrived at the parking lot at 10am it was bitterly cold and windy. The crag could be seen, 200 feet above the road, on the side of the canyon. The cliffs were all south facing and were baking in the sun which was quite a bit warmer than the shady parking lot. We had chosen Queen Creek for this exact reason and it worked out perfectly.
A quick hike up the trail and some 3rd class yielded access to the climbing. We were the fourth group at the crag and that number quickly grew throughout the day. The weather was perfect and you could easily wear T-shirts when you were climbing.
The rock was a type of tuff that is formed out of solidified ash. The climbing was mainly vertical with lots of small pockets and crimps. There was not a lot of chalk on the routes which made finding the next hold a constant challenge.

Kyle, Rebecca, Lizzy and I had a ton of fun on the routes before lunch and had a few routes mostly to ourselves. We went around the corner to some longer routes and found quite the crowd of people. We ate lunch and waited for climbs to become free. Kyle, my climbing partner from SD, did a short climb and established a self belay on a pedestal so that he could take pictures of the nearby routes. The climb in the picture above was the coolest we did all trip. At 11b it had thin technical climbing up a seam to a good rest followed by a bit of easy climbing which led to the technical crux. A zig-zag traverse and then a bit of thin pocket pulling brought one to the anchors. The group climbing this route before us was a talented group of women accompanied by John Sherman. I had no idea that he sport climbed but he floated up this route. He also taught me that Guiness only has 10 calories per ounce, amazing right? Lizzy, enjoying the slabby small hold climbing this route offered, flashed the route which was her second of the grade. Kyle, in the photo above, and I also flashed the route with each of the three of us using different beta for both cruxes. Our second day we went to investigate the Looner crags in the Mine area. The climbs were on worse rock and were sparsely bolted. If you weren't near a crux there was no bolt. The climbing was still fun even though it was not as cool as the previous day.
In preparation for her upcoming visit to Red Rocks, Rebecca lead a bunch of routes this trip. It was great to see her really push her limits on lead. She was climbing really strong and excelled on the sharp end.
While Queen Creek is not a destination climbing area it was fun to be able to climb in such great weather in the winter time. Perhaps if we are visit phoenix again in the winter we will drop by.
Cheers,

Luke

New Years at Cochise Stronghold

This New Years we decided to go on a mini road trip and check out the climbing in Arizona. The predicted weather for the Tucson area was temps in the 60's and sunny. This seemed perfect and neither Lizzy nor I had climbed in AZ before.

So off we went to the Cochise Stronghold for a few quick days of climbing. Hope you enjoy the Trip Report; I tried to offset all the talk with some pictures from our trip since I usually write too much and leave out the pictures.

The steep approach combined with the warm sun allowed us to wear t-shirts even though we had to hike over ice. It was quite amazing to be so warm in the last week of December!
For our first climb we chose to do the classic What's My Line. For some added mileage and a bit harder grade we did the direct start. We set off up the steep canyon to locate Cochise dome so that we could climb What’s My Line. I guess the direct start rarely gets climbed because we found a cam, a nut, a belay device and a biner on our way to the stance below the first pitch.


I was able to link the two pitches of the direct start and ended my lead at the first set of anchors of the regular route. Lizzy, happy to be climbing after the windy belay, zoomed up to my stance and got ready to lead the next pitches. She also linked pitches brining us to a tree belay just below the summit.
The climbing was quite fun and the weather was great despite being a bit windy. In the photo on the right you can see a sea of chicken heads that served as both hand holds and protection.



With most of the gear already on my harness I lead the last 30 feet to the rappel anchors. A team that we had caught up to allowed us to rappel on their rope which helped us quicken the decent and get back to the campground before dark. On the decent we stashed our gear for the next day so that we would not have to do the steep approach again with our ropes and rack.

The next day we headed back up the canyon but this time to the Rockafeller Group. We were hoping to do a few climbs on the south side of the end pinnacle. With light packs filled only with food and water we made great time getting back up the steep approach. We got to our climb early and it was still all in the shade. Based on the orientation of the two climbs we wanted to do we chose Days of Future Passed as our first route. While this route ended up being much more serious than we expected it was a good choice.

After three serious pitches of run out climbing we made it to a spacious sunny ledge. This was a most welcome change from the past two hanging belays. The climbing on the first two pitches followed a large crack system that had a numerous chickeheads along the way. when the crack ended there was one pitch of exciting run out face climbing.

After a bit of food we chose the easier path to the summit and I climbed past around ten bolts to the summit. This was more than three times as many bolts as the previous pitch which was of comparable length. After reaching the summit we snapped some photos and made our way over to the rap station. Three crazy rappels through a chimney and a crawl through a hole beneath a chockstone lead us to the ground.

After packing up all of our gear we determined that we were far to tired and it was much too late for another climb. We hike all our gear back to the camp site and made a tasty dinner in celebration of New Years Eve.

This trip was a lot of fun and it taught me a bunch about traditional ethics and run out climbing. Why do you need gear when you will not fall? Bolts are not the immediate solution but the last resort. The climbing was scary and physical and expanded my mind. Most of all it really makes me appreciate all of the climbers of the last generation. While they may be a bunch of old die hard traddies they really have a lot of balls.

Cheers!

- Luke

Vacation is over, back to work!

Lizzy and I are now back at school and work respectively. We had a good time learning and exploring Arizona. Cochise Stronghold was quite the experience and has made me really think about traditional climbing ethics. In many ways it was a wake up call to how climbing used to be. It was a lot of fun and I will be posting a long trip report at some point this week.

Now that vacation is over it is time to get back in a routine and start training for the spring. I hope to keep better track of my climbing so I can figure out what works and what is a waste of time. One of my New Years’ resolutions was to start a training log. I think this will help me and give me a nice think to look back upon in the years to come.

On the horizon for next weekend is the ABS regional for the Southwest. Even though I was never serious enough to compete at the regional’s out east I became familiar with a good number of the comp climbers. It will be interesting to see all of the people that show up. The comp will be held at Vertical Heaven on January 12th. I don’t expect to do well since this winter has been quite light on training and comp climbing but I hope to take some photos and cheer on my friends. For sure it will be a good time and I have heard great things about the host gym.

Over the last year Lynn Hill has been writing quite a lot of blogs for findyourdetour.com. Sadly her stay is over and she will now only be blogging for Patagonia. I really enjoyed all of her writing and the various subjects and I hope she keeps it up over at Cleanest Line. Writing is a powerful tool and it has been a great motivator to be able to read thoughts from such a talented climber, thanks to Lynn!

In other news US climbers have been tearing it up. As reported by Climbing Narc and many others Paul Robinson flashed Nagual, V13 and did the 2nd Ascent of Terremer V15. Additionally Dave Graham has been on a sending spree at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch (HCR). He repeated many hard climbs including Sharma’s King Lion V12/13 and has established four climbs V12 or harder.

Happy Holidays

2007 has been an amazing year for climbing and this will most likely be my last post of the year. Moving to a new place has allowed me to climb more often and at a whole bunch of amazing areas. I look forward to 2008 and many months of exploration and climbing! I thought I would add some photos to for a bit of spice, hope you enjoy!

Lizzy is already in Seattle for Christmas and I will be flying up there tomorrow. We will be in Seattle until the 28th visiting family and friends.

Climbing has been winding down recently as the temps have been a bit colder. Our only trip in the last three weeks was to Joshua Tree this past weekend. We had some really warm weather which was nice and unexpected! We did a bit of trad, sport, bouldering and multi-pitch. The mix of everything was nice and I even hopped on Iron Resolution (photo above/right) which was really cool despite the fact that it is way too hard! We also got to climb the Headstone at sunset which was fun(photo below). I had never lead before in my down jacket and it ended up being a good decision. It probably dropped 20 degrees in the hour and a half before sunset.

We are going to try to head to Arizona for a short New Years climbing trip. I will be posting up a trip report when we get back.

Thanks to everyone that reads our blog. It has been a great experience writing these blogs!

If anyone has questions or topics there are interested in let us know via comment or email. DreamInVertical at rockclimbing.com

Cheers!

- Luke