This weekend I learned to lead belay, rappel and climb on real rock. As
other people have put it, climbing on plastic doesn't quite completely
prepare you for the experience of hanging off the real thing.
My friend Janet and I went to Pinnacles National Monument on Friday morning after an impromptu trip to REI for some necessary gear. After setting up camp,
we drove in to see what we could before sundown. A ranger at the
visitors center was incredibly helpful describing where we should start
climbing and things to watch out for, particularly the rock.
The rock at Pinnacles is volcanic breccia
and things tend to break off. There were some completely
unnatural-looking holds on some of the walls. We definitely thought
“this hold can't be real!” The ranger let us sample a few pieces of the
different type of rock we’d likely be encountering on our trip, gave us
copious safety-related material and sent us off in search of our first wall, Tourist Trap.
Tourist Trap is probably the closest wall to the east side entrance, about 150 feet in from the top parking lot in the Bear Gulch area. We parked, hiked in with our gear and found a half-dozen climbers at the wall. A French pair was climbing Rat Race and a couple of guys had set up a short toprope on the next wall over.
They graciously offered to let us use their rope if we’d clean it, so
we harnessed up and Janet belayed my first, pathetic attempt at
climbing real rock. I went up about 10 feet before becoming completely
stumped and burning out my arms trying to hold onto the overhang
figuring out what a hold looked like. I wish I could have blamed it on
the dying light, but this was just a case of pure newbie. We switched
off and Janet made it to the top with ease, cleaned the gear and I
lowered her down.
We hiked & drove back to camp and finished
off the day with a fire, sausages, a bottle of Chimay and a tipsy game
of Scrabble. Ah, geekery. Incidentally, it was really cold. Note to
self: invest in warmer sleeping bag.
The next morning we fired
up the camp stove for tea & blueberry pancakes [1]. In addition to
leaving my jacket at home (Pista ate it while we were away), I'd
forgotten some essential pancake ingredients so we had to improvise. We
substituted water + lots and lots of butter for the [soy] milk &
oil portion of the recipe. In the end the pancakes, save one, turned
out perfect: tender and moist on the inside, crispy on the outside. I
<3 blueberry pancakes.
We’d decided the night before to stick around the Bear Gulch area and planned to hike into the reservoir up to Toprope Wall. Janet hadn’t led outdoors before, so we figured sticking to top rope climbs would be wise. Getting there was a treat: The Moses Spring trail leads through some spectacular caves formed by huge boulders getting stuck in a narrow canyon.
We got to Toprope wall by sheer accident, following the trail up around the backside of the Monolith
and scrambled up on top of a series of interesting looking rocks when
we spotted a pair of anchors. We checked some more, referred to the Book,
double-checked and finally ended up asking the couple whose anchor we
saw on the 5.8 climb if this was Toprope wall. They confirmed it, so we
hiked down to the base and decided to set up shop.
Toprope wall has 3 sets of anchors, one for a relatively short 5.3, a
5.7-5.8, and a 5.9. We set up our anchor on the 5.3, which only had two
bolts. Physics dictates that you want about 20 degrees angle between
anchor points to spread the load evenly between the bolts, so we rigged
up our anchor with a pair of slings, two quickdraws and a couple
locking crabs. It’s an interesting engineering problem that we’d face a
few more times over the weekend: crafting an anchor that’s
fault-tolerant, redundant and as resistant to shock-loads as possible
should one side fail.
I hiked and Janet rappelled down to the base and we set up belay. I
climbed first, and made it to the top of my first real rock pitch.
Trusting my feet was the main problem, but grabbing onto real (sharp,
crispy) rock was interesting too. I ended up stuck at the roof for a
few minutes trying to mantle up over it with poor footholds (poor to
me) and less handholds than I was accustomed to. Eventually, I made it
and was standing next to the anchor we’d crafted. The feeling was
sublime.
Janet lowered me, we swapped and she scaled it quickly, getting past
the crux at the roof with ease. Her experience + my foot taller + 70
pounds means her moves were almost entirely different (and more
elegant).
I
scaled the 5.3 again, this time with a bit more confidence and then
moved our anchor to the 5.8 bolts. There were 3 bolts here, so we
restrung the slings & quickdraws to make a better anchor. Rope drag
was the only problem we had after that.
We switched off climbing the 5.8, which as expected was way harder than
the previous route. This time Janet climbed first and gave me the beta
on my attempt. Hard. By this point, the other couple had departed, so
we decided to move the anchor over to the longer 5.9 route. This was
harder still. After we both had scaled the 5.9, it was getting on in
the day so we decided to pack it in and hike back via the upper trail.
We
decided we didn’t want another freezing evening in the tent, so we
drove to Hollister and had tasty barbeque. It was a bit of an ordeal
getting into town, with every. Single. Parking. Space. Taken by an
assortment of SUVs, trucks with lift-kits and the occasional Prius.
Which we found particularly amusing, as there were a comparatively
large number of non-lifted, non-gas-guzzling vehicles in the immediate
vicinity of Pinnacles, contrary to the surrounding area.
The reason for the parking/traffic problem was Hollister’s annual Lights On parade.
We think it has something to do with Christmas lights or something.
After BBQ and beer, we drove back to camp and had lights out.
On Sunday morning after a late (er) start, we made for the Balconies area of the park, hiking in via the Old Pinnacles Trail.
After going through some spectacular (dark, confined) caves, we made it
to a half-open area underneath some massive (100+ foot in diameter)
boulders wedged into the canyon. Our choices: go left and follow the
trail or go right and scramble up the hillside on a 45-degree rock
face. So we strapped on our climbing shoes and went right.
This turned out to be another serendipitous moment: At the top of that
scramble we found the base of Chockstone Dome, where a father-daughter
pair were ascending the Regular route using some seriously vintage
equipment. Turns out to be the exact wall we’d set out to find: a two-bolt lead (with a somewhat scary long runout) on a 5.4-ish route. Sweet.
Janet
led the climb up and belayed me from the top. It was interesting not
having my belay partner below (telling me where to put my feet). I made
it up to the top, cleaning the protection as I went. A little scary,
particularly since we were doing this on what was essentially a boulder
wedged 50 feet above the ground. When we got to the top, we cleaned the
anchor and set up for rappel. Another first for the weekend, just to
round it out. Walking backwards down a cliff with nothing but a rope
and your right hand keeping you from decking on the pavement is an
interesting place to be. It all worked out, and by the time we’d packed
the rope it was starting to get dark in the valley so we decided to
head back to the city.
We hiked back on the high trail and
stopped for a late lunch on a fine crag, splitting when it started to
rain. We made it back to the car before getting completely soaked,
passing hikers going out for the day!
I can’t wait to
get back on a cliff. When we went to the gym on Monday, the big safe
holds looked different, and I wanted more of a challenge. Guess I know
where my summer’s going...
[1] I’ve been making blueberry pancakes while camping for years. It’s sort of tradition.
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