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Phew, I just got back from a crazy weekend. The weather in all the usual places was crap, but Joshua Tree looked to be perfect (and it was!). Unfortunately no pictures this trip, none of us thought to bring a camera.
I drove down to Joshua Tree on Thursday evening — well, I drove half way there anyway — I pulled off the road a bit past Bakersfield (about 4.5 hours into the 8 hour drive) on what I thought would be a nice, secluded, quiet, spot. Just as I’m about to go to sleep, a bright, loud freight train blares it’s horn and it looked like it was about to run me over. After I got over the shock of that, I slept quite well — from about midnight until 5am when my alarm went off. After the alpine start, I made it to my friend Matt’s place in Joshua Tree on time at 9am. We packed up the gear and headed out into the park.
On Friday, we started at Hidden Tower and warmed up on the classic Sail Away (5.8) and Wild Wind (5.9). Next we walked over to Sports Challenge Rock and did Clean-and-Jerk (5.10c). Dan led it clean (whoo!), and Matt had one hang because he messed up the sequence getting to the knob after the crux. I TR’d it clean wearing a full rack, so it’s definitely doable next time on lead. We then setup a TR on What’s it to You? (5.10d) to the right of Sphincter Quits. I tried heading up to the crack via the “direct start” with no luck. From the usual start, I got all the way up to the last move to the bolted anchor, where I fell because I got tunnel vision, and totally missed a good hold. Finally to end the day we went over to to The Wart, and I led The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (5.10a) which is a nice hands traverse that brings you out from under a roof, followed by a rightward traverse into an offwidth. It was a no-star climb, but I really enjoyed it.
On Saturday we went to Starwars Rock, and I tried leading Light Saber (5.10b) which I TR’d clean on my last trip, but I took a short fall at the top of the initial corner. No problem on the rest of it though. I had the sequence wrong (didn’t put both feet on the face!) through the first corner. Next we walked around to Perpetual Motion Wall, and I onsighted Perpetual Motion (5.10d) . Whoo, that felt good! I think that’s my hardest onsight ever. The coolest part was that I ended up placing pretty much exactly the pieces I thought I should place, in the same order, and the whole climb just seemed to flow perfectly. 7 gear placements got me to the top. We followed that up with the right-hand crack on Lean Two (5.10a) before hiking out.
On Sunday, Matt had to drop Dan off at the bus station and pick up Karen at the airport, so he didn’t climb. I went out with Rick and Linda into Wonderland of Rocks. We went to Lenticular Dome, where Linda led the highly-starred Mental Physics (5.7), which I followed in approach shoes. I figured it would be good practice for busting free moves out of my aiders on bigwalls). We Rapped from the top of the 2nd pitch and setup a TR on Dazed and Confused (5.9). This is a highly starred runout 5.9 face on crumbling edges. Next I led Hand Wobler Delight, a supposed 5.9 up a wide right-leaning crack to a leftward traverse across a low angle face into a corner under a big roof, which you have to layback up out of on the left side. The corner of the roof is too far away to place gear (3.5 camalot) from the stance below, so you have to get into the lieback all the way out to the lip before placing it (scary, and pretty committing because it would be a bad fall), then you have to pull over the lip somehow. I couldn’t figure out out first try, so I had to hang there. After than it’s easy low angle hands to the anchor. Fun, but scary. We finished up the day at Perry Masonry Wall where I led Trowel and Error (5.9) which looks like a very asthetic line, but it turns out to be quite awkward. The crux again involves liebacking. It was fairly hard to protect because it was basically a finger crack with tight lips that widened out behind.. Very strenuous for a 5.9.
I capped Sunday off with a stop at Nomad’s to replace a sling I left to back up the rap anchor on the last climb, and a quick run into Crossroads for a coffee for the drive. I was out of cash at that point, but luckily the whole crew was there, and I was able score a cup on them. I got to Bakersfield around 11pm, where I stayed in a hotel then was back on the road by 6am, and at work by about 10:45am. I didn’t get home until 2am, but that is another story.
This was a great spontaneous climbing weekend, I’ll have to do it again sometime!
Phew,
It took many hours of work, but I’ve finally finished updating a spreadsheet with my climbing log details. I’ve got pretty much all of the climbs I’ve done since October 2006 logged every which way, and now I can use this info to generate some cool graphs and charts to plot my progress.
Here are a few charts for your enjoyment.
First up, pitches by grade. Well, actually it’s “climbs by grade” as of this writing, since I haven’t split out the multipitch data yet. Apparently I spent most of my time on 5.9’s, followed by 5.10a and 5.8, and the 5.10b, c, and d grades are running neck-in-neck. Also it’s interesting that all of my attempts (not yet redpointed) of Chain Gang (5.12a) at Jailhouse is really catching that grade up with the 5.10’s!
Next up is number of pitches by type and year. It’s pretty cool to note that 2008 was a great year for trad leading. Also, even though we’re barely through the first two months of 2009, I’m already half way to the number of sport pitches I did for all of 2008. Definitely gotta catch up on the trad pitches though. (Indian Creek will help with that!). Clearly though, if I’m gonna be a good big wall climber I really need to get more aid pitches in.
Finally, Pitches by Location. Indian Creek and Yosemite are roughly tied for the most pitches. Both places are amazing in different ways. Now, to be strictly technical — I’ve climbed way more pitches in Yosemite, they just don’t show up in my data because I haven’t (yet) split out each pitch of multipitch climbs. For example, in 2007 I climbed The Regular Northwest Face (5.9, C2) on Half Dome with Derek and Patty. That was 23 pitches 22 of which are not counted. Also, Northeast Buttress of Higher Cathedral (5.9) is 12 pitches, 11 of which are not counted. You get the idea. On the other hand, the Indian Creek data is roughly correct because practically everything I’ve done there is single pitch.
Well, that’s enough geeky data for now. If you’ve read this far, you must be somewhat of a geek yourself. For your reward, enjoy my climbing log itself.
Well, I have this climbing logbook that I’ve been making notes in since my first trip to Indian Creek in October, 2006. I’ve been slowly entering this data into a spreadsheet, which I will eventually post as a page here on my site. The idea is that I can keep track of my progress in getting up harder and harder stuff. So far, I have all of the data through the middle of 2008. That is 168 climbs in the log.
It looks like by the time I get all of my 2008 data in, that it will account for more than half of the climbs in my log. Nice!
To pique your interest (and hopefully keep you coming back to my blog) here’s a humorous account I wrote of a possible FMA (First-Moss-Ascent) of Trigger Finger (40′ 5.10a J3 II) in the Grotto. Enjoy!
 Possible FMA (First-Moss-Ascent) of Trigger Finger (40' 5.10a J3 II)
I’m getting psyched for the kickoff, starting in Indian Creek.
For those of you not in on the secret, Indian Creek is a Crack-Climbing-Mecca. I’ve heard it described as “trad sport climbing”. Seriously, most of the cracks are perfectly parallel for hundreds of feet. Oh yeah — there are vanishingly few face holds. It’s about the purest crack climbing you will ever find. For your rack? You need to beg, borrow, and steal every cam you can get your hands on. Many of the climbs require 5 or more cams of the same size (parallel cracks, eh!). The epitome classic IC climb, “Supercrack of the Desert” is about 130 feet of #3 Camalot. Derek took 26 cams up the 180 foot Steve Carithers Memorial Crack — Of those cams, at least 10 were #3 camalot, and most of the rest were #2 camalot. Burly!
 Our Piece of the Real Estate (5.11a), Battle of the Bulge buttress, Indian Creek, UT I’ve spent at least one or two weeks there each year for the past three years, for a total of over a month of climbing. Do I like the area? Well, getting there from here requires about a day travel time (if flying), and reportedly about 18 hours of driving. I’ve been there on three separate trips, and each time I took a different route.
Trip #1: Fly to Salt Lake City, rent a car, go shopping: REI for Gear, Black Diamond HQ because it’s there!, and a supermarket to stock up on food. With three of us in the car (Derek, Patty, and me), all our climbing and camping gear, and about 2 weeks worth of food, we were crammed to the limit. Next up? a five+ hour drive from Salt Lake City to IC. Finally arriving at our Newspaper Rock campsite late in the evening.
Trip #2: I was meeting Danielle in Tempe, AZ after the trip (to watch her cousin run the Ironman Triathlon, and spend vacation with Danielle in Zion & The Grand Canyon), so this time I flew into Phoenix, rented a car, stocked up on food & gear, and drove the seven+ hours across Monument Valley to IC. Another full-on travel day.
Trip #3: This time Derek and I flew to Denver, CO. His brother Rob picked us up at the airport and took us to his place in Boulder (where he had just finished building a stunningly beautiful house). We stole his SUV the next day, loaded up, went shopping for food (two guys who almost never cook — this was interesting!) and took it out on the six+ hour drive to IC.
So, the long winded answer, which is obvious from the effort I put in to get there: Yup, I love Indian Creek!
OK, so it turns out that getting folks to let me know specifically when they’ll be available is somewhat problematic. My mass emailing gleaned a bunch of “I’m interested in IC”, “JT”, “Red Rocks”, “Bishop”, “Smith”, “Zion”, and “Yosemite” destinations, but almost no actual dates. So I’ve tried to put together a schedule. Please check it out. I’ll update the calendar frequently. I’m hoping that I’ll start to get some dates and destinations locked down. If you’re interested, leave a comment here (or drop me an email) indicating which days you’re available and where you want to climb.
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