October 2021 Tennessee Wall with Noel

 

Kenton and Noel

October 31, 2021 Halloween! Misty day, chilly. We weren't really nice and warm until mid afternoon, when the sun finally came out.

Art (5.8) - Warmup. Noel's lead. Always fun. Brings back memories of my trad fall 2/3 of the way up on this route a few years ago.

Finagle (5.9) - My lead. Bouldery start, basically two campusing moves. Traverse left to face climbing with thin cracks. Poor protection on the face, better protection higher up. 2nd "pitch" was mostly lichen, felt sort of hard for 5.6. We did both pitches in one go.

Hidden Assets (5.10) - Noel's lead. Easy down low, tricky section 2/3 of the way up in the corner. Pretty classic hand crack. A long route, definitely needed the 70 m rope.

Golden Gloves (5.10) - My lead. Bottom half was chossy, making me nervous about the quality of the protection. But the climbing was very easy. Second half was challenging, but the protection was very solid. Pulling out of the roof was the first crux, and I needed to hang on gear to regain my composure after freaking out about the dripping wet hand/finger crack. The second crux was keeping stable in a flaring hand crack very near the top of the route. The entire route was a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated because all of the cracks were dripping wet today.