June Sunset Rock with Zach

June 25, 2022 trip to Sunset Rock with Zach

There was light rain in the morning, but the clouds kept the temps down to a tolerable level, and the heavy treecover above our first few climbs kept us dry enough (and the routes dry enough) that we could still climb.

Nuclear Blue (5.10a) - my lead, fell on a black totem at the crux.

Unleashed (5.11-) - toprope. I tried the route twice and fell at the crux both times.

Harassic Park (aka Devil Dog) (5.9) - Zach's lead, I followed.

Stan's Crack (5.8+) - I led the first pitch to set up a toprope for the next climb.

Toothpick (5.11b/c) - toprope. I fell at the crux the first time. I had been trying to grab at a sloper on the right wall rather than a positive sidepull to the left. I tried the route again and did it cleanly.

May Foster Falls with Bryan

 

Kenton on one of his many takes while ascending Bottled Up Warrior

Went to Foster Falls on May 29, 2022 with Bryan and his two sons Brendan and Aidan.

Narcissism (5.10b/c) - Hard for the grade. Top crack was cruxy.

Dihedral (5.9 trad) - A fun little climb in the corner.

Bottled Up Warrior (5.12b) - Crux clearing the big lower roof. I hung on the rope many times on this climb, but made it to the top eventually. This was fun.

Lynn's Route (5.11b) - The start of this felt quite hard to me, and I was glad to have stick-clipped the first bolt. I got nervous about taking a big swing (and potentially cutting the rope on an edge) when I was being lowered, so I kept a draw between me and the rope to my belayer the whole way down. Not my favorite climb.

Moonscape (5.10b) - Short, but not easy. Quite a hard move at the top. I ended up using an undercling and moving my feet high up to reach the last holds.

On The Side (5.8 trad) - Felt hard for 5.8 to me, I was struggling to place gear in the fist crack near the top. Many face holds looked good but weren't as good as they looked.

April Denny Cove with Jacob

Jacob pulling the rope...

April 19, 2022 returned to Denny Cove, this time with Jacob. Temps were in the high 30's when we started, and it took a few hours to warm up, but by afternoon the conditions were perfect.

Three Star Salad Bar (5.9) - warmup.

Gas Powered Flight (5.11a) - Hard move with only a thin right hand finger pocket two thirds of the way up.

Wish-bone (5.10b/c) - Fun, technical face climbing.

Frozen Lightning (5.11a) - Relatively juggy until crux in the middle. I moved left when I should have moved right and fell on my first attempt.

Magic Meat (5.12a/b) - Pumpy. Juggy most of the way, but very overhung, with three or four harder moves on thin holds thrown in.

Little Orange Corner (5.8) - Short. Sweet. Fun enough. 

April Denny Cove with Julie

 

Kenton and Julie at the base of the Buffet Wall

Went last-minute to Denny Cove on Sunday April 10, 2022 with Julie. Look at how we represent the Access Fund!

The temps were in the low 30's in the parking lot, but we were sweating in t-shirts by lunchtime. This is definitely a cold-weather crag. The Salad Bar and Buffet Wall areas where we were climbing face almost due south.

Three Star Salad Bar (5.9) - warmup. 

Casa de Condimientos (5.10c/d) - This has a thin crux in the middle, I used a thin undercling to move through it.

Tossed Salad (5.10d) - I moved left instead of right through the middle crux section, and I think this was the harder way.

Pressure Cooker (5.12a) - The bottom felt relatively easy. The top was hard with thin crimps and side pulls. I hung on the rope once or twice.

Canned Heat (5.12a) - There was a hard crux in the middle, where there were thin hands with almost no fee. I hung and/or fell on the rope several times here.

Pestilence (5.11b) - This felt super hard for the grade. Near the top there is a slabby crux. Rather than trying to move through it, I traversed a few feet to the left where it was rather chossy but the holds were large. This was a mistake.  I ended up pulling off a large block (maybe 1-2 feet in diameter) which went crashing down onto the hiking trail, and I feel about 30 feet or more before Julie caught me softly. Nobody was hurt, but it gave me second thoughts about climbing near choss again!!!

Red Rocks February 2022 with Adam

Adam standing in front of Armatron

Adam and I met each other for a quick weekend of climbing in Red Rocks on February 26 and 27, 2022. The weather was nearly perfect, sunny with highs in the 50's and lows in the 20's.

February 26 - I wanted to try linking MysterZ (5.7) to Armatron (5.9-) again after giving up because of crowds the last time I was here. However, today I lived up to my reputation of getting lost easily and managed to get us onto the wrong climb entirely at the start of the day. We went up a single pitch on a buttress closer to the parking lot before I realized my mistake and we were forced to bail by rappelling off a #10 and #11 nut placement. I am really bad at route finding. But, we managed to figure things out and get onto MysterZ soon afterwards. We climbed the whole thing pretty quickly, but we still didn't get to the top in time to climb Armatron. I had brought too much gear for this climb (perhaps for an easy climb like this I don't need to bring a double rack) and this, combined with the weight of both double ropes and my backpack was really weighing me down. I will say that I was more efficient on this trip than on any previous occasion with the double ropes. As usual, my problem on this line was route-finding. I was glad to have another party ahead of me, even if they were climbing a bit more slowly than I would have preferred. The climb felt extremely easy, and I was constantly running it out way above my pieces. I also know I did not pitch it out as described in the guidebook or on Mountain Project, so there were two occasions when I actually ran out of rope early and was forced to build an anchor. I brought lots of large gear which was useful to have in places, but the climbing overall was so easy that I probably could have skipped it and carried less weight instead. The part where you reach something that looks like an overhanging chimney/offwidth at 5.9+ was interesting. Here, as I had read in several comments, you avoid going that way by rather blindly traversing over right through a roof into an easy hand crack. There was also a section of stemming through a very wide crack/chimney where I placed almost no gear, which certainly felt rather dangerous, but the climbing here again was super easy. By the time we got to the base of Armatron the sun was already behind the mountain, but this at least gave us a chance to get our bearings and be sure we found the base of the route easily the following day.

February 27 - We set out early on this morning and made it to the Armatron base right at the same time as another (more local) party was arriving. This turned out to be ideal, because this guy Dave was a really chatty character, and he gave us all the beta we needed to do both the climb and the descent. Overall, I felt that Armatron was very very easy for the grade. There were, perhaps, two 5.9 moves on the entire climb. The rest of the thing just felt super chill. That said, the climb itself was really beautiful. We were climbing it in full sun, and it was the perfect temperature (high 20's when we left the Pine Creek parking lot) on the wall (even a bit chilly when the wind started to blow and I didn't have a jacket on). This time I left my pack at the base and only brought a smaller rack consisting of single cams through #3 and a double rack of nuts. Even with this, I didn't ever feel as if I was running out of gear. The first pitch had 5 bolts and I didn't place a single piece. The next pitch was two finger cracks (5.9) where I did place some gear, and from there it transitioned around a bulge to the right into easier face climbing. Pro was plentiful. The next pitch was the "money" pitch. The black sandstone here is just so much harder and seems so much more dependable than the white/red stuff we often see in other places at Red Rocks. This pitch really could take a nut wherever you wanted to stop and place one, and I climbed it a good bit more slowly than I needed to so that I could savor the feeling of the warm black plates baking in the sun. The fact that all of the belay stations on Armatron are bolted definitely made things go even more quickly - I was constantly riding on the tail of the party in front of us (Dave and Dillon). I was surprised by this, because Dave seemed to have done so much climbing and knew the route so well, but I guess I was just climbing quickly. Pitch 4 felt like more of the same as pitch 3. Pitch 5 was easy climbing along an arete. Pitch 6 was the boulder problem (do a pullup!) followed by easy climbing to the top along another arete. From here we unroped and scrambled the last hundred feet or so to the top (this was exposed but very very easy climbing). The view from the top was expansive and beautiful, we could see all the way to the lake in the distance. I wrote a note in the summit register in an ammo can, and we then followed Dave and Dillon back to the Armatron base to retrieve my pack and other gear. This climb has a long (1.5-2 hour?) approach and a similarly long descent, but this just adds to the fun of the day. It would be fun to link MysterZ with this climb, but that would require climbing quickly and not getting lost on the approach and on the climb. I definitely DID NOT want to be making the Armatron descent in the dark without someone else showing me exactly where to go. It was quite icy and exposed in some places, and slipping could have been really bad.

February Tennessee Wall with Zach

Zach ties in at the base of In Pursuit of Excellence

February 20, 2022. Climbed with Zach at T-Wall.

Mad Hatter (5.9) - Warmup. Zach's lead.

Multiple Use Area (5.9) - Toprope (shares anchors with Mad Hatter).

Prerequisite for Excellence (5.8) - Toprope (shares anchors with Mad Hatter).

Love Handle (5.10) - My lead. Lots of fun. Sling through the handle. Tricky face climbing above the handle. Then a chill roof.

Infinite Pursuit (5.10c) - Zach's lead.

No More Tiers (5.11a) - My lead! Only my second time leading 5.11 on trad. This route pushed me, especially through the final roof, both physically and mentally. But I managed to hold it together (there are plenty of rests) and do it cleanly. We linked both "pitches" (there is a large ledge in the middle of the climb). It was a hard lie back rock over to pull the first roof off the deck. Then a beautiful finger crack to the top of "pitch 1". From there it was a thin finger crack which I fell on during my first attempt. I lowered back to the ledge at the "start of pitch 2" and then led it clean to the top. It ends with a long series of tiered roofs. These are not particularly difficult, but it is a long and pumpy stretch of climbing, and at times it wasn't easy to see where the next jug was, so I would need to place gear high to trust that I could go up to explore further for good holds.

In Pursuit of Excellence (5.9+) - Zach's lead.

Dirt Bag (5.8) - Our cooldown on toprope (shares anchor with Pursuit). This felt hard for 5.8. Was I just tired after the rest of the day?

January Tennessee Wall with John and Rachel

 

John and Rachel at the base of T-Wall

Sunday, January 30

A chilly day to start but it quickly warmed up. It was sunny and a perfect day for being outside. Temps were in the 20's when we parked but probably hit the 50's by midday. We were climbing in just long sleeves starting at 9:30 AM and for various other portions of the day.

Open Sesame (5.9 or 5.8+) - A juggy warmup, this route had me being extra careful when traversing right under the roof where the feet were more smears than holds. I wish I had double-extended the piece near the wall in the crack under the roof to avoid rope drag.

Crack Attack (5.10a/b) - A very crack-centric climb. There was tons of good pro. However, I went left about 2/3 of the way up instead of right. This seemed like the easier way to go, and someone told me later in the day that by going that way I had avoided the crux.

Espirit Nuvo (5.10c) - The bottom section was very easy but quite chossy. The finger crack felt really tough for me, especially at the top. There just were no good feet, and it had me thinking that I need to practice my slab climbing some more. Traversing to the right after the finger crack also felt very challenging. The top was easy but I was exhausted by the time I got ther. I ended up using all 14 double-length slings. I rested twice on the gear while leading this route.

Electric Rats (5.10c) - This one was tons of fun, I really enjoyed it. This climb starts hard but gets progressively easier. There is a big roof to pull at the beginning, then a smaller roof with a heel hook into a corner after that. It was tricky getting up from the ledge into the crack. From there it works up into a hand crack and is basically a hand crack all the way from there to the top. I could have brought one or two #4 cams and would have used them. I placed all the larger gear except one #1.