Spring Climbing
The season has transitioned over to spring, and as we’re waiting for the summer trails to melt out, we’ve spent the first few weekends in April and May climbing.
Weekend 1:
On the 27th Katy and I headed to Vantage to kick off our climbing season.
Katy led and cleaned her first ever sport routes on the feathers—it was awesome! It was crowded, but we got on some excellent routes in the morning before we hiked over to Sunshine Wall.
Katy’s first lead!
Exhausted after lunch, I decided anyway to make a go of Duress/Under Duress, an awesome 5.8 column with a 5.9 second pitch to the top.
Duress/Under Duress follows the center face and crack, depending on how you choose your adventure.
I took a nice whip around the top but found whatever reserve I had left to get to the anchors and finish it up. It was awesome, airy, beautiful, and exactly what I needed to kick off the summer.
Weekend 2:
The next weekend a few of us headed up to Leavenworth to do some camping and climbing, plus Christian and I wanted to get some practice with trad leading and anchor setting.
We headed up to Mountaineers Dome, where we were able to get up in parallel on a 5.-/4th class trad lead to the base of the dome (was fun, I got comfortable with placing a variety of gear, dealing with rope drag, and setting a gear anchor) followed by a 5.5ish and 5.6 cracks to the top.
It was pretty fun climbing, getting comfortable with the rack and setting anchor. We set up some top rope for the rest of the crew to climb and enjoyed the sun for a while.
The second half of the afternoon we spent our time getting our butts kicked on easy boulders at The Sword bouldering area in icicle creek. Climbing outside humbles you, especially bouldering (where the I feel the gap between gym grades and outdoor grades is pretty wide).
Weekend 3:
Finally, on Mothers Day weekend we were back at Vantage. Brad and I drove up early on Saturday, expecting hot weather and hordes of people. We found the hot weather, but, surprisingly, not many people.
Left – Brad. Right – Me. Figures the only photos we get are when we’re cleaning routes…
We sent some excellent routes at the Feathers, but by noon we were almost delirious with heat. I was still psyched to get a bunch of good leads by lunch though.
At lunch we were joined by Katy and Meredith, and in the afternoon we headed to Zig Zag wall, where I led a couple more fun routes that we played around on:
The next morning we spent some more time on the Feathers. Brad, Katy, and Meredith all got some great leads in. I felt pretty great about leading Shin Smasher, a fun route with a some thin holds once you get past a cool roof.
Can’t wait for the rest of the alpine and climbing adventures this season…