Exit 38, North Bend (Nov. 1, 2003)

On Saturday, Mike and I went to the Nevermind area at Exit 38 for some sport climbing.  We arrived around noon, and discovered that the upper section of the wall was covered in hanging icicles.  Every few minutes, one would drop off and shatter on the ground. The wall also had a mini-waterfall going off the top, with some prominent wet streaks.  The temperature was supposed to be around 50, but it felt colder than that since the wall is well shaded and the melting ice had the effect of rain for the belayer standing under the overhanging wall.


(left: Mike getting ready to "warm up" on Neverigine (5.10a))
(above: Ice on the flora at the base of the cliff)

Undeterred, we started out on Neverigine (10a) which looked pretty dry. The rock was indeed dry, but our fingers quickly went numb.  We decided to get on something steeper and more strenuous, which would hopefully get some blood flowing to our hands. So we went down to Culture Shock (12a). There were wet streaks on either side of the route but with the exception of one handhold (and numerous non-critical footholds), it was dry.  We each had 3 attempts, but could not do better than a one-hang-red-point (that seems to be a theme with my climbing right now). The route starts and finishes on nice positive holds, with a well-defined crux section. The crux is relatively easy when fresh, but becomes difficult when you are pumped from climbing the lower part of the route.   We got some good sequences worked out, and I think it will go if we come back fresh.

At this point it was starting to get dark, so we headed down to the car, and discovered that the battery was dead. We hiked back up to the railroad trestle, and fortunately ran into some other climbers on their way out who gave us a boost, and we headed back to Seattle.