Leavenworth – April 9-10, 2005

This past weekend I decided it was time to test out the new giant climbing pad that the UW climbing club had so kindly purchased in the fall quarter. I put out the notice for a trip to Leavenworth, and a few people were interested but had other work or school commitments (on the weekend??? weekends are reserved for climbing!), so in the end it was myself and Rok driving over to 11worth bright and early Saturday morning. We were a pretty well-named team for climbing, Cam and Rok. Rok is from Slovenia, near the capital city of Ljubljana (try to pronounce that!). It was raining as we drove through the mountains, but cleared up on the other side and by the time we reached the Swiftwater picnic area it was bright and sunny. We started here, warming up on some stuff before doing the exciting V3+ to the left of Royal Flush. Shown below is Rok attempting the crux moves over the lip (the club pad is the big red one):

Next we moved on to a classic V4 called Lead Pants, which Rok was really close to sending and vowed to come back and finish the job. In the picture he is doing the super fun throw to a sloper:

Next we went to a problem I had tried when I was in Leavenworth in the fall, a V7 called Premium Coffee. It is a few moves on terrible slopers, and last time I was there I could barely pull onto the problem, and could only do one of the moves. I surprised myself by climbing the problem from the second move to completion, and came really close to sticking the first move. After several attempts and breaks I finally stuck the first move, and was able to finish it off for the send! I was super happy as I had no expectations of sending it in light of how hard I had been shut down in the fall. I guess climbing gyms are good for something. Next we went over to some other unfinished business, a long traverse that I have seen variously graded from V3 to V6. I think V5 is about right, although since it is just the pump factor (it is about 50 feet long) probably a route grade would be more in order. I managed to send it after repeated attempts, and Rok worked out a lot of the sequences, vowing to come back for the send at a later date. Here are some photos of us on it:

Next we headed over to an area called the Fridge boulder. It was really good, we did an awesome V4 up the middle of and overhanging face, one of the prouder looking lines I have done, really cool movement. We tried some other stuff, including a V3 dyno that took me about 10 tries to send, shown below finally sending it (thanks to Kodak power, all it took was a camera in my face!):

Next we headed up to the boulders by Barneys Rubble, where we did some other fun stuff, a V4 dyno that I did on my first try and a really good V1 problem that took me at least 8 tries to get (rather sandbagged). By this time Rok had holes in 3 of his fingertips, and had retired for the day. I decided I had also had enough, so we cooked dinner and then headed in for Rok’s first Leavenworth experience. He was suitably awed by the kitschy pseudo-bavarian décor, and we finished the night off with a planning session for the next days climbing, held over ice cream at the Coldstone Creamery (only after I discovered that the Leavenworth DQ had closed up shop, SUCKS!!!).

We camped in some free camping by Bridge Creek campground, and the next morning dawned bright and sunny again. We decided that our finger tips were too spent to boulder for another day, and Rok wanted to try his hand at crack climbing (no pun intended), so we headed over to Alphabet Wall. We started on Dogleg Crack (5.8+), which I led and Rok seconded cleanly, pretty good for his first ever crack experience, and I even forbade him from laybacking and told him he had to jam. We then both lead the 5.10- sport route to the right of that (really well protected and super fun). Next we did the long hike up Givler’s Dome, where we did Bo Derek (the climb), a super classic 5.10b. It was good, although a bit short. After that we did Givlers Crack (5.7+), another must-do L-dub classic, normally 2 pitches but we ran it all into one pitch. It was really good, worth the hike up there if anyone was wondering. After this we decided to head over to the Swiftwater Picnic Area again to finish the day off with some bouldering. We did a bunch of messing around on easy stuff (running up slabs in our tennis shoes, climbing V0s with no hands, etc) and then finally decided that the fun and games had to end, so we got serious and set up shop by the big boulder immediately left of the parking lot. We did some good stuff on it, the highlight of which was the campus-style V3 with a mantle top out onto a high slab. Pictures are shown below, the top out was very low stress thanks to the comfort given by the though of 6 inches of foam lying below (in the form of the clubs new monster crash pad).

All in all a super fun trip, and we plan on doing it again soon!