Smith Rock, October 2-3, 2004
This past weekend I made a trip to Smith Rock with Roanne, Ryan, and
Jen. We met at Ryan and Jen's place Friday night, loaded up the
van, and set off. We arrived around 1:30am, and went to
bed. The next morning dawned sunny and hot, and we got right down
to business. Roanne and I started on a super fun 5.8 stemming
corner called Lions Jaw, which Roanne is shown climbing below:
Next we moved on to a 5.9 corner called Moonshine Dihedral, also very
fun. Next we did Karate Crack, a 5.10a hand crack with super
bomber, locking hand jams. As I climbed it, I was careful not to
adjust any cam placements while holding the rope with my teeth.
Roanne didn't have too much fun on this one, not yet being adept at
hand-jamming, so for the rest of the day we switched to sport climbing.
We headed over to the morning glory area and met up with Ryan and Jen,
where Ryan had been working on his latest project, a 5.12d called Kings
of Rap. Roanne and I climbed a 5.10c called Nine Gallon Buckets,
which was good, nice and long, then I did a 5.11a called Cool Ranch,
which is shown in the photos below:
Next we all sat around and watched the awesome orange colours the rock
turns in the sunset:
Here are Ryan and Makhya relaxing at the end of the day:
The next day was really hot. We started on a 5.10a called
Irreverance, which was pretty fun, then did the classic Barbeque the
Pope (5.10b), which Roanne is shown on below:
By this time we were tired of climbing in the sun, so we headed over to
some climbs on Smith Summit, to the right of the Phoenix
Buttress. There we did a 5.10b, which Jen is shown on below:
And a long 5.11a, I can't rememer the names of either of them.
The rock there is sort of weird, a coarser texture than most of Smith,
more like the happy boulders in Bishop. Ryan and I finished on a
really good 5.11d called Blackened. It was really soft for the
grade, but good moves on good rock. We left around 5:00, stopping
for Burrittos enroute and arriving in Seattle around midnight, a
weekend well spent.