Friday, November 7, 2008

Tradish.

Once a year my friend Andrei shows up from NJ and invites me to take long walks into canyons and artfully place shiny metal objects into the rock wall.Above, Andrei sits before an inviting canyon and a dissipating rain cloud. Day 1 - First Creek Canyon: Romper Room Area: Doobie Dance 90' 5.6. I led this to a bolted anchor. Andrei was quite ill and vomited several times on the approach. An inauspicious start...
Day 2 - Pine Creek Canyon: Spectrum Area: Birdland 560' 5.7+. 6 pitches. Andrei led all but Pitch 3, which I led. All anchors were bolted, which made for a much quicker ascent/descent. Except for the fact that there were 3 parties ahead of us. So we ended up waiting at the several anchors for parties to rap through. We were the last party on the route and exited in the dark. At the parking lot, a rescue helicopter was busy fetching lost hikers from the back of the canyon. Day 3 - White Rock Springs: Angel Food Wall: Group Therapy 755' 5.7+ 7 pitches. Ben the mountain goat showed up and gunned most of the route for us in his approach shoes.Ah, the joy of rope management.
Trust your life to any one of these biners. I did. My single brown Black Diamond positron screwgate can be seen way at the bottom center.
Below you can see 1. a trad climber 2. Turtlehead peak 3. the trail into the canyon from the parking lot. It's hard to show scale with a small digital point and click.

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