We got up and were excited to get out for a full day of climbing. We selected the Fin Wall. This wall is just to the left of Broken Tooth. According to Bloom, it offers many "long clean dihedrals" and it's a good warm weather destination.
We drove to the parking lot and headed up. It was warm and wonderful! At least as first. While I belayed Peggy on Walkin' Talkin' Bob (5.10-, 50'), Dave relaxed in the sun. I don't recall noticing the wind - yet.
We then moved over to No Beggin' a 50' 5.9 crack that Peggy lead. By now, the wind was BLASTING. While Peggy was on the climb, her full back pack lifted off the ground and blew about 20'! Luckily Dave caught it before it pitched over a not-to-be-retrieved-cliff edge. Her camelback also took flight and was rescued. The same wasn't true about Peggy's bottle of water. It became airborne and was never seen again even though it had water in it!
Next up was Flight Time. This is a 5.12, 50' long finger crack. Bloom describes it as a "short, but quality splitter finger crack." While belaying Dave on Flight Time, I thought - wow, what a great job! Then I got on it. Holy Moly! How he stayed on at all is a mystery. This is definitely a bigger-fingers crack. Still it was fun working it the bit I did.
Next we hiked over to Fintastic (5.10-, 50'). We all agreed that Fintastic was the best climb of the day. It was really lots of fun.
What wasn't fun any longer was the wind. It was really nasty.
And because of it, we were hesitant to commit to climbing Third World Lover. None of us would decide so we turned to the flip of a rock. If the flat side was up, we were to climb it, if the peaked side was up, we were to head out. We flipped and the rock said: LEAVE! So, of course we stayed to climb it instead.
While Dave was leading this pitch the wind was blasting so hard the sand and small pebbles hitting me were hurting. In addition, I was being blown over. Finally I was squatting with my down jacket on trying to make myself as small as possible.
Meanwhile, Dave was just trying to stay on the wall. He had to sit tight in several spots to avoid being blown off. No joke!
Seeing this, I decided I didn't want to climb, but just to leave asap. Peggy went up and cleaned the pitch and we high-tailed it out of there. The rock tried to warn us but we didn't listen did we?
It was great getting back to the Cougar and out of the wind. By now, the wind was blasting so hard that the entire area had very little visibility. It was just nasty.
Peggy and Quinn both came by and we all had drinks and dinner together. Then we capped off the evening by watching an episode of the Simpsons. Good times!
No comments:
Post a Comment