We set out around 8:30am. After the required backtrack the wrong way down route 93 for my "easy day" Starbucks. Started hiking around 9:30am. Our goal, the blue line, or thereabouts..."Freeway". A class 4 rock route so named supposedly because it's that obvious...according to Gerry Roach...who probably named it, and who thinks everything is obvious and easier and shorter than it really is...(Class 4, is generally accepted as the last level of difficulty of rock before you should prolly rope up, in case ya di'int know)
(That picture doesn't even look real to me...picture taking tard-luck, I guess.)
We just started moseying up the "fire road" according to G. Roach. His directions up to the base of the climb, about 1.5 mile, were pretty ok. Then comes the part about where to enter the route..."start at the lowest point of the rock and go up for 250 feet, then follow the obvious route". Uh...yeah. DUDE, where does the "obvious" part come in here, cause, none of this is obvious. We're in the trees here, at the lowest point of the rock and there appears to be about a quarter mile of the bottom of the rock...After walking back and forth and checking it all out, we just picked a good looking spot and started going up. Looking back, we think we were a little bit north of the actual route until the upper half, but decided that there wasn't many class 4 options on the face and you had to stay in them or else...so we weren't that far off. We know we were on the route for the last 200 feet or so because that was your only reasonable option.
It was fun. I only got mildly sketched out a couple times when holds were small and/or exposure was high. Chad agreed there were a few class 5 moves in there, at least the way we went. Each time there was a tricky move Chad helped me get my game plan set. It's still quite a learning curve for me. I don't even know what all the moves are, and so my creativity with how to tackle an obstacle is limited. Plus I am not yet totally comfortable with the physics of it. I need to practice more to learn what works and what doesn't...and I need to learn in my mind that my ass is NOT inevitably going to drag me down in a direction I don't want to go every time like I tend to think right off the bat.
This gives you the general idea, though I'm not too good at rock pics yet. Not a lot going on to frame the pic with but air.
This next one is right near the top of the route...which was that point just to the right of that group of huge trees in the background. Just before this stop there was a, lets call it "exhilarating", little move we had to do to the right where you basically hung on to the knife edge with your hands and swung your legs over into thin air until you can lower down onto the shelf below. It was SO easy once I did it, I immediately started cracking up after I did...but it took me a good 10 minutes staring at it and Chad spotting me to go ahead and do it, because it was about a 30 foot digger backwards down to the walk-out trail below if you screwed up. This sort of stuff is just a head game for me. I sat here for a minute while Chad scouted ahead, because we weren't sure yet at this point if we were on track or not and he didn't want us to get dead-ended up on the point. But that was it. The point we were looking for. Done.
In the end, the theory for me was just "shut up and climb". Less questioning more action and we'll all be fine. Chad always says things like "trust your feet" and "you just need to commit"...and they couldn't be more true. Chad did a great job leading the climb and keeping it reasonable for a rock tard such as myself.
Then we hiked back down the walking trail, drove to Pearl Street, ate Hapa sushi with a few beers and Haagen Daas ice cream (e.g. total gluttony), Chad had a quick Bob-O-clock appt for his knee, which was fine, and we went home.
Good times! Good times! Can't beat that day with a stick, now can ya? Happy Becky:
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