A pinched nerve in my neck relegated me to bed rest yesterday. Not much to report from yesterday.
So here's the internet version of a re-run. I posted this on my mac.com weblog before. No I''ve moved it over here. Enjoy!
----
Climbing Broughton Bluff
Pictures
Nate, Sue and Moto took me out climbing yesterday (February 26, 2006). It was only the second time I’d been outdoor climbing. The weather certainly wasn’t great: the forecast said the day would be partly cloudy and a little over 50 degrees. Instead, we got cloudy skies all day, a chilly wind and never left the forties. Regardless, we geared up and headed out to Broughton Bluff in Troutdale.
Once there, Nate set a top rope for a fairly easy face. Well, easy for him and Sue. Plenty rough for me. We played up the first face 4 or 5 times and then moved around a corner and ran up that face another 5 or 6 times (I went up one time each). Then we walked a few hundred feet down the trail where Sue started lead-climbing the last route on the face. She got to the area under the roof near a bolt and just didn’t feel solid or planted. She came back down and let Nate lead back up to the same point. He set a quickdraw in the bolt, moved out left and then went over the roof.
Once over the roof he got stuck on a slabby section. He said he could see the bolt near his face; he just couldn’t get his hands up to the bolt. And he didn’t have anywhere to set protection. So he came down and Sue went back up. She didn’t feel good about the rach to the bolt either. So she came back down and up Nate went one more time. He tried to find a surefooted way up to the bolt 4 or 5 times before he decided that it just was not the right day to top out this route.
Then we moved back along the wall for two more routes. Nate and Sue forced me to sight climb the first route. I got stuck at the crux for a solid 10 minutes (that felt like an hour). After 6 or 7 abortive tries I stumbled on the right combination of high feet and right-side lay-back. The foot holds stayed sketchy to the end but I made it all the way up top. Nate ran the route after me. He handled the crux handily but felt like he had “thugged” it a little too much. He didn’t find a more finely finessed sequence after 2 or 3 tries. So then it was Sue’s turn, where she proved once again to be the most graceful of our trinity.
We moved over to “Classic Crack to round out the day. I failed to learn much in the way of crack climbing skills on the route, but Nate and Sue topped it out with little trouble. Nate went up Classic Crack one more time and then lead up a route named Red Eye. And with that we packed up and headed in.
All Grown Up
11 years ago
