Friday April 18, 2008
Last night Ben and Claudia from Quebec arrived in Joshua Tree. They have been traveling and climbing in Hueco Tanks (where Claudia did her first V10!) and came to JTree via Bishop. I hadn't seen them since Hueco and I was psyched to spend some time. Claudia was the reason I began talking to Sterling Ropes, with whom I am now an representing as an athlete. :)
Anyway, Ben and Claudia where staying at an RV and camp site just down the road from Jtree (29 Palms entrance). I packed my things and planned to sleep in my Cruiser for the next few nights so I could be closer to JTree and have some friends nearby.
This day, we started out by trying to find some other friends in the park. The park is huge and although we drove around a bit, we didn't see their van or any sign of them. So, Claudia and I made a plan to try this nice 10ish finger crack climb called the exorcist. First, we were going to warm up on a 5.8 nearby.
I took the lead since I spent sent the previous day refreshing my memory on all the trad basics. I set up my rack and finagled my way up the beginning without too much trouble. I was not half way up when I realized I was going to have some issues. Since I didn't fly all of my gear down (I didn't have a chance to get into storage for my draws for example), I was borrowing draws from Claudia. I realized right away that I might not have enough draws to place much gear. I hollered this down to Claudia but decided not to retreat.
After heading up a bit more, I could see the width of the crack and was becoming keenly aware that the gear on me would not fit. I was in an interesting situation: back clean the climb and forego the send or free climb to the top and hope I had pieces for an anchor. I knew that the exorcist had bolted anchors and we or I could always rap down that if it became an issue so I took my chances on anchor gear and proceeded up.
I managed to put a few more pieces in (one or two a bit precariously, but better than no pieces) and found that I had just the right sizes left for an anchor. I set one up and belayed Claudia to the top. I was relieved everything turned out well, despite the spiciness I created by not having the right gear for the climb.
After Claudia rappelled down and collected our bags from below, I went over to the exorcist and set up a top rope. Since I'm not a crack climber, I wanted more practice and figured I'd TR the climb, first, then lead it on gear. Unfortunately, by this time, I was hungry and needed water. When I cam down to the base of the climb and set myself to eat and drink, another group arrived. It was our friends we were looking for earlier in the day.
I felt bad holding up the line. Leslie had come to lead the climb and they were 4 people in total to climb the thing. Another party of 2 came and left while we were setting up so I insisted we climb the route quickly and move on. :( I was a bit disappointed that I didn't have my chance to lead to it, but I didn't want to wait for another opportunity and I wasn't going to try to onsight it.
The climb itself was phenomenal, as every climb I did out there was. The finger crack was amazing and I was pleased that I could actually do consecutive finger locks and toe jams on the way up.
For the rest of the day, we set out to find some boulder problem but got lost. We found something that was a boulder problem but it was not the one we were looking for. We ended the day with dinner at the cafe in town before heading back to the RV and camp site to sleep. The Sterling Rope events were starting bright and early the next day and I was still a bit under the weather so I crashed pretty directly when we got back.
Surprisingly, despite the Cruiser having a tiny back end to sleep in, with the help of Ben's crashpad, I slept well.
