I realize that this is a California-centric forum, but some of us have moved on to greener, or at least rainier, pastures...
Today, I led my 4th, 5th and 6th routes up in Boulder Canyon with my friend D. Walker. Good times were had by both of us. As I was driving westbound on Canyon Blvd, I thought the clouds over the mountains looked a bit ominous, but no rain was falling as I got to our meetup spot (the parking area by The Dome). I jumped into David's Jeep at 4:35 PM, and we headed out to The Bihedrals -Upper Tier.
After a five minute steep uphill hike followed by 60 feet or so of 4th class scrambling, we arrived at the ledge at the bottom of our intended climbs. There was one other group there (a guy and his girlfriend), quite surprising for a Monday with threatening weather! But the guy goes, "Hey, don't you guys climb at Movement?" As it turns out, David had climbed with this guy (also named David) when he did his lead belay test at the gym...
Anyways, David jumped on
Group Therapy, a 2-star 5.8 bolted line. After he cruised it, he cleaned it and then I led the route as well. Fun climbing on really solid rock! As always, the climbing felt a bit stout this early in the season, but nothing horrible. I'm still working on getting my lead head back after too many years of not getting on ropes (I think the last time I led something before this year was when I climbed
Lava Falls at Pinns (immortalized in the guidebook). I couldn't even tell you what year that was...
After I cleaned the gear, we took turns leading
Dan's Line (5.8 ), which is about 20 feet right of
Group Therapy. The climbing on this one felt a little more solid; probably because it wasn't the first lead of the month! Another stellar route on good rock.
David jumped on
Trick Or Treat and sent in good style past 7 bolts and a couple of cam placements.
Sensing that the weather was closing in on us, and not wanting to be forced to leave a cam as a lower-off piece if the rain came in, I opted for the 5.9 another 20 feet to the right.
Hold The Line is a great little route with a not super-obvious crux sequence. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I ended up grabbing the quickdraw at the bolt just past the crux. I tried twice to get the rope clipped into the draw, but was thwarted. So I hung onto that draw like a shaking rat... Too bad, because the rest of the climb was mellow fun after that. I was just overgripping things and generally freaked out. I'll have to get it clean some other time. The clouds started spitting cold raindrops at us just as I was moving through the crux. I was able to finish the climb and rap off without issue.
Then we rapped out and headed back to the car. Next time we'll bring a third so we can get some pics. Here's a shot of David rapping out.
