Quest for Mud (Special Edition)

[Marco]

Just got to Arizona from the South Bay area and catching up on mudncrud. Looks like we are ships in the night Sabuber. How long are you in the area?

I cant believe people recommending such niche crags for the first time at Pinns. Good access and climbing? Yes. But the classics are good to get you hooked on climbing the park.

If you're in the south bay into the new years and theres 3+ days of sun/no rain, sandstone TRing is always a blast. Castle Rock and Mt Diablo are great for easy TR access. If you just have a half day, Guadalupe (hicks road area on MP) and Lexington rocks are fun for a few hours. Unlike sandstone and more like Pinnacles they could be climbed wet but they would be slippery. Unless youre visiting in Santa Cruz stay away, it is not a good climbing spot.

After the rains, I would suggest a long chord for anchor and a 70m rope and you could TR most things on Discovery wall.

Every place I've recommended require no leading but potentially a rap into lower anchors for TRing. Hope I wasn't too late to help.

Sabuber, there are so many formations and routes that might fit your parameters that it's hard to comment without writing an essay (which I kinda did by way of the '07 guidebook).

I'd suggest that you give Discovery Wall a try but that you also leave a few hours to wander around the place and check other stuff out?

Agreed with everything above from Brad. Broken clock...accurate... twice a day... etc

Was walking the beach today and saw something that reminded me of pinnacles

At first I thought this was an update on Flake don't break at Snake Bend.

[Gavin]

Hi! Does anyone have route recommendations for a first time TR climbing visit to Pinnacles? I’m coming home for the holidays from Arizona and Pinnacles seems to be the best place for TR in the area. I’m familiar with the park and used to hike there a lot when I lived in Cali, but never climbed there. Disc wall seems to be a popular spot on MP, but I figured I’d ask the experts of the park here.
Similarly, if there are other TR crags you recommend in the South Bay Area, I’d be interested in hearing about them.

Welcome to the climbing forum! I'm not sure how long you are in the area over the holidays, what climbing grades you're looking for, and what your comfort/experience level is with building anchors, but for Pinnacles, Discovery Wall is probably the easiest and most accessible location for setting up some topropes. The main issue for most of the full-length routes at Discovery Wall is that the anchor bolts are on the cliff summit at least 5 feet back from the cliff edge, so you do need some familiarity with building equalized anchors and using long cordelette lengths to get the focal point with carabiners over the cliff edge (to avoid excessive drag). It also helps to have some decent familiarity with location of routes at Discovery Wall so you know which anchor bolts correspond to which routes.

Probably the most straightforward TR setup at Discovery Wall is for the route Ordeal. I replaced the summit anchor a couple years ago and it is a nicely equalized anchor setup with mussy hooks - you can just pop the rope into the mussy hooks, throw the rope ends down, and you're good to go. Note that a rope in the range of 60-70m is needed for full-length TR climbs at Discovery Wall.

There are other east side locations where you can set up topropes too - Tourist Trap, Teaching Rock, Backdoor, Upper Crust, etc. In all cases referring to Brad's guidebook or details on MP should help for navigation.

Note that it is raining at Pinnacles right now and will likely continue to do so through Saturday. If you're still in the area, I would say that conditions will improve for climbing - especially at the more sheltered cliffs of Discovery Wall - by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, if you're still in the area at that point.