I'm not sure that this post is worth its own thread, but I've got to put it somewhere.
I spent Sunday and Monday at Pinns with my friend from Twain Harte, Roger Putnam. This was Roger's first visit ever to Pinns.
We got there late enough Sunday that we "only" got five hours of climbing in (I wrote "only" since Roger tends to climb like Clint and Mud - you've got to start and end at dark or it isn't a real day of climbing).
Sunday we did one route that was new to me. This route was among the worst 10% of routes I've ever done at Pinns (really bad rock quality and dirt everywhere). I led this and then invited Roger to skip it. He insisted that he wanted to at least follow it and then did so. He ended up just laughing at how bad it was. But this turned out to be a critical climb - it helped him set his gauge regarding how bad Pinns climbs can be.
Roger then led both pitches of Lava Falls (and actually Clink, J.C. and others who were at Smiling Simian thought he pretty much sprinted up them). He loved it. While I removed and patched a stray bolt stud on Lava Fall's first pitch, Roger joined the J.C./Clink crew at Smiling Simian. He did every route there on lead, toprope or free solo.
Among the fun we had, Roger was really most impressed with the quality of the climbing crew we'd hung with that day.
On Monday we got to the East Side at 7:00 a.m. We ran up to Pipsqueak where we repeated John's route Puny Legs and did the fun new boulder problem there that J.C. and Clink had reported.
Then it got impressive.
Roger had to leave by 2:00 to get back and teach a class. After Pipsqueak we went to Discovery (which we had all to ourselves). Roger proceeded to onsight all of the following routes, in order:
- Portent,
- Wet Kiss,
- Stupendous Man,
- Lithium,
- Melvin,
- Verdict,
- Broken Arrow.
We ended on The Long And The Short of It, which is new and which he enjoyed.
He liked Pinns. I liked introducing someone with his level of enthusiasm to the place.