Ramblings of a Monkeygirl I laughed, I cried, I fell down…

Yosemite, dinosaurs, new friends and experiences

I've fallen a little behind on my blog updates so instead of posting each entry separately, I put together this end of summer recap of my adventures.  I had a great summer making new friends, climbing new routes and, yes, there were dinosaurs...

Lovers Leap again and meeting Rick. August 22, 2009.

Ask anyone who knows me, I'm a hugger.  Its just in my nature to hug people I'm friendly with instead of shaking hands, slapping backs or similar reserved nonsense.  Oddly, when I met Ben Pope (@benpope) for the first time earlier in August, I held back on my customary hug out of some strange notion that it might alarm him, and I gave him an awkward handshake that made me worry he was going to think I didn't like him all that much.  When Jeff and I met Rick (@rikray) at the Lovers Leap parking lot on Saturday morning, I decided I wasn't going to hold back - I gave in to my initial impulses and gave him a proper monkeygirl hug.  He wasn't alarmed at all and, in fact, hugged back just as good as I gave. I knew right then that the weekend was going to be fun.

Now, I had planned on climbing a bunch of 5.7 routes that weekend like Surrealistic Pillar and Corrugation Corner with no thought to anything harder. When we arrived at the base of the East Wall, however, Rick started pointing out routes including The Line, which he recommended it as a great 5.9 route. I gazed up at the striking crack, glanced over at Jeff, and decided I'd give it a try. After getting some beta from Rick about the first piece of pro, I racked my gear and headed up. While feeling fairly confident, I'd never led a 5.9 trad climb before so I started out by stitching up the pitch with a lot of pro. I reached a slick section and, after setting a nut, I floundered around a while trying to figure out how to get up and over the section. I tried a few moves and, while stretched out above the piece, I suddenly slipped and took my first trad lead fall! It happened so quickly that I didn't actually have any time to get scared, but I was very pleased that the nut held. Once I knew the piece was solid, I wasn't afraid to try the move like I should have in the first place - by committing to a somewhat bouldery move (bouldery for me, at least, probably not so much for my partners).  After that, all my initial head flutters disappeared, and I  finished up the rest of the pitch much more quickly than the first third.  Rick lead the second pitch, and Jeff lead the third, and it was all very fun climbing.

After we descended from The Line, we hopped onto Labor of Love . Jeff lead it first and rappelled down then I tried it as well.  Although most of the climb was dike hiking, some of the dikes were pretty damn far for my 5'2'' reach so the climb was pretty balancey and heady.  SuperTopo describes the crux as "extremely height dependent and could probably be rated like this: 5.9 if you are taller than 6’0”, 5.10c if you are 5’9”-5’11” and 5.11 if you are 5’8” or shorter," but I was determined not to pull on the gear.  I tried my damnedest to get around the section by traversing far around to both sides of the crux.  I had just realized how far out and above the bolt I was when I slipped and took a nice long whipper.  Luckily, Rick gave me a nice, soft catch so I was barely jarred at all.  I wasn't really scared, but I had a moment of total frustration with the long reaches and half-seriously asked "Can I come down now?"  As soon as I said it, however, I shook myself, leaned my head to the wall, took a deep breath, and kept going.  I ended up just pulling on the quickdraw to get over the crux, but I will come back to that section someday and try it as a dyno.

The thing I learned on this trip is that I can be super ballsey the first day out. I'll jump on lead and take on harder routes than I've tried before. The same is not true for day two of a trip, however.  Jeff and I hit up Cosumnes River Gorge on Sunday (we were rained out of the Leap but didn't want to stop climbing), and I was the world's biggest wimp about leading cracks.  Sure, I tend to sketch out when all I have to rely on when first coming off the deck is a loose fist jam, but the main problem was just that my head wasn't in it.  I may have been the biggest badass the day before, but I was reduced to a quivering mass of FAIL that day.  Just goes to show how important the head game is to sending.  Despite my inability to lead, I still had a great time top roping and hanging out with the other climbers at the crag.  All in all it was a fantastic, almost perfect, climbing weekend.

Click on the pictures for larger versions.  Also check out my Picasa site for the full album of pictures from this Lovers Leap trip.

Knights Ferry, metal dinosaurs, and meeting Katie. September 11, 2009.

I know I am prone to being over enthusiastic about most everything, but I really can't say enough good things about Katie. She's a climber and skydiver who is wonderful, energetic, sweet, caring and badass.  Her enthusiasm is so infectious that its spurs me on to try new things and seek out new experiences. I've had the pleasure of getting to know her through Twitter (@katiebeth) over the last few months, but I couldn't wait until October to meet her in Yosemite at a tweetup I'd planned so we decided to meet up in Modesto when she came home for a weekend to visit her family.  We had so much fun going to lunch, taking her little sister to Knights Ferry to explore, and climbing at her local gym.

Pictures from our fantastic day. Click on the pictures for larger versions. See the full album of pictures on my Picasa site.

First Annual Yosemite Tweetup. October 2-4, 2009.

I went a little nuts in May after a great Yosemite trip and booked multiple weekends in October at campgrounds in and near the Valley on the off chance I could get people to go with me.  It turned out that my regular climbing partners couldn't make it to the first weekend so I either needed to cancel my reservation or figure out something else to do with the weekend.  Rather than waste the reservation, I decided to turn it into a mini-tweetup (mini since I could only fit 6 people into the campground), and asked 5 Twitter climbers to join me.  Luke (@lstefurak), Lizzy (@lizzy_t), Rick (@rikray), Katie (@katiebeth) and George (@sudarkoff) all said yes!

George and I went up early on Friday and hit up Commitment as soon as we got down to the Valley.  The first pitch started out a bit slick and unpleasant but quickly turned into a fantastic hand crack that made me realize why people love crack climbing. Pitch 2 was an easy face climbing cruise with a small roof.  Pitch 3 contained the crux - a roof that you climb under and around.  I actually didn't find the crux all that difficult though I had a little trouble reaching the crack under the roof.  I had to use a small crimper hold to get myself higher up on the face under the roof in order to get my hand into the crack.  You do have to commit to come around the roof (hence the name), but it's a well protected move so there's not much to worry about.  I actually found the slippery start of p1 more heady than the roof crux.  After Commitment, George did his very first multi-pitch trad lead (first trad lead ever!) on Munginella. He pretty much ate up the route and cruised through the whole thing without any trouble and with only a few pointers from me. When we got back down from the climb, we found that a bear had ripped up both our packs!  I guess I still have much to learn about climbing in Yosemite.

When we drove in to camp, we were greeted by Katie. Luke and Lizzy arrived later that night, and Rick joined us in the morning.  The 6 of us decided to check out Pat and Jack Pinnacle since there was a mix of trad and sport of various levels.  I attempted and failed at an easy off-width, which I plan to come back and try without my rack on, but then successfully led Nurdle . Luke had set up a top rope for Skinheads and Underclingon so George, Katie, Rick and I all had fun attempting the traverse on the Underclingon.  Luke, Lizzy and Rick headed back to camp while the three of us remaining all climbed Skinheads before returning for a delicious curry rice dinner, courtesy of Luke and Lizzy.

After a fun and relaxing night of sitting around a warm fire while Rick and Katie softly played the guitar, we woke up to find the campgrounds covered in snow!  It made for a beautiful, if cold, morning and I was pretty thrilled to have experienced my first snowfall while camping.  I've been camping in the snow before, but it's never snowed on me while I was sleeping before.  Hey, what can I say, I like new experiences!  Needless to say, it scrapped our climbing plans for the day, but it made for a fun touristy morning in the Valley.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I just have the few iPhone pictures above.

Taking my best friend on her first multi-pitch trad climb. Donner Summit. October 7, 2009.

I have been hoping to get my best friend, Adrienne (@adrienneknits), to climb with me outdoors for a while, but she hasn't really been into it the last couple years.  Out of the blue, she recently said she'd like to try following me on a multi-pitch trad climb.  I jumped at the chance and set a date as soon as possible before she could change her mind.  I decided to take her to Donner Summit because I knew Schoolhouse Rock had a great beginner climb, Kindergarden Crack, that I could take her up. I went over anchors, lead belaying, and belay transitions with her at my house, and we were ready to rock.

We got an early (though not absurd) start and arrived at Donner Summit around 9:30 or 10. After I racked up and we went through safety checks, I started climbing.  About 10 feet off the deck, I suddenly realized that I was a little bit sketched out by having Adrienne belay me.  I've been climbing with Adrienne for a few years now so I trust her completely, but that's all been top roping and this was lead belaying.  She'd given me no reason to worry about her belaying or anything, but it was just that she'd never caught a lead fall before, and I weigh more than her.  I was committed to this outing though, so I shook the head trash off placed my first piece of pro.  After a little while, I stopped thinking about it entirely and just enjoyed the climb.  We did the route in 3 pitches, including some super fun slab climbing, and Adrienne was beaming when she got to the top.  She immediately said, "Let's do it again!" so I suggested we try Junior High, a slightly harder route.

The first hitch occurred at a bouldery move that requires you to commit to a reachy (for us short people) mantle.  I ended up needing to set up a z-rig to get her over the short section.  Pitch 2 was fine and we got through it without much trouble.  At the start of pitch 3, I couldn't figure out which crack was the correct way to go.  When I climbed the route with Jeff and Jeremy a few months back, Jeff went up the most vertical crack available (which didn't really look all that 5.6ish to me).  I chose a wider, stemmable crack that seemed easier.  Halfway up the chimney, I realized the second half would require some straight on crack techniques that Adrienne didn't know about so decided to hop out onto the left side for some face climbing.  Turns out that I chose very poorly.  Getting out of the crack required a completely committed step left and swing around an arete that left me feeling a little sketched out and exposed.  Then I had to lie back a short section with bad, mossy, slippery feet.  I knew that Adrienne was not going to like those sections at all so I did not top out.  Instead I set up an anchor close to the lieback section so I could talk her through the moves.  As I predicted, she wasn't happy with my routefinding skills.  In the end I set up the z-rig again to help her over the bad sections.  We quickly finished up the climb as the sky darkened and the temperature dropped noticeably.

To my relief and happiness, Adrienne was not turned off to multi-pitch trad climbing.  In fact, she's decided to join me, Jeff, Kelli, and Jeremy on our next trip to Yosemite!!

Click on the pictures for larger versions. See the full album of pictures from this Donner trip on my Picasa site.