Welcome to spanel.com

As has become usual for trips with Mat, short notice, late night driving and camping, big fun and outstanding results.

I made a nice HD video of the funs. It’s HD, so if you’re on a slow Internet connection, you’ll need to let the video buffer or it will stutter and restart. Here’s an explanation of how to enjoy HD videos on the Internet.

This time, the weather looked good for a trip to Yosemite NP –  unseasonably warm and dry –  sucks for our future water supply; works wonders for winter climbing trips. We spent our climbing time at Pat and Jack Pinnacle –  an excellent crag to learn to deal with Yosemite cracks and slabs.

Climbs:

• Knob Job, 5.10b trad, 4 stars, Mat led it twice, Carol and I followed twice. I haven’t yet gotten it clean; plan to go back and run laps on it until it goes clean and I’m ready to lead it.
• Boneheads, 5.10b sport, 4 stars, Carol led it, I followed twice, Mat followed. The crux is right off the ground on slabby moves, be prepared to smear your climber onto the rock if they fall before the first bolt –  there are ankle-breaking rocks in the LZ.
• Babble On, 5.10a trad, 2 stars (can’t imagine this rating, it looks like awesome fun), Mat led, Carol followed and cleaned. More adventure maybe than she planned on, as she slipped and fell under the roof  and found herself having to self rescue by ascending with Prusiks to get back up on the climb. Well done, Carol. I did not follow in deference to my sore shoulder –  the climb looks really physical.
• Golden Needles, 5.8 trad, 3 stars, I led the bottom pitch which goes at 5.7 (we saw the second pitch; looked burly and I chose to come back another day, again in deference to my shoulder). I had a couple firsts here:
  • – about 5 placements up, I looked up and realized I didn’t have enough hand-sized gear for the rest of the pitch, so I lowered, got more gear then reclimbed.
  • –  I encountered maybe 10–15 feet of verticalish, pure crack –  I had to place gear with hands and feet in the crack –  a first for me and a real confidence booster.

We wanted to get back on Sherrie’s Crack, 5.10c, but it was busy whenever we were in the area. Climbers were running laps on it and trading off leads –  some real inspirational stuff.

Speaking of inspirational –  guy and gal are there; she’s running laps on Sherrie’s Crack while we’re doing our Knob Job thing. Once we’re off, she gears up to lead Knob Job; the guy starts backing slowly down the hill to get to the belay spot. I detect that something’s amiss; turns out October last he took a whipper on some Yosemite pinnacle, broke his patella (kneecap), had surgery to repair. He showed me the big scar and swollen knee –  and next I know he’s going to follow his partner on Knob Job. As he puts it, “I can climb cracks, because I lead with the good leg, stand up and drag the bad leg, then place it in the crack while I move my good leg up again.” Wow.

We’ll be revisting this crag frequently to work those cracks and slabs –  our climbing gym is excellent for learning to face climb, but slab and crack climbing opportunities are sparse.

Thanks to Mat for proposing the trip and getting us out and about!!!

Namaste, Rick