Welcome to spanel.com

Where to start – an amazing trip – new climbing friends, new climbing areas, new climbing routes, new lead climbing breakthroughs, our first ever lead climbing falls (yikes!)…

I’ll start by mentioning a few climbing mentors that have helped us so much, coaching us on climbing technique, style and confidence – Bob, Mat, Eric, Diana, Paul, Hunter, Ryan, Kyle, Peter and Karl – thanks!!! There are dozens of others that we’ve watched and learned from as well.

Next, thanks to Serge and the Rock Rendezvous + “friends of RR” gang (Faith, Dirk, Don, Elaine, Kelly, Andre, Colleen, Chelsea, Jennifer, Liza, Susan, Tim, Drea) for motivating us to get out early before our Idaho friends showed up. We came away from the early Alabama Hills climbing session with a whole new (positive) opinion of AH rock.

It’s always a pleasure to climb with Idahoans Diana and Paul and we’ve learned so much about outdoor climbing from them both. My favorite Diana-ism is “just stand up and believe the hold will be there” – she’s so right and doing so really opens up one’s climbing potential. We can only dream of having Diana and Paul’s endurance and enthusiasm for rock climbing.

Big, big thanks to Carol for taking on lead climbs so that I could rest more and enjoy “toprope time”. We definitely get more climbing in with more than one leader.

It’s hard to know how to organize a report from such a trip; this time I’ve decided to focus on the climbing areas and what we thought were the best climbs – hopefully to get my readers interested in them. All the climbs are sport or topropes; we never got the trad gear out on this trip.

Alabama Hills (near Lone Pine)

The Alabama Hills are just west of Lone Pine and are easy to find. The climbing crags are less easy to find because of the somewhat confusing network of roads. Once you find your crag, you can mostly gear up at the car and walk a few yards to your climb. A lazy climber’s dream.

We had two sessions at the AH, one with the RR group, and another later session with Diana and Paul.  My guidebook lists 200 sport climbs and 70 gear climbs in the AH. I know there are more as we found and climbed one sport climb that wasn’t in the book in our short time there.

Carol  lead climbs:

• Tall Wall, Spur, 7, ***, Carol’s first ever 5.7 lead, but in fairness she did have two 5.6 leads under her belt to build that climbing pyramid…
• Walnut, Honey Bunny, 6, * – a typical AH 5.6 face, thin hands and feet
• Hoodgie Wall, Leonosphere, 7, **, face
• Hoodgie Wall, Ankles Away, 8, ****, fun face
• Truffle Tower, Escargot, 8, ***, fun face
• Tall Wall, Bananarama, 8, ****

Rick  lead climbs:

• Tall Wall, Rotten Bananas, 7, ****, my first lead of the trip. Thoroughly enjoyable; watch yourself on a 60m rope.
• Tall Wall, Bananarama, 8, ****, long for a 60m rope
• Truffle Tower, Mon Cherie, 9, ****, nice to finally complete this one; I had backed off this climb on the first attempt
• Tall Wall, Unknown, around the corner to the left of Rotten Bananas; I’d rate it a 9 and one star – getting off the ground is the crux.

Funnest TR climbs:

• Tall Wall, Tall T, 10b, ***, thin face, sketchy flakes, got to go back and lead it…
• Western Wall, Hang ’em High, 10a, ****, Diana lead, Paul followed and put up another TR
• Western Wall, Call of the Canyon, 10a, **, face or crack variation
• Western Wall, High Plains Drifter, 10b, *****, “face to bulge”, Carol only, I’ve got to lead it next time…
• Pistachio, Scoop Ejector, 9, ***, “sporty bouldering up scoops”, fun!

Click here for Alabama Hills Pictures (best viewed as a slideshow)

Clark Canyon (near Mammoth)

This was our first excursion to Clark Canyon. It’s not the easiest place to find and last time we went looking we got turned back by snow. Now that we’ve found it we’ll return again and again – we’ve only been to one crag (Area 13) in Clark Canyon; there are many more. My guide book lists 102 sport and 8 gear routes in the area. If you don’t go on a weekend, it probably won’t be crowded…

Carol lead climbs:

• Exqueeze Me, 7, *, face to arete to bulge
• Bodhisattva, 7, ****, follow the edge of a crack
• Too Many Princesses, 7
• Ugly, Fat and Mean, Come to Mammoth, Be a Queen, 7, ****, face to airy arete, awesome fun
• Wild Will’s Arete, 8, *****, face to arete with airy finish, awesome, we bought a 70m rope during the trip  just so we could climb this one, Carol’s first ever 5.8 lead – outstanding.
• Chupacabras, 8, **
• Rock Candy, 8, ****, we think the only “8” part of this climb is retrieving the rope successfully
• Demasaido, 7, ***, crack to arete

Rick lead climbs:

• Mobetta Forgetta, 7, ***
• Now and Zen, 8, *, 70m rope is handy, bulge at the top is the crux
• EPA, 8, **, face
• This Ain’t No Weenie Roast, 10b, **, my first 10b lead ever(!), don’t know what came over me but it looked to me like I could do it, fun.

• Digit Delight, 9, ***, face, easy for a 9
• Borrowing From Tradition, 10b, ****, my third 10b lead and my first ever lead fall. Fun moves, awesome  lieback crack, I don’t know why I fell; when I got back on the rock and re-climbed through where I fell I had no trouble. Thanks to Carol and the rest of the system for saving my life – I yanked Carol up off the ground, but she held on…
• Ugly, Fat and Mean, Come to Mammoth, Be a Queen, 7, ****
• Wild Will’s Arete, 8, *****

Funnest TR climbs:

• No Left Turn, 10d variation, first time either Carol or I finished a 10d route outdoors. We’ll have to go back and work it until we get it clean and then ultimately lead it.

Click here for Clark Canyon Pictures (best viewed as a slideshow)

Al’s Garage (near Mammoth)

Al’s Garage is slightly easier to get to than Clark Canyon, but a little stiffer – there are 3 5.8’s, 5 5.9’s and then into 5.10’s so it’s not what we would consider a great beginner place. My guidebook lists 16 sport and 3 gear routes.

Carol lead climbs:

• Sound of One Hand Slapping, 8, *, be aware the anchors are spinning open cold shuts with no backup; we did not use these for toprope climbing.
• Aviary, 8, **, Carol’s first ever lead fall, we think it’s more like 5.9 if one is too short to reach one critical hold. She’ll have to go back and finish this one.
• East Side Days, 9, *, Carol’s first ever 5.9 lead. Impressive, I found it pretty hard going on TR.

Rick lead climbs:

• Aviary, 8, **, it pays to be tall on this climb, there’s a critical hold that was easy for me to reach but I still think it took more power than a 5.8 should – or maybe I just had poor technique.
• Triple Delight, 10b, ****, arete to multiple roofs and bulges, right up my bouldering alley, my second 10b lead ever(!)

Click here for Al’s Garage Pictures (best viewed as a slideshow)

Owens Gorge (near Bishop)

We chose a cooler day for the Owens Gorge, but we were still chasing shade. Fortunately, shade is pretty easy to come by as the Gorge runs mostly N/S so the east side is shady in the morning; the west side in the afternoon. In fall or winter, the reverse strategy makes the Gorge climbable most days, I’m told.

We chose to go to the Central Gorge as it has the highest climb density. My guide book lists 544 sport climbs and 158 gear climbs…

Rick lead climbs:

• Enter the Dragon, 8, **, generic Owens Gorge face climb.
• Heart of the Sun, 9, *****, “killer pumpy vertical face”, yeah, save your energy for the last few moves.
• Babushka, 8, *****, “varied vertical face”, the variation made it fun. We were climbing next to this climb once when the climber on TR fell off and grabbed at the toprope; burned the crap out of his hand. Add “grabbing the TR” to your “never do this” list.

Funnest TR climbs:

• Crowd Pleaser, 9, ****, “sustained vertical face”, use your feet…

Click here for Owens Gorge Pictures (best viewed as a slideshow)

Wrapping it up…

In between climbs, resting our bodies and minds, we hiked canyons, hit hot springs and hot tubs, scouted out more areas to climb (Rock Creek / Patricia Bowl looked like big fun, but was snowed in when we were there) and just generally had so much fun we can hardly wait to go back.

A word about guidebooks – decide  on an area and then check out Maximus Press – a quick look says we currently own about 9 of these guides; highly recommended.

Please leave feedback and comments on my blog – any questions, what you enjoyed, etc. – and thanks for reading!