A day at the Nears

A bunch of news to report. First and foremost, I've been promoted at My Hero. No longer am I a lowly peon, for I have been given the rank of Pizza Maker. I start training on Friday, and soon I will have my own shifts. Yay!

In other news, Matt and I have been climbing some more. (Go figure.) I've been working four days a week as of late, and so Tuesday was the beginning of my weekend. The weather was a little iffy, but thankfully it held (for the most part). We went off to the Near Trapps, and did quite a few climbs, actually.

Late last fall when Duncan and I went out and did Gelsa, Ian and Matt did a climb called Inverted Layback (5.9) It's a classic climb, and I had never done it, so Matt recommended we do it -- and he gave me the lead. The beginning of the climb follows a crack that is pretty vertical. The climbing isn't too hard though -- maybe 5.8 or so. Then, you eventually get up to this big roof that is separated from the face. So there is like a foot and a half gap between this roof and the rock. You traverse with some underclings and just smearing with your feet on the wall. Right before that I placed a green C4, a blue C4 and clipped a piton, but it took some serious convincing to actually get up into this thing. Very committing.

After walking off the backside of the cliff and getting back to our bags, we decided a short walk was in order. Two climbs over is another classic called Grand Central (5.9). The first pitch is a coasting pitch, with nothing but fun easy climbing. It follows twin cracks and so I tried to lead it with nothing but nuts. I did place lots of them, but cams sure are friendly. The second Pitch was were the meat was. Matt got on the sharp end and started up the climb. The climb traverses around the nose of an arete and then goes up a steep face. He got around the nose no problem, and then at the crux he had to think about it just for a second. After getting in a few micro nuts (a new purchase right before Morocco -- starting to like them a lot), he pulled the crux no problem. And followed up and led the last pitch, which has two roofs in a row. Upside down at 5.8 -- gotta love the Gunks.

The next climb we did was called Roseland which is another classic 5.9 in the Nears. Matt had lead it before, but I had never climbed it, so he gave me the lead. It follows a beautiful open-book, with a crack in it, and then traverses under a roof, exiting it at the easiest spot. What a wonderful climb. Lots of stemming, lot of palm down moves, high steps and also great protection (even got to place a few more micro-nuts). There are second and third pitches to it, but we only did the first one. Matt followed it cleanly, and we set up a top rope on a 5.10R climb called Shitface. Very cool climb. So cool, I did it twice!

So with the official start of the summer season, Matt and I did 8 pitches of climbing. That's what I'm talkin-bout.