An enchainment

Rich had to work yesterday, but Colin didn't. Upon waking up to a completely bluebird day, we grabbed our headnets and went up to Silver Lake to do some climbing. Colin had the great idea of doing an enchainment -- hit a climb on three different cliffs. I had never really done this before in any context, so it was cool to do it at Silver Lake.

We got a decently early start, arriving at the trail head at a little after nine. From there we headed up towards the Summit, and then turned out to the Outback Slab. I had never climbed there before and neither had Colin, so after a little while of wandering around in the woods and talus, we found the cliff and our climb. From Jim's guide:

Morticia 5.9 G (5.6 R) 370'

Excellent face and slab climbing, with some of the best friction anywhere—the water streak on P2 and P3 is "sand blasted" clean and has been climbed without hands. The route begins right of Bimathalon, joins that route on P2 for a few feet, then crosses to its left to ascend a parallel water streak.

It's a three pitch climb that ascends a pretty sizable slab. Colin did the first pitch, I did the second, which was spicy, spacey and really friction-ee. Way good. The other climbs on the cliff look pretty good too.

After that, we packed up and hiked up to the Blade area of the Summit Cliff and we did a two pitch link up of

It Goes to Eleven 5.11a G 100' and Queen of the Jungle 5.10b G 100'

Both pitches are really fun for sure. Colin led the first pitch, which is steep at first, with not very good holds, and then it slabs out and the holds almost completely disappear. I led the second pitch, which is definitely way harder than 10b. I think it's probably more like hard 10c.

Since the Summit cliff is right above the Center of Progress Cliff, we hiked from the Prow Area straight back, and rappelled over the top of Tooth and Nail Terrace, and then climbed the first pitch of

Tooth & Nail 5.10b G 200'

That climb never ceases to amaze me. It's always hard, and the gear is always hard to figure out...but hard in a good way for sure. The gear on this climb is as much a part of the crux as the actually climbing. And you know what? That's ok by me. Trad climbing is about knowing how to place gear effectively. If you can't do it, then there's always a crash pad...or Kentucky...

All in all, we did roughly 660 feet of rock climbing over 5 pitches at 3 cliffs. On top of that, we probably did 3.5 - 4 hours of pretty strenuous hiking. That Summit cliff approach is steep for a long time. And it's never easy to bushwack through talus.

On the hike back to the car, Colin and I were talking about two years ago, or even last year, an enchainment like this would be very very difficult at Silver Lake. Two years ago, there was little to no public information about most of the cliffs. On top of that, ³⁄₅ of the climbing hadn't even been done yet! If we had tried this last year, we would have been wandering around the woods and the rock a lot longer.

All in all, it was a totally splitter day. Next thing to do is a bigger enchainment...