Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Smith Rock

Well, as usual, I’ll begin my blog post by apologizing for not updating it in a month.  I guess I only think of writing a new post when something cool happens.  Nobody wants to read about my boring day to day life.  This time, the catalyst for writing is to report on our trip to Smith Rock, Oregon last week.  This has become a yearly ritual for Jess and me.  It seems that aside from the masses from Portland and Seattle, Smith is a largely forgotten destination.  Kids these days prefer to test their mettle at more powerful areas like Rifle, Maple and those places with a bunch of little practice rocks and scattered about.  Just as well, there isn’t one spare parking spot at Smith on the weekends anyway.

Beautiful Smith Rock State Park












So, Jess and I headed out after work two Friday’s ago in our newly purchased (and massive by the way) cargo van and drove west.  After a night spent at a Washington rest stop, we arrived at Smith on Saturday afternoon ready to climb.  After succeeding on a handful of 14s at Tensleep this summer, my goal for the week was to put some work into a Smith 5.14 to see how it compared.  It seems like every 5.14 I’ve done has some speculation around it as to whether it’s soft or not.  What better place than Smith to try and do one that has none of that controversy?  I realized this could end in defeat as last year I tried hard on the route White Wedding (13d) and could just never put it together.  I decided to try the route Badman (14a) in the Aggro Gully.  The route was put up by J.B. Tribout in 1991 and has held its grade ever since.  Jess had a couple of 12s she wanted to try, especially Latest Rage (12b), which she’d tried last year, but never got.  The Rage is a beautiful arête featuring a 20-30 foot runout from the last bolt to the chains.  The last hard move comes with your feet well above and right of the last bolt.  Excitement!

The spacious new van!  Still a bunch
of work to do inside, but it's great for now.













After warming up on a few Morning Glory Wall classics, we headed into the Aggro Gully for me to give a first go on Badman.  I always find it interesting to see what comments people put down on routes they enter into 8a, so I of course had looked at Badman before we left Bozeman.  With comments from the likes of Mike Doyle and Alex Honnold alluding to the route’s difficulty, I must admit I was intimidated and hoped I wasn’t getting in over my head. The route is made up of three hard cruxes stacked on top of each other with no rest.  You then get to a full, no-hands kneebar rest (yes I brought a kneepad to Smith, are you surprised?) and then finish on a hard 12c headwall with two moves that would prove to repeatedly spit me off even after hanging.  After two goes on this thing, I was worked.

The next day, I headed back to the route and gave it two more tries.  It shut me down big time.  I could only do about two moves at a time before fully pumping out and things were looking dire.  I told Jess the route was too hard for me and that I should look for something else to work on.  This revelation was frustrating, but not completely surprising to me.  Jess convinced me to give it a couple more tries the next day, just to make sure I thought it was too hard.  So, with low expectations, we returned to the Aggro Gully a little earlier the next day for my beat down session.  To my total surprise, I climbed to the first crux, fell off, messed around a little at that move, and then climbed to the chains.  No idea where this came from.  My next go, I got the true one hang.  Totally mystifying.  With newfound, albeit confused, confidence, I went into our rest day knowing that I would keep working on this route.

In the meantime, Jess put a quick 2nd go smackdown on a slick, stemmy, smeary route called Panic Attack (12a) on our second day and then moved on to start working Latest Rage.  The moves on Latest Rage were definitely coming together on toprope, but the idea of leading the route with its runout to the anchor was really getting to her.  I kept convincing her she knew those moves and likely wouldn’t fall, but that didn’t help much.  It was time for a rest day, both physically and mentally.












We spent the day in Bend and took a sweet tour of the Deschutes Brewery.  For anyone looking for something to do in Bend, this was a really cool tour and included four free beer samples, all for free!  After that we walked around town, took a little hike and had dinner with local honemasters (sorry, newfound love of this word) Ryan Palo and Tara Reynvaan.  By the way, Ryan just did a hard first ascent in the Aggro Gully called Sure Shot and did the third ascent of the Jerry Moffat route Jam Master J.  What a badass!

Back at the crags the next day, we headed up to the gully to see if my previous progress on Badman was just a fluke.  I gave it several good tries, but wasn’t getting through the first crux.  Oh well, still plenty of time to get it done.  We moved over to Latest Rage and Jess put it down first go of the day!  This is totally Jess’ style. She’ll worry about something being too hard for her, and then she’ll do it effortlessly, resting in the places she thought were hard previously.  Jealous.  She moved the rope over to Watts Tots (12b) and gave it a couple toprope tries.

On Thursday, we warmed up on the Morning Glory wall and I was not feeling great.  I just felt stiff.  I’ve come to realize that this is not necessarily a bad thing though.  I’ve done some hard routes on days when the warm up felt horrible and in fact, when I did F’d in the A, I felt like I should be taking on the first three or four bolts!  We headed up to the gully and I got on the route.  I made it through the first and second cruxes and then made a stupid mistake and fell of right before the third.  It was really frustrating.  I rested for a while and belayed a guy named Kyle who was trying the route.  After that, I stepped on the route and sent!  There were a couple desperate moves, but it all came together.  I couldn’t believe it.  Definitely more proud of doing this route than any other route I’ve ever done.

We then headed to the Dihedrals and Jess put in some work on Watts Tots.  This was one of the first sport routes in the US, but remarkably, it isn’t too runout.  In between her tries, I tried Chain Reaction (12c), the iconic arête climb.  I’ve been attempting this thing on and off every time we come to Smith and I’ve never been able to get it.  I spent one try figuring out the moves, fell once at the top on my next go and then sent.  Almost felt more satisfying than Badman……almost.

The next day, I decided to see if I could do Aggro Monkey (13b).  We had decided we wanted to spend our last climbing day doing some cracks in the Lower Gorge, so this would be our last day climbing in the main part of the park.  The pressure was on if I wanted to do this thing.  I figured out the moves on my first try, fell off one of the long moves on my second, botched the crux on my third and then finally sent.  This thing is really good and highly recommended!


Crankin' it on Aggro Monkey.















With the sun still beating on the front side, we walked over to the Phoenix Buttress to try a 12a called Lama Sutra.  I was able to do the route second go and then Jess was ready to get on Watts. We headed over to the route and Jess wasn’t feeling very confident.  She had one hung the route on toprope, but she had never reached the crux feeling very strong.  She stepped on for her first attempt on lead and guess what, she sent!  It was cruiser!  Three 12s in a week!


Latest Rage is the arete on the right and
Watts Tots climbs the slab on the left.

















We spent our last day in the Lower Gorge climbing the amazing basalt cracks.  All the routes we did were great, but the one that stuck out was Morning Star (10c).  If I ever get to do a “best 5.10 ever” article, this will be the featured route.  We drove partway home that night and finished the drive on Sunday.  This was one of our best trips yet.  We were both successful, we had perfect weather, we met some great people and most importantly, we had a ton of fun!  Now we’re back in rainy, soon snowy Bozeman.  We hope to get outside some more, but I fear it may be time to restart the gym memberships.  Get out and climb while you can!
















1 comment:

  1. Glad to hear you guys had a great time. We cant wait to see you guys in March.

    -Tara & Ryan

    ReplyDelete