Monday, May 4, 2009

Echo Cliffs on Friday

On Friday I was in the throes of the beginning of a chest cold. Despite that, Ben and I headed out to Echo Cliffs, which is in the Santa Monica mountains near the border of the Ventura and Los Angeles counties, at the crack of noon. The weather was hot and oppressive at first, but turned breezy and nice, and eventually even sprinkled a little late in the day. The approach to the crag is about 45 minutes long, and can, but should NOT be shortened by going down a scree gully that happens to be an endangered wildflower habitat. I was having a really hard time breathing during the approach, and was feeling very weird when we got to the crag, but we still got 3 5.8-5.9 climbs in before totally losing motivation and resorting to just lounging around. We went to the Grotto area, which is down by the creek, and really enjoyed both the location and the quality of the rock. We're looking forward to returning to try our luck on some of the 5.10 sport climbs in that area.

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