Tuesday, December 29, 2009

New Jack City again

A couple weekends ago I hit NJC, planning to meet up with my friend Francis and his peeps. Indeed I found plenty of SD meetup folk when I arrived, but Francis was nowhere in sight. I proceeded to climb with Bob at the Boyscout Wall. I led an 8, and then we toproped 10d, 10b, 10a and 9. They were all great climbs. I flailed on the 10d, but didn't fall on the rest of them, although the 9 felt a lot harder than any 9 has a right to feel. Also I froze my butt off. Late in the day we headed over to Raven, where, lo and behold, Francis was. He put me on a toprope on Candy-O, which I had foolishly said looked cool during our previous visit. I found a way to bypass the lower crux (going left), and fought out the top crux. After half a dozen falls I made it to the chains! That's pretty good, given that I've never even been on a 11b climb in the past.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Gaps

It's incredible ... the gaps that sometimes gape open in this blog really make me think.

The last month has been a whirlwind of activity, as I moved from San Diego, land of awesome granite, to Santa Barbara, land of shitty sandstone. I haven't had a chance to climb in 3 weeks, and I'm sure it will show immediately when I next try to climb. Santa Barbara has three, but really two, climbing walls. There's the one at the Rec Cen at UCSB, which is newer. There's an outdoor wall at the Goleta Valley Athletic Club, which I fully intend to check out, since Dan has a membership there through work. Then there's one at my favorite store in town, Santa Barbara outfitters, but I've never seen a proper route set on it, ever. This third one makes me sad and I wish I could do something about it...

So the gaps I was talking about, they're not even ones in the last three weeks. I'm referring to two or three climbing trips in October and November that went altogether un-logged. First there was Halloween in JTree, with the San Diego meetup folks. Then there was the #jtreetweetup, with my new internet friends. Both were different from the sort of trip I'm used to taking, and I think both went un-logged and un-remarked largely because of that. I haven't digested them, and they feel a bit fragile and special, and I don't want to go there. So I won't. The second trip, in any case, has been "reported" on by the aforementioned friends.

In other news, I finally caved, and during last week's Metolius promotion I ordered the set of free TCUs. That gives me a fairly complete rack, except for the mega sizes. I can't wait to use them!