Alright, I know it's kind of lame that the last like 20 posts (do I even have 20 posts yet?) have been about the Riverside Quarry, but for some reason we haven't been climbing anywhere else lately. At least I know that next weekend I'll be at New Jack City since I have to take a group of scouts there so at least there will be a change of scenery.
So once again we headed to Riverside Quarry on Saturday the 10th of March and invited Asia to join us. Both Amy and I wanted to do our projects so we headed to Slab City so that I could do Vertical Vee, and she could do Shattered Dreams. Now the one problem with Slab City is the fact that there is nothing easier than 5.8, and of course, Asia is a very new climber. We decided to start on the 5.8 (Feetal Rearrangement) so that Asia could give it a go. Now Amy isn't a fan of this route because it is constantly traversing to the left, but she did lead it without any problems so that was good.
After Amy lead the route, Asia went up it on TR and did a good job on the route, but it worked her pretty well so she decided that she didn't want to try anything else after that. I pulled the rope and ran up the route on lead to get a little bit of a warm-up before trying my project.
Now it was my turn to try for the redpoint of Vertical Vee (5.11d). I had attempted the route 2 times before, the first time I made it halfway through the crux, but I killed myself trying to figure out the moves so I couldn't finish the route, the second time I was able to figure out the crux sequence, but again I killed myself doing it so I had to hangdog my way up the rest of the route, but now I knew the sequence, so I just had to go quickly before I got too pumped.
I started up the route skipping the first bolt because the climbing is easy, and the bolt is way right of the rest of the bolt line, then clipped the second bolt with a shoulder length sling to help reduce rope drag. From there it is an easy walk to the third bolt, but that is where the crux starts. I told Amy to be ready for a fall and started through the crux. The crux involves laybacking an overhanging flared finger crack through a roof with basically no feet. As I was making my way between the third and fourth bolt, my feet skated once but I was able to hang on and get to the fourth bolt. I clipped the bolt and as I started moving past it my feet skated again, but once again I managed to hang on and complete the crux sequence and clip the fifth bolt. At this point I knew I had done it since none of the climbing above is harder than about 5.10c so I gave a yell of excitement and continued up the route. I took my time and made use of the various rests throughout the remainder of the route to ensure that I wouldn't blow the redpoint because of something stupid and made it to the chains without any problems. Unfortunately, we forgot to set up the camera, so there are no photos of my redpoint, but you can at least see some photos of the route in the posts about my previous attempts.
After cleaning the route we headed over so that Amy could try once again to figure out how to get through the crux of Shattered Dreams (5.10c). I lead the route and set up a TR for her, then she gave it a go. She did really well through the lower portion of the route, but as usual she couldn't figure out how to get through the crux. I really need to belay her from the top sometime so that I can help figure out the sequence for her, but that will have to be another day. Once again, we forgot to set up the camera, so no photos of Shattered Dreams, but there are plenty of photos of the route in other posts.
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