Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Riverside Quarry, 07/07/2012

Saturday rolled around and we decided to just hit up our local Riverside Quarry for a morning of climbing. As usual we went to Slab City since there are some pretty fun climbs there, and the area is flat and safe for the kids to run around and play in.

 We decided to start the day out with Goody Two Shoes (5.10b) so that Amy could lead it. Goody Two Shoes starts out with some easy slabby climbing for a few bolts, then it steepens to a vertical jug haul for a coupld of bolts, and the crux comes when you are pulling over the vertical section onto the slab above. There are really no holds on the slab above so it ends up just being a very balancy move as you rock up onto your foot that's smearing on the slab. After that it's just some easy slab climbing past a couple more bolts to get to the anchors. I ran up the route without any problems and hung the draws for Amy, then she lead the route and got the redpoint. Amy did take a while trying to get up the courage to commit to the crux move, but when she finally did she had no problems.

 Next up, I wanted to do something a bit harder so we decided to move one route to the left to a 5.11b called "Bottom Feeder". I had redpointed Bottom Feeder back in August of 2010, and had then tried climbing it again in November of 2011, but I fell off at the crux in 2011, so I wanted to see if I could redpoint it again. The crux of Bottom Feeder involves palming this rounded slopey arette with your left hand, getting your left foot way high, and then making a quick step up and reach with your right hand to a crimp back in a corner. When I had done the route the two times before I had needed to make the crux move dynamically to get the crimp, but I guess I am stronger now because I made the move statically without any problems. After the crux the route is pretty easy, so I cruised the rest of it and re-redpointed the route. Amy didn't want to climb an .11b, so I cleaned the route, then we moved on to climb her nemesis.

 The climb that has been thwarting all of Amy's attempts at (for quite a while now) is a 5.10c called "Shattered Dreams". Shattered Dreams is a really fun route that follows a jagged, slightly overhung crack system through an otherwise fairly blank wall. The crack portion is quite easy, clocking in at about 5.9, but then the last 10 feet of the route after the crack ends involve some fairly reachy moves through the still slightly overhung blank face above. I ran up the route and set up a TR so that Amy could work on the crux moves. Amy then climbed the route and did pretty well on the lower crack section which is usually still quite hard for her due to the overhanging nature of the climb, then she spent some time trying to figure out how to do the final moves. Eventually she found a little jib for her foot that allowed her to make the big reach and was able to complete the route. She still has some work to do before she'll be able to TR the route cleanly, but she is definately making progress.

 After Amy finished the route we packed up and headed out to continue with our Saturday afternoon.

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