Riverside Quarry - 11/24/2011 - Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving we wanted to do a bit of climbing before we gained so much weight that we wouldn't be able to climb anymore so we decided to head to the Riverside Quarry. Unfortunately, just after leaving the house I realized that we forgot the camera so this will be another lame post with no photos (I mean seriously, who reads a blog, you go to look at pictures).

So we arrived at the quarry and headed over to Slab City since it is a good kid friendly area and has some fun climbs. We started by climbing a 5.10a called "Mantle Marathon" which as the name implies, involves about 10 mantles onto ledges throughout the climb (ok, I might be exaggerating a little, but there are at least 4 or 5). I lead it quickly and felt like it was just a cruiser easy route, but Amy didn't feel the same about it. She has a hard time with the first 10 feet of the route and then does fine, but the first 10 feet were enough to discourage her from wanting to do anything else.

Amy wanted to head over to Schoolhouse Rock on the other side of the quarry (where there are a bunch of super easy routes), but I wanted to do at least one harder route before we headed over there, so Amy agreed to belay me as long as I didn't make her try to climb it.

I decided to try a 5.11b called Bottom Feeder. I worked this route a couple of times and got the redpoint about 1.5 years ago, but it had been a while since I'd done it so all though I kind of hoped to be able to redpoint it again, I certainly wasn't expecting it. I got to the crux move and couldn't quite stick it so I peeled off, I tried once more again peeling off, but on the third try I stuck the move and cruised the rest of the route.

We headed over to Schoolhouse rock to do a couple more routes before heading home for our Thanksgiving dinner. We started out with a 5.0 called "My Hero Zero" which has to be the most overbolted route in the entire world at 7 bolts in like 40 feet on climbing that really doesn't need any protection at all. Needless to say, I soloed up the route to set up a TR for Danny. Danny TR'd the route with me soloing next to him for moral support, but he did a great job. After Danny got down, Amy lead the route because she didn't want to TR it, but also didn't feel comfortable soloing it.

We decided to do one more route before heading home, and since we had draws on the anchors of "My hero Zero" we decided to do a 5.6 called I'm just a bill since it heads up to the same anchors. I lead it, Amy TR'd it, and we headed home.