Frustration Creek, 10/30/2012

As you may have noticed, Bennitt hasn't been showing up in my blog too often as of late. The reason for this is that he works every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday which are the days that I regularly have off.  Because of this it's kind of hard to get out climbing with him. I decided that since daylight savings time is ending this weekend I'd better get out climbing with him after work this week since it is still light enough to climb for about an hour. 

Of course one hour isn't a whole lot of time, but we decided to at least try to get in a couple of routes.  When we arrived I decided that we should do something that would chalange him a bit, but not be too hard so we decided to start out on The Natural. We decided that I'd lead it first and hang the draws, then Bennitt could try leading it as well.  I ran up it as quickly as I could, then Bennitt went up and got the redpoint.  I have to say that he did pretty well considering how little he's climbed lately along with the fact that the route is 5.10a.

As Bennitt was cleaning the anchors I ran over to my new route and threw in a first bolt quickly (originally it was going to share the first bolt with Louie's route, Rabble Rouser, but I thought it would be nicer if it had an independent start so that people could climb both routes simultaneously if they wanted), then we decided to give it a go (I had come up and finished cleaning the route the day before on Monday).

I lead the route up to the fifth bolt without any problems, but that is when the crux hits. The crux moves consist of pulling off of a good crimp with your right hand to get a left hand-jam in a horrible flaring crack in the overhanging wall before bringing your feet up and then bumping up to a sidepull crimp that you are supposed to clip the sixth bolt from.  I tried the move several times, but I wasn't able to stick the sidepull crimp and fell off a few times (hey at least now I know that the crux bolt will hold a fall right;).  After a few tries I knew that we didn't have much time before it got dark so I lowered off and let Bennitt have a go at it. He did fine up until the crux, but then he had the same problems that I was having, he did however come up with a different sequence than I had been using, so I'll have to give it a try next time we head up there.  Eventually Bennitt gave up and lowered off, then we packed up the gear and headed home since it was just about dark.