Although Utah does have some amazing climbing, it is hard having to deal with several months of unclimbable weather in a row. Luckily for me, there is a climbing wall on base where I work so I am able to train there when it's too cold to climb outside. The cold weather coupled with the fact that Amy was pregnant kept us from doing any outdoor climbing during the month of February, but by mid March the weather was warming up, and so it was time to get outside again. Since Amy was pregnant, she didn't really want to do any climbing, so luckily for me, I had met a few people at the climbing wall at work who were willing to get out with me.
The first trip outdoors was to the 29th street crag in Ogden. One of the guys that I had climbed with at the wall wanted to get outside, so I happily accompanied him. We decided to go to the 29th street crag purely based on it's proximity to work since we were going there right after work and wanted to get as much climbing in as possible before it got dark. We ended up climbing all 4 of the routes on the main wall at the crag and I got the onsight on all of them. The routes were Safety Goggles (5.9), Overlooked (5.10a), 8 Ball Corner Pocket (5.8), and Loose Shingles (5.10b). Unfortunately, we didn't take a camera so no photos from this trip.
The next day I decided to head back to the 29th street crag because I had noticed a pretty big blank space between Safety Goggles and Overlooked that looked like it could use a new route there. Amy didn't want to do any climbing, but she did offer to give me a belay on the first ascent of the route after I bolted it. We hiked up there, I threw in a few new bolts, then I ran up and grabbed the first ascent of Little Pile of Choss (5.7). I named it that not necessarily due to the rock being particularly chossey, but because of the general appearance of the whole crag. We did get a few photos of Danny on a TR of the new route so I've put one below.
Danny TRing Little Pile of Choss - 5.7
A couple of weeks later I was able to get out climbing again, this time with another friend that I had met at the climbing wall at work named Colin. We decided to head up Ogden Canyon since Colin lives right by the mouth of the canyon and knows it pretty well. We met up at the Smiths at the mouth of the canyon and drove up to Utah Wall to do some climbing.
On Utah Wall we started out with a really long climb called Right of the Roof (5.4), Then we climbed an unknown 5.8 that follows the rightmost crack in the roof, next we climbed a really fun 5.6 that has a pretty big roof on it for such an easy grade, after that we climbed a route called Apex Right (5.8), and finished up our climbing at Utah Wall with Lawyers, Guns, and Money, a 5.10b that happens to be the first sport route in the Ogden area. I was able to nab the onsight of all five of those routes.
After that we decided to do a few more climbs at the Hole in the Rock area before heading home. At hole in the rock we did the two crack lines, Hole in the Rock (5.5) and Layback Crack (5.6) along with two sport routes, Chicken Wire (5.8), and If the Fall Doesn't Kill you a Car Will (5.10a). Once again I got the onsight on all of the four routes, then we headed home.
That does it for the climbing I was able to do during the month of March.
No comments:
Post a Comment