Woodson

Josh and I headed out to Mt. Woodson this last Saturday. I hadn't done much crack climbing of late and was itching to get back onto some splitters. The initial plan was to meet at 6am and then drive out to the rocks. However, a brief look at the forecast showed that it wasn't supposed to be as hot as it normally is and we decided to meet at 7am instead. The hour sleep in was nice for sure, but it was still pretty hot out there. Oh well, at least the climbing was fantastic. We warmed up on a really fun 5.9 finger crack. It felt super good to sink the digits into the rock again, as I hadn't really been crack climbing since May. Here's a view of the warmup.



Since Josh lead the warmup it was my turn to hop on the sharp end. Next up we headed to a gorgeous dihedral called Rockwork Orange. It's a steep, slightly overhanging hand to wide hand crack that goes at somewhere around 5.10b. The last time I had lead trad was in May, so hopping on a stiff 10 right off the bat gave me my moneys worth and I had to take one time on it. Josh cruised it super smoothly, and then I ran a second lap on it, this time on top rope and got it clean. I'll be back to nail the clean lead on this guy again. Stellar!



Next up was a beautiful, right leaning, technical 10a finger crack, called Alpine Crack. Here's me after leading it.



We threw a top rope on this gorgeous 12a finger crack. It's got pretty good fingers for the first half, but bad feet the whole way and then the crack tappers out. Neither one of us finished it, but this one was good. Made the blood run! Aaaargh!



One of the climbs we did was called Bat Flake, a stout 11b that goes from fingers to hands to fists and then to offwidth. Here's Josh demonstrating the proper technique to use on the offwidth section.