East Bay and the Pinnacles

Three weekends ago Ray Lassman and I had plans to visit Mt Diablo, but the weather was looking a bit iffy so we ended up doing a tour of the East Bay bouldering areas instead.

We started out at the "Golden Gate Wall", a man made retaining wall located under highway 24 in East Oakland. The wall itself is made up of hundreds of quarried, uneven volcanic blocks embedded in a ~150m long concrete wall, reaching up to about 6m in height. The rock the blocks are made of is exceptionally hard, polished stuff and generally offering very poor friction. Thankfully the blocks project out from the concrete a bit, so virtually all of the holds are crimps and small edges at the tops and sides of the embedded blocks. The wall itself is dead vertical and what with the ridiculuous number of small crimps in a row I made it about 1/8 of the way along before getting pumped senseless and jumping off. Ray claims to have traversed the wall twice in a single session without stepping off, but I don't believe him! :-)

After that we checked out one or two concrete cracks in various walls nearby. Most of these were pretty sharp and unpleasant so we didn't spend much time on them.

We then headed north to Berkeley, to check out the world famous Indian Rock. This is quite an amazing little area, being a series of house- sized boulders located right in the middle of suburban Berkeley. In fact the boulders are so cramped by the surrounding houses that you literally boulder past people's windows as you climb up!

The one thing that struck me about Indian Rock itself (which is just one of the various boulders scattered about) is that it's a tiny area - maybe equivalent to the main wall at Lindfield, but with more variety in terms of overhangs / slabs etc. The rock is also quite unusual - I'd probably describe it as "soapy" - perhaps a bit like limestone, only greasier and with more incut edges and stuff. Very soap coloured too - white and light grey for the most part. Despite my initial disappointment at the size of the area, the bouldering turned out to be excellent, and with Ray trying to sandbag me on all his standard warm-ups I had a great time. We also checked out Mortar Rock (another set of boulders a few houses up the street), and after that my arms were jelly.

We also checked out Remilliard Pinnacle, located a few blocks further up the hill. This one looks a lot chossier and is a lot higher than Indian Rock (maybe 12m or so). It might be worth visiting at some point (although I can't see myself visiting more than once).

Following on from this strenuous weekend I caught the flu again, so the weekend before last (16th / 17th) I had a lazy weekend recovering.

After a few misapprehensions about the weather, Ray and I headed down to the Pinnacles yesterday, for my first roped outdoor climbing in 3 months. It's about 2 hours drive south, past San Jose, and the drive in is quite inspiring........not. The last couple of miles wind through some fairly big hills and whatnot, which reminded me of some parts of the north island of New Zealand - tottering stacks of compacted volcanic sand everywhere, and landslips down just about every exposed hillside. Just what you need to get motivated about a crag that has a reputation for being the chossiest developed climbing area on the West Coast...

Thankfully from a distance the Pinnacles themselves look a bit more impressive - walls and stacks of rounded orange and grey rock all about the place. It's a bit of a funny area actually. The pinnacles are the eroded remnants of an ancient volcano, so most of the exposed rock is located along the sides of creeks and little canyons that have eaten into the rounded top of the old volcano. For this reason it's kind of hard to get any long range views of the place or get a feel for its size.

Our first climb of the day (Rat Race, ***, 5.7) was all of 1 minutes walk from the car, and strikes a fine line up the first decent buttress of the crag. From a distance it looks like a lovely less than vertical corner crack that punches through a 1.5m roof at the top.

On closer inspection the rock isn't quite as attractive as I initially thought. The guide says that the rock type is "breccia" - basically compacted volcanic rubble and ash. Up close it looks like some kind of funky conglomerate - there are all these sharp little chips of some exceptionally hard kind of volcanic rock embedded in what appears to be little more than compacted dirt and ash. In some parts erosion has started to pry away these big flakes of crumbling rock that look a bit like that chossy, crumbly granite that you sometimes find (all crystally and crumbly).

Anyway after getting started it became apparent that most of the loose stuff had been knocked off long ago and therefore there was little point in worrying about it. Rat Race turned out to be a lovely little jaunt - the low angled wall up to the roof being the crux, with the crack being very slippery and worn (from millions of happy hands slapping and slipping up it I suspect) and not much in the way of face holds. The roof itself it quite intimidating but actually pretty easy - lots of jugs everywhere.
My rating: Rat Race* 15m 14

Ray then jumped on a nice looking 5.8+ sport climb on the face around to the right of Rat Race. This one was pretty hard down low - the millions of little edges and chips making it very hard to see where the decent handholds were. Easy rambling at mid height led to a final hard move over the bulge at the top (4m above the last bolt, which added a bit of spice!).
My rating: Thrill Hammer* 25m 17

By this time a bumbling duo of Seattle top ropers had arrived and were battling with Rat Race so we wandered further up the gully to one of the main areas (Discovery Wall). The dark grey clouds that had been threatening all morning opened up as we trudged up but thankfully it was just a light drizzle and it passed soon enough.

Ray then attempted to sandbag me on a steep and well chalked 5.9 arete. Maybe it just suited my style of climbing (good positive holds up a slightly overhanging, bulgy wall) but I didn't find it particularly hard. Despite that the climbing was sustained for the first half and really good fun. The chips in this part of the crag had grown to be full on cobbles, so the holds were much bigger too (and slightly more unnerving!!). One cobble up near the top was about the size of a lunchbox and stuck out about 6 inches from the wall - very spooky, particularly since it moved a bit when you pulled on it!! A pleasant semi-hanging belay about 10m from the top (the top bit is quite dirty and slabby on some of the walls) with a rap descent to get off.
My rating: The Wet Kiss** 25m 16

After a bite to eat and a bit of a tour of the crag, Ray decided to jump on a short 5.10a with a 2 foot roof about 3m off the ground. After a couple of solid attempts he backed off the move over the roof and let me have a go. A big reach from way out right gets you onto two cobble jugs just above the lip of the roof, but then the next hold is about 1.5m up and the wall below the roof is basically dead blank so the feet suck. I had a couple of goes at the move but after trying a couple of different ways of doing it but still not getting up I also backed off to let Ray have another go. This time around Ray got halfway through the move and was looking good (if a little shaky!) before a very handy ferrite hold appeared and helped him through the move. On second I managed the move free but it was bloody thrutchy and horrible. From here up the climbing (which looked easy from the ground) was surprisingly sustained, with most of the obvious looking cobbles and knobs being either horrendously slopey or totally useless. With a bit of thought it was all there, but definitely some engaging climbing. Another rap descent from a small ledge and we were back on terra firma.
My rating: Stupendous Man 15m 20 (almost worth a star, but the hard grovelly move over the roof spoilt it for me)

A good looking corner crack further along ("Jorgie's Crack" 5.10a) was finally free of top ropes, so after a bit of humming and haaing I jumped on it. The corner describes an aesthetic left sweeping arc, with an overhanging wall to the right and a slightly under vertical, greasy looking wall to the left (a bit like the corner section on "Fer De Lance" at Zigzag, only longer and not quite so overhanging).

Having had a bit of a struggle on the previous climb (which was the same grade) I was fully expecting this one to be a horror show. After all, the previous climb had been fully bolted and this one was on natural gear in rock that I barely trusted to pull on, let alone place gear in! Still, the crack looked pretty deep so I decided I'd just have to put lots of gear in and think light thoughts if I felt myself coming off.

Once I got up into the crack I discovered that there were plenty of little footholds on either wall to stem against and place gear from, and before I knew it I was right up below where the crack steepened right up. A slightly manky piton winked at me about a metre up, and the well chalked traverse to the left led to the belay ledge just above that. Thankfully there was the most amazing fingerlock / gaston in just the right place so I pulled on through, clipped the piton, placed a wire on the traverse and then it was all over. All in all a very pleasant route, but nowhere near the supposed grade (unless you're a sporto-weenie who doesn't know how to stem!! :-)
My rating: Jorgie's Crack** 22m 17

Both Ray and I had to get back early, so with a decent tally of 5 routes under our belt in only 4 hours of climbing we called it a day and started the long drive back to the Bay Area.

All in all not a bad climbing area and definitely a lot more to explore there. The rock is pretty interesting to climb on - not sure I want to do too many hard natural routes, but I'm keen to do more bolted stuff since it's pretty funky to climb on (once you feel safe!).

With any luck the next trip report will be from *ahem* Yosemite! ;-)