Sierra Scouting with Sue

Friday:
Saw "Insomnia" (with Al Pacino and Robin Williams). Amazing scenery (Alaska) but a pretty ordinary movie otherwise.

Saturday:
Got up early and drove out to Cosumnes River Gorge (near Placerville) in the Sierra foothills. Did 5 short routes (2 on lead, 3 on top rope) on the smaller (up to 15m high) side of the gorge. The best route I did was a 15m series of flakes and finger cracks with an old skanky piton halfway up. No wait, it's a dead bat! No wait, it's a live bat and it's just squirmed in behind the #0.5 WC friend I just placed!!! I hope it doesn't have rabies! :-)

It was stinking hot so we didn't venture onto the dome on the other side, which has half a dozen or so nice looking 4 to 5 pitch slab and crack routes on it. The couple who did venture over there slowly turned red before our eyes as they crept their way up the big sun-blasted slabs...

Overall it wasn't a bad crag at all, and definitely a good place to bring beginners (lots of good top rope anchors, although the vast majority of the climbs aren't safely leadable).

Went back to Sue's house (near Jackson on highway 88) and had beers, BBQ and more beers. Aaaaahhhh.....sleeeeeep..........

Sunday:
Drove further along (and up - melting snow drifts everywhere!) highway 88 then turned off and followed a twisty back road down into the Calaveras Dome area (see http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/caldomes/index.htm for details). The Mokelumne River has carved a deep V shaped valley into the mountains here, and at one point the rocky slopes explode out into a series of massive domes and buttresses. The main dome (Calaveras) is so obvious even blind Freddy could see it, and although it is nowhere near as sheer as the walls in Yosemite, it's still bloody impressive (about 1500 feet in height).

We decided to head up to one of the smaller / easier crags (Silver Streak Slab) opposite the main dome, and after a bit of humming and haaing about the best access, decided to follow the river upstream until we were directly below it, then blast straight up the hill to the base.

This turned out to be not such a hot idea, and the ensuing bush bash was hot, tiring, and overgrown with massive poison oak thickets. We even had a run in with a rather large snake that refused to move out of our way (I almost stepped on it, but didn't realise until I'd walked a couple of metres on and turned around to see it eyeing the toes of Mike, who was walking behind me - he was wearing Tevas!).

We eventually made it, panting and sweating, up to the aqueduct that runs along the hillside, only to discover a wide, well trodden path! We sat down for a bite to eat, and commented on how good the aqueduct would be for liloing (the water was racing past!). After dipping our hands in the water though we canned that idea - it was ****ing freezing!!! The tunnels cut into the cliffs further along the hillside also looked a bit serious - the water runs within 6 inches of the top of the tunnel! It could be fun with a thick wetsuit and scuba gear! :-)

After a bit of a breather we continued on, only to find we'd stopped less than 50m below the base of the crag! Doh! After a bit of scouting we worked out where we were and Sue and I decided to head up a great looking 5.8 (~Ewbank grade 16) offering a dihedral splitter crack starting about 10m up the wall. Sue led the first pitch, and I'm damn glad she did, because the initial slab was the crux, and totally unprotected. The final move to gain the crack / flake must have been about Ewbank grade 17 (5.9 YDS) with ridiculously insecure smearing and at that point she was a good 10m or so above a very nasty landing (with another 15m low angled slab below the belay ledge to tumble down if the boulders didn't stop her first!). We padded the landing area as best we could, all got underneath to spot, and she calmly pulled the move and placed the first piece. I think I was more scared on second than she looked on the lead / solo!! It was sphincter clenching to think about soloing it! ;-)

The remainder of the pitch was pretty sustained and quite hard for 5.7 I thought. In fact the supposed 5.8 crux at the end of the dihedral where the crack goes thin and vertical was quite possibly the easiest part of the entire pitch! But the crux was definitely the unprotected move to get to the crack / flake.

The "second pitch" involved an easy ramble across the top of a massive flake to reach a small ledge at the base of the next crack. With a bit of belay shenanigans Sue and I worked it such that I could lead the final crack pitch. While on the belay we admired a lovely pair of pine (or fir - I can't tell the difference!) trees that were almost identical and reared up between us and the main Calaveras Dome across the valley. Great stuff!

The next pitch turned out to be a lovely romp - no harder than Ewbank grade 8 (5.4 YDS) and with lots of bomber protection to boot. Some slightly suss rock up high (that coarse, grainy, crumbly granite) but nothing really to worry about. A double bolt belay and a quick second by Sue and we were up.

The guide described a 4th class (read "unroped") descent ramp that led of to our left, but one section looked a bit tricky and was extremely exposed, so we down led it instead. Although it wasn't very hard once you got there and worked it out, I can definitely say that there's no way I would have unroped for it!!! A slip would be death on a stick.

We needed to be back at Sue's cabin early to meet some other friends of hers, so having done a delightful 2 pitch climb in a stunning setting we decided to call it quits. We discovered the real track back down, which was MUCH easier than our ascent route - following a series of low angled granite slabs almost from the aqueduct all the way down to the road (very reminiscent of Flat Rock at Stapylton Ampitheatre in the Grampians, only not as long). The funniest thing was that this track deposited us all of 20 yards from the cars and within spitting distance of where we'd started up the river! Oh well, at least we know for next time...

Sunday night involved more beer, food, wine, beer etc., and to finish off we watched a late 70s / early 80s movie that Pat Ament put together. It was a really interesting bit of history - the climbing fashion in particular was great - I can't wait for white flaired pants to make a comeback! ;-)

Some of the footage of John Gill was incredible - he must have been incredibly strong - lots of foot-free one arm lock offs through rooves and stuff, and of course it was mostly solo (and some top roping too). I can see why he's considered the grandfather of bouldering (he was doing V4s back in the 50s!!).

Monday:
Had a very lazy morning chatting with everyone and enjoying the sunshine. Nisha and I decided to try to beat the traffic (yeah right!) so we headed off about lunchtime and made it back to San Fran by early evening.

All in all it was a great weekend! All I need now is a plethora of big shiny ring bolts to put my shattered confidence back in order! :-)