King Wall, Sunday 9/9

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Originally uploaded by Aya_K_Alt.

So I took the photo a second too soon, but this was anotehr whipper in progress. I love the cloud coming through! It was a wet, wet day. Thought Monday was going to be a washout, too, when it dawned as misty and miserable as Sunday did. We took a drive up to Poko just to show the boys, though, and as we were pulling up, the clouds broke and the sun came out. Sweet! We figured we'd take a look and see if the rock was dry - it was - so we sent them up Gamesmanship, while Joe ran up the Sting. We then sent them up Bloody Mary in a single pitch, and while they were on that, Joe gave me a choice between a bolted route called Casual Observer which he'd bailed off of the last time he'd tried to lead it and Fastest Gun, which I'd previously followed but not led. I was feeling a little ambitious because looking athe route, it seemed manageable; Joe told me he figured that it was 5.10ish and so I grabbed some draws, and few small cams and set off. There was definitely a lot of whining and a lot of squealing; a lot of fuck I'm pumped fuck I need a rest oh man I still have to climb that far to get to the next bolt oh god can't I just lower here, but eventually, after slipping off while downclimbing to a rest under the third bolt (I thought that was the crux), I grunted my way through the climb. It's very cool, climbing a steep face on the ubiquitous dacks squarecut edges, then traversing left over a huge gap to another face up to a roof, then chimneying up between the wall and a jutting flack, and finally shooting up twin bulging cracks to the anchors. Jim Lawyer gives it a 5.10b in the new book he's working on, but come on, I'm not leading Dacks 10b so I'll call it just 10. It was bolted, sure, but the only other 10s i've led were bolted, and they were either out west or at Rumney and so hardly count. Probably the lead that most drained me physically, but with such well spaced bolts, it wasn't much of a mental lead in that regard. We went down and did the first pitch of something (I followed in my sneakers) and then Joe led the first pitch of Pilgrim's Progress, whcih I thought was marginally easier athn Casual Observer. I led it with Joe's draws in place (cheating) and it was pretty much no problem until the last move. That move rocks you right onto your foot with only bad, slopey little ripples on top of the bulge to hold you up; clipping risks knocking you off balance. I'll be honest; if I'd had to clip my own draws to the anchor bolts that move would definitely have taken me far, far longer than it did.