Pictures of My First Route

This is me drilling a bolt at the top of the route.
And here is me climbing the top of the route. And below is a full picture of the route, which you can follow by the rope running up the rock.

To Catch a Mouse

Inspired by Mike, I decided to try my hand at route development also. I picked out what I thought would be a good route while waiting for Mike to finish his route. Since this was my first time drilling bolts (BTW - we bought a power drill!), Mike drilled the anchors for me.
Then I rappelled the route to pick out the bolt placements, and clean some of the loose rock off. I was ready to start drilling, but I wanted Mike to check out the bolt placement first, to make sure they were in a good location for clipping, and also to make sure the rock was solid. So he rappelled, and adjusted some of my placements, then gave me the go-ahead to start drilling.
I got on rappel and went down to my first location. I used a prusik to back me up at the spot, and I also wrapped the rope around my leg to hold me in place.
The first 3 bolts drilled relatively quickly, for a novice like me. But the last bolt gave me a heck of a time! First, it was in a location where I had difficulty getting leverage on the drill, and the rock was particularly hard there. It took me probably 2 hours to get it drilled properly. I was worried that the hole wouldn't be straight or too wide due to drill wobble, but Mike checked it out and pronounced it OK! So I tapped in the last bolt and headed up on the first ascent.
Apparently the route still needed some cleaning, because the rock broke between the first and the second bolt and I fell on my first bolt! Luckily, it held my fall!
I call the route "To Catch a Mouse". The picture uploading isn't working on blogger at the moment, so I'll have to upload pictures later!

Fossils and such

One of the cool things about the Homestead rock is the all the fossils and shells in the limestone. You can see complete crynoids sitting on the rock like in the photo to the left. Also, there are really cool shells and other fossils everywhere. These two fossils were at the top of the cliff on the new routes Mike put up. But you can see them all the way up the climbs and in the rocks along the creekbed up to the climbing area.

New Year, New Routes

After Christmas, we returned to the Homestead for some more sport climbing. Although a staunch trad climber, Mike decided to put up some new routes. To the left is Mike drilling the hole for the first bolt hanger. On the right, Mike blows the dust out of the drill hole. Unfortunately, we only have a hand drill and so it takes quite a long time. Things would go a lot faster with a power drill. Each bolt takes close to an hour to place, which means for hand drillers like Mike, it takes almost a full day to finish a route. Mike made me do the first ascent of this route, which he calls "Pocket Mouse", probably rated 5.8.

Today he did the first ascent of another route he put up, which is yet to be named. I think it will be rated 5.10b. I was unable to get photos of the first ascent because I had to pay close attention while belaying.

What a cold, dark month it's been..

We've spent most of December chasing the warm weather and sitting out the winter storms. We started off in the McDowell mountains near Scottsdale, where Mike showed me some of the old climbs he used to do. Left is a picture of me on top of a big boulder near Pinnacle Peak in Scottsdale. We then took refuge for 5 days at Mike's friend's house in Phoenix to escape the heavy rainstorm.

We then headed to Queen Creek, which is reportedly Arizona's premier sport climbing area. Again, it was quite cold, and the volcanic tuff was rough on our hands. Also the campground was quite sketchy - perhaps the proximity of a large urban area to a free campground attracted many undesirables. We worried about leaving our trailer during the day without supervision since every ratty car that drove by stopped and stared for a while.

One of the local climbers told us about a limestone sport area called the Homestead, which is at a bit lower elevation. So we decided to try our luck there and jackpot! We found an area we liked! The cliffs mostly face east and north, so we concentrated on the east facing cliffs where the weather was quite comfortable until early afternoon. It's a fantastic area, but it doesn't see much traffic - I think because it's a little farther away from the major urban areas and because it requires a four wheel drive truck to navigate a pretty rough road. Here is a picture of Mike on the Welcome Wall.

The last week we've been in Taylor, AZ, spending Christmas with Mike's family. It's definitely nice to get out of the cold for a while. We will probably head back down to the Homestead area tomorrow as the weather is supposed to warm up again.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Mike asks as I start up the first pitch of "Falling Ross". We're at Granite Mountain near Prescott, AZ. I did want to do it, but Mike was making me nervous by asking me such questions. I decided to continue, despite my doubt. It's a difficult first pitch, and a harder second pitch. The crux about a third up the climb, and when I get to it, it takes me a while to figure out how to get through it. It's a long pitch too..about 140 feet. After I make it through the crux, there's no turning back, and although the difficulty eases off a little, it's still a bit sketchy and a bit run out. After a fair amount of squealing, I make it to the top without too much more trouble. However, the second pitch is considerably more difficult and it takes a quite a while to work through it and get to the top. I am sympathetic with the pitch namesake "Ross", as I fall quite a bit on the second pitch as well.

In any case, the climbing here at Granite Mountain is spectacular despite some desparate groveling through the pitches. To the left you can see part of the excellent quality rock you can enjoy here. In fact, there are not a huge number of climbs, but almost all them are worth doing. The weather has been mostly sunny, but the wind has been quite cold and it's very cold at night, so we are about to move down to lower elevation even though there are still several climbs I'd like to try here. The campground hosts a pack a feral cats, one of which Mike tries to convince me to adopt and take on our trip with us. I don't think it's such a good idea, so we had to desert "Mr. Coyote Bait", as Mike refers to his hopeful pet. Since yesterday, we are lucky to be able to take shelter indoors, with one of Mike's local friends. Tomorrow I think we'll head south. I sign off, in search of better weather.

And that's what Wonderland is all about..

Mike replies as we trudge out of Wonderland (one of the climbing areas) after a hard day of scrambling. I commented, "it seems like a lot of work for a few short climbs.." We had just spent the entire day scrambling through boulder fields, literally over, under and through tunnels to find our target climbs - and we ended up only doing 2 short climbs!

It's my first trip to Joshua Tree and while the camping and the weather are quite nice, I'm not so enamored with the climbing. If long scrambles through huge boulder fields to get to a few scrudgy, short and generally run out climbs is your cup of tea, then Joshua Tree is the place for you!

On the positive note, we met some nice people (including rockgrrl! where there should be a picture of Mike climbing), saw some beautiful scenery and in town, they have a great climbing shop and a bar with wireless Internet access. The campground is also quite nice, the picture to the left shows a campground cliff where people climb up to watch the sunset.

We are currently on our way to Granite Mountain, near Prescott AZ, so I sign off now in search of better climbing!