Sunday, January 30th, 2005

Cranking hard at Pinnacles

After two nights of partying and hanging out with friends, I was ready to get out. Mike from the gym has one more seat in his van, so I happily hopped on. On Sunday, Mike, Kent, Charlie, and I left the bay area around 6:30 AM and found ourselves at the Discovery Wall at 9:00 AM. The sun just warmed up the wall for us. As the day proceeded, more people showed up, and then even more. We moved to the Monolith Area in the afternoon, where we met many more friendly climbers including Hal, Claire, Albert, Lindsey, Kay, and Jacob. (Sorry if the list does not interest you. I’m simply documenting my event of the day so that later I do not forget the names — My memory for names is terrible.)

Between all the climbing, waiting, and socializing, I managed to go up quite a few climbs:

Route Rating Comment
Discovery Wall:
Wet Kiss 5.9 lead
The Verdict 5.11b top rope
Stupendous Man 5.10a lead
Monolith Area:
Bad Bolts 5.10c top rope
Feed The Beast 5.11b/c top rope
Post Orgasm Depression (P.O.D.) 5.10d/11a lead.
Foreplay 5.11a/b top rope

No doubt leading Post Orgasm Depression was the highlight of the day for me — it’s 2 letter grade harder than the hardest climb I had ever led before. I might be in depression at other times, but definitely not after this climb. I have to admit that it did take Kent’s a little gentle push for me to tie in to the sharp end of the rope. The encouragement coming from the crowd at the Monolith Area was incredible.As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Let me add another few thousand words to this trip report…


Kent Feeding the Beast.
Claire gracefully dancing up P.O.D.

Mei focusing on Foreplay.
Mei reaching for a higher hold on Foreplay.

Three guys showing off their muscles on Monolith.

Mike doing dental work to The Boulder Problem (under Wet Kiss).
Mike did it!

Climbers are versatile. We can climb high on the walls and we can descend deep down into caves.