Wednesday, January 26th, 2005

What is ahead of me?

2005

Well, for sure, I will still be climbing. Besides Yosemite, Pinnacles, and Table Mountain, I hope to go to other different places in this new year in front of me. It’s always fun to explore.

It has been a pretty good start so far. I went to Pinnacles with Debby on Jan 16, Sunday– a rare all women outing for me, and it turned out a wonderful experience. We stopped at the popular Discovery Wall, where I led Wet Kiss (5.9) and Stupendous Man (5.10a), and we top roped Cosmos (5.11b), Melvin (5.11a), the Big Pucker (5.10d). We were not all self-sufficient as we had planned to be. Seeing Mike from our gym and his hardcore friends, we happily took on their offer to fix our rope on the hard climbs. Cosmos is a memorable climb — as the guidebook puts it: “a spectacular route that puts the leader in very photogenic positions.” We didn’t have a camera with us, but Debby found this picture on the Internet.

On Jan 22, Saturday, I went to Gold Wall at Table Mountain with Allen for a very short afternoon. We drove out to Yosemite first time this year on Sunday because the weather looked very inviting. At Reed’s Pinnacle, Allen led the Direct Route (5.10a), a burly offwidth crack. After the second pitch, the tunnel through was a lot of fun. We then topped roped the 5.10a flared offwidth/chimney from the top anchor of Reed’s Direct. After coming down, we ended the day with Lunatic Fringe (5.10c). There was no crowd, and the weather was perfect. It was a great weekend to live in my memory, because this weekend could well be the last weekend Allen and I climbed together (P.S. Well, that’s what I thought, but it turned out to be wrong very soon.). Having always lived a distance away and busy with our own lives, we seemed to have grown apart. We finally decided to take a break from this relationship. It’s not like in the future, we will have many chances to cross path again, but we will remain friends.

2005 is indeed a brand new year for me. The page has turned.