Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Climbing: Showing JT the Best

[Note: This TR was first posted to the forum.]

JT is a friend of mine whom I met at Lynn Hill Climbing Camp three years ago. Ever since then, we have kept in touch. He became a close friend of Lynn. Over the past couple of decades, he has climbed all over the place such as New/Owens/Red River Gorges, Veadauwoo, Eldo, Red Rocks, J Tree, England, Canada, and Italy just to name a few. So, this time, when he told me that he would be visiting the Bay Area and had Saturday free, I decided to show him the crown jewel of climbing — Pinnacles.

We picked him up at 7 from his hotel. We had thrown in an extra backpack from him. I’m glad we did because otherwise, he would have had to carry his laptop bag to the crag. On the drive down, we chatted and caught up with things.


JT is “madly in love” (his own words) with his wife. Of course, so am I with my husband. So, nobody should be jealous with this photo right?

After consulting with him, we thought some Pinnacles classic would suit him well. We first got on Portent. The top out moves seemed to have impressed JT. After that, we moved on to Ordeal. He came up amazingly fast.
JT loved the no hands rest on Ordeal

After those climbs, JT called for a siesta, so we moved to the Monolith, and Mud got on his nemesis. Well, what can I say. Today ain’t his day.

Many hikers passed by when Mud worked on the route. One particularly big and noisy family lingered for quite a while. What was funny was later when a small group of climbers we met at Discovery Wall walked by, JT acted out the chaotic scene to them leaving everyone rolling on the ground laughing. Til today, I can still hear him impersonate the father shouting in a strong Spanish accent, “Kid, come over here. We’ll go to the lake! Where is the lake? How am I supposed to know?! We’ll just go this way. We might get to the lake. Oh, look, see those holds on the wall? Oh, wow, there is a rope on the wall too! Oh, gee, see that?! There is man on the rope! Kid, don’t run that way! I said DO NOT run that way! It might not lead to the lake!…” I knew JT was one a geeky computer engineer and now a successful lawyer, and I did not expect him to have the talent to act so well. Learned something new about my friend.

On our way out, we stopped at the entrance because JT wanted to take a picture of the entrance sign. I just realized that all these years coming here, we had never bothered stopping here.

There is JT posing behind the sign

Mud’s first photo taken at the sign