The following is a first person account from Lillian Chao-Quinlan, one of our participants in our Warrior's Way Trad Camp held last weekend. This 3-day workshop is a crash course on how to put the rad in trad. We teach gear placement, jamming, planning for the trad lead and give you lots of opportunities to test your gear placements by taking whippers on them. It's the only way to know for sure if your pro is totally truck...or not so much.
7 sport climbers braved a horrible weekend forecast of 60-80% rain everyday, and they were rewarded with newfound love of crack climbing, minor loss of skin, egos intact, and not a single drop of rain fell the entire weekend.
Hi everyone!!
So I'm not sure if I should be flattered or worried that at some point, most of you checked in with me about trad camp, either before, during or after the weekend. ; ) I know, this whole thing is so juxtaposed to everything I do and know about climbing so you have every reason to worry but I MADE IT! ; ) Well......for the most part. Here is my recap (or as Wayne has taught me...recapitulation) of the weekend's exciting events.
When: April 23-25; go time around 7:30am and off crag by 8pm on Friday and Saturday, 4pm on Sunday.
Where: The New - Friday - Endless Wall (Fantasy Area), Saturday - Bridge Buttress (new area for me!), Sunday - Junkyard (another new area for me).
Weather: We sooooo lucked out! Was calling for rain almost every day but stayed high and dry every day with the sun peeking out just about every day. The predicted forecast kept a lot of people away so we had all the crags to ourselves.
Who: 7 participants, including me, 5 from Sportrock (!). Arno Ilgner from Rock Rock Warriors Way and Mike Williams from New River Mountain Guides and author of the new New River guidebook.
8 guys + 1 girl made for an interesting group dynamic....more in a bit.....
Note: Drive down, a truck's tire blow's out and part of the rubber hits the front of my car, mashing my signal light. Ugghhh!!
FRIDAY: Endless Wall - Fantasy Area
- Carpool in Lil's car - Lil looks at one of the guy's packs and says..."Is that a pack or a man purse?" My pack dwarfed his little pack! We got along just fine (really!).
- Begin with a 100' rappel off of roof into mid air. Thank you Garrick for us practicing rappelling in your class! I knew how to set up my prusik. ; ) One of the guy's prusik's gets locked in his ATC so Mike has to do a meunter mule, lock him off to transfer the weight so he could get enough slack to get his prusik out. It was actually pretty cool to have some clue about what was happening!
- After a very brief demonstration (like 15 minutes) on placing gear, my partner and I were assigned Black and Tan 10a. "You want to go first?" he asks. "Sure!" Since Lil has no idea what pieces she needs, she brings just about everything! After racking up and tightening up her harness, she's off. Scoping the opening moves, her concentration is rudely broken with a "do you need help with the sequence? I'm good at reading routes." "I think I got it," she responds.
- After placing the first piece, she yanks (a bunch of times) and then sits on the piece. It holds! Score!
- Another piece goes in after a bit of futzing and more yanking and bouncing.....it holds! Score again! 2 for 2!
- Third piece goes in....."testing time?" Arno asks. "Testing time?" she repeats. "Go ahead above the piece and take a fall." "Uh, ok!" Thank goodness for top rope back ups!! "Falling!" Hey, it holds!!!
- All the pieces hold with some pretty big (10-15') falls taken on each piece (did I already say, thank goodness for TR backup?)
- After a rotation to Doe Si Doe and Fantasy crack, Day 1 is over.
SATURDAY: Bridge Buttress
- Ground school - placing gear on the ground and inspecting each other's pieces (wait, why didn't we do this first thing yesterday? oh....weather concerns, get everyone climbing quickly).
- Building anchors
- Jamming techniques - hey, I want to try the "teacups!" Owww.....I don't want to try to teacups anymore!
- Time to climb - first climb - Jaws - crack in a dihedral...Lil stems the whole climb, smearing on nothing.....the alternative was to cram my ankles into the crack...why? Wow, that's tiring to smear and stem on nothing with a hand jam (hmm.....maybe there's a crimp in that crack I can hang onto?) and place gear......trying out at least 5 different pieces per placement.....running out of pieces....let's try this hex!!
- Next climb - Chockstone....
- Round out the day top roping another climb and focusing just on crack climbing.....OWWWWWW!!!! 2 hands, 2 feet all jammed up in a vertical slot.....feeling a little stuck......unwilling to let go of any 4 points....wow, I gotta work on this technique!! Sorry, Chris.....I tried!
SUNDAY: Junkyard Wall
- Set up anchors and belay as if we were on a multipitch trad climb
- Climb New Yosemite - there are no edges on either side of that crack so it was full on crack for Lil.....lots of testing her gear without the intention of testing her gear....thank goodness (again) for top rope backup because I really, really fell out of the crack a number of times!
- That was all we had time for....2pm....another hour or so for debrief.
FINALE
Say our goodbyes.....Lil goes back to apt to pack up. Steps out of car and walkup up the driveway, does a total face plant onto the ground rolling her right ankle....the kind of roll where you feel nauseous and need to take deep breaths (see lovely pic!). Drive 5 hours home on the bad ankle. I know....how does that happen???!!!! 3 days of doing all sorts of Houdini contortionist moves, cramming my feet into cracks and torquing them in positions one would think impossible.....get on safe ground and WHAM!!! Genie...I can totally relate to your fall after a full day at Elizabeth's furnace!! What the ------??!!
Anyway.......
PROS:
- Something totally new, learned so much and was able to apply some things I've learned from sport climbing, from Garrick's class and from the SPI course.
- Fun group
- Great weather
- Feedback on my placements was invaluable....Arno would climb up after every climb, give verbal feedback, take pics of every placement, come down and we would go over the quality of each placement and look at the pics
- falling on gear with a TR backup!
CONS:
not a lot of cons....other than the 5.13 face plant and ankle roll in the driveway!!
THE FUTURE:
I would like to explore this world more....try to place gear without a TR backup and still feel confident about falling on it......that's going to take a lot of practice!!!! Oh yeah.....more crack.....climbing. ; )
Thanks friends for caring and sharing in my excitement!!
Lillian
Lillian Chao-Quinlan
President
Sportrock Climbing Centers
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