A Crazy Weekend

This weekend started out as most weekends do in central Oregon. I woke up, ate breakfast, then headed out to Smith Rock to get some climbing in. It was all fairly normal. We went to the backside of Smith to climb on the Mesa Verde wall. There, I got on a classic dihedral called Trezlar. The first pitch is kind of crummy so we did a 5.10a sport route called Cosmos to gain the second pitch's fantastic corner. My feet were so tired after this pitch. It is nothing but overhanging stemming with jams. If anyone ever goes to Smith Rock, I recommend this route.

Trezlar is the green line and Cosmos is the red.

After climbing that, we headed over to Monkey Face. Calvin has a project that he wanted to get on called The West Face Crack 5.12a. This has to be one of the finest finger cracks that I have ever had the pleasure to see in person. It goes up for close 30 meters then ends with a few face moves. To start the route you aid up a bolt ladder then gain the crack. It stays in your face for nearly the entire route. I had the chance to top rope this route and wish I had the skills to lead it. So beautiful.

The West Face Crack. It ends where the white rock starts.

While we were climbing on the Monkey we could hear a crowd on the other side of it. For those who don't know, the Monkey Face is a free standing pillar/spire/tower that is semi-detached from the bluff line. It is called monkey face because if viewed from the south it looks just like a monkey face.

As I was saying, there was a crowd gathered across from the "mouth cave" on what we called the diving board. They had set up a swing, with ropes, and were jumping off and flying through the air. It was quite the site. From the west side we were hear screams then see a person flying off to the north, only to stop and start flying back to the south. Because this may be hard to imagine, I drew a diagram.

The green line represents the two ropes in which you swing on. When you are tied in and waiting to swing, the ropes look a lot like the yellow line. Once you gather enough courage, you jump off the diving board. The red line then depicts the swing you will take. Once you settle the swinging, you transfer over to the blue line and rappel down to the ground where they pull up the two swing ropes and the process is repeated by the next person. At the lowest part of the swing, you are probably 130 feet off of the ground. At the fullest extension, you are possibly more than 200 feet up. I was too much of a coward to do this, but my friend Adam took the ride. I was able to get pictures from the diving board of him doing this.Adam is at the end of the swing in the center of the picture

After this, we went and got two more climbs in before we called it a day. Adam then invites me to spend the night at his house and hang out with him and his wife. After arriving at their house, we, Adam and I, were informed that there would be girls from the youth group coming over to play Settlers of Catan. Those of you have not played that game, go buy it and play. You won't regret doing so. I was sucked in to playing. Normally I love this game, but that night it was a little different. I found out that these girls, plus Diane, had no focus that night. It became normal to not know who's turn it was. Eventually, the game ended. It was a few hours later. At this point it was past my normal bed time (11). After the game the girls started talking in the living room. That wouldn't have been a problem, but the place I had planned on bivying that night was a couch in the living room. This posed some problems. First off, I have a very hard time sleeping while wearing much clothing. I don't sleep naked, but I get too hot wearing just shorts. Also, I only had pants with me, and I was not going to wear pants in a 20 degree sleeping bag inside a house. So I wasn't going to strip down to my underwear with a bunch of high school girls in the same room. Secondly, they were so loud. Finally, Adam asked if i wanted to use the bed room their boys normally sleep in. I took up that offer and headed to bed at 2A.M.

After a restless night sleeping, I woke up at 7. The one time I want to sleep in, I am unable to. Once Adam got up, he made breakfast. It was a great breakfast of potatoes, eggs, sausage, cheese, and then I started drinking mate. After chillin at his house for a while, we headed back out to Smith for another day on the rocks. We got some fun climbs in, then I headed back to Calvin's. I was so tired, that I had trouble staying up until 9.

Then today, after going to church, I headed out to Smith to meet up with Calvin. He climbed with the guy who owns the climbing gym in Bend, Larry. I went out, not really wanting to do much climbing, but decided to take pictures. The second route they got on was a project of Calvin's called Bolt from the Blue 5.12a. Larry took the first burn on it and did well. Then Calvin went for the redpoint. He got it! Not once did he look like he was going to fall. I took pictures of both of them climbing the route. I ended up taking 85 pictures in only a few hours of climbing. Never before have I taken so many.

I also took some close ups of the rock so that you could see it. As I said before it is welded tuff. Welded tuff is a volcanic rock that is basically only solidified volcanic ash. Because is it stuff that blew out of a volcano, there are many knobs. Some are small some are larger. These knobs, along with pockets and edges are what you use for holds. On the harder routes, the knobs become key footholds. This makes routes very technical. Here is a close up of the rock.

Notice the knobs and little bits of rock in the rock.

That has been my weekend. It was great. Now I have to go through pictures and edit them from today. Tomorrow I am supposed to go climbing with Adam again. Maybe I will send something hard and surprise myself. I'll be sure to post some pictures of Calvin's accent and if anything exciting happens tomorrow.