One Last Caress
Once a year, the Sespegorillaz (our little climbing club) make a pilgrimage to a place called Pine Mountain for a few days of high adventure. This would be our third annual trip. Unfortunately, this year we would be without the guidance of the club’s majordomo, Mr. Crash Fistfight as he had committed to lead a small group on a fifty mile motorcycle ride through Hungry Valley. But, you cant mess with tradition. So, with school starting next week and soccer season just around the corner, me and the boys drove up to Pine Mountain for a weekend camping and epic bouldering. Carlo has been climbing pretty hard all summer and his pal Max, has put in a lot of time in Wheeler Gorge and the Sespe Snakepits of late so a trip up to one of the most glorious boulder fields in California was definitely in order. In spite of the “game over” snags we encountered, this trip would prove to be quite productive and the boys would get themselves a little taste of life as real dirtbag climbers.
Pine Mountain sits atop the Sierra Madre Range in northern Ventura County within the Los Padres National Forest. At over 7000ft, it is the high point facing the ocean and can be seen from anywhere on the Oxnard Flood Plain and the Santa Clara River Valley. From Reyes Peak, its true summit, Pine Mountain offers views of all of the Northern Channel Islands, Santa Catalina Island, the Santa Monica Mountains, the Cuyama Valley, Mt Able, Mt Pinos, the tops of the Tehachapi Mountains and parts of Angles NF. Pine Mountain is also a sort of high altitude, back country trail hub with trailheads for Reyes Peak, Chorro Grande, Raspberry Spring and Boulder Canyon, accessing Lion Canyon and Piedra Blanca Creek down one side of the mountain and the Lockwood/Cuyama Valleys down the other. On its western ridge, Pine Mountain also offers excellent primitive camping, sporting about half a dozen individual campsites and one group campsite. With 360 degree views, balmy temperatures, wonderful groves of enormous pine trees and immaculate trails, Pine Mountain is the best adventure destination in Ventura County. And then there’s the boulderfield.
Scattered across both sides of the entire ridge are hundreds of sandstone boulders of various shapes and sizes. In fact, there are so many boulders, climbers have grouped them into distinct areas with names such as The Happy Hunting Grounds, The Eastwoods, Enlightenment Ridge and The Birthday Challenge Boulders. Pine Mountain boasts some absolutely classic boulder problems including Dissing Euros, Pieces of You, Gyroscope and Whiplash. Pine Mountain sandstone has every rock feature imaginable; cracks, huecos, diadrals, arêtes, faces, slopers, patina, congom and comes in tans, whites and blacks with intermittent spots of green and orange lichen. These boulders are situated within the shade of the pine tree groves and most of them are on ground that is relatively flat and soft. These features make Pine Mountain a rock climber’s paradise.
As is usually the case, this trip was squeezed in between shifts at the hospital, but for once, the boss let me go home early so I got a good nights sleep before we left town. Carlo and I loaded up the truck with gear and departed Ventura around 11am on Friday the 22nd, stopped in Oak View to pick up Max, charged up the 33, and were on top of the mountain by 1300. As we pulled off the highway and on to the Forest Service dirt road that leads up to Pine Mountain, it dawned on me that I had forgotten two essential items at home; our tent and camp chairs. Nuts!
Fortunately, I have in my possession, an original nylon Rivas Mountaineering rain fly. My Dad, Dave Rivas Sr., aka Dave the Cave made it for my old Scout troop to use for backpacking back in the 1980s. It was designed to sleep several people and to be used without poles. It’s shape, size and tie-in points allow for versatility of set up. I’ve only used it a few times since then but I keep in one of my gear boxes for emergencies. Thanks Dad. The camp chairs we would have to do without. Oh well.
The Sespegorillaz normally camp in the last site on the ridge but unfortunately this site was occupied by a lone tent, probably being held for the large group of campers that eventually arrived. We didn’t really care for the other available sites so we decided to sit tight and wait to see if something better opened up. In the meantime, we got right down to business.
From our parking spot on the road, we walked down the hill a little ways, consulted our topo (map), and picked out a boulder that wasn’t listed.
Carlo and Max flashed a new route on this boulders south face, something sort of easy but sustained with some tricky footwork and a mantle top out. I got them working on something a little harder on the boulders east side as I noticed some evidence of recent activity there. Nice climbing on good rock that is still un-named at this time. 
After a short break we moved on to another boulder just above us. Here, with Max and I spotting him, Carlo sent a route called The Place of Dead Roads, that featured some scary face climbing with a terrifying sloping top out. I love the expression on the boys faces when they put up something hard and scary, they get that hardman look about them, priceless. Afterwards, with the boys cheering me on, I flashed a pair of crimpy, overhanging routes called My Education and Turkish Bath. 
We were feeling kind of pumped after only the second boulder, but with half a dozen routes a piece under our belts, we decided to head up the hill to the truck for a snack. Once we got to the road, we noticed that one of the better campsites had opened up so I told the boys to stay put while I ran down the road to get the truck. It wasn’t the best site, but it would do.
We set up our camp and took care of all our camp chores (firewood gathering, gear sorting, ect) in short order. After a quick snack we tooled around on the boulders sitting in our campsite. A few months ago, Carlo figured out that some boulders could be climbed without using his hands, and made this type of climbing into a sort of competition between he and Max. Now, this is not an original idea. In fact, this special technique was developed by the high priests of Stoney Point in the San Fernando Valley during the 1950’s. It requires balance, good footwork and some minerals to perform. I encourage the use of this technique as it illustrates the fact that rock climbing is not about pulling oneself up the rock but rather standing up on thin holds while using your arms and core strength to keep oneself close to the rock. The idea being to distribute ones body weight evenly between the arms and legs, thus requiring less energy and enabling the climber to get up harder and longer routes. I often wonder what those legendary old school locals (Royal Robbins, Yvon Choinard, Bob Kamps, Tom Frost, TM Herbert) from Stoney would think if they saw these 10 year olds taking a page out of their book. They’d proly be pretty stoaked!
Anyways, after playing around in camp for a while and then exploring some unclimbed boulders across the road from our site, we decided to get busy with the making of dinner. Carlo built us a nice cooking fire while Max and I got the food ready; chili dogs and watermelon with some hot apple cider…yum.
We sat around the fire for a couple of hours then the boys turned in for the night while I stayed up till our fire burned down a bit. The first nights temperature was quite nice but there was a sustained wind blowing from the north and were it not for the large boulder that we had hitched our rain fly to, blocking the wind, we could have been quite miserable. In addition to the wind, I noticed that we were loosing visibility of the stars due to the high clouds that were blowing in. As an alpinist, I’ve become conditioned to paying close attention to things like wind and clouds and changes in mountain weather so I decided to take a few moments and make sure our shelter was secure and our gear tucked away before turning in myself.
I awoke the next morning to Carlo sitting by the campfire he had re-lit, heating up the water for Moonraker Mochas. The Moonraker Mocha is a secret recipe invented by myself and Mr. Fistfight during one of our alpine trips in the Eastern Sierra. Along with hot apple cider, Top Ramen and the Tunapitawich, it is now a Sespegorilla staple. A short while later, Max rolled out of bed and I got breakfast going while the boys sat by the fire and enjoyed their mochas. The wind that blew overnight had died down but skies were still overcast and things smelled ominous so I quickly got some bacon and eggs and fruit into the boys and together, we got things cleaned up and our gear organized for the day. We were just starting to make our initial plans for the day when it started to rain. Bummer. Not just because of the rain, but do you know how hard it is to get a 10 year old out of bed on a weekend? Carlo and Max were fed and sorted and ready to climb by 0830! Now it seemed like it was all for not.
I had the boys get out their books and IPods and duck out under the rain fly to keep dry while I made sure that anything that could get wet was put away. The rain was light but sustained and after the first hour of it I told the boys that we would wait it out until lunchtime. If the rain kept up, we were gonna bail out and head for home. The real problem was not the rain. I mean sure, rain sucks, but its only water, and its not like we were at 14,000ft, on foot, 20 miles from nowhere. The issue at hand was the fact that sandstone and rain don’t go well together. In fact, when sandstone gets wet, it becomes slippery and brittle. If it was to rain for more than a few hours than our climbing trip was over. I explained this dilemma to the boys and all three of us held out hope that the rain would stop soon. In the meantime, we kept the morning campfire going, wandered around the camp and just basically tried to kill time. Carlo and Max were good sports about it all and if the truth be told, being socked in by bad weather is something every climber must endure.
There is a whole skill set that comes with dealing with inclement weather, skills that one day could save the lives of you and your climbing partner, skills that separate the dirtbag from the tourista. And we’re no tourists.
Lunch time rolled around and it was still raining. I boiled up some water for Ramen and we ate our noodles under the shelter of the rain fly, but we slowly started to accept the fact that the party was over. After we ate, we begrudgingly began to roll up our gear and load up the truck. With everything packed away and the camp policed of any bits of trash left by previous campers, I got out our 20 liter water jug on loan from Mr. Fistfight and doused the fire. And then, just as soon as the last drop hit the fire pit, the rain stopped. Not only did the rain stop, but the friggin sun came out and cast a beam of light and warmth onto us. Woot wooo!!!!! Were aint going nowhere!
So, just a quickly as we loaded the truck, we unloaded and laid all the wet stuff out to dry in the sun. I figured the it would take a couple hours for the rock to dry out, so I turned the boys loose and re-assembled our camp. Carlo and Max had found a large fallen pine tree arching across a small gully just down the hill from the camp and built them selves and fort/shelter out of some dead fall they had collected (another useful alpine skill). With the boys occupied doing their own thing, I put on my headphones and took some time to max and relax and enjoy the view and soak up some sunlight. Around 2pm, I determined that things had dried out enough for us to get busy with the boulders so I whistled for the boys and we got our gear together, then headed over to the Happy Hunting Grounds.
HHG was a mere 2 minute walk from our campsite and contains a majority of the developed climbing on Pine Mountain. I let the boys get ahead of me so I could take some photos. As they entered the HHG proper, they walked through a small group of college age boys who working on a boulder problem in the upper part of the area. The big boys were quite surprised to see these two youngsters, all geared up, strolling through and gave some shouts and hoots of approval. As we walked past them, I heard one of them say to another, ”Dude, don’t be a wuss. I bet those kids could climb that”, which was followed by some laughs from the others. That’s right mofos, Sespegorillaz in the house!!!
Just like the day before, we made our way to the edge of the “developed” areas, and got down with some already established routes. Carlo and Max started working on the beginning moves on a route called Pink Fingers, a pretty highball and grainy face with a not so good landing. They couldn’t finish the route this time, but I’m sure it will go for them soon. Maybe next time.
Right next to Pink Fingers, is a roof/cave problem called Dreams, that I sent after only a couple of tries. I love roofs and overhangs, they suit my body type and climbing style.
Next we moved to the Hueco Problem boulder as I had some unfinished business there. I sent Hueco Problem and The Hueco Solution, while the boys put up The Hueco Slab. Slab was tough for them as its rather height dependent, but they worked it out after a few tries.
After a short break we focused on the other side of this boulder where Carlo and Max sent something called Free Thinker and I put up a route called Unseamly right next to it. We were feeling pretty pumped right then so we took another break then moved on to another boulder that was not on our topo. This one featured a less than vertical face that was fairly high and slopey. 
The boys make quick work of it so we turned our attention to some other un-named rocks in the immediate vicinity a played around on some one and two move problems that required some tough crimping technique. A crimp is a hold that is very narrow, presents from any aspect (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) and allows little more than the tips of your fingers. Finger strength and balance are key.
By this time we could see that the sun would be setting soon so we headed back toward the main area of HHG. On our way up, we stopped and climbed a sit-start hueco problem called Big Fun which was both easy and fun.
Once we got up to the Dissing Euros Boulder, the boys let me know that their arms were blasted and that they wanted to have a look around at the rest of the main area. So turned them loose to go explore. While they out scoping out some other routes, I slapped the shit out of two more problems that had sent me packing in the past, New Ways To Get From A To B and Dirtbag. 
Feeling pretty mustered, I decided to have words with a route on Dissing Euros called Heaven On Top, which I must say, got the best of me…this time. My forearms were so pumped by then I could barely open my fist much less hold myself to the overhanging rock. Even with my boys cheering me on, it was not to be. Besides, Heaven On Top is one of those problems that gets harder the higher you climb, and with without Mr. Fistfight to give me a proper spot, I decided to back off and save the route for another day. 
Feeling pretty accomplished with the days climbing and tired as hell, we headed back to camp for an evening relaxation and fellowship. Carlo once again, started us a cooking fire while Max and I collected and broke up the firewood. When the coals were ready, we prepared Tin Foil Dinners (another Gorilla fav) and layered up for the evening while they cooked. The TFDs were delicious and made for an easy clean up, after which we put on the water for cider and broke put the marshmallows. After a couple of hours of fireside fart jokes and bragging of the days climbing exploits we let the campfire burn down and hit the sack. The night sky was clear but the temperature was considerably cooler than the night before and the wind had picked up again, this time from the south. The weather was a non-issue at this point however because we were all absolutely exhausted and sleep came easy.
The next morning we all rose with the sun and fixed up some mochas and oatmeal. After breakfast, we broke down camp and re-loaded the truck. I didn’t have to be to work till 3pm so we took our time and even got a little more climbing in around camp. At 1130 we saddled up and rolled out.
We did a little sight seeing on the way down and stopped for pictures a few times as well. It was a quite ride down the 33 and I know that after three days of dirtbaggin’ it, the boys were missing their mommas and had a lot to reflect on, so I let the silence ride. We deposited Max at safely at home and Carlo and I were back in Ventura by 0130.
Sespegorilla Dispatch 082509
ROCK CLIMBING IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. ACCEDENTS HAPPEN AND PEOPLE LOSE THEIR LIVES DOING IT ALL THE TIME. IF YOU GO OUT THERE AND START RUNNING UP ROCKS YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING ON, YOU ARE A FOOL AND YOU WILL DIE! SO, LIKE SURFING, SKING, SNOWBOARDING AND MOUNTAINBIKING, DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT PROPER INSTRUCTION OR PARTNERING UP WITH SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEIR DOING. LLAP.
Once a year, the Sespegorillaz (our little climbing club) make a pilgrimage to a place called Pine Mountain for a few days of high adventure. This would be our third annual trip. Unfortunately, this year we would be without the guidance of the club’s majordomo, Mr. Crash Fistfight as he had committed to lead a small group on a fifty mile motorcycle ride through Hungry Valley. But, you cant mess with tradition. So, with school starting next week and soccer season just around the corner, me and the boys drove up to Pine Mountain for a weekend camping and epic bouldering. Carlo has been climbing pretty hard all summer and his pal Max, has put in a lot of time in Wheeler Gorge and the Sespe Snakepits of late so a trip up to one of the most glorious boulder fields in California was definitely in order. In spite of the “game over” snags we encountered, this trip would prove to be quite productive and the boys would get themselves a little taste of life as real dirtbag climbers.
Pine Mountain sits atop the Sierra Madre Range in northern Ventura County within the Los Padres National Forest. At over 7000ft, it is the high point facing the ocean and can be seen from anywhere on the Oxnard Flood Plain and the Santa Clara River Valley. From Reyes Peak, its true summit, Pine Mountain offers views of all of the Northern Channel Islands, Santa Catalina Island, the Santa Monica Mountains, the Cuyama Valley, Mt Able, Mt Pinos, the tops of the Tehachapi Mountains and parts of Angles NF. Pine Mountain is also a sort of high altitude, back country trail hub with trailheads for Reyes Peak, Chorro Grande, Raspberry Spring and Boulder Canyon, accessing Lion Canyon and Piedra Blanca Creek down one side of the mountain and the Lockwood/Cuyama Valleys down the other. On its western ridge, Pine Mountain also offers excellent primitive camping, sporting about half a dozen individual campsites and one group campsite. With 360 degree views, balmy temperatures, wonderful groves of enormous pine trees and immaculate trails, Pine Mountain is the best adventure destination in Ventura County. And then there’s the boulderfield.
Scattered across both sides of the entire ridge are hundreds of sandstone boulders of various shapes and sizes. In fact, there are so many boulders, climbers have grouped them into distinct areas with names such as The Happy Hunting Grounds, The Eastwoods, Enlightenment Ridge and The Birthday Challenge Boulders. Pine Mountain boasts some absolutely classic boulder problems including Dissing Euros, Pieces of You, Gyroscope and Whiplash. Pine Mountain sandstone has every rock feature imaginable; cracks, huecos, diadrals, arêtes, faces, slopers, patina, congom and comes in tans, whites and blacks with intermittent spots of green and orange lichen. These boulders are situated within the shade of the pine tree groves and most of them are on ground that is relatively flat and soft. These features make Pine Mountain a rock climber’s paradise.
As is usually the case, this trip was squeezed in between shifts at the hospital, but for once, the boss let me go home early so I got a good nights sleep before we left town. Carlo and I loaded up the truck with gear and departed Ventura around 11am on Friday the 22nd, stopped in Oak View to pick up Max, charged up the 33, and were on top of the mountain by 1300. As we pulled off the highway and on to the Forest Service dirt road that leads up to Pine Mountain, it dawned on me that I had forgotten two essential items at home; our tent and camp chairs. Nuts!
Fortunately, I have in my possession, an original nylon Rivas Mountaineering rain fly. My Dad, Dave Rivas Sr., aka Dave the Cave made it for my old Scout troop to use for backpacking back in the 1980s. It was designed to sleep several people and to be used without poles. It’s shape, size and tie-in points allow for versatility of set up. I’ve only used it a few times since then but I keep in one of my gear boxes for emergencies. Thanks Dad. The camp chairs we would have to do without. Oh well.The Sespegorillaz normally camp in the last site on the ridge but unfortunately this site was occupied by a lone tent, probably being held for the large group of campers that eventually arrived. We didn’t really care for the other available sites so we decided to sit tight and wait to see if something better opened up. In the meantime, we got right down to business.
From our parking spot on the road, we walked down the hill a little ways, consulted our topo (map), and picked out a boulder that wasn’t listed.
Carlo and Max flashed a new route on this boulders south face, something sort of easy but sustained with some tricky footwork and a mantle top out. I got them working on something a little harder on the boulders east side as I noticed some evidence of recent activity there. Nice climbing on good rock that is still un-named at this time. After a short break we moved on to another boulder just above us. Here, with Max and I spotting him, Carlo sent a route called The Place of Dead Roads, that featured some scary face climbing with a terrifying sloping top out. I love the expression on the boys faces when they put up something hard and scary, they get that hardman look about them, priceless. Afterwards, with the boys cheering me on, I flashed a pair of crimpy, overhanging routes called My Education and Turkish Bath. We were feeling kind of pumped after only the second boulder, but with half a dozen routes a piece under our belts, we decided to head up the hill to the truck for a snack. Once we got to the road, we noticed that one of the better campsites had opened up so I told the boys to stay put while I ran down the road to get the truck. It wasn’t the best site, but it would do. We set up our camp and took care of all our camp chores (firewood gathering, gear sorting, ect) in short order. After a quick snack we tooled around on the boulders sitting in our campsite. A few months ago, Carlo figured out that some boulders could be climbed without using his hands, and made this type of climbing into a sort of competition between he and Max. Now, this is not an original idea. In fact, this special technique was developed by the high priests of Stoney Point in the San Fernando Valley during the 1950’s. It requires balance, good footwork and some minerals to perform. I encourage the use of this technique as it illustrates the fact that rock climbing is not about pulling oneself up the rock but rather standing up on thin holds while using your arms and core strength to keep oneself close to the rock. The idea being to distribute ones body weight evenly between the arms and legs, thus requiring less energy and enabling the climber to get up harder and longer routes. I often wonder what those legendary old school locals (Royal Robbins, Yvon Choinard, Bob Kamps, Tom Frost, TM Herbert) from Stoney would think if they saw these 10 year olds taking a page out of their book. They’d proly be pretty stoaked!
Anyways, after playing around in camp for a while and then exploring some unclimbed boulders across the road from our site, we decided to get busy with the making of dinner. Carlo built us a nice cooking fire while Max and I got the food ready; chili dogs and watermelon with some hot apple cider…yum.
We sat around the fire for a couple of hours then the boys turned in for the night while I stayed up till our fire burned down a bit. The first nights temperature was quite nice but there was a sustained wind blowing from the north and were it not for the large boulder that we had hitched our rain fly to, blocking the wind, we could have been quite miserable. In addition to the wind, I noticed that we were loosing visibility of the stars due to the high clouds that were blowing in. As an alpinist, I’ve become conditioned to paying close attention to things like wind and clouds and changes in mountain weather so I decided to take a few moments and make sure our shelter was secure and our gear tucked away before turning in myself.I awoke the next morning to Carlo sitting by the campfire he had re-lit, heating up the water for Moonraker Mochas. The Moonraker Mocha is a secret recipe invented by myself and Mr. Fistfight during one of our alpine trips in the Eastern Sierra. Along with hot apple cider, Top Ramen and the Tunapitawich, it is now a Sespegorilla staple. A short while later, Max rolled out of bed and I got breakfast going while the boys sat by the fire and enjoyed their mochas. The wind that blew overnight had died down but skies were still overcast and things smelled ominous so I quickly got some bacon and eggs and fruit into the boys and together, we got things cleaned up and our gear organized for the day. We were just starting to make our initial plans for the day when it started to rain. Bummer. Not just because of the rain, but do you know how hard it is to get a 10 year old out of bed on a weekend? Carlo and Max were fed and sorted and ready to climb by 0830! Now it seemed like it was all for not.
I had the boys get out their books and IPods and duck out under the rain fly to keep dry while I made sure that anything that could get wet was put away. The rain was light but sustained and after the first hour of it I told the boys that we would wait it out until lunchtime. If the rain kept up, we were gonna bail out and head for home. The real problem was not the rain. I mean sure, rain sucks, but its only water, and its not like we were at 14,000ft, on foot, 20 miles from nowhere. The issue at hand was the fact that sandstone and rain don’t go well together. In fact, when sandstone gets wet, it becomes slippery and brittle. If it was to rain for more than a few hours than our climbing trip was over. I explained this dilemma to the boys and all three of us held out hope that the rain would stop soon. In the meantime, we kept the morning campfire going, wandered around the camp and just basically tried to kill time. Carlo and Max were good sports about it all and if the truth be told, being socked in by bad weather is something every climber must endure.
There is a whole skill set that comes with dealing with inclement weather, skills that one day could save the lives of you and your climbing partner, skills that separate the dirtbag from the tourista. And we’re no tourists.Lunch time rolled around and it was still raining. I boiled up some water for Ramen and we ate our noodles under the shelter of the rain fly, but we slowly started to accept the fact that the party was over. After we ate, we begrudgingly began to roll up our gear and load up the truck. With everything packed away and the camp policed of any bits of trash left by previous campers, I got out our 20 liter water jug on loan from Mr. Fistfight and doused the fire. And then, just as soon as the last drop hit the fire pit, the rain stopped. Not only did the rain stop, but the friggin sun came out and cast a beam of light and warmth onto us. Woot wooo!!!!! Were aint going nowhere!
So, just a quickly as we loaded the truck, we unloaded and laid all the wet stuff out to dry in the sun. I figured the it would take a couple hours for the rock to dry out, so I turned the boys loose and re-assembled our camp. Carlo and Max had found a large fallen pine tree arching across a small gully just down the hill from the camp and built them selves and fort/shelter out of some dead fall they had collected (another useful alpine skill). With the boys occupied doing their own thing, I put on my headphones and took some time to max and relax and enjoy the view and soak up some sunlight. Around 2pm, I determined that things had dried out enough for us to get busy with the boulders so I whistled for the boys and we got our gear together, then headed over to the Happy Hunting Grounds.
HHG was a mere 2 minute walk from our campsite and contains a majority of the developed climbing on Pine Mountain. I let the boys get ahead of me so I could take some photos. As they entered the HHG proper, they walked through a small group of college age boys who working on a boulder problem in the upper part of the area. The big boys were quite surprised to see these two youngsters, all geared up, strolling through and gave some shouts and hoots of approval. As we walked past them, I heard one of them say to another, ”Dude, don’t be a wuss. I bet those kids could climb that”, which was followed by some laughs from the others. That’s right mofos, Sespegorillaz in the house!!!
Just like the day before, we made our way to the edge of the “developed” areas, and got down with some already established routes. Carlo and Max started working on the beginning moves on a route called Pink Fingers, a pretty highball and grainy face with a not so good landing. They couldn’t finish the route this time, but I’m sure it will go for them soon. Maybe next time.
Right next to Pink Fingers, is a roof/cave problem called Dreams, that I sent after only a couple of tries. I love roofs and overhangs, they suit my body type and climbing style.Next we moved to the Hueco Problem boulder as I had some unfinished business there. I sent Hueco Problem and The Hueco Solution, while the boys put up The Hueco Slab. Slab was tough for them as its rather height dependent, but they worked it out after a few tries.
After a short break we focused on the other side of this boulder where Carlo and Max sent something called Free Thinker and I put up a route called Unseamly right next to it. We were feeling pretty pumped right then so we took another break then moved on to another boulder that was not on our topo. This one featured a less than vertical face that was fairly high and slopey. The boys make quick work of it so we turned our attention to some other un-named rocks in the immediate vicinity a played around on some one and two move problems that required some tough crimping technique. A crimp is a hold that is very narrow, presents from any aspect (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) and allows little more than the tips of your fingers. Finger strength and balance are key. By this time we could see that the sun would be setting soon so we headed back toward the main area of HHG. On our way up, we stopped and climbed a sit-start hueco problem called Big Fun which was both easy and fun.
Once we got up to the Dissing Euros Boulder, the boys let me know that their arms were blasted and that they wanted to have a look around at the rest of the main area. So turned them loose to go explore. While they out scoping out some other routes, I slapped the shit out of two more problems that had sent me packing in the past, New Ways To Get From A To B and Dirtbag. Feeling pretty mustered, I decided to have words with a route on Dissing Euros called Heaven On Top, which I must say, got the best of me…this time. My forearms were so pumped by then I could barely open my fist much less hold myself to the overhanging rock. Even with my boys cheering me on, it was not to be. Besides, Heaven On Top is one of those problems that gets harder the higher you climb, and with without Mr. Fistfight to give me a proper spot, I decided to back off and save the route for another day. Feeling pretty accomplished with the days climbing and tired as hell, we headed back to camp for an evening relaxation and fellowship. Carlo once again, started us a cooking fire while Max and I collected and broke up the firewood. When the coals were ready, we prepared Tin Foil Dinners (another Gorilla fav) and layered up for the evening while they cooked. The TFDs were delicious and made for an easy clean up, after which we put on the water for cider and broke put the marshmallows. After a couple of hours of fireside fart jokes and bragging of the days climbing exploits we let the campfire burn down and hit the sack. The night sky was clear but the temperature was considerably cooler than the night before and the wind had picked up again, this time from the south. The weather was a non-issue at this point however because we were all absolutely exhausted and sleep came easy.
The next morning we all rose with the sun and fixed up some mochas and oatmeal. After breakfast, we broke down camp and re-loaded the truck. I didn’t have to be to work till 3pm so we took our time and even got a little more climbing in around camp. At 1130 we saddled up and rolled out.
We did a little sight seeing on the way down and stopped for pictures a few times as well. It was a quite ride down the 33 and I know that after three days of dirtbaggin’ it, the boys were missing their mommas and had a lot to reflect on, so I let the silence ride. We deposited Max at safely at home and Carlo and I were back in Ventura by 0130.Sespegorilla Dispatch 082509
ROCK CLIMBING IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. ACCEDENTS HAPPEN AND PEOPLE LOSE THEIR LIVES DOING IT ALL THE TIME. IF YOU GO OUT THERE AND START RUNNING UP ROCKS YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING ON, YOU ARE A FOOL AND YOU WILL DIE! SO, LIKE SURFING, SKING, SNOWBOARDING AND MOUNTAINBIKING, DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT PROPER INSTRUCTION OR PARTNERING UP WITH SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEIR DOING. LLAP.
