Winter climbing at Vantage

Posted by on November 21st, 2016  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

The Vantage forecast looked iffy but James and I went for it. Saturday morning we woke up to a steady drizzle. We took our time over breakfast and decided to hike out and do something easy in the drizzle. When we got there it was dry and we jumped on a crazy hard 10 that looked good to James. After we climbed that I did Pony Keg and Air guitar clean. Can’t remember what we did after that. The fire that night was relaxing and we woke up to still winds and overcast weather. I started the day on George and Martha. I felt powerful on the first 40 feet. My placements were clean, with no time wasting errors. I flowed through the moves easily, nailing the stem rests and side pulls until arriving at the rest jams. I’m normally pumped when I get to the hand jams, but I’d done the start so smoothly I still had some gas in the tank. Still, it was very nice to get up to the first solid rest about 50 feet up. After that James went back to his debacle from the day before. He still couldn’t send it clean, but I have to admire his persistence. I can tell he’s going to get that thing clean. I led the 9 to the right, and it was quite fun. The moves were bold, and the second bolt is loose, but I still enjoyed it. It’s got some great movements though the arete is so thin on top it’s freaky.

Last but not least I led Sunshine Buttress. It is a climb I did with Vladi a few years ago. It starts out vertical but has a number of platforms where you get rests, and where the climing style changes. It goes from vertical aretes to cracks to broken face. It finished on a narrow column with 3 steps notched out of the face. They aren’t positive so you have to hug the column as you mount the steps. It feels super sketchy but is quite safe due to close bolts, 16 on the route. Love that climb!

It was nice to take my mind off work for an entire weekend. The 5 classes I have this quarter have been challenging. It’s fun work but one of my classes burned through my entire book and I’ve had to pull a book off the shelf to finish up the last few weeks. My latest re-write cleaned up some of the old problems, and that meant the book flows better and we got through it faster. They have better websites, but I need to add in a couple more chapters so it has enough content to last the whole quarter without pulling in other textbooks. Other books are fine, but they typically aren’t written as clearly as mine. I would love to find a book that I didn’t have to write.

My problem with textbooks on web design is they rarely make anything pretty. They can be functional, or they can be pretty, but never both. It’s the old “you are an artist or a programmer” problem.