Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Sandstone

Yesterday dawned beautiful and not terribly hot, so I called some friends, grabbed my gear, and headed down for a full day climbing again at Sandstone.
It was pretty great- lead a whole bunch of stuff, got a whole bunch of stuff, and got to climb with some pretty sweet people!

I had trouble on only one problem- I was leading up a wonky 5.11- called "Multiple Sax Partners", and I couldn't figure out how to get past one section without the possibility of a bad fall (the route has a PG13 rating, meaning it's pretty easy to get at least mildly injured).

I kept going up and backing down, looking around, and going up and backing down until my forearms were completely pumped.  It was only after I fell that I realized I missed a tiny ledge to crimp off of just above a bad sloper I was desperately grasping on the first time.  Hindsight allowed me to climb up easier once I knew what I was doing.  Next time- a clean run, hopefully! :)

My climbing partners also did well, and I even scored a couple of pics from the top of Sandstone's wall.  This is one of my buddy Coulter grabbing a lead on a 5.10.  Coulter is 13, and competed at the National level for climbing this year.  Super sweet kid, and his energy helped me get stoked, too!
While at Sandstone, I scoped out my project for this fall- a 5.12 called "Sigma".

It's a super-beautiful line, well bolted with clean falls.  You basically pull a few technical moves at the bottom, then fight up the thin crack to the anchors, hoping your arms don't give out on the way up.  The wall is pretty vertical, so it's sustained climbing the entire way.
It'll be a fun line to work over the next couple of months, before the snow flies.  I'm hoping to get down to Sandstone at least once every week or so to jump on it- super stoked!
I'm definitely sore today after climbing all day yesterday and Monday night at the gym.  I'll be doing an evening run, stretch out a bit with yoga, then back in the gym tomorrow to train more on the bouldering wall!  It feels soooo good to be sticking with my work-out schedule- climbing about every other day, running every other day (or more)- and I know I'll be happy I did down the road! :)
Fall climbing season is coming, so training has to be amped up now for sweet sends in cooler temps!

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