June 28 - July 4
Today was a great easy day, I was strict about keeping my exertion very low even if that meant walking relatively slowly. I started with the Southeast Face of the Seal, which starts off at a stiff 5.4 before easing into a relaxed 5.0-5.2. I was happy I decided to bring rock shoes for the first pitch of crimping and minuscule foot holds. I had to take a harder downclimb along the north side since a roped party was using my preferred route, but the actual west face was a trivial 4th class ramp to the ground. On the Slab I took Diagonal all the way across the length of the rock (which is really far), since it was allegedly "classic". Unfortunately almost the entirety of the arete was a broken shamble of lichen and swarming with red ants, a far cry from noteworthy scramble. The final pinnacle did finish the scramble well, with a few super exposed vertical moves.
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| A whole new realm of unknown slabs and routes on Bear Pk's eastern aspect. Unfortunately, many require a rope for a rappel. |
Somehow hadn't made it up Green in a while. Nice easy run with RMR. Jack and I were able to lay out some fiendish plans for the weekend. Hopefully they work out well!
6/30, Tuesday - Locomotion Lab - 3 miles, 0', 0:45
Last lab session, left it just at that for tomorrow's sake. The cool thing about today was reminding me of how fun it can be just run - flat, straight and slightly up-tempo was surprisingly grand.
7/1, Wednesday - AM: 1st Flatironette, Spy, Green, South Green, 7 miles, 3100', 3:13 - PM: Satellite Boulders + 2nd Flatiron - 3 miles, 1300', 3:00
I felt pretty depleted from the get-go so I resolved to hike everything today. Heading up the trail I ran into Bill and Corey, and joined them for the 1st Flatironette - Spy linkup before I continued up to Green. I was planning on tagging Bear & SoBo, but on the fly decided to explore the Sacred Cliffs route over to South Green. It was an interesting scramble to say the least; mostly characterized by acres of lichen and narrow 20ft notches in the ridge. A very cool summit with views rivaling Bear nonetheless.
In the evening I tacked on to some of Jack's friends to go bouldering. I had never been before -- well, outside that is -- but it was very fun. I was able to get one V2, and was enthralled watching a very-near-successful V10. Afterward we ran into our friend Joe and did an alarmingly quick, yet easy jaunt up the 2nd, I should scramble in sandals more often!
7/2, Thursday - Off
7/3, Friday - Browns Pk (13,523') & Huron Pk (14,003') - 17 miles, 5000', 4:17
Jack and I left our campsite near Missouri Gulch and had a nice 4 miles running along the dirt road before turning up Lulu Gulch. We broke off of the old mining road early and took a nice grassy rib up to Browns Pk's north ridge. I summitted Browns and caught back up to Jack near the top of Huron. He descended from the low point on the Huron-Browns saddle down a nasty gully which eventually gave in to some nice glissading. After thrashing through the trees we were planning on heading up to Missouri/Belford/Oxford on the Nolan's route, but we missed the turn up Missouri's ridge and ended up running nearly to Pear Lake. We were well aware of our mistake early on, but the trail we were on was quite nice and all runnable so we just enjoyed the out and back before dropping the road back down to camp. I was bummed in a big way we didn't get to complete our "Nolan's 4" route though. Oh well.
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| Jack stomping through one of the numerous creek crossings. |
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Jack on top of Huron looking over to the trio we had planned for the day. |
We started up powerfully and held a strong pace all the way up to Belford. I was happy to churn out the ~4500ft climb in 1h25m, Jack came in a couple minutes right behind me. We breezed over and back to Oxford then started the descent. Jack had the misfortune of rolling his ankle sort-of badly twice within a 5 minute period so he resigned to a much slower pace so as to not destroy himself even more (he fell and hit his jaw in a boulder field descending Huron too!) while I gave just enough effort to sneak in under 3 hours.
Week Totals:
53 miles
20,400'
17:16
Huh, that week felt a lot harder than the stats reflect! Ah well, it was some good work up high.