Donner

Friday and Saturday were my second and third days climbing on real rock since the start of my recovery. I climbed with a couple close friends from the city, and Kevin Jorgeson at Donner Summit, know for the Donner Party, and some pretty nine granite bouldering, trad and sport-climbing. Friday was actually my 22nd b-day. We warmed up on the snowshed wall and I felt kind of crappy on the first few 11s we did. Kevin and I both took on the first bolt of a 12 we tried to warm up on, and then got pumped silly on the rest of it barley making it to the chains. After getting spanked on the next climb I tried to flash, a 13a-ish route called Pump Lust with deceivingly big side-pulls but no feet, I felt as though I was just having a bad climbing day. We then ventured over to the famed Star Wall, home to Steep Climb Named Desire and the mixed gear and bolted route fathers day, which is the direct start to Steep Climb and was red-pointed using just natural protection by Allan Moore and Nico Faveresse respectively. I somehow managed a second go send of Steep Climb and just like that, the day was reversed. Kevin was dialing in the beta for the moves and the gear placements on the Star Wars Crack, the 13a beginning of Fathers Day and after watching him on it a few ties and feeling confident I knew where to put the cams, I went for the flash. I groveled up 3/4 of the route before pumping out, completely loosing my breath and almost having a heart attack. That night we gorged on swag Mexican food that gave us all, especially me, terrible gas the next morning.

On Saturday morning I watched a few friends, including Natasha, send the classic Donner problem White Lines and the adjacent problem Pimp Slap. We eventually made it back up to the Star Wall where I gave Fathers Day several good attempts but wasn’t able to get past the last move of the crux boulder problem. I did however send the Star Wars crack which was quite a step up from my previous gear lead in the 5.11 range, but the Star Wars crack does have quite a few face moves and pretty solid gear so It isn’t exactly a splitter. Kevin and I were totally beaten up after two solid days of hard climbing but are determined to return to have another go on FD, this time skipping the bolts… Maybe. I’ll see how bold I’m feeling. We’ll have to come back to it in a couple weeks though because I’m going on my first climbing trip… to an undisclosed location. Sorry for the lack of pictures. We did bring an HD video camera with photo capabilities, but ended up leaving it in the car for the entire trip. I promise there will be some good pictures soon!