from climbing hell to heaven

Friday had me traveling from my mom's place in Washington to Joshua Tree for some winter radness. Climbing in the cold is rad. And cold it was - thirties and forties during the day. Sunny though, and little wind, so a well-insulated belayer can pull on crisp crystals and hopefully achieve some progress on otherwise greasy projects. Marcela was not projecting. She was cranking. "Yay, my first 5.10 trad lead". Actually, it was a heady 5.10b onsight. The much touted Sidewinder (5.10b) got straight owned by one Brazilian crankmuffin late Saturday. So late in fact, that Justin and I had a mini epic getting down. Though I gotta say, jumping between pillars is less scary in the dark - at least then you can't see how far down things are. Sunday, we got back to sport climbing business. The three of us pulled around on Desert Shield (5.13a). That's a rad route. I would like to have made more progress on her, ideally gotten close to a redpoint, but she was having none of it. Those little crimps wore me down too fast and there's barely any let up over her entire length. She'll have to go in the project file for now.