Monday, April 26, 2010

Exit 38 Exploration - 04.22.10

Adam and I took a trip to Exit 38 to explore extending/expanding routes on the Easy Street Slab. The forecast was to be in the 60°s and mostly sunny, but when we arrived in the parking area, there was a light mist falling. We opted to at least go for a hike presuming if the weather got worse, we wouldn't be climbing.

The weather didn't get worse, and after the twenty minute hike we were looking at the wet slab.


Adam said he would lead up the least wet route which was ES1, or third from the right. We geared up. Transitioning from muddy ground to rock was a bit sketchy, but he made the lead and then traversed to the anchor for ES2 before bringing me up. Fortunately the slabs are fairly easy, so the water did not affect us too adversely.

At the belay it was perhaps raining a bit harder now, but still not a full soaking. We couldn't really see anything that we wanted to look at, so I led out on the next pitch to the upper chains. There were a few wet bits that I did not feel comfortable on and I even placed a cam on the upper section to protect a wet move to get to a bolt. I got to the top chains and brought Adam up.

We were cold and wet, but now was the exploration time. I had Adam belay me out right just to check out the terrain. I had no intention of doing a lead in the rain. The terrain above looked dirty and not worthy of bolting. The terrain further to the right (where I did not venture looked a bit better.)


I came back to the anchors and belayed Adam up a bit. We both agreed that the terrain immediately above us did not look promising, but there was a knob above that looked fun. We were cold and starting to get wet, so we set about rappelling.

On the rappel I checked out the right side where there was a decent looking corner.


There was a set of anchor bolts above the corner that may have been used to develop the crag. We considered the possibility of extending ES3 with a short second pitch to those bolts. But there wasn't as much there as we wanted to be or anticipated. It was an interesting outing at least.

Leaving

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