Smith Rock
I went with Andreas and his wife Julie to Smith Rock this weekend.
For those of you who do not know of Smith Rock state park, it is a large rock formation (primarily volcanic tuff; compacted/fused ash) that is known throughout the world. It's sort of like a disneyland for climbers. It is located in the middle of Oregon, in the high desert near Bend.
Andreas is a lot of fun to climb with. He's an easy-going, friendly, and interesting guy. He's also a really good climber and knows many of the people that frequent the climbing areas. It's also kinda fun because he helped define a number of the routes in the park, and knows a lot of the people that put them up as well.
At one point his wife Julie was asking a group of climbers what the grade was on the route they were climbing. After she had talked to them, Andreas made the comment "You know you could have asked me, I helped set that route."
We had several highlights during the trip. The first was camping. Andreas has a friend who owns some land right next to the park, so we didn't have to deal with a large camping area filled with cars, and it was about a five minute walk to the trails that led to the climbs. Here is the view from camp.
The night sky views were awesome. Been a while since I've seen the Milky Way and shooting stars. The best my camera could do was the candle in my tent, and then just barely.
It was a little cold the first night. About 20 degrees F for a low. I had my mummy sleeping bag in true mummy mode. I left a hole about 3 inches in diameter for air. It was so cold that when I wanted something outside of my sleeping bag, I stuck my arm out of this small hole and groped for it like some synthetic unicorn worm.
When I woke up the next morning I noticed that there was a layer of frost on the inside of my tent from all of my respiration freezing to the tent walls.
We had a pretty good day of climbing. The daytime weather was perfect (sunny and 60), so it was quite crowded and we had to wait in line for some climbs.
Andreas' dad and both of Julie's parents drove out for the day to watch, and they got a good show. Andreas did Chain Reaction, which is a 5.12 climb that has a significant overhang. This is him on the last move.
It's a great climb to watch, particularly since he ends it by jumping off. The resulting fall (and belayer being pulled off of the ground) is quite a show. His dad didn't know what was coming, and talked about it for some time afterwards. Here are two pictures. The first is him taking the leap, and the second is the final position of him and his wife. Someone else was filming, so I hope to get a copy of that to post as well.
We had an accident later in the day. Julie had a gear mishap, and ended up having to catch a fall by hand (i.e. by grabbing the rope). She lost quite a bit of skin, but fortunately Andreas didn't hit the ground. A little disturbing.
We came close to leaving that night, since Julie was not going to be able to climb, but she convinced us that she could find things to do, so we ended up staying. Fortunately, Saturday night wasn't nearly as cold.
Sunday was a lot more mellow, and one of their friends, Leslie, camped with us that night and joined us for the latter part of the day. That was a nice relief for me, since I was pretty much done climbing by that time, but Andreas still had a number of climbs left in him. The did a couple of climbs in the shady east side of the park, including a couple that had some bouldery kinds of moves. This is Leslie following a route Andreas had just put a rope on:
I did manage to get a decent picture of me on a climb (Lion's Jaw):
For those of you who do not know of Smith Rock state park, it is a large rock formation (primarily volcanic tuff; compacted/fused ash) that is known throughout the world. It's sort of like a disneyland for climbers. It is located in the middle of Oregon, in the high desert near Bend.
Andreas is a lot of fun to climb with. He's an easy-going, friendly, and interesting guy. He's also a really good climber and knows many of the people that frequent the climbing areas. It's also kinda fun because he helped define a number of the routes in the park, and knows a lot of the people that put them up as well.
At one point his wife Julie was asking a group of climbers what the grade was on the route they were climbing. After she had talked to them, Andreas made the comment "You know you could have asked me, I helped set that route."
We had several highlights during the trip. The first was camping. Andreas has a friend who owns some land right next to the park, so we didn't have to deal with a large camping area filled with cars, and it was about a five minute walk to the trails that led to the climbs. Here is the view from camp.
The night sky views were awesome. Been a while since I've seen the Milky Way and shooting stars. The best my camera could do was the candle in my tent, and then just barely.
It was a little cold the first night. About 20 degrees F for a low. I had my mummy sleeping bag in true mummy mode. I left a hole about 3 inches in diameter for air. It was so cold that when I wanted something outside of my sleeping bag, I stuck my arm out of this small hole and groped for it like some synthetic unicorn worm.
When I woke up the next morning I noticed that there was a layer of frost on the inside of my tent from all of my respiration freezing to the tent walls.
We had a pretty good day of climbing. The daytime weather was perfect (sunny and 60), so it was quite crowded and we had to wait in line for some climbs.
Andreas' dad and both of Julie's parents drove out for the day to watch, and they got a good show. Andreas did Chain Reaction, which is a 5.12 climb that has a significant overhang. This is him on the last move.
It's a great climb to watch, particularly since he ends it by jumping off. The resulting fall (and belayer being pulled off of the ground) is quite a show. His dad didn't know what was coming, and talked about it for some time afterwards. Here are two pictures. The first is him taking the leap, and the second is the final position of him and his wife. Someone else was filming, so I hope to get a copy of that to post as well.
We had an accident later in the day. Julie had a gear mishap, and ended up having to catch a fall by hand (i.e. by grabbing the rope). She lost quite a bit of skin, but fortunately Andreas didn't hit the ground. A little disturbing.
We came close to leaving that night, since Julie was not going to be able to climb, but she convinced us that she could find things to do, so we ended up staying. Fortunately, Saturday night wasn't nearly as cold.
Sunday was a lot more mellow, and one of their friends, Leslie, camped with us that night and joined us for the latter part of the day. That was a nice relief for me, since I was pretty much done climbing by that time, but Andreas still had a number of climbs left in him. The did a couple of climbs in the shady east side of the park, including a couple that had some bouldery kinds of moves. This is Leslie following a route Andreas had just put a rope on:
I did manage to get a decent picture of me on a climb (Lion's Jaw):
posted by tk | Monday, October 23, 2006
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