Tuolumne & Yosemite Valley
Sep. 26th, 2019 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizolasTuolumne & Yosemite Valley
August 17-18. 2019
| Climb | Grade | Pitches | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guide Cracks 4 | 5.5 | 1 | Trad (lead) |
| Guide Cracks 1 | 5.8 | 1 | Trad (lead) |
| Bachar Cracker | V4 | -- | Boulder |
Guide Cracks 4
Note that I am actually leading despite the pink rope also hanging in front of me
It turns out I might still have a ways to go with the whole guiding thing. I took Sarah - the gym crack prodigy who sent the 5.12 finger crack after about a year of climbing - to Tuolumne for a trip to learn to lead. I was expecting her to cruise up the 5.5 we started on and have moved onto sending things harder than I could even follow by the next trip she went on. It turns out everyone has different struggles, and outdoors she has a fear of heights that doesn’t really come out in the gym. I wished I could have helped her push through that, but I’m neither terribly encouraging nor terribly good at convincing people to do something they’re not sure about. Since we’d run into a women’s meetup group at the Guide Cracks crag, we joined them and Sarah and JC toproped on some of the other routes rather than mock leading the 5.5 again. At the very end when everyone else pulled their ropes, I led what I think was a 5.6-5.7 variation on Guide Cracks 1, starting on the right side of the block rather than the left side.
JC and Sarah on our way back to the car after the lake
After that, we joined the rest of the group at Tenaya Lake to relax a bit, and leaving the lake I ran into Ben. He tried - even harder than I had - to talk our group out of going to the Valley to boulder the next day. Sarah and JC were pretty set on Bachar Cracker, though, and I was kind of just along for the ride. It turned out that that area was less miserably hot than I’d expected, though still much warmer than I’d have liked. We took turns working on Bachar Cracker - a V4 I don’t think anyone was expecting to send in one session. I could do the first few moves but not the thin hands to slopers part. Eventually I wandered around the side (into the sun) and tried and failed to start the V0-. The V0 went ok (not sure I started as low as the intended start), although I couldn’t figure out where the “walkoff” was, so I downclimbed it.
