Fortunately all the approaches at The Emeralds are real easy and straight forward. With a brisk 10 minute walk I was already with my friends. We started climbing instantly, warming up on an easy 5.8 “Second Time Around”. After Dave and I ran our respective laps, we walked down a little ways and jumped on "Unknown" 5.10d. This was a real easy route with only two bolts. It was a two-move wonder route with an easy scramble to the first bolt then on the head wall was there crux. After I lead that, I climbed “White Riot” 5.11a.
We woke up feeling good, ready for another full day of climbing. After some coffee and a breakfast beer, we found our selves on our way to Bowman Lake for a day full of sport climbing. The drive to Bowman is about 6 or so miles on a paved road and then goes into a dirt road. Mitch’s Subaru and my Tacoma handled it like a breeze. I saw a few basic sedans so if you have any sort of sedan, you can make the drive too. (It gets pretty rocky at some places) We drove down the whole road and parked our cars and made the hike out to Larry Land. Its a huge wall with a short 10 foot wide roof section and a slaby head wall. I tried warming up on “Yuba Blue” 5.10b and it was pretty wet. I was unable to even make it to the second bolt due to the water run off. I bailed off and Mitch tried climbing “Hot Rod” 5.11b. He made it about 1/4 of the way up and was quickly shut down to the water run off too. It ended up being all the routes within our climbing capability (sub 5.12) were wet. Mitch tried "Larry Land” 5.11c and got up to the third bolt and lowered off. Dave and I both top roped it up to the third bolt and I found the sequence to get onto the head wall and climb the slab. I lowered off and Mitch gave another run up it getting about 1/2 way up and was to tired. He ended up bailing too. After all getting shut down by Larry Land, we decided to just swim in the nearby swimming holes and head back to the cars. On our way back home, we stopped off at Deer Park Boulders in Rocklin. We had some fun times messing around on a gnarly V2 finger crack “Nemesis” Both Mitch and I sent it and ran some laps on it. Mitch ended up getting a V4 and a gnarly V3 mantle. After a quick session we started our drive back home.
Overall, I felt okay about my climbing this trip. I could of sent some harder things but I definitely felt sore the following day. It was a lot more fun just messing around and having a good time climbing than it was trying to send some hard serious climbs. Im excited to get stronger and better and head back to Larry Land.
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