Sunday, September 04, 2011

Just too much.


Kim and I were at Noobie Squeeze today. We got above the new over hanging face. I wanted to put in a set of rappel bolts so it would be safe to lower into the wall. Before I slung a tree but I don't want to have to rely on webbing, long term, for a rap anchor. I went up through a few tree to the base of another crag that is about 30-40 feet high. It might pan out something?
We lowered off and set up a TR over the right sided bolts. Again, I grunted up this overhanging face and could not get it clean. Four attempts over two days and I can't send it clean. I am thinking the grade has to be more than 5.9. I have not flailed that bad on a 5.9 in years.
I then tried the line going up the left line that Kaleb thought was a harder 5.10. It has some really fun moves but I didn't get too high. I was worried about a pendulum into a tree. We were also looking at 2 more lines that should be fun and overhung as well.
As we were leaving, I had a look back at where we got above the overhanging face. Not only were below a small face but we were above another one. So much terrain to check out.
In the picture, The three black lines are Noobie Squeeze, Nice Bulge and Ankle Biter. The red solid line is the access above the overhanging face, the dotted line is the intended rap direction. The pink line represents the lip of the overhanging face.

1 comment:

Phil Stennett said...

I was out at Manuels on Sunday and got a chance to check out the three newly bolted lines and a route on the overhanging face.

I would definitely recommend Noobie Squeeze as one of, if not the most fun routes for it's grade around here.

Nice Bulge was good and I think the difficulty came mainly from how hard it was to see while going over the bulge rather than the moves being particularly strenuous.

Ankle Biter was good as well, more sustained than routes on the German Wall, but still a little mossy as it's obviously been climbed less than others.

The overhanging face definitely has some good potential for something completely different from the rest of the area... short routes like this aren't really my style or preference but it was fun none the less and I look forward to being able to lead a few routes down there.