Monday, October 16, 2023

Ridgeline

 Jan and I had thought there may be another face below and a bit North of the face we have been working on. We managed to bushwhack our way to what appeared to be a ridgeline and suddenly we were standing on top of another rock face.

This is a pic of Jan standing at the top of the ridge facing south. The feature in the background is the area we are developing (just to the right of Jan's head).

The second picture I just pivoted and took a pic facing north and the third is just trying to get a sense of the height, probably about 50 feet.
 



 

Sunday, October 01, 2023

Cleaning the Face

 Jan and I have been working on the new face for several weeks. Some places don't need much work but there are other that are crazy. We have knocked down some big rocks. We tried to film some big rocks getting dislodged. See the clip included (sorry for the change in camera angles).

We we managed to get another, bigger rock off the face that same day but didn't film it. Today, we were looking at a slightly different spot with quite a few loose rocks/boulders. We spent 2-3 hours setting up top anchors and kicking rocks off the face.

Cleaning a new face means trying to get all the loose rock and vegetation off the face. Rock fall is a big danger when developing or climbing in a new area. Small rocks falling a 100 feet can hurt...a lot. We assisted several 100+ pound rocks down to a lower, safer resting spot. They literally explode when they hit bottom. 

We rappelled down the face which allowed us better views of the over hanging faces mentioned in the last post. The overhangs look pretty intimidating yet so intriguing. We could see a few places that might allow us to climb but climbing straight through the overhangs will be tough. 

There 2 picture are looking South East toward the overhangs. There is an upper and lower pic of the same face. The lower pic has a feature pushing out (block) that is one of two over hanging sections. In the upper pic, a second large block is seen. These two features are above one another. Also in the upper pic, there is another feature between the two blocks. This is a third overhang and is about 10 meters SE.



Just to top it off, we found a nice straight crack.