Bay Area Climbing Weekend

Action Report - Climbing at Castle Rock State Park
Los Gatos, CA
August 9, 2008

We met up with some friends of ours who recently got married, and got to climb with them for the first time. I remember watching them climb last November at Pinnacles National Monument, and thinking they might be a bit looney, but your perspective shifts quite quickly once you start climbing. We climbed three interesting routes, several of which must have been sandbagged, but were fun nonetheless. The sandstone quality at Castle Rock was much higher than at Stoney Point, and the shade made it a heck of a lot cooler. The funnest route of the day was a 5.8 dihedral on the backside of Castle Rock proper, which starts with huge pockets and goes up to a mean undercling/hidden blind foothold/mantle type thing at the crux. Onfortunately we had other obligations to attend to so we couldn't stay all day and had to bug out around 3.

East Bay Climbing
August 10, 2008

Berkeley / Oakland, CA

We decided to get a little more outdoor practice in at the local hotspot, Cragmont Park, where we did our outdoor climbing lesson. We worked a while on getting through the hand-jam to undercling transition in the 5.7 route, then started getting hungry. Feeling a little too psyched from working on outdoor stuff all weekend, we ran a few errands, got lunch, and headed to our climbing gym to round out our workout and wear ourselves out.