Adventures on June 11th, 2006

7:15am: Mike and I arrive at the base of Rhododendron (5.6-). This was Mike's first experience with trad and only his second time outdoors. Instead of my standard 15 minute crash course followed by me attempting an onsight around my lead limit, I decided to ease Mike into trad. Before I could explain how to clean gear, we got distracted by this guy jumping up and down at the base of Horseman (5.5). I thought "great another weirdo boulder jumping around." I realized that I was wrong once he was around 15 ft up on Horseman. This guy wasn't bouldering. He was free soloing! I snapped a couple of photos and he was back on the ground before we even racked up. Thank God he was still in one piece. Mike figured out the gear pretty quickly and after some practice he seemed to know how to lead belay. Good enough me for me. I lead up Rhododendron with no epics or close calls. Mike followed up smoothly, only having problems with one piece of gear: my notorious passive tricams. After Mike got that out, he did his first rappel. Lots of climbers were starting to show up now but we managed to get on Jackie (5.5) next. I thought this would be a good next step because it isn't too exposed. This was my 4th time up Jackie so P1 went smooth. I found a bomber passive tricam placement out to the left under the first overhang so that made my day considering I usually have trouble protecting that move. Building on his momentum from the last climb, Mike cruised of most of the first pitch. He had a little trouble at the second overhang because you really have to jam yourself under it to get the protection out. Now when Mike approached the last overhang, he finally decided to turn around and look at the view. A few profanities came out of his mouth followed my numerous phrases along the line of "this is the craziest thing I've every done." Even with all this excitement, Mike managed to pull the crux and get safely to the anchor. Now Mike wasn't too happy about the size of the belay ledge or the fact that he had to belay from. He took him a few minutes to let go of the rock and trust that the anchor will hold him. Once he got comfortable, we burnt through P2 and took did the uberfall downclimb. Next on our list was Easy Overhang (5.2) since it has some wild exposure and is super easy. Things got interesting when I started P2 and reached for my blue C4. Where the hell did it go? It wasn't on my rack! I had Mike check his gear loops 10 times. He didn't have it either. As much as this pissed me off, I needed to put it out of my mind and focus on the lead. After finishing Easy O, we checked the top of Jackie for the cam and then the base of Easy Overhang. We couldn't find it anywhere. Fuck! 2:00pm: Typically, I consider the climbs at the start of the Trapps a waste of time since they are short and it's always a circus. Regardless, I decided to give Black Fly (5.5) a go. The first half of the climb is easy, almost class four. But it leads to a sweet right leaning crack with an overhang in it. The crack just ate passive gear everywhere and the overhang pulled smoothly. Mike was walking around in his climbing shoes all day. When he started up Black Fly, his toes were in so much pain, he didn't think he could climb. After a few minutes of sole search, he actually climbed it better then me. 3:00pm: Even though we had 6 hours of climbing time left in my book, Mike had enough for one day. So we set out to find the swimming hole, which turns out to be a 20 minute hike. There's a trail for it on that starts halfway along the trail that connects the West Trapps parking lot and the carriage road.