Last week at the Pinnacles

Due to a work related trip to New Mexico it took me a while to post this report of a climbing day-trip to the Pinnacles last weekend.

Ben, Sam, Wendy and I met at my place at 8am, and decided to go to the Westside of Pinnacles National Monument. On the previous trip we had been to the Eastside, which was pretty crowded, and Sam had never climbed in the western part of the park. (Is a NM considered a park???) The ride down there was pretty eventless. We stacked up on some sugar for the day at a store in Soledad and pulled into the parking lot at 9:45.

The first objective for the day were 'The Flumes'. Here Sam and Ben teamed up to start on 'Knits and Bits' (Name in the new guidebook by Brad Young, in the old book by David Rubine it's called Bits and Pieces). While I lead 'Bits and Pieces' (according to the Young guide) next to it. From the top of the first pitch I started up 'Rebacca's sailing' (?), which had a nice overhanging block up at the top. Both of the routes are nicely bolted though. I felt quite good about leading these two 5.9s as the first climbs of the day. I seem to get my lead-head back...or am I getting one? After rapping off, we toproped the 10a on the formation, (I forget the name right now, and don't have the guidebook handy...) before doing another route on the second tier of the rock. We essentially climbed all routes on the (East?)-Face of The Flumes.
Happy about this, but not ready to call it a day yet, we headed over to Machete Ridge... Ben had been studying the guide well, and found a line to the top of Badman Mezzanine. It started up "Lucky 13" (5.9, 13 bolts really tightly placed, actually so tight, that I used the lower 4 or 5 as a bolt ladder), countinued on the 2nd pitch of a traverse to a 4th class chimney behind the Mezzanine to the big ledge above it. From here it we continued up another 5.10a (again I do not have the name :-(). The beginning of the route seemed to be much harder than 10a though. It seemed as if some holds had broken off...Anyway, we made it to the top (Ben's lead) and rapelled off. We briefly contemplated to do a quick easy route, to give Wendy some lead practice as well, but the sun was pretty low already, so that we decided against it.

The drive back was as uneventful as the drive there, but seemed to be waaay longer, which it wasn't.) Wendy and I closed the day with a dinner of salad and pizza...and a 'fake margarita' :-)