Tuesday, June 06, 2006

June Climbing

To continue my halfhearted climbing documentation:

Back in May we get to Yose only once (weather not as good as usual, and we were a bit sick occasionally) and we did:

* The first 3 pitches of a wet Goodrich Pinnacle route (looked like it might be a little bit wet on the runout face parts so we called it after 3 pitches. Taska P1 (5.6) Travis P2(5.7) Jim P3(5.8/9)
* Harry Daley route 5.8 (such a fun little climb over there on GP apron!) Jim P1 Travis P2
* Bishop's Terrace 5.8 Travis P1 Jim P2 (1 pitch to the top, 2nd pitch traverses over to the terrace


Finally got back to Yose on June 4-5 for a 2day trip.

Day1:
*Higher Cathedral Spire-regular route. what a route. 5 pitches, the last 4 are 5.9. Great summit (rarity in Yose!) We did the std route as shown in stopo, the thin hands variation to the right on P2 looked more like 10b (saw another party struggle on it...). THe 3rd pitch was pretty stunning, and the 5th pitch we did a sttep hands variation on the right that was short but fun.
** Travis P1 (5.5) P5 (5.9)
** Taska P3 (5.9)
** Jim P2,4 (5.9)
* Commitment- We got down from the 1500' vertical of the hike to and from Higher spire at about 330 or so, and decided that after a snack we needed to do something more to earn our dinner. So we ran up Commitment in pretty quick time (less than 2hrs-quick for us anyway). V-P1(5.8) K-P2(5.7) J-P3(5.9)

Day2:
A bit sore we decided we needed something to stretch the muscles and be a bit more relaxing, so we did Royal Arches. We ended up finding a couple of new things to do: a 5.7 hand crack just to the right on the big ledge system before the "3rd" pitch. A good alternative to 3rd class scrabming in the gully on the left, fun for 20-30 feet. Also the 5.9?? variation on the 5.7 pitch after the traverse. When the tree at the top of that pitch finally goes (rotten, but gives great holds!) you can move left about 15-20 feet below the tree and do a little crack that has one fisty move-but a #3 camalot should protect it very well, no problem and a good alternative to bringing the treee down. Total time <4.5 hours, not too bad, we weren't really hurying, and we had 3 people, though Jim was self-belaying.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Podcast Test

So I am now getting interested in podcasting, and I tried this podcast from home with just the random flotsam and jetsam I had laying about in my itunes and iphoto stuff (most of my real photos and music are in Taska's account, so didn't use them).

This took about 30 mins from opening garageband to posting it to my blog...

My first podcast


Just click on the link and if you have iTunes you should hear it immediately. Keep an eye on the lower left corner to see images. You may have to open the iTunes artwork pane (in lower left corner, there is a button to do that)-you also have to keep the podcast selected for the pix to show. You can make them bigger by expanding that window...