should have guessed it. Of course there is. This is a north facing climb. It was a huge winterJer and I went trad climbing for the first time today just the two of us. I skipped out of work a little early and we made our way up to Pentapitch in Little Cottonwood. We got lost on the way there and had difficulty finding a trail, but we did make it... only to discover that there was still 15 feet of snow at the bottom of the climb. We. What did we expect? Oh, well. We climbed it all the same. The initial idea was to each climb it
twice (we were only doing the first pitch). Jer led the first climb. He first climbed to the top of the snow in his sandals and then put in some gear, then changed shoes and began really climbing. The climb is a finger sized crack all the way up. Jer found that he just kept wanting to use .5 cams, but he ran out of them pretty early and had to use what he had. After what seemed to be a while, he did eventually make it to the top and then he came down
for my turn. It was at this point that we realized that we were running low on time. I only had time to clean his gear and not lead the climb myself. Oh, well. I am going climbing again tomorrow. It is a lot easier to climb and you can do so with far greater speed when you are just taking gear out of the rock and not putting it in. Putting it in requires thought, skill, strategy, and patience. Taking it out just requires h
ands for squeezing. I quickly made it up the climb (with the exception of one cam that proved rather difficult to remove) and we then cleaned up our stuff and made our way back to the car. The hike was far easier when we were able to follow the trail. In retrospect, I have decided that real trad climbing is much more fun than faking it at Dogwood. On Rock.
should have guessed it. Of course there is. This is a north facing climb. It was a huge winterJer and I went trad climbing for the first time today just the two of us. I skipped out of work a little early and we made our way up to Pentapitch in Little Cottonwood. We got lost on the way there and had difficulty finding a trail, but we did make it... only to discover that there was still 15 feet of snow at the bottom of the climb. We. What did we expect? Oh, well. We climbed it all the same. The initial idea was to each climb it
twice (we were only doing the first pitch). Jer led the first climb. He first climbed to the top of the snow in his sandals and then put in some gear, then changed shoes and began really climbing. The climb is a finger sized crack all the way up. Jer found that he just kept wanting to use .5 cams, but he ran out of them pretty early and had to use what he had. After what seemed to be a while, he did eventually make it to the top and then he came down 
for my turn. It was at this point that we realized that we were running low on time. I only had time to clean his gear and not lead the climb myself. Oh, well. I am going climbing again tomorrow. It is a lot easier to climb and you can do so with far greater speed when you are just taking gear out of the rock and not putting it in. Putting it in requires thought, skill, strategy, and patience. Taking it out just requires h
ands for squeezing. I quickly made it up the climb (with the exception of one cam that proved rather difficult to remove) and we then cleaned up our stuff and made our way back to the car. The hike was far easier when we were able to follow the trail. In retrospect, I have decided that real trad climbing is much more fun than faking it at Dogwood. On Rock.
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