Climb 8 - Saturday May 31 - Now We're Cookin' With Oil

Jer, Mallory, and I went for a bike ride this morning. We attempted Big Cottonwood Canyon for the first time. Due to time constraints and my inability to go fast, I only made it to Solitude - 12 miles up canyon - before we had to get going so Mallory could get to work on time. This ride was much harder than I had imagined. It seems like the canyon is not terribly steep, but on a bike it is a totally different story. After the ride and a brief lunch with my folks and my sister, I headed back up canyon with Jer and Dave. We went to Ferguson Canyon for some trad training and climbing. There were a ton of people up there, but they were all sport climbers so the trad routes remained open. For the first 30-60 minutes Dave took the time to show us how to set an anchor on a multi pitch route with no chains. After we felt confident with this, we then began climbing. I attempted to lead the first climb. It was rated at 5.7 but I had difficulty with it.
I gave it another go to just get stuck just above that and by that point I was exhausted. Jer followed and made it easily past those sections (I then saw how to approach them), but got stuck in two other spots higher up but managed to finish the climb anyhow. I am sure Dave was just getting so bored with us taking forever to lead a single pitch 5.7 trad climb, but he is such a nice guy that he doesn't say anything about it. He then climbed it and only took a matter of a couple of minutes. This made it difficult to get a good picture of him - not to mention that top roping pictures are just nowhere near as cool as lead pictures. The best shot I got of him was as he was rappelling back down to the bottom. At this point Dave had to go so we bid him goodbye. I then attempted it again on toprope. I was able to get up it with rather ease this time with the added confidence of the toprope situation. I need to just get to the point where I have that confidence all the time. By this point, Crazy had come and chatted with us and left already. He didn't bring any gear and didn't really want to climb after his Omelette for lunch. I was determined to successfully lead a climb toady so we headed over to another easier trad climb just around the corner. I have done this climb before, but not with trad gear. Instead, I would climb this route and then lean as far over as I could to clip into the bolts on the face. This time I lead it trad. Having done this one before I was able to climb it much faster than I would have if it was my first time. It really is just a confidence issue I need to get over. Anyhow, I climbed it and then rappelled down. I then remembered that one big reason I wanted to climb this was so I could belay from the chains with the Petzl Reverso3 that I was loaned for the weekend. I had used it as a standard belay device, but I wanted to try it in reverso mode. So I quickly climbed it again and then set up to belay from the top. Jer followed and cleaned the gear while I belayed from above. I was totally digging the new gear. The only problem I had was that we were using Jer's old rope which is very thick so it was a chore getting it to go through the device without having to force feed it. The device also allows for emergency lowering and I wanted to try that. It was difficult again because of the thick rope and especially at the bottom when the most weight was against it, but I was stoked I was able to try it out. We finished around 7 this evening with the short hike back to the car. The beetles and the wildflowers were out in full force today. The mountains certainly are an enjoyable place to be this time of year. This was a good day. With a short lunch break, I basically was out playing from 8:30am to 7pm. That is what I call a Saturday. On Rock.