Alabama Hills—Shark’s Fin
Climb Review
The Shark’s Fin is all granite, like the rest of the rocks at Alabama Hills.
The trailhead is right off of Movie Rd and the parking lot is well-defined. The fin is clearly visible from the trailhead and it’s less than a quarter mile to get there. The trail itself is kinda sandy/gravelly.
I didn’t spot too much trash around the fin, which was a welcome surprise (BLM land usually has too many drunken buffoons).
There’s a bathroom across Movie Rd!
Shark’s Fin Arete (5.7, The Shark’s Fin)—The start looked a bit intimidating, so we skipped it and started from the boulder, which still had insecure feet, but was a single move, so not too bad. There’s then a flake which seems hollow and untrustworthy. Once you get past that, it’s a pretty easy climb with holds everywhere (except for one section where I had to trust all my weight on a slope-y foot that wasn’t positive enough to make me feel super secure). The anchor was bomber with lobster claws, which I lowered off of. The view of Alabama Hills from the top is epic.
What I Learned
Photo by Marina
While the 70-200mm lens worked well to capture the climb, I wished I had brought my 150-400mm instead. I would have been pushing the IBIS of the camera with how windy it was, but it’d been nice to get real closeups of the climbers.
When I started my climb, because I had been taking photos of everyone in full wind, my hands were ice cold and I couldn’t feel too much. Good thing the climb was easy with bomber holds (I don’t think I rechaulked my hands on the climb up)!
Darlene was super awesome in taking photos of me on the way up! She even studied the photos I had taken of everyone else to get the angle/framing I thought was best.
It was my first time climbing in windy conditions (10-20mph?) and I was definitely wary of it. During the climb though, it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, even though it kept getting windier as I climbed.
I think it was my first time cleaning an anchor that had lobster claws and they’re amazing! So much easier than trying to thread rope through the bolts or any of that other nonsense.
Friends
Darlene, Louie, Marina, and Sarah joined me at Shark’s Fin. Marina skipped the climb though, as her shoulder is still injured and the bouldering in the morning was enough. Even though she didn’t climb, her stoke was welcome, especially as it got darker and colder. Everyone else climbed the route and I’ll call out Sarah here as I thought she climbed as fast as I’ve ever seen her—me thinks that her climbing has improved to the point where she must be much more confident outdoors. Bravo!
What Happened?
We got to Shark’s Fin with a bit of a worry that there would be others on the route and that with the incoming sunset, we would have to wait until the next morning. Well, those fears were unfounded, as we arrived at Shark’s Fin with a single car at the trailhead and no others we could see on the arete route. When we got to the rock, we saw other climbers, but they were attempting either Pirates on Horseback or Coral Sea Adventure.
With the route clear for us, we put our gear on and started figuring out who would do what.
Louie is our climber par excellence and they volunteered to lead the route. This worked since I was most excited about taking photos with the beautiful light that was backlighting the fin. I think others were happy with Louie going first too.
I grabbed my camera and walked back on the trail until I could line up Whitney with the top of the fin—then started taking pictures. Louie led this route using a heel start, which was bad-ass and not replicated (I think everyone else started to the right, closer to the arete). They then set the anchor and Darlene was up next. Darlene seemed to have an easy time with the climb and she actually topped out (her first top out of any climb!) for the photo finish. The lighting happened to be perfect at this time (the sun was setting on the shoulders of Lone Pine Peak), so I thought it was perfect that she topped out for some great photos. Sarah went next and made the route seem easy too. I then came in and had some jitters as I was cold, it was windy, and everyone else had such an easy time that I didn’t want to be the one that struggled badly. The climb wasn’t as bad as I thought and I went up without too much difficulty. I then cleaned the anchor and got lowered down.
At this point, we were all hungry and cold, so we headed to our cars to find our campsite for the night.
