Cragmont Rock Park
Leslie having tons of fun on Senior
Cragmont Undercling (5.7; Northeast Face)—I’ve always wanted to trad this route, so it was the first thing I did after setting anchors on Cragmont Crack for the other folks. I brought my whole rack, but it ate up just my four large cams (#1-4). There was one point where I felt nervous and couldn’t find feet, but once I had my feet situated, it went smoothly. Oh and if I weren’t practicing, I probably would have only put two cams, but practice makes perfect, right?
Mont Crackula (5.8-; Northeast Face)—After Louie led this one, I top-roped this one and it was fun. There is one 5.8 move at the main crack where I sort of laybacked for a move or two, then swung my legs out to the left. Honestly, it felt more like a 5.6 (or something), but that’s probably due to my height advantage. Probably the chillest climb of the day for me.
Independence (5.10a; Northeast Face)—I had gone up senior before, so I wanted to veer right and try to climb on these tiny holds. And while I did fall off twice, I did make it up in the end. I also resisted all temptation to use the dihedral on the right as I thought that’d make it too easy and thought maybe that’d be off route.
Woo reaching for a better hold on Face
Face (5.8; Northeast Face)—I had gone up this route many times before, but this time (unlike before), I went up smoothly and without a struggle. This was probably because I had just struggled on Independence and was used to trusting shitty feet holds.
What I Learned
I think I was one of the tallest people out today and I couldn’t offer much beta as—I think at this crag especially—my height advantage was a huge one. There are these pretty good holds throughout, but because they’re spaced out, I could just go on to the next good hold while others had to struggle with shittier intermediate holds.
This had the largest attendance of any of my climbing meets yet and I think I need to think about placing limits on attendance in the future. While everything went smoothly and worked out for today, I think that was only because of people like Sarah, Joseph, and Max being there—they brought additional rope, anchors, and trad gear and without them, we’d only had two routes instead of the four that we ended up with. Also a huge shoutout to Marina for welcoming everyone and just being super helpful overall as she still is the heart of this community that I belong to.
Max rappels down after setting up the anchor for Mont Crackula
There was so much rope drag on Mont Crackula as the rock here is similar to Pinnacles—it’s a volcanic rock that has lots of smaller, sharp rocks embedded within it that cause tons of friction. To solve that, I went up to see if I could put the anchor past the lip. I didn’t have all my gear with me, so I was just about to make due by at least extending the anchor point another few feet by using a girth hitch instead of looping the cordalette around the tree and tying it off with an overhand. The cordalette, though 30’ long, was too short to do a girth hitch with (as it reduces effective length to 15’). I was thinking about whether I should use a bowline (to use the full 30’) and a figure-8 on the other (then get another 30’ cordalette for redundancy) when Max showed up with his static rope. He also advised that using the trees as an anchor was frowned upon due to the trees being less than fully healthy. We then found two boulders/rocks that looked super solid as our new anchors and while Max first tied one end off with an overhand follow-through, I didn’t trust it as that’s not what I was taught. I then asked if we could use a bowline, and he said he had always wanted to learn it. I untied the overhand and tied one end of the rope to a boulder while he followed along with my verbal instructions on the other end (of course, I double-checked his work). He then tied a BHK in the middle and it juuuuust went over the lip. I think if I were to do it again, I would have brought my static rope for sure as I think it’s a bit longer than Max’s. Still, I was so glad Max came along as I trusted his static rope more than the accessory cords that I had brought (mainly due to climbing rope usually being able to withstand 22kn versus accessory cord which can usually handle about 10kn).
Friends
There were so many new people, but let me start with my old favorites first—in no particular order, Marina, Sarah, Louie, Jo, Scarlett, Leslie, Woo, Denise, and John. As for new folks, there were Vanathi, Max, Natasha, Max, and Wesley. One thing I am grateful for is that everyone seemed to be pretty cool and I feel lucky that Coalition Crag seems to lack asshats. With so many people that came, it was a shame that I couldn’t catch up or get to know the new folks in-depth, but that’s the price for having an event where anyone can come.
What Happened?
It’s winter in the Bay Area, which means that it can be difficult to find a weekend where the rock isn’t wet.. at least for the weekends when I want to climb versus the other adventures I want to have. This event was originally scheduled for Sunday, but had to flex it to Saturday as rain was forecast—I was sad that we might have way fewer people due to the last-minute change, but I was happily wrong.
I drove to Cragmont in a bit of a hurry as I was running about 10 minutes late—when I arrived, I saw Joseph and Wesley at the Northeast Face. We introduced ourselves and I quickly made my way to set up the anchor above Cragmont Crack. When I came back down, I saw the folks that were climbing the Cragmont Undercling clean their anchor. Given the prime opportunity, I geared up to trad the Undercling. After that, the day is a bit of a blur...
There were just so many people and so many fun moments, but I don’t remember them in order or with clarity. Rather, I just have this warm feeling about the day and have snapshots of memory where I remember laughing with Marina, connecting with Max, or taking photos of Leslie and Woo.
I think just about everyone stayed until the end, where we had four routes up (with each being in constant use). But I was hungry (and so were others), so I put the girls in charge of counting votes between Steve’s Korean BBQ and Marugame Udon, while I cleaned a few anchors—Steve’s BBQ won out to my elation.
We said our farewells to about half the folks, and the other half headed over to Steve’s—where we gorged ourselves with lots of rice and meat.
Thanks to Marina for the four photos above!