Mortar Rock
Climb Review
I went bouldering at Mortar Rock with the largest group of friends yet!
The boulder is just a few feet from the road and there is tons of street parking next to it.
In Berkeley, the four major climbing areas all have houses right next to it, which means that it isn’t uncommon to stand on top of the route and just stare into someone’s living room before you realize what you’re doing.
The rock is the same stuff as Indian Rock and Cragmont—rhyolite. It’s great. It’s one of my favorite rocks to climb. The downside is that the rock can be sharp and hard on the fingers, but at the same time, the rock inspires confidence and is sticky.
I climbed half a dozen more routes than listed below, but they weren’t listed on either the guide book or on mountain project.
Left Face (V0; Little Half Dome Boulder)—This was an easy peasy warm up with super positive foot and hands. Climbing shoes optional. :)
Right Face (V1; Little Half Dome Boulder)—This climb is kinda like a traverse and is fun. Much like above, the hands are super positive and the foot are there if you look for it. The more right you go, the easier the top out is, which is cool how one can up the difficulty by staying more towards the center when going up.
Unnamed Traverse (V1; Little Half Dome Boulder)—I did this left to right and found it to be fun, though a few of the moves are the same as the Right Face climb above. One thing I liked about this traverse is that there are no desperate holds. And worse case scenario, the fall is just a foot or two.
Left Arete (V0; Pipeline Boulder)—Probably the easiest route out of these ones listed.
Unnamed Edge (V0; Mortar Rock)—I climbed three different variations of this climb, with two being legit highballs, and the right most route being not-much of a highball. The holds are there, so one just needs to search for it. This route gets less traffic than the others listed, however, so I had to scrape away leaves/dirt for a few of the holds to feel super positive. For me, this was my favorite route of the day, as the highball nature of the route was mentally challenging (staying calm despite the fear).
What I Learned
It was really cool how when Keva first came, she was really scared to even walk to the top of the rock on stairs cut into the rock. So I offered her my hand and we walked to the top together and walked down after a little bit. By the end of the day though, she was walking up and down those stairs all by herself. :)
We had many folks returning from extended breaks due to various reasons (Gene, Vivian, Steve, and Jo) and it was nice to see them get back on the rock.
Even though Mortar Rock got crowded by lunch time, for most of the day, there was a ton of room for everyone. The best part was how there were tons of places to explore for the kids, so they got to explore and play by themselves.
Friends
Ok, we had a lot of people today. Lets see there was Vivian, Gene, Graham, Auden, Weston, Jo, Scarlett, Steve, Javan, Amanda, Aubrey, Kyle, Keva, and Meera. Even though we had a lot of people, I thought everyone had a pretty good time. Everyone had a chance to climb all the routes they wanted to and I really enjoyed how chill everyone was. Good crowd.
What Happened?
Kaylee and Annabelle asked me if we could go to Berkeley as they wanted to boulder and then eat some yummy food (Steve’s BBQ has the best Korean short ribs). So, I sent out my usual invite, and a ton of people responded!
I carpooled with Vivian and we arrived just a few minutes after 8:30am. Jo and Scarlett were waiting for us and others started to file in in pretty quick succession. We climbed our hearts out at Little Half Dome Boulder, then we moved onto Pipeline Boulder. From there a highlight for me was watching Javan climb the left side of Mortar Rock, which has no official route. Until the top out, there seemed to be good holds here and there, but the way he struggled at the top out told me that there were no good hands nor feet. I was a bit scared watching him as I was worried about him falling, but as Javan usually does, he topped out without any slips or major scares. I then followed him by going half way up, then climbing back down as I wasn’t ready to attempt that highball. That first bit is pretty fun though!
Around this time, most everyone’s hands were feeling sensitive/pain from all the climbing in the morning, so we just hung back for about 20 minutes while a few of us got the last climbs in. After that we all headed off to Durant Square and the girls got to eat the short rib bbq that they had been craving for a few weeks (I ate it too!).
