Wagon Wheel

Picture by Marina

Climb Review

• I bouldered here last year and the review is still accurate.

• I came here with my friends to create new routes and it was fun climbing the unknown (at least to me).

Red left line is Midnight Banshee, right is Who Wrote Orgy?

Who Wrote Orgy? (VB; Coalition)—This was an obvious and easy route up this boulder that was right next to where we camped. The route is full of easy jugs and super positive holds. I gave the boulder this name as without Coalition Crag, I would have never met all these wonderful people whom I now call friends. The name is from a moment in a word game we played the night after.

Midnight Banshee (VB; Coalition)—This is another easy route that is left of Who Wrote Orgy? Lots of positive holds (though for shorter climbers, there are a few more tenuous holds that are required to get to those positive holds). Marina climbed it first, named it, and gave it this rating.

A for Annabelle on the left, K for Kaylee on the right

K for Kaylee (V0-; Nothin’ but Love)—On this boulder, I spied two relatively easy climbs. This first one was on the face of the boulder, which had an obvious flake that I used as good hand holds. It is named after my eldest daughter who asked me if I could name a route after her.

A for Annabelle (V0-; Nothin’ but Love)—This second route on Nothin’ but Love was on the arete to the left of the route above, which had some easy jugs to use as hand holds. It is named after my youngest, who also wanted a route named after her.

Cooldown

Cooldown (V0; Ostrich Egg)—This last one was one that I worked on last year, but couldn’t quite figure out. This year, Louie climbed it first to cooldown from their climb up Simon Barsinister Says Freeze (which they climbed after after a few attempts). There’s an awesome jug to start, then a shelf that doesn’t feel super positive, but once you find feet, it’s easy the rest of the way. It took me a couple of tries, but once I trusted my right foot, it was gold. Louie climbed it first, named it, and gave it this rating.

Photo by Darlene

What I Learned

• Due to my ankle injury, I couldn’t climb as well as I’d liked or take risks in going higher than a couple of meters. I still had fun, but I’m going to be a bit better in helping this ankle heal with more rest days, so that when an opportunity like this comes again, I can try my hand at some of these incredibly fun problems.

• To lower Louie down from a highball boulder, I roped my 70m rope around another boulder so that Louie could rappel down using their Grigri (I used a bowline and it was perfect). I was thinking about this and in the future, if there were no boulder to anchor off of, I think I could drive my car to the opposite side of this boulder, use that as the anchor, and make this kind of highball problem a self-belay toprope problem.

Friends

• Darlene, Louie, Marina, and Sarah joined me for bouldering. Unfortunately, due to injury fears and study obligations, Darlene had to sit out the bouldering. It was still great having her there as she brought her trademark bright smile and good vibes.

What Happened?

 

Photo by Marina

Last year, when I visited here, I noticed that while there were hundreds of rocks and possibly tens of thousands of routes, there were only 51 routes on Mountain Project. I then looked for guide books which I thought could have more routes, but when I searched for guidebooks, I found two, both of which were out of print and were published decades ago. Given this neglect towards such great feeling granite rocks, I thought it’d be great to go back and establish routes so that more people would check out Wagon Wheel and give it the attention that it should have.

With that as my background, when Marina asked me for ideas for a meet up for Coalition Crag, I thought of Wagon Wheel and what a fun activity it’d be for members to come, FA routes, and to name them.

Unfortunately, probably due to the distance from the bay area and the lack of facilities, not a lot of people came, but my closest friends in Coalition Crag made it out.

Due to existing injuries and other commitments, we ended up climbing here for half a day, but it was still enough time to establish a few routes and to try our hand at some existing routes.

I still dream of spending weeks here and establishing more and more routes (especially for beginners). I love the granite boulders out here and I think others will too, if we just show them the possibilities that exist.

Besides the first and the last two photos, the rest were taken by Marina.