4th of July Weekend

Welcome to my new look blog, I thought I'd brighten it up a bit. The banner photo is courtesy of Micah of a 12c that I flashed this weekend, thats right flash! I had a great 4th of July weekend, at one of my favorite places in the state, Tieton. On Saturday after a late-ish start and getting a bit lost, Micah, Laura, Jimmy and I eventually made it out to the sector called The Oasis. There was a 12a I wanted to get on there, after a quick warmup (Laura onsighted a 10d) I got on it, it was a battle fighting the pump and the greasy crimps in the full sun. But in the end I fell off at the last hard move on the onsight attempt. Micah fell on the same move, then with our beta, Jimmy stepped up and flashed it. We also checked out Dream Wall for the first time, I was a bit dissapointed, it wasn't quite up to Lava Point quality, but still had fun routes nonetheless. That night we stayed up late and had a blazing fire, check out the pile of wood we gathered.

The following morning we headed straight to The Cave area, where we climbed in the shade at Oak Wall. I did a few routes I hadn't done before. After onsighting a 12a Jimmy abbed down a 12c there ticked some holds put the draws on flashed it like it was no big deal! It was very impressive, I was psyched to get on it too and with his streaming beta, I managed the flash as well. It was a really fun route, 5 clips up an overhanging wall/arete, on small and sloping holds, I'd highly recommend it. We finished off the day with some really good routes further left. I'm impressed with how well Jimmy is route climbing right now, I need to step it up, otherwise he will take my #1 spot in Olympia. I put our 8a.nu rankings back up on my blog to try to generate some more competition. I'll update it frequently, I can see it changing a lot, especially with Nick coming to town soon and Andrew hot on the heels of Laura for the #5 spot. Below are a couple of shots of Micah working the 12c.