Trad is Rad!

Yesterday I brushed off the cobwebs on my trad gear and placed some pro for the first time in a long time. The last time I climbed trad routes was up in Squamish in the summer of 07. But even then I only led a handful of routes, in fact since I came to US 3 years ago, I can probably count all the trad routes I've done on both my hands. Which is weird because I used to be a big tradder. When I started out climbing in 2001 I bought a very minimal rack (just a few nuts and slings, which I still use today) and got out climbing on the sea cliffs and crags around where I lived in Scotland, I was climbing easy trad and I loved it. The next year I worked in a climbing shop, so built up a respectable rack and was able to push my grades a little. For the first 5 years of my climbing I nearly only did trad routes, since there was very little sport routes to climb in Scotland. Since I moved to the states I got hooked on sport climbing and seemed to forget about my trad roots. But yesterday I got out to Index with Doug and Zach, for my first time, and it all came back to me.

I forgot how much a rack weighs me down

I love trad climbing, I'd forgotten how much fun it is to plug a bomber nut in a crack and run it out til the next good stance. The first route we got on was Aries a popular 4 pitch (5.8, 5.8, 5.6?, 5.8) route at the Great Northern Slab area. I got a bit nervous at the start since there was a mandatory 15ft or so of hand jamming which I'm terrible at, I stuck my hands and feet in the crack, and they seemed to stick so I made a few moves and I was on a ledge before I knew it. The next pitch was a great friendly finger crack up a corner. It felt great to place pro and feel confident climbing past it. I was really pleased at how smooth I seemed to be climbing and I was really happy with my gear placements. It was really fun setting up a gear anchor, it had been a while, since all the stuff I did Squamish had bolted anchors, but it came back to me really easily. For some reason I got a lot pride setting up a bomber equalised anchor. Doug and Zach let me to lead all the pitches, with them following and cleaning. The last pitch was an awesome exposed pitch climbing around a roof, I was really grateful for being able to use Doug's big cams, otherwise it would have been a very scary and run out pitch. We made pretty good time for climbing in a threesome and rappelled down to see what was next.

Me climbing up the tricky moves at the start of Japanese Gardens P1 (10a)

We checked out more of the Lower Wall, which is very impressive and intimidating. I spotted a cool looking pitch that had a bit of everything, slab, finger crack, and wide laybacking flake. I got on it and did pretty well, the top part laybacking the wide flake was a little nervy since it was insecure and was pretty much placing the cams blindly. There was one bolt mid way up the route, but I opted to skip it since there was good gear placements not too far away. I clipped the anchors and got lowered off for Doug and Zach to toprope it. It turns out that the climb I did was the first pitch of Japanese Gardens which goes at 10a, which felt about right. I was a little scared on it, especially on the wide crack section, but I feel like I could climb harder trad if I stuck to smaller cracks which I feel more secure on.

Zach toproping Japanese Gardens

With that in mind we headed back to the Northern Slab area, where I got on a cool finger crack up a dihedral that I had spotted earlier. Its listed in the guidebook as a 10c alternative start to the Great Northern Slab, but its really short, I only placed two pieces of gear in the crack. I finished the route by cruising up Great Northern Slab which get 5.7 here but it felt way easier than the other routes we had done. After we had all done this route, we rapped down and headed back since it was getting late and we were getting hungry. We stopped en route in Seattle for a great dinner (thanks Doug!) before getting back to Olympia pretty late. I would definitely go back to Index, I just wish it didn't take so long to get there from Olympia. Theres a ton of routes to do there, we barely scratched the surface. Most of the stuff there is a lot harder though, so I'll have to step up my game for next time. It has definitely re-ignited my enthusiasm for trad climbing though, so hopefully this summer I'll have more opportunity to get my gear out more often.