7/30/2008: A Taste of Cinnamon
Credit: webshots.com
Heather woke up this morning with a migraine. This seems to happen on a surprisingly large number of our climbing days, and neither of us is sure why. Anyway, she doesn’t allow anything as trivial as pain to keep her from climbing (climbing provides plenty of pain on its own!) so after a quick and unhealthy “continental breakfast” at the hotel and some prescription medication, we were off to Smith Rock.
Smith Rock is the premier rock climbing location in Oregon. Apparently it was quite influential in the development of “sport climbing” in the 1990s. Sport climbing is a style of rock climbing in which both climbers start at the bottom of the climb, with the rope at their feet, and the “leader” ascends the rock while attaching the rope to the rock at intervals to protect against a fall. In “traditional lead climbing,” the leader brings various kinds of gear that wedge into cracks in the rock and then connect to the rope with a carabiner; the gear is then removed at the end of the climb. In “sport climbing,” someone has previously ascended the route and drilled permanent “bolts” into the rock, thus removing the need to wedge funky gear into cracks during the climb. The advantage of sport climbing is that the leader does not need to bring all the gear and does not require the skill and stamina to wedge it into cracks during the climb—-this makes sport climbing easier than “trad climbing” a route of the same difficulty. The disadvanage is that the bolts are permanent, a kind of “litter” on the rock, and they leave scars if they are ever removed. Also, sometimes they get old and become unreliable. Oh, and it reduces the purity of a human climbing a face with no pre-existing assistance. Heather and I both enjoy sport and trad climbing, though Heather more the former and I more the latter.
Just for completeness, the third option is “top roping” in which one of the climbers hikes to the top of the cliff first, sets up an anchor which the rope passes through, and drops both ends of the rope to the ground. The big difference between top roping and leading is that on top rope, when you fall, you only fall a few inches before your partner catches you. When leading (sport or trad), when you fall you fall twice the distance between you and the last piece of protection connecting you to the rock. Lead falls happen and are usually not a problem (Heather and I have both taken lead falls and emerged unscathed) but, trust me, there is a big emotional and psychological difference between top roping and leading. For this reason, we (and most climbers) generally only lead climbs that are well within our ability and on which we do not expect to fall (as opposed to being on top rope were we might fall dozens of times a day).
Anyway, I digress. Heather and I climbed four pitches. The first was Easy Reader, a 5.6 bolted (“sport-climb”) route. 5.6 is the difficulty rating; all technical rock climbs are “5th class” (that’s the “5.” part) and are then rated from 5.0 to 5.15. 5.6 is not too difficult; an healthy, athletic, but untrained person who is not afraid of heights could probably climb a 5.6 on top rope. (5.15 is currently the absolute limit of human climbing ability and only a few mutant people in the world can manage it.) Barry led and Heather followed. It was fun and straightforward. We next did Lichen It, a bolted 5.7, which Heather led—-although she claims to be the weaker climber and is much more cautious than Barry, in fact it somehow always works out that she leads the harder routes! Go figure.
We were climbing directly in the sun on hot rock and after these two climbs (plus the hike in) it was time for lunch. We sat in a shady corner below Cinnamon Slab, a two-pitch 5.6 trad lead. More jargon: A “pitch” is a single stretch of climbing limited to one-half the length of the rope (if it is longer than one-half the rope, aborting the pitch partway up becomes impossible). In multi-pitch lead climbing, the leader climbs up one pitch, establishes an anchor, but stays at the top of the pitch, usually on some convenient ledge; the follower comes next and removes the gear from the rock. Now, both climbers are 50-100 feet up the cliff, and one of them leads up the next pitch. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you reach the top.
Multi-pitch lead climbing is Barry’s favorite style and the four-star Cinnamon Slab was just too tempting to pass up. Unfortunately, we had a problem: The guide book indicated that the route required gear up to 3.5” wide (the funky stuff we wedge into cracks in the rock has to be at least as wide as the crack to work!) but we only have gear to 3”. We decided to pass on the route (possibly planning to buy a 3.5” piece the next day) and climb a different route instead. Luckily, right then a climbing instructor with three students showed up. He confirmed that we really did need a 3.5” piece for Cinnamon but said he wanted to do our second-choice route with his students. We compromised: we gave up our second-choice route and he loaned us his 3.5” piece so we could climb Cinnamon; a win for both of us! After inspecting the borrowed item carefully, Barry started climbing.
The route definitely deserves its four stars. The first pitch is almost 100’ long (our rope is 60M or about 200’) and goes up a low-angle flake about one foot wide a few inches away from a large cliff face to the right. The second pitch is easier (a 5.5) along a corner to the top. Unfortunately, we did not bring our camera on this route so we have no pictures! Crud. Instead, we found a pretty good image on web and have shamelessly (but legally) cribbed it.
After Cinnamon Slab we were pretty wiped out. It was 5:30pm, we’d been climbing since noon, we were out of water, and it was time to go. We hiked back out of the canyon and drove COW* back to our hotel.
*Why COW? Because the Suzuki is a gas guzzling brute of a machine who happens to have a license plate that looks like it says “cow”. How perfect! :)