Flip flops and Vodka

Today Jess and I headed to Indian rock in the Castle rock area near Santa Cruz. For some reason I was driving like an idiot, missing the right exits repeatedly, but we eventually made it there. The hike proved dangerous for Jess who was in flip flops and getting over a short night... We started with Cum Slot which has a short 5.10c section followed by a 5.8 in a chimney. There is one bolt at the start but that's it. It was not a great warm up: I had to pull on the first piece to get to a good hand hold and the chimney part baffled me as I had never climbed one. It was much better on my second try on TR. Jess also had a hard time figuring out how to climb the chimney but after some work she figured it out. The next 3 climbs we did were a 5.8+ (South Face) and two 5.10a (Puckered Starfish and Bubbles). All the climbs were short between 40 and 65 feet. The protection was terrible with the first bolt after 20 feet and runouts at the top. This made me very nervous, but I managed to lead them all, although not with great aplomb, which led Jess to ask at some point: how many times have you led? She did all three climbs on TR.

The rock is very unusual for me, and all climbs involved slab with minuscule feet and crappy hands, often small crimps or sloppy open hands. It definitely suggest that I should start with leading easier stuff, especially in an area I don't know...

We followed this by a huge fondue dinner. In the end, a good day of fun getting back to the outdoors.