Sonora Climbing - Aug. 26-28, 2005
Aaron Ohta, Erwin Lau
8/26/2005

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Climbs:

Craig's Face, South Face, Burst Rock (5.10d TR)
Inknobvious, Legoland (5.8)

Summary

Kerry had secured a sweet cabin in Twain Harte (East of Sonora) for the weekend, via an old coworker. Brett, Kerry, Aaron, and I drove out to Sonora for some chill climbing and cabining. I had never been out to the Sonora area before; being extremely keen on climbing at different places, I had a great desire to check it out.

Day 0

We drove out Friday night packed like sardines in Aaron's Corolla. Being extremely sly and noting there was a Raiders game that night, we avoided all highways and surface-streeted from Alameda to the 580, East of the Coliseum. Somehow, this probably took longer than if we had found the highway straight off, but we still felt very sly. The cabin was sweet; four beds in the loft, two decks with two BBQ grills, access to a private lake and a ping-pong table. After a little tom-foolery, we hit the sack.

Day 1

We had a nice, classic breakfast befitting of a cabin, then headed out to Burst Rock. We scanned it the night before and the Green Acres Wall had a plethora of moderate trad climbs on it. The road tributary off 108 was etremely long and bumpy (unpaved) but we arrived and hiked in. Following the guidebook, we tried finding Green Acres, to no avail. We even searched the large 3rd-class gully to the base of the canyon, plus scrambling along ledges, but nothing matched the book topos. Giving up, we headed back up and tried finding the South Face instead. We found the area, looked for a 10a sport climb, and found nothing. Scrambing onto a fin, we finally found a pair of nice bols atop some route. Not really knowing if this was a 10a or 10d (both in the book), we decided to rap down and climb it to find out! We set up the rap and Brett and I came down to the ledge at the base. We decided it was Craig's Face (5.10d) due to a roof at the finish. Brett TR'ed it, then I followed, we each rested a bit on the route, though I hung a lot more at the finishing move. Kerry and Aaron opted out, we hiked out, drove back and had an awesome barbecue and board gaming to finish off the night.

Day 2

This time, we chose a site with an easier approach, albeit longer drive. We went to Legoland, due to the existance of several moderate trad routes. Brett got on Inknobvious (5.8). The plan was to have Kerry learn how to lead belay him with Aaron and I watching. Unfortunately, the beginning was a pretty sketchy, greasy lieback, so I belayed him for this climb for the added security. A bit of rope drag management ensued and Brett attained the main crack. He got halfway up and bailed, offering the lead to me. I cavalierly accepted and TR'ed up to his last piece, with Aaron belaying. As I attained Brett's last piece, I realized why he bailed; higher up, the crack shallowed and flared out before disappearing altogether. My tunnel-vision caused me to fear the climbing due to the vanishing crack, but after I committed to the send, I found lots of mini-knobs on which to face climb, making the climbing exciting but manageable. I fear I've been climbing too much crack that face climbing is becoming alien to me. Once up past the crack and onto the ledge, the next step was to find which way to go. The first feature I saw was a wide crack (ow?) that leaned slightly right. It looked secure but difficult. I opted for the route that Brett advised via the guide book and went up a right-arching crack with knobs for feet. The jams were secure but tricky, and I made it to the next ledge in a high-adrenaline state. Moving out to the right, the last section was a steep crack near a corner. Stemming aided the process and I soon found another right arching crack that was filled with dry moss. The moss made the hand jams feel weird, but they were secure and I finally hit the anchors. Most definitely one of the hardest 8's I've done (aside from following Double Crack at the Gunks (the only .8 I've weighted the rope on)). At the top, I belayed the rest of the crew up. We hung out, ate a bit, then rapped down. If we had climbed something else, we would have put our daily climb per capita above one, so we decided to go swimming instead. Kerry's coworker's cabin came with a free pass to Twain Harte Lake, so we headed to the lake, paddle-boated around, and fooled around on some diving boards. True to our nature, we decided to boulder the diving platforms; performing spectacular 10-point beached-whale maneuvers. A leisurely stop at the local pizza joint and we were off back to the Bay.