rumbling bald trip report - 1/9/10

Last weekend, Adam and myself drove out to Rumbling Bald to meet up with George and his roommate. It was a little on the cold side, but the only time it truly felt like 30 degrees was in the shade. The sunny side of things were pretty comfortable. Adam took a bunch of pics but there was some kind of error and only a few survived, the best of which I'll give you here in a sec.


Adam and I warmed up near the washing machine boulder, and then quickly went to work on a problem called Contact. After sorting his beta, Adam sent in a couple of tries. Unfortunately I was not as lucky, and only managed to sort through the first half of the problem and fall off the crux. Maybe next time...


After leaving the washing machine boulder, we stopped by Lost Cause. This is a super classic line that I have worked a little bit before, so I wanted to get on it again.

Lost Cause.

The problem has some really cool movement, and is really fun to climb. The "move" is a weird dyno up and left to a jug that's angled about 30 degrees away from you. Holding in the swing after the throw is the hard part. Too hard for me on the day, so I worked the top out a little and we moved on.

The pit boulder, in the middle east, was our next destination. This is by far one of my favorite boulders in the entire area, and is full of must-do climbs.

One of my many unsuccessful attempts on Pit BBQ

Pit BBQ is one of my all time favorite climbs at Rumbling. It's tall, overhanging, and is very sustained. After working it for a little bit, we met up with George and Brent. They had been in the east all day, and hiked up to where we were at. Shortly thereafter Adam got his send on and bagged the repeat. I was not so lucky, falling off the last move three times in a row. This is the breakdown of the following 30 minutes:

0 mins: 3 falls, missing the crash pad each time. Frustration ensued. Pep talks began.

5 mins: Luay, another Clemson climber, and Martha, his girlfriend, showed up.

10 mins: More frustration and increasingly worse pep talks.

15 mins: Adam did the Grease Pit dyno in his tennis shoes, and then sent the whole problem on his first attempt with climbing shoes.

20 mins: I switched from Pit BBQ to Grease Pit and managed to send the problem in three attempts.

25 mins: Luay asked if he could try Grease Pit. He sent as well. SEND TRAIN!!!!!

30 mins: We left the pit.

After getting lost and bushwacking down a hill, we finished up at the slave driver area. Adam, George, and Brent were smart; they climbed some really cool V1 highballs.George got extremely close to sending another really cool V2, but the name of which escapes me. In the mean time, I was not smart. I fruitlessly worked another hard problem called Master of Torque.

Long story short, they finish on a good note, I do not, we leave and Adam and I enjoy some Bojangle's.

The End.