Little si to the 95th degree

Dom battles through the first crux of Technorigine(5.12c)

It's not really 'officially' summer unless you spend all day at Little si in 85-95 degree weather. It was an absolute ghost town as my friends and I arrived around 2:00. Besides me it was Jimmy, Lisa, Laura, and Dom. Were we out of our minds? Had we all let the heat drive us to the edge of sanity? Or, were we just rock starved crushing machines driven by a desire embedded so deeply in all of us that we ignore 'sub-prime' conditions in favor of pursuing a love that envelops our souls and pushes us forward into the unknown rocky abyss.


Dom and Laura watch as Lisa works Techno.

The warm ups were plentiful, and the hike in was not as bad as I thought it would be. Surrounded by trees, the environment at World Wall is less affected by the heat , due to evapotranspiration, than if it was surrounded by a barren wasteland. Yet, even in the shade the first few routes, Abo and Mega definitely could have felt better. I hadn't done Mega in a while and man is that route a gem. Often overlooked but wildly entertaining the steep climbing on incut jugs leads to a delicate sequence at the top and makes for a very decent warm up (even though we were all plenty warm just stepping out of the car in the parking lot).
While Lisa, Jimmy, and I all had go's on Sweet Tooth Dom flew up Techno and contemplated running out the extension Extendorigine, but opted out in favor of coming back with some draws on his next go.
Sweet Tooth is a terrible climb with one sort of fun move and terribly hard and reachy finishing sequence. No sends on that one. I climbed up Psycho with my camera and snapped osme shots of Lisa attempting the love of her life Propaganda.









Lisa made some great progress on Propaganda. She is going to send very soon. Jimmy also is hot on the trail of a send on Propaganda and it may be a race to the top between these two. I decided not to try Propaganda despite Lisa's car salesman pitches and instead I just tried to climb as high on the wall as I could possibly go. This resulted in me one hanging Psychosomatic and then getting into the opening sequence of the crux on Flatliner. Super sick route!! A pure inspirational jolt to my system to want to improve and get stronger just to climb this amazing line. The rock up there is exquisite and the movement is great, plus being very, very high and doing bouldery moves on a rope is something that always tickles my fancy. Jimmy linked all the way to the opening sequence of the crux before having to rest, and even did a couple of the moves in the crux. The only thing is that we have no clue what awaits us guarding the chains; could be jugs, could be heinous slopers. We will just have to find out next time.

Laura, who has flown under the radar in previous years and just revealed to us her supreme crushing power by ticking many of her long term projects lately, has once again sleighed another Little si giant, Aborigine!! Last time she fell just short of the vic jug, but with some good beta (you can thank me later), and a couple of rehersal go's, she sacked up and sent!! Excellent effort Laura!
Now it's either on to Rainy Day for her, or seeking out the next level, a 5.11c. I think she should throw caution to the wind and go for Rainy Day, she's already done all the moves.

We all wound down with some good warm downs. I found a better sequence for Techno (finding better sequences lately seems to be a growing trend in my life), Lisa got up Mega, Laura got up Psycho, and Dom got up Propaganda. All in all it was a fantastic day of climbing and we had the crag to ourselves all day; probably because noone else is stupid enough (stupid like a fox!) to come to Little si in these temps, but we made it RAIN!!


Jimmy on Propaganda


Lisa hanging out on the Abo jugs before launching into Techno.