The Smith Oblivion Times Forgotten part Two

Historically I’ve never much cared for trad.  Seemed like a dangerous waste of time and money.  However, with age, like a fine wine, my attitude turned sweet towards the shiny clinkety-clank of multi colored gear and I decided to dive head first into this seemingly passing fad (oh no he didn’t!).  It was a common conversation that could be heard around the non-existent glow of our campfire every night about how we were going to do the monkey face, and then hit up all of these cool looking multi-pitch trad routes and then knock out all of the super classic cingle pitch trad routes.  Needless to say those conversations were chemically enhanced and after five days of sport climbing we finally sucked it up and dedicated an entire day to trad climbing.  Chase and I got an alpine start (around 9:30 or so) and started out our ambitious tick list on the ultra classic Cinamon Slab.  I didn’t care too much for it, but we did the second pitch anyway and topped out in gale force winds.  Approaching near hypothermia we rapped down and continued our day.  Ticking such classics as Lions Jaw, Moonshine Dihedral, New Testament, and some other lesser classic but still fun 5.7’s near Chain Reaction.  It was a blast!!  Chase stepped it up in a big way and did his first 5.9 and 5.10a trad leads!  His head was in the game and we were both on the same page of tickin a route, and keeping it moving on to the next.  Seven pitches later we were both ready to be done. 

 

On another note, one day we headed out to the Aggro Gulley and everyone got a turn running a tran on probably the MOST FUN route in the entire park Toxic.