First ascents - new sport routes

 Myself, the boys and my lovely wife have been busy putting up a series of new routes out at a crag. It's a bit of hump to get up to the crag, so carrying 60 lbs of bolting gear up and down that big hill has made for some slow new routing. That being said, we have put up a handful of fun new climbs which add to the large amount of development that Mr. Doe and others have been up to over the past decade. Once word is out, this whole area will be a premier climbing spot in the Western sierra.

Ted on the FA of Summer Rain (5.10-)

Dogtooth Peak (again)

 Griffin hit me up wanting to do some sort of alpine venture. I could only do a day trip, so suggested we climb Dogtooth Peak, since it's an easy day trip. I had climbed the peak twice before, once as a first ascent with Kevin, and a second time I climbed the NE arete with Trevor (although we were actually trying to climb Lookout, but went up the wrong thing!). This time I proposed we climb "Lookout"

Overlay of routes on Dogtooth peak.

 

I met up with Griffin at the Cliff Lake parking lot at 7am and we headed off. With all the snow melt the normally tame creek crossing required taking our shoes off and wading through knee deep water. Cold on the feet!

A little wet

After a quick easy 2.5 hour hike we found ourselves at the base of the tower. We didn't really look at the topo or beta very carefully and sort of thought we were looking at the correct route so scrambled up a couple hundred feet to what we thought was the start of the climb.

scrambling up to the 5th class terrain

We roped and racked up, and then I spied a bolt on the face directly above us. At that point I was fairly certain we were not on the correct route! Anyway, I headed up anyways, I figured it didn't really matter much. After a rope stretching easy pitch, I found a bolted anchor with chain! Definitely we were not on Lookout! 

We swing leads and continued up, finding a bolted anchor station every 60 meters. The climbing was easy, but became progressively harder and more interesting as we went higher. 

Griffin approaching the top of P4

Griffin led the last pitch, he headed out and then found the crux above. A steep off-width type flake loomed above to gain a ledge. He decided to break up the last pitch and belayed me up off a gear anchor so we could look at the last bit togher. With a big cam (#5 or 6) it would be protect-able, but all we had with us was a #4.

Heading out on the last pitch

Offwidth flake crux

Griffin pull through the crux without any gear (bold!), I'm glad I didn't have to lead that one! After that it was easy cruising to the saddle below the summit. We scrambled up to the summit, and then headed back to the car for some ice cold beer!

 After some sleuthing on old ST posts, I believe we climbed the route "Gin and Juice" (5.9, 5 pitches, FA Matt Schutz and Julie Tran, 9/2017). Enjoyable climb, now I just need to back one more time and actually climb "Lookout"

Learning to backcountry ski

2023 has been a slow year adventure/climbing wise. There have been a bunch of reasons for it. After returning from Greece, I found that my stoke and psych for climbing had been a bit low. However, with the record breaking snow this year, I finally took the plunge and bought a backcountry ski set-up. I had a ton of fun being a novice again and learning how the whole ski touring thing works

I did a bunch of solo tours on Black Butte, near Huntington lake, which was great for learning. The drive and approach are short, there is very little avy danger, so it was the perfect place to learn!

Top of Black Butte - looking down on Huntington lake

Fresh turns in the silky powder on the north facing slopes of Black Butte

 

I only did a couple of bigger tours, both in Kaiser peak area. The firs bigger one was Ted up to Potter Pass. The uphill was pretty easy, skinning is not very difficult and is certainly an efficient way to travel. The problem came on the downhill. The guys at REI had not quite adjusted the heel gap on my binding properly so one of my skis would not stay on! Yikes! 7 miles and 2,500' of elevation to descend was not easy!

Ted using my skin tracks as we head up Potter Pass

A snowy landscape around Huntington Lake

Just to the west of Potter pass. We skied down the drainage to the left

On a second ski trip I went back to Kaiser Peak with Griffon, this time we took the main Kaiser peak trail, which was much steeper. We found tons of fresh deep powder, and with my binding repaired the ski went much better! I'm looking forward to getting a bit more into ski touring next winter!

Griffon and Shasta

Deep powder

Virgin powder on the slopes. Backcountry skiing is fun!

Sport climbing in the winter sun - Leonidio, Greece

I've always had a fascination with ancient history, and visiting Greece has been a dream of mine since I picked up and read Herodotu's The Histories when I was 16 years old. After our original 2020 plan to visit Greece was squashed because of Covid, I managed to convince Teresa that a January trip to Greece was in order! So right on the New Year, we drove down to LAX and hopped on a flight to Athens. Now, since I can't do a vacation without going climbing, we planned a mix of site seeing to archaeological sites, and a bunch of sport climbing. Rather than going to the more famous Greek island of Kalymnos, we opted instead to go down to the Peloponnese and visit the village of Leonidio, an up and coming winter sport climbing destination.

The acropolis of Athens at sunset as viewed from the Pnyx

We spent a couple of days in Athens taking in the sites. We mostly visited archeological sites, and it was a thrill to stand in those ancient ruins. On the first day we took in the ancient Greek agora, Hadrian's arch, the temple of Olympian Zeus and of Temple of Hephaestus. We then wandered the maze of tight streets in downtown Athens, petted the many local feral cats and enjoyed the food and the busy crowds of tourists. 

Teresa admires the Temple of Hephaestus

Looking down at the ancient Greek Agora

The following day we hired a guide and did a 4 hour tour of the Acropolis. The guide was worth every penny. Since we were in Athens in the off season, no one else booked a tour, so we had the guide all to ourselves! She was a graduate student in ancient Hellenic history, and was a wealth of information. 

The Parthenon in the Athens Acropolis

Temple of Athena Polias in the Acropolis

After our wonderful time in Athens, we rented a car and drove down past Corinth and onto the Peloponnese peninsula along the coast of the Argolic gulf to reach out home for the next week, the lovely traditional Greek village of Leonidio.

 

Leonidio

 The village has developed as major winter sport climbing destination, with thousands of sport climbs within a short drive of the village with routes up to 8 pitches tall. We rented a little house and spend a full week enjoying the climbing and visiting some other lesser known archeological sites found in the Peloponnese.

The rock is all limestone, and varied in quality and type. The easy climbing tended to be on grey/orange slabs with pockets, while once the grades moved into 5.11+/5.12+ there were more dramatic features like tufas. The bolting was very friendly, the climbs long (often 40 meter pitches) and I found the difficulty to be on par with sport climbing in California.  

 

 

Approaching another climbing sector

The locals have made climbing very accessible. There are signs pointing the way to the different crags (sectors) and the names of the climbs painted on the base, so you always knew what you were hopping on!

Easy to find the climbing sectors with signs pointing the way!

Name of the climb painted on the base

The crags were busy, but only on one day really crowded. The climbers were friendly, and it was a thrill to be surrounded by so many languages! It seemed to be mostly local Greek climbers and Germans with a scattering of Italians, French, UK. We only ran into other Americans a couple times the entire trip. 

I was somewhat surprised that euro climbers are exactly the same as North American climbers. There were sprinter vans everywhere! I cannot imagine driving a huge van like that in the insanely narrow streets of European villages and cities. I was terrified driving in Leonidio with my little rental car! 

Busy crag

We climbed one of the multi-pitches above town one day, Mignonette (5c+, 6 pitches). It was the easiest way up the giant cliffs above town, but was fairly chossy and had a mountaineering feel to it. Still an enjoyable half-day adventure.I linked pitches and did it 5 pitches, taking us only about an hour climb it.

Mignonette, 5.9, 5 pitches (PC - https://olympusmountaineering.com)

Teresa tops out the last pitch of Mignonette

In addition to days spent sport climbing, we took a rest day and drove out to Sparta and visited the ruin of the Byzantine city/fortress of Mystras. This was another thrill for me, as I have long been a fan of the history of Byzantium. I find it's long decline and eventual fall tragic and I think most people have forgotten about the long standing Eastern Roman empire. It must have seemed like the world was ending when Constantinople finally fell to the Turks, ending 2000 years of "Roman" empire. 

The ruins of Mystras

Faded painted walls in a Byzantine cathedral

Mystras was abandoned in the early 1800s, but a single convent of nuns still live there. They care for a colony of feral cats, who are the friendliest group of cats you will ever meet!

 

Friendly kitties!

It was a wonderful climbing trip and vacation, I would definitely visit again!