Cayman Brac Climbing Trip

Teresa insisted that we do a "beach vacation" over Christmas break this year, so we headed to Cayman Brac, a tiny Caribbean island, just south of Cuba. Although there was tropical weather with clear blue ocean water, there also happened to be some awesome sport climbing (and no actual real beach)!

Cayman Brac - tropical island... with sport climbing?

The island is a bit of an obscurity, its one of the three Cayman islands, and has only 2000 inhabitants. Its mostly known as a dive vacation location, but in the past few years has seen significant development as a sport climbing destination.

We flew into Grand Cayman island through Fort Lauderdale. From there we took a tiny little plane over to Cayman Brac, rented a car and made our way to our rental house on the ocean.

Rental house

 

The house was lovely and very affordable!

Our first full day on the island it was cloudy and threatened to rain, but that gave us a chance to climb at the Orange Cave. The cave is on the south side of the island, and sits right next to the ocean.

Heading out climbing

The orange cave

The climbing was super fun, steep, featured and interesting. The cliff was so sheltered and steep, that even when it started to pour rain we were able to continue climbing!

Teresa samples routes in the Orange cave

Steep and fun!

Each day after climbing we did some serious relaxing. The weather was perfect, not too hot, not cool, always a nice breeze blowing. The island was so chill and relaxed.

Its easy to relax with ocean views like this.

Chillin on the patio

 In addition to climbing we checked out the local sights. The island is full of caves and and the east end of the island has a tall bluff where sea birds, the brown footed boobie, nests. We hiked out to the bluff and encountered a bunch of the birds nesting and courting. 

Nesting sea bird

 

Photographing birds

Brown footed boobie

The sun stayed out for the rest of our trip, the crags on the south side of the island were a bit too hot to climb in the sun, so we mostly climbed the routes on the North side of the island. The limestone was very high quality, and we had the place to ourselves. We only saw a handful of other climbers in passing.

Tuffa climbing at the Heritage wall

Evenings at the house

A nice treat was that one of the neighbors had a super friendly dog who would come by and visit. He would hop over to the ocean, take a cool-down dip and then head over to us for pets and belly rubs!

Friendly pooch!

 On our rest day we did a bit of snorkeling. Neither of us had done it before, and it turned out to be more fun than I expected. The water was crystal clear, and as the island is just a giant coral reef there is tons of sea life right off the shore. At first, we tried going right out of our house. There was lots of fish, but they were pretty small.

Heading into the warm Caribbean sea

 After some interwebs searching, we went to an excellent snorkeling location a few minutes down the road. It was amazing! We saw squid, and tons of super colorful fish. 

Snorkeling!

 And more climbing. The best wall we climbed at was Dixon's wall, the wall carried on of the most fun 5.10s I have ever done. Tuffas, steep, a traverse - super fun.

5.10 doesn't get more fun than this!

And of course, many more lazy afternoons....

Post swim drinks

 

Sunrays

 The island has a bunch of caves. They were pretty neat, some of them had large bat colonies living in them. Unfortunately since the caves are roadside, they have been heavily vandalized. What is wrong with people? 

Cave

Cave entrance

Mostly on the trip I was on-sighting climbs within my comfort zone. It took a while to get used to the steep climbing, not something we have a lot of in my regular caves. On one of our last climbing days, I took the time to redpoint something a bit harder (for me anyways), an interesting and enjoyable 5.11. I managed to get the redpoint, right before a thunder storm blew in, what luck!

Teresa working my little project.

 Soon enough our little trip was over. I feel very recharged, it was probably the most relaxing vacation I have taken in a long time. A really special place!

Bye Cayman Brac!

Alabama Hills and Tollhouse

With exams graded and the semester over, Teresa and I headed over to Lone Pine for a couple of days of climbing at the Alabama Hills. The weather was warm and sunny, perfect for a couple of days of clipping bolts

Alabama Hills bathed in early morning light

 We spent a full two days climbing, we did a nice mix of easy routes and some of the "harder" routes at the hills. Teresa even did a bit of leading.

Teresa leading a nice little sport route at Paul's Paradise

Stick clip!

Penny came along of course, and got some good sleeps in

Sleeps?

We checked out some area I had not been to before, including the eye of Horus,  and we tried (and failed) to find the Oz wall.

What should we climb next?

 We a great time! When we got back, I still had some free time, so the following day I headed out to Tollhouse and climbed a bunch of easy multi-pitches with Lauren. We were treated to some cool clouds and fog in the valley

Summit of Tollhouse

Lauren topping out "Free and Easy"

Cloudy sunset

Danland in December

I love climbing in Danland. Its a wonderful place, located deep in the foothills at the edge of the Mineral King branch of Sequoia National Park. I went out there with Michelle and her friend Lauren, we had a great time playing around on the granite slabs and cracks

Michelle on P1 of DZ arete (5.10a)

I got to lead a several routes, including both pitched of the very interesting DZ arete. The first pitch was a short 5.10 crack, followed by a bolted slabby arete. 

Lauren on P1 of DZ arete.

The 2nd pitch of DZ aerte was a short, well bolted and very technical slab/face, which went at 5.10d/5.11a. I took a little whip on the crux, so the on-sight eluded me, but I got it 2nd go.

Me leading out on the crux pitch

P2 of DZ arete (5.11?)

WE then took some burns on my long standing project - Lizard run, 5.11d/5.12a. I almost made it through the crux, but not quite. 

Taking a shot on Lizard Run

Michelle takes a-go.

Michelle's dog Bart watched us the whole time. Well not the whole time, he did excavate a rather large hole at the belay station

Bart - looking regal

A great day!

New Jack City

After a couple of weekends off of any climbing, I managed to convince Teresa that we should head into the desert and climb at New Jack City. 

NJC - Parking lot filling up

 Its not a pretty place to climb, but the rock is challenging, and is not in a style that I am very good it. Steep and technical sport climbing on slippery volcanic rock.

Hmmm.. what should we climb

 It was pretty crowded, lots of 20-something straight out of the climbing gym. I am not the at best climbing when things are crowded, I feel weirdly self-conscious. I think also I am used to the nice solitude of places like Shuteye. I need to work on my self-confidence a bit maybe.

We spent a bit of time climbing in the Western canyon, which is a lot quieter, which I enjoyed. 

Sunset in the Western canyon

 

Some solitude in the Western canyon

 We found a nice mix of moderates for Teresa and challenging climbs for me. I took a lot of whips working through some of the routes.

Happy family!

 Overall a nice little trip to the desert. I'm looking forward to heading back sometime over the winter for some more!

Penny had fun as well

Shuteye Ridge -Eagle's Nest - The wrong approach beta

The seemingly endless nice weather continues in California, so Teresa and I made our way into Shuteye Ridge on the weekend for more cragging. I had been wanting to check out Eagle's nest for some time, so we headed up to the magical land of SoYo and Shuteye ridge for another day of climbing

SoYo - The magical land of granite domes

We drove up towards the Big Sleep parking area, but a giant tree had fallen on the road, blocking our way up to the parking area. With many miles to go, we contemplated our back-up options.
I had the "brilliant" idea of driving to the Shuteye ass trailhead and hiking up to Eagle's nest from the other side. So we headed down and around to the other (much lower...) trailhead

Start of the other way up

It soon became apparent that this was not the best way up. While approaching form the other side is a well maintained, easy trail, this side is not well kept. The trail was very overgrown and littered with fallen trees. This made the going very slow, especially for Penny. Jumping giant fallen trees is tricky when you are a 1.5 feet tall.  

This part ain't so bad....

 

Downed trees. No problemo

After a couple (2.5?) hours of bushwhacking and seemingly endless uphill, we eventually spotted Crocodile Dome, meaning we were close!

Crocodile!

 We eventually made our way onto the ridge, and found Eagle's nest. What a treat. The sun was shinning, and the climbing delivered the goods. 

Teresa works the moves on this tricky 5.10

Eagle's Nest in all its glory

 

Penny takes a break

Sadly, we only got in about 4-5 climbs before the day was getting on. So we packed it up and headed out. Good climbing, but I don't think I will take the Eastern Shuteye pass approach in the future! I'll stick to the regular way up which only takes 30 minutes and not 3 hours!