Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Palmdale Project

Project Line
Leading into toe hook madness, photo Jason Smith
Like every climber this rain has forced me and many others to put their projects on hold until better days arrive. Originally this weekend I was to be back up in the Mountains on my nemisis "The Poo", though I was not overly keen to drive all that way only to see a water fall flowing freely down some of the crucial holds. So what to do? Luckily for me a good friend of mine JP knows the central coast very very well. Piper came to the rescue. We had spoken a few weeks ago about this cave which he said was full of little rails, he was confident there was be the potential for some hard lines. Well, this was our chance to go and check it out. I left my house with a few mats, no food and my climbing gear just in case. I was thinking we would just go check it out and have a look around. We ended up being there for about 5.5 hrs pretty much trying to establish one line. Piper nearly did one other but we spent soooo much time on this one main line we were looking at. We came up with the beta only for myself to snap off the crucial hold time and time again. I think I snapped 3 crucial holds each time making the line harder and harder. We nearly gave up for the day only to say "one more shot", that shot something would click and we would find another way, this happened time and time again. In the end there was basically one last move we could not work out. Just before we left I had a thought of how we could potentially do it, though by then we were so boxed we didn't have the energy to try it again. The line is HARD! If we (I) didn't pull numerous holds off I recon it would have nearly gone today (maybe not the last move) but close. If that were the case Id say possibly V10/11, but now the holds have gotten way smaller or the moves a lot harder I am not sure what the grade will be? could be ok in awesome conditions though I still think it will pack a punch. At the moment I am thinking hard 11 maybe 12?? That's if the last move goes!!! Could be futuristic too?