exposures

exposure in climbing is the distance from where a climber might fall to where the climber might stop if there were an unprotected fall. big wall climbers typically get the most exposure (several thousand feet); boulderers the least (several feet). i like to stay towards the lower end of the spectrum. a long fall, while it would give me a long while to contemplate my life and enjoy the ride, would be certainly unpleasant when suddenly stopped. why am i defining this? on tuesday, cp exposed me to the most exposure i've had thus far in my (brief) climbing career. we were in boulder canyon, trying to find our way to a cluster of sport climbs. we wandered up and down canyon road, unsuccessful in finding where we thought we wanted to go. so, we did a tyrolean traverse (ropes strung across river, attach to harness with carabiner, and pull self above river hand over hand) across the creek and scrambled our way up to some climbs that he'd done with kai and allyson. i say scrambled because it wasn't really a hike; 'twas far more vertical than that! before i knew it, we were easily 200 vertical feet above the road we parked on with well over 200 feet of granite above us yet to climb.
see the bolts on the picture? that's so that the belayer won't take out two people if he falls, stumbles, or the climber on the sharp end takes a whipper and yanks him off the ground. additional protection. to the right was the warm-up. the overall route goes at 5.8. i'd venture to guess that there were two, maybe three moves that went at 5.8. the rest of it could've been easily done with sneakers on. to the left was the other route. cp thinks the total route goes at 5.10b; my opinion of the first pitch, probably accurate, though half of it was pretty easy, though technical. laybacks and handjams on cracks. easy clips, breeze on my back, tourists watching the red-shirt climb up the sheer face in awe.

the climbing of the day being done, we down scrambled to the falls and cooled off in the creek. all in all, a helluva good day, minimal amount of climbing though it was.