First set at Santee Boulders

Santee Boulders Landscape

I am going to make more of an effort of outlining my climbs. I heard through the grapevine from a joshua tree/29 palms resident that to be considered a "local" you have to have done 1000 climbs. That is totally inconceivable for me, but the idea of a hard goal piques my interest. I'll have to make sure that I at least remember the names of my climbs until I get some sort of checklist going. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!

That being said, Scott and I went to Santee boulders this morning. This was my first trip out there.

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Gets a bit steep there

The nice thing about santee boulders was that it was across the street from a high school parking lot. You could park your car, walk across the street, and almost immediately start climbing. That's a lot different than the 1 hour hike we've had to do to climb, say, Mt Woodson. The bad thing was that this convenience made the rocks seemed almost overused. You could tell when there used to be a good foothold, but you would slip off of it like a banana. The great holds were smoothed like polished rock.

These are the few boulders I climbed today. I got the topo from Hubbards website.

PDF source.

I had a conflicting paper map that I scanned in.

First we climbed at the amphitheater. This one didn't have a walkup so we practiced the 5.4 descent on the northeast wall. The topo above shows it a 5.7, but I can't be that generous. I did it twice and I felt like it was hard my goodness. I also climbed the 5.10 there in the smack center. I conqured two on the amphitheater today.

Amphitheater

We then went over to the Bullet Hole wall, so named because of a single bullet hole in the rock on the southwest side. There is allegedly a 5.6 crack on the face. It looks like a perfect hand jam from the onset. It just gets sort of scary near the top because it juts out just so. I couldn't see my feet anymore and I got scared. I think I said something like, "i'm scared!" then I gingerly stepped down.

Bullethole crack.

We then did a short walk to the beehive. I attempted the 5.10 masochists crack, where I hurt my hands. You see, the footholds were so slippery that I just sort of.. slipped off. Its not fun to slip off when you've got a good handjam in. The tops of my fists are all chawed up now.

Then I went over to happy face! I did a 5.9 or a 5.8, whichever guide you want to believe. I got my confidence back, thats for sure.

Happy face from afar

The topo above labels this easy climb as a 5.10 but my guidebook at the time said it was a 5.6. My goodness, what do you do when experts disagree? Perhaps I would do better in life if every guidebook was wrong to inflate my confidence. Even just looking at the picture makes me want to touch the rock again.

Easy climb on happy face. Its either a 5.6 or a 5.10

Beehive happy face was a walkup so I could easily go get my camera and lay on top of the rock. This is the first photo I've taken of a climber from above. It doesn't look as cute as a lot of the other overheard climbing photos I've seen.

Overhead photo I took.

I then went around the corner and did the very slightly harder yet easy climb on this edge. Don't think I messed with that underhold. I didn't.

Happy face second climb.

The whole happy face from a short distance away.

I told Scott that I thought it would be fun to get my technique down a bit more. I mentioned my ambition to start lead climbs in the gym. He reacted positively, but made it sound like that wasn't such a big goal that would take up my entire year. To that I asked if he would teach me how to set up sport climbs before I got lead certified. To that he said dully, yeah, sure. To which I responded enthusiastically.