Pitch One
We spotted the "highest tree" sitting atop a low angle ramp and the dihedral above it that the first two pitches follow. What we saw matched well with the pictures I had stored in my mind from reading other people's trip reports, so we were confident that we were getting off to a good start. The approach had only taken us about an hour. As we roped up and scoped out the first pitch, I was bit surprised by the steepness of the rock. Fortunately the rock appeared to be well featured and reminded us a great deal of the quartzite at Blue Mounds in Minnesota (just a lot taller!) so we expected to be quite comfortable with the climbing.
The first
pitch was quite fun. Although the climbing wasn't that hard, it was
amazingly steep for it's grade. At times the rock was really in my
face as I climbed over bulges and small roofs. Though I wasn't carrying
a
whole lot in it, having a pack on made these sections even more exciting than
they would be otherwise!
As I climbed, the generally loose nature of the rock quickly became apparent to us. I found myself making route finding decisions based more on the quality of rock than the apparent difficulty of the climbing. Finding protection among the millions of loose rocks was sometimes a challenge, but I generally felt quite confident with my gear. I worried much more about knocking things down toward Angela, so I climbed cautiously, testing holds as I went.
