Gnarnia and Climb for a Cause

Despite the snow, Ben, Spook, Aaron, Tyler and I went up North for a little exploring and to show Ben and Tyler Gnarnia. We took a back road that ran behind the mountain Gnarnia is on to check out a spot I had seen in Google Maps -> Terrain. We were discouraged by posted signs, but encouraged by a seasonal use road that seemed to run directly under the spot I was interested in, guess it'll have to wait for the Spring.

At Gnarnia, the psych level went up quickly as Ben (the most Anti-Exploring member of our crew) scoped out the many lines on the 1st boulder. Obviously it was too snowy to climb, but the number of possible lines on that boulder is obvious.

We continued to show Gnarnia to our friends, and with every boulder, psych grew. We reached the Gnarwhal, a huge, 25 foot, 30 degree wall with distinct, hard lines on it, and began discussing how to maybe build a platform to cover the terrifying talus below the right end of the wall. Next, we cleaned off the bottoms of the problems, as well as the tops (as much as we could) and began scoping out the sequences.

Much of the interest was on the right end, where a rail of sloping crimps leads to a dynamic move and sloping ledges to the top. We tried to unlock the bottom sequence, but it will no doubt be very hard (V10+), the stand start however is a bit less intimidating and might be somewhere in the V7 - V9 spectrum.

While we were still interested in the Gnarwhal, Aaron rapped down off the top of his little gem. A 30 foot tall zig-zag crack up a slightly overhung wall, with a landing that slopes away slightly, he says it may be V5 due to the lack of holds near the top, we will have to wait and see.

Let it be known that not EVERYTHING at Gnarnia is highball. Just that the Gnarwhal is super impressive and Aaron likes highballs, so thats where we went. The area probably has around 10 - 15 climbable boulders (maybe more) each with at least a few lines. The actual worth of this area will be seen in the spring, when FA's can start to happen.

Before heading home, we stopped in for Climb for a Cause at Rocksport, a fundraiser for Sanfilippo's Disorder. We were impressed by the number of people that came, and the new problems the gym had set up. It was a fun time and they have apparently raised over $1000 towards research for the disease. Sweet.



In other news, snow sucks, that is all.
-WB