sport climbing – Page 3 – Jasna Hodžić, PhD

The victory of the send

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Last week sucked. I had a lot of tests to study for, essays to turn in, a training schedule to try to stick to, field trips to attend and bureaucratic paperwork to slog through. I was overwhelmed and when Friday finally came I had one of my longest days yet; I was up at 6:30 AM and didn’t come home until nearly 12 hours later at 6 PM. Strangely, despite my exhaustion I did not sleep well that night. I spent half the night tossing and turning, half of me debating going through with the plans I had made to go to Tahoe the next day to try Penguin Lust (5.12c, 7b+) again. It was supposed to be cold and windy and I was not looking forward to making the drive up there. But, winter was approaching and soon we would set our clocks back an hour and the sun would set at a horrific 5 PM; “this weekend may be my last chance to go to Tahoe before spring”, I thought. I began to visualize the moves of Penguin Lust in my head and pretty soon my psyche was quickly restored and with a thermos filled with coffee I again was on the road to Donner.

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FALL!

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IT IS FALL!!! Finally, the best season of the year has arrived! You know what that means, right? It means biking to campus with the goal of riding over as many leaves as I can, blissfully hearing the “crunch” each one makes and mentally tacking it as a personal victory for the day. It means escaping schoolwork to go to the arboretum or the greenbelt and basking in the perfect light that emerges at just around 6. It means layering in warm clothing and finally being able to bust out my beanies ( I love beanies.) It means crisp mornings and perfect days.. really it just means a lot of good things, to put it simply. It also means ROCK CLIMBING A MUERTE! !!! Fall is the BEST season to climb and honestly the best conditions are just ahead of us.

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Trinity Aretes

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After three weeks of dog-sitting I was aching to get back to some good old fashioned sport-climbing. (that’s not at Castle Rock.) I had already done my granite return tour of Tahoe and Yosemite- where I plan to climb a lot in during the fall (especially Tahoe)- and after coming back from Spain and France I was already feeling some limestone climbing withdrawals. I had heard of a place in Humboldt county called Trinity Aretes that apparently houses CA’s best hard limestone climbing. Conveniently, one of my very good friends lives in Arcata, about 1 and a half hours away from the Aretes. Equally as convenient, she also climbs and was willing to take me up there! So, the very next day that my parents came home I was off on the 101 North, driving to go see one of my good friends and climb at a new place- I was stoked! ( all the photographs were taken by Tyler Kappen).

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Chilling at home and climbing around Castle Rock State Park

Note: This is an old post whose content was created for fun, with little to no proof-reading or editing. Please read this post keeping that in mind.

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been forced against my will to stay in the South Bay Area! I have no responsibilities until school starts on Sept 26th except for one… dog-sitting. My parents went to Europe (as soon as I got back) and I was deemed the most suitable candidate to watch my dog, Scottie.

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Back to California- Berkeley, San Francisco, Davis, Sport climbing in Lake Tahoe and eating Fajitas

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“Shit! How the hell am I still on these holds? My feet are literally on nothing! I can’t believe they expect me to use this sloper .. though it is sticking…”

My inner dialogue while climbing on granite for the first time in basically a year went a littttle bit like that… with even more expletives. Outwardly, I was climbing awkwardly. I was gripping down way too tight on some holds that looked terrible but had a bunch of friction. I was nervous, placing and trusting my feet on small crystals or just smearing them on nothing; in other words, I suck at climbing on granite.

Star Wall at Donner Summit… instagramed!

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Les Gorges du Tarn

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Chris and I didn’t realize it at the time, but we coincidentally planned our France climbing trip in decreasing order of approach times. At Céüse we did the famous 45 min- 1 hr grueling uphill approach every day and then at the Ardeche our approach was flat and about 20-30 minutes long (once we figured out how to do it and didn’t have to employ kayakers to get our gear across the river), though it did involve easy traversing on cables for a small part of it. There were also scorpion sightings, humongous river otters and hoards of French tourists in mega-industrial “campsites”- it was pretty intense. The approaches at the Gorges du Tarn were quite a bit different… on average they were about 2 minutes long. In fact, a lot of the best sectors are right off of the road which runs parallel to the beautiful (and cold!) Tarn river. In fact, the whole setup was pretty similar to the Ardeche; in other words, a ridiculous number of limestone crags surround a river in a remarkably striking Gorge. However, the differences were only improvements- the rock quality is way better and there were much less tourists.

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The Ardeche

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We left Céüse on account of its delightful weather (aka rain storms every afternoon for 4 days in a row) and because we had two more areas left to visit on our 3.5 week long French climbing vacay… Les Branches in the Ardeche and the famous Gorges du Tarn.

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Céüse

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As soon as school got out I ventured beyond Spain’s borders to see what its next door neighbor, France, had to offer in sport climbing. They say that sport climbing was born in France so I had high expectations, though was pretty skeptical; I just couldn’t imagine anything topping Spanish crags like Margalef , Rodellar or El Chorro. Our first stop was Céüse, a cliff band that is perched on top of a hill near the French Alps.

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San Sebastián rest day!

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Yes, this blog has been posted about 2 weeks late, but I’ve been super busy climbing and enjoying life in the South of France. Thanks to a few summer thunderstorms that have slowed us down, this post has finally taken priority over going wine-tasting and eating more goat cheese..
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País Vasco- Valdegovía: Part 1, pre-rest day

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I am writing this blog post from probably my most luxurious location yet- sitting on the bathroom tiled floor at the Ceuse campgrounds, right in front of the trashcans – unfortunately my charger can’t stretch past the trash and outside. Ceuse is a cliff band in the South of France and has been called by many as the best sport climbing destination in the world. It also comes with a bit of history as it houses the first 9a+, (5.15a) climbed, called Biografie or Realization whose first ascent was done by Chris Sharma. But, stories of my travels in france (which have just started) will come a bit later. (as a mini-preview, Ceuse is amazing but it’s kicking my ass!) Before I crossed the border, I took a week long climbing trip with my friend Chris Jorde to the Basque Country.