Finger Lickin' Area Trip Report

OK, a strange week had me down in LA on Friday, and home through the easter weekend, but with Monday free. I sent an email out into the aether to the off-width crew and a few others and got a reply from Melissa.

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From: "Melissa"
To: hartouni
Subject: RE: climbing Monday, April 9?
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:49:33 -0700

Hi, Ed.

I plan to be in the Valley on Monday. I may be with slobmonster who has a dog, so we're looking at cragging. If slobmonster and doggy come, I was thinking of Finger Lickin', which has routes on both the thin and fist list (that I can't find) and may even sport a 10a ow. You're welcome to join us. And as I haven't heard from him, us might just be me. I'll already be there b/c I'm climbing w/ another friend on Sunday.

Melissa

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Great luck! I hadn't climbed in the Finger Lickin' area before, and this was a chance to go climb with someone I had run into occasionally but never climbed with, Melissa. We converge on the Arch Rock entrance early Monday morning and head out to the turnout, 1 mile east.

Reid admonishes: "a tricky scramble up a poison-oak laced roadcut begins a steep dirt and brush march on a vague trail..." and our first half-hour is consumed just scoping out a way minimizing the PO contact... which we find. A rather well defined trail leads up to the cliffs, hitting the lower one first. But we are still waiting to see if we've escaped the PO, nice shiney, oily leaves, lush in places, and right in the path.

To the cliff you make a little move right and find yourself staring at Petty Larceny, Snatch Power and Jaw Bone. Short routes which look fantastic. We go over to do Jaw Bone 5.10a first. This route was Mark Chapman and Kevin Worrall in 1973. It starts thin, gets wide and steep, then lays back a bit and gets a tad narrower. My lead... which I execute but not cleanly. I have to hang at the crux but I'm hating my weak head... oh well, this is spring training, the big show will start soon enough. I lower and clean the rope, then Melissa dances up the thing. She's in "off the couch" mode but is strong. Here she is just before the crux:


It was a very nice route with excellent protection, and short at about 50', perfect craging. We then move over to Snatch Power 5.10c. This was put up by Bob Ashworth, Bruce Pollack and Mike Pollack in 1973. My lead, oh boy! I work the initial moves over and over again, but don't get the pull. Feet are slipping, can't quite get a solid hold, fall on a couple of Aliens a bunch of times, skinning the backs of my fingers in the process.

Melissa goes up to work it, but doesn't figure it out. She steps in a sling and sets a piece high, but that doesn't help much, so she just leads out of the sling. Her main objective is up and around the corner, no sense getting blown out on the warm up. Beside, I think the difficulties moderate a bit, but the move through the roof is not at all easy, some tricky jamming and an odd sequence. This is not a problem for my rope gun, Melissa walks the upper part of this climb which is also great.


I get the moves on TR, another very nice climb.

The real reason we are up here is to do Finger Lickin' 5.10d, FA 1973 by Mark and Kevin. Just walking up there and spying the climb through the brush makes you wonder why there aren't lines of people waiting to do it. The line is striking. Really esthetic, and relatively short. Melissa warned me she would hog as much of the leading on this as she could... I told her not to worry, she could take all that she wanted. The description in Reid: "Continuous splitter, 5.10d doesn't get any harder," and since I don't climb 5.10d yet...

In fact, Melissa found this climb on Ray Jardine's website log rated as 5.11...

Here is Melissa on the easy lower part just before the first 5.10d crux. There is one that finishes the climb higher up.


A set of burly moves in the corner gets you up to a point where you are reaching off finger locks just good enough to get you extended so that you can slip part of your right hand into the thin beginning of a thin hands crack. Somehow you cheat that hand up until you are feeling good, then pull up and into a great thin hands, continue working this until it thins to fingers... man.. a few moves at 5.10d gets you to the ledge.

What a great route! Melissa nearly fires it, having to hang at the lower crux, but gets the rest of the route without much difficulty detected from the belay...

I go up and struggle, but I work both cruxes and get to the top without resorting to a pulley/winch haul system. Man am I worked.

So that was it for me, Melissa was game for more but my old body was happy to have done as well as it did. We tour around and look at somebody's project, and at a corner which turned out to be Pandora's Box 5.10a fists... there is a lot to return to here.

So far, no PO... but I couldn't floss on Tuesday, wrapping the floss around my finger hurt! missing divits of skin remind me that we worked hard on finger cracks, and the sore left foot arch another reminder that slippers don't have much support, even though you want to wear them on thin cracks.

A first visit to a nice crag, a picture perfect day, and a wonderful partner... can't get better than that!