On “Deeper Shade of Soul” at The Gym – 5.13b
The last Sunday in March, a trip was organized to head down to Shelf Rd and get on some harder stuff. Pascal and Mirthe had finally moved to the USA a couple weeks ago and they had some climbing projects in mind. I invited Tom from work, which also joined in the Sunday fun. We all started the day with a nice stop at the friendly “Canyon City Coffee Café” and the continued on to “The Bank” parking lot.
The Gym Wall is host to a ton of 5.hard routes and a couple fun moderates thrown in the mix. The rock is pretty good and really sharp. Pascal put up “Crack of Dawn 10b” right away. This was a very popular, tall, and fun bolted crack. Pascal had no problems with it, but when I lead it, I got sucked in the upper right corner, which ended up with pretty awkward down climbing. My first route was “trout fly’s 10-ish” and it end up being pretty weird. It had some hard reachy opening moves and an awkward exit resulting in a 1 star route. (It could have been I was just having a awkward morning).
Mirthe projected “Example 13b” which I think was the 1st 13b in the US. It looked pretty gnarly and I had nothing to do with that, it was way out of my pay grade. She ended up figuring out the pocket opening sequence.
Here we split up for a bit. Tom and I went and played around on another moderate, “There Goes the Neighborhood”, which was extremely sharp. When Tom when up it actually started to rain, which is unheard of at shelf. From this wall, we watched Pascal and Mirthe work another 13b called “Deeper Shade of Soul”. From this vantage point, it was a extremely impressive and stout line.
Tom and I made our way over and feasted on Twinkies. I was convinced to give the 13b a try and man it was hard. The opening moves I would say where V5 into a ok rest, then a v5 cross over to another rest, then the crux hits with a v6-v7 move, sloper pull-up to a single pad mono pocket. From here I couldn’t do any more even. Pascal then was up and made his way through the sections using crafty sling aids. Once above the crux he work his way through the top route.
Thoroughly beaten and cold from both the route and the storm rolling through, we headed back to the cactus cliff. Here we still had sun, so we tried 2 more routes. Pascal and Mirthe put up “Almost French”, which was a horrid 5.12a. The climbing was very convoluted and seemed manufactured. I didn’t like it at all. Tom and I put up “Almost Gothic“right beside them which was juggy to thin 11d. I almost on sighted the route, but fell off once at the crux. This was my hardest lead yet and first attempt to lead an 11d, which got me really excited on how much I have improved since the last I had been there.
Tired and thoroughly worked we left and went home.
