Rock Climbing --- 5/18/2005 --- Gunks

Climbing with Jason at the Gunks. We started on Pas De Deux which is a fun climb I had never tried before. Then we climbed City Lights since we were right there. Nice sunshine and lots of time to watch the skinks run up and down the cliffs. After that, I felt inspired to try Directissima. I had followed Jerry on this climb, but never led it. I fell on the first move of the first pitch. Pretty pitiful. The first pitch is only 5.8, but the opening move is tough. From the way I was flailing, it was obvious that I was going to pitch. Jason's quick catch and a small nut that held my weight saved me from a nasty crunch from about 5' on to a big boulder. Shaken from that experience I cleaned the nut and walked away from the climb.

Walked far enough away to reach Ant's line which I had climbed just a week earlier with Alana. Jason wanted to climb it too, so I set out on lead. Still shaking from my experience on Directissima, I had to hang once on Ant's Line. This was frustrating because I onsighted the climb when I first led it back in 2003. Sigh. Then we set a toprope on Ent's Line and both Jason and I got up this very difficult climb, albeit with many falls. I took one last run up Ant's Line on toprope to clean the anchor (and to do the climb without a hang), then we called it a day.

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