On day 10 Paul and I decided to go back to the Icebox Canyon (which we previously visited on day 3).
This time however we decided on the other side of the canyon and visited Sunnyside Crags area. Spoiler Alert: it wasn’t sunny at all!
But it didn’t matter – it was still quite warm (mostly because it wasn’t windy at all).
For some reason, there aren’t huge crowds at the crags of that canyon – despite a pretty easy approach (straight path, maybe 20 mins walk), perhaps because the area is mostly trad, and almost all in the shade and most will prefer the sunny bolted crags of Calico Hills.
Either way, we started with my lead of Shady Ladies (5.7), – it was a nice and pleasant corner with an exciting finish to the anchor at the grade I’m feeling comfortable right now.
Below: Paul following on Shady Ladies.
Then Paul took over and did a couple of progressively harder routes Cold September Corner (5.8) , – which has an amazing leg press sequence to get from under the roof.
Below: Paul at the crux section of Cold September corner.
Paul also did Magellanic Cloud (5.9), Bad Day at Black Rocks (5.10a) which I followed,
The final route of the day was Mercedes (5.11a/b), which was too hard for me to get on, so Paul cleaned it on the way down.
Below: Mercedes
Since the car park closes at 5pm (and besides it gets dark not much before that), we walked out to the beautiful views again.
As we were in the shades of Icebox Canyon Calvin and Clare came back to Calico 2 for another day there. Calvin’s ankles are flaring up a bit so they are taking it slow. And that’s a good thing!
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