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And it all began at around 10pm on the Friday night of Memorial Day
weekend. Due to Daphne's prior commitments, our exodus to the
crags for our Memorial Day climbing trip had to begin on Saturday
morning. She got home at 9pm on Friday night to discover a storm was
about to blanket central California. Southern California was
suggested but quickly ruled out due to the drive time.
Climbingweather.com was perused. On a whim, we looked at something
called the Redwood Coast. Good weather predicted. Our doom was
sealed after a quick googling which turned up some route beta.
So the next morning we headed north without camping reservations,
without a guidebook, without a full tank of gas.
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The drive up was a portent of the evil things to come. Actual sprinkles of rain hit the windshield all the way through Sonoma County. The 101 was completely empty of traffic. We felt both physically and emotionally abandoned by the other drivers and it was a most traumatic four hour drive to Eureka. The highway patrol car on the southbound side of the highway didn't even turn around to pursue us even after we had sped right by him at least 15 miles over the speed limit. What, we weren’t good enough for him???
This was the first weekend of gas over 4.15 a gallon and as we rolled north, each station got more and more expensive. Truly, we were cursed to have tried to get north without filling up first.
As we pulled into Eureka we were terrified by the rays of sun which
suddenly attacked our eyes, leaping from the quickly evaporating clouds. And no sooner had we recovered from this jarring experience then we saw an actual billboard to a outdoors outfitter (horrors!) and under
the billboard was the outdoors shop! It was ghastly. The manager
of the shop sold us a local guidebook and recommended some crags.
We bought some gas (causing Jaybro severe pain which he has repeatedly tried to process all summer, ad infinitum, really, someone has to help him get over this) and headed north of Arcata to Moonstone Beach.
The rock we wanted there was found after laboriously searching for it
for 2, entire, minutes.
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At it's base, the sight every climber fears: more climbers. These people were suspiciously friendly and alleged they were from Redding. After taunting us with rumors of a cheap and empty camping site just minutes from Moonstone, they took off. We climbed several routes on this rock. Horrendous climbing. Karen Rock. We did Karen Crack (5.8)
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and Standard Route (5.9) At least we think we did. The idea that it was getting to the end of the day and we didn't have a camp yet weighed mightily on us.
Wondering why we ever started our obviously cursed adventure, we
took off to find a place to lay our heads.
We drove a whole 5 minutes south and ended up at Clam Beach. We
aren't pot smokers and were almost not allowed to camp at this extremely 420 friendly county beach. Two mean young men pointed us to what was obviously a terrible place to pitch our tents: completely sheltered from the sea breezes and surrounded by flowering shrubs.
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(Mr Smooth suggests they are mutant giant yellow Lupine)
They offered to take our shirts in a dominoes game but we took
off for Safeway instead. The cashier at Safeway was so unhelpful and critical as to point out we could have gone to a Safeway that was about 5 minutes away from our camp instead of 30 minutes away. We ran off to make a quick dinner, with a plan to get to bed early.
Much fun was had into the night by the denizens of the campground. Not by us as we headed to sleep on the early side, but all the other denizens had a really, really good time.
The next morning the sun was out and we tried to reunite some pants left on our campground table with their owners and then took off for the nearest Safeway but we couldn't find it. Instead we found the Crab Shack, which promised us fresh shucked crab for our dinner if we called ahead.
On to Patrick's Point State Beach.
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We did 2 climbs that morning.
Bon Voyage and Clipper Ship.
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We would have done more but when we got to the top of each climb
we were annoyed to find that pods of whales were migrating off the
coast and we felt compelled to watch them as someone had to support
them in their journey.
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(views from the belay, Gray shadows may be whales, some
are certainly blow hole equipped)
It's a boring job but someone has to do it. Also, seals were playing below us and it's just hard to climb when
that many distractions are happening. The rock had the most annoying
quality of looking slick and yet gripping like sandpaper. And we
are just not used to beach rock that feels like velvet and yet
grips. It was such a disconcerting experience that we decided to go inland
in the park and climb Ceremonial Rock. Ten minutes inland we were
stunned by a new ecosystem and entered the rainforest. Instead
of whales, deer. Wild iris clogged the path to the rock. Once
again, we were overwhelmed by the crowds of climbers in the parking lot.
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Thankfully, no one was at Ceremonial Rock. We climbed Regular Route
(5.10)
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It was a horrible climb so we did it again.
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Then something else. It's a bit hard to call it from the guidebook,
but it felt a bit like 5.11. We were hungry now and the crab promised
to us that morning called.
We called the crab shack but she was just closing. More awful luck
for us, as usual. We sped south towards crab, slowing to 80 around the bends in the road, hoping we would make it... And we did. We ate succulent fresh dungeness crab soaked in melted butter, washed down with cold beer, of course. It was terrible because it has just ruined crab for us forever. We'll never get it that fresh and wonderful again. Plus, we forgot we had a lemon.
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We went to sleep to the sound of the waves
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and woke up to... rain. Yes, the rain found us.
Truly, this trip was doomed. Certain we would have to just pack it up
and go home, we were hydrating with coffee when a scary looking
Grateful Dead fan approached. He softly suggested that if we headed inland about 2-4 miles, we would miss the weather entirely.
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Then he gave us some trash bags to protect our car from our rain-soaked gear.
We remembered the manager of the sporting goods store suggesting that we head inland to the Trinity Aretes area and we cleared out.
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A while later, after a drive through some of the most beautiful
mountains either of us has seen, we found the dirt road that leads to
the Trinity Aretes.
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You really should never go here. It's awful.
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The climbing is intense,
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most of the stuff way, way beyond moderate.
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After a bit of a hike,
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we found the
easier routes. At their base were the Redding climbers of our first
day. We tried to run away, but they sinisterly insisted we stay and use their rope to try the routes.
The day was catching up with us and we knew we were in for obscene
amounts of traffic back to the Bay Area so we left and headed East on
299. If you have never been on this drive along the Trinity River,
take our warning: Don't. We almost ran off the road numerous times
because of looking at the views. It was so dangerous that, really,
they should close this road.
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We joined the 5 South to discover that, true to the spirit of the
weekend, there was absolutely no traffic the whole way home. None,
nada, zip. No slowing, no braking. What a cursed trip. We'll
certainly never go again.
