The first twinges of a slight itch under my left armpit have begun. I'm gonna fire this Trip Report off today, while everybody is still in a good mood from the weekend. Because when the poison oak blisters begin on festival-goers this Wednesday, I'm gonna go internet dark. I will not open any of the upcoming threads entitled "Death to Micronut[TR]", "FACT: Micronut is a LIAR![TR]", or "Can Micronut Prescribe Me Some Prednisone[TR]."

Yeah Jaybro....That's gonna leave a mark.

Rewind:
Several months ago, an obscure Supertopo thread posted by Matt Sarad entitled Leversee Offwidth Near Balch Camp started with an innocuous question...."Anyone heard of this?"

The firestorm of beta, stories, photos and folklore that followed regarding Balch Camp Flake and Patterson Bluff could never have been foreseen. An old Patagonia poster showing a massive, maneating crack with a struggling climber in its jaws had inspired climbers for years and added to the mystery of "What is that thing?!" and "Where is this place!?"


148 posts and two other threads later, the interest in this central valley giant was at a boiling froth. Alexey bit first, and started yapping online with Jaybro and others who had been to The Flake. The route in the phot is called JCA's Wide World of Sport (5.12b), and with the second ascent still up for grabs and a rating in the "prolly harder than 5.11" range, Alexey committed to aiming for the send.

Somehow I chimed in with a "Hey, I'm from Fresno and would love to throw a BBQ and make some T-Shirts" and the idea of a Balch Fest was born. With nearly 30 people highly interested in driving deep into the foothills east of Fresno, Macronut and I started talkin BBQ, camping, trailcutting and t-shirt logistics.


So. A couple things about Patterson Bluff, and the famous Balch Camp Flake and its twin slitter offwidths. The place has a history rife with tales of bushwacking, tick bites, obscure route locations, mysterious approaches on rappel, mountain lion encounters and general bad to the boneness. If you're from Fresno, you can see the thing on nearly every clear day, and word of 10 pitch 5.12 routes and full on adventure had escaled the place to legendary status over the past couple decades. Though few of us had ever really been climbing there. With the installation of a new climbing gym in fresno and the "interwebs" as Cultureshock likes to call it, sever locals started getting to know each other and interest in the place started to happen after many years of dormancy.


Rich Leversee, Paul Martzen and others were hot and heavy on the big main wall in the pioneering days of the place, and guys like Jaybro and Mungeclimber were all about the big splitters on Balch Camp Flake, a freestanding 240 foot tall act of God down the road a ways.




I had hacked my way in to the flake more than 20 years ago on a recon trip gone bad, and with miserable tales of the approach to the flake, we set up a trail day with some of the local motivated locals.

Paul Martzen, early FA man himself, Macronut and his kids, me and my two sons and Donutnational spent a day in full on Junglebook mode whackin' and thrashin' and poisonoakin' to the base of The Flake. Imagine my surprise, when at 7:00am, halfway up the winding road to Patterson, when my 7 year old son hollers from the backseat, pop-tart in hand, "Dad, I forgot my shoes!" After about ten seconds of rationalizing turning around and heading home, with the gravity of the upcoming Balchfest on my heart, I had a WWHD (What Would Herson Do?) moment. We pressed on and my boy manned up, having a blast in full cave-boy mode. I don't think poison oak affects kids under 10 anyway. They move too fast in the dense underbrush for the evil sticky oil to collect on their paws.


Turns out Adam and I didn't get very close to the flake, we were still a long ways off when we called it a day, but my emails to fest attendees were nothing but confident.

"Hey yall, trail's lookin' good."
"Jaybro will clean it up a few day before we get there...it'll be dialed!"
and the one I'm now famous for "You will NOT be clearing trail at The Festival!"

yeah......my bad on that one.

DAY 1. Friday. I split from work early and am on the road with daylight to spare. Gonna go set up camp and post some signage and get ready for folks to start rollin in anytime.

The light is great and I stop often for photo ops...

until I almost splatter a free range filet mignon on my windshield doin'52 MPH on the windy road past Pine Flat Lake.
Fwoah! This drive is no joke yall.

I didn't mention much about the local wildlife in the OFFICIAL BALCH FEST INVITE thread in case there were arachnaphobes in the group. Wouldn't want a lil brown bug or two to scare people away from one of the best offwidths on the planet now would I?

I make it to Kirch Flat and set up basecamp, alone in the lowland canyon of the mighty Kings River. It has a nice, quiet Deliverance meets methlab country kinda feel....and off in the distance I can swear I hear a banjo pluck a few cords.

dada ling ding ding ding ding ding ding....

Sure would be nice if somebody shows up soon....
The lack of Balch Fest Goers by ten pm has me wondering if anybody is gonna come to my little party.

I sit by my small fire, in the pitch black, reading and just chilling for five hours, until I can no longer take the creepy silence.

I suppress images of Ned Beatty and toothy rednecks in river country and head down in the absolute darkness to shoot some timelapse shots on the water. I'm stoked to see the results, though its so dark I can hear the water more than I can see it. 20 second exposure is rad eh?

Eventually, Adam shows up with the firewood and Jaybro makes the show, along with others. By midnight we're digging the vibe of new friends and the following day starts to show promise!


DAY 2: Saturday
We awake to new faces, the hiss of Jetboils and coffee and donuts to start the Fest in style. There a whole lot of "What's your real name dude?" as the reality and dysfunctionality of meeting on Supertopo sets in.
"Crotch? Your name is Crotch? Who names their kid Crotch?"

Soon after breakfast its time to load up and the following Supertopoans (among others but I can only remember their real life name and don't want to post them here) are in attendance.

Crotch
Limpingcrab
Micronut
Macronut
Matty
Paul Martzen
Christina
Jaybro
Alexey
Vitaliy
Da Hunter
Oakie
Rincon
Eventually we'll pick up John Elezarian, Cultureshock, Danny, Ying and many others.

The drive up to the flake is something straight out of "IceRoad Truckers in Nepal."

The stoke is high and its all smiles at the pullout.........and for the first ten minutes of the trail.

Then the cussing begins. I'm not sure I've heard my name cursed in quite such decorative vocabulary for a long time. Packs are snagging on branches, razor sharp manzanita tears at the flesh, people are slipping and crawling and yelping when the poison oak infested ground gives way beneath them. At some point we are literally in a jungle of poison oak, clawing at vines as we ascend class three branches and roots along a series of house sized boulders with gaping black holes beneath them. The natives were restless to say the least.

At this point, I'm feeling like I'm either gonna quietly hang back, get in my car and head home or push on tellin' em to shut their lightweight pansy mouths and act like they've seen a real trail before. In my book it ain't fun till somebody gets a stick in the eyelid I tell em. I choose the latter, and after a true near death experience by Alexey in a poison oak carpeted serac field of death boulders, we emerge out of Mirkwood forest and the wall comes into view. The stoke returns and people are ready to freakin slay the dragon! Hoots and hollers and monkey calls reverberate through the canyon.

The flake does not disappoint. We feel like conquistadores reaching the edge of the known world. Bilbo Baggins deep in the dragon's lair. The inside of the flake is immense and magical. Awestruck, we descend into the bowels of Patterson Bluff and the place literally swallows us whole. Its 240 feet straight up with the weight of the world squeezing in on us.

While Jay and Alexey get ready to do battle with JCA's Wide World of Sport, other's start to check out The Passionate life and Dracula Crack. Here's some shots of Vitaliy, Adam and Limpingcrab on Dracula crack, which is actually the back side of The Passionate Life....as the two big cracks actually slice fully through the crack in a mystery of Newtonian physics that defy gravity.



The place is literally rattling with energy as BIG cams get dumped out and boys and girls start jumping on things. Here's Crotch starting up a gnarly thing left of Dracula Crack.


Never has this place seen so many humans.

though silent relics of the past remind us of the pioneers who came before us.

Meanwhile...on the other side of the Earth. Gladiators prepare to go into the arena.



Alexy and Jay. Christina and Vitaliy. Two teams that would end up with the second and third ascents of JCA's nightmare trash compacter grovelfest.
Alexy had earlier reached the flake, slapped on his harness and started up while we were all futzin' around on the inside. This quiet Russian madman is all business. A true barbarian. With nothing more than a grunt here...a "Vatch me Jaybro" there, he steadfastly inched his way up the gut. The angles from the base were lame and the sunlight was in my face, but here's a couple shots of the early action.

If I had to characterize the sounds and style of each climber it would be thusly:
1. Alexey
A deep grunt and a scrape here and there, but always going up.

2. Christina
Beauty and grace. Fluid. Like water running uphill.

3. Jaybro
Curses and belching. The sound of a waterbuffalo giving birth. A True Master of the Wide.

4. Vitaliy
I don't know, he didn't stop yapping and making jokes long enough for me to get a bead on him



So Paul, Adam, Limpingcrab and others set off to find their own adventure on the massive pillars east of the flake. They got themselves into some nice stuff and maybe they'll post their photos here on this thread. Paul's shot looking down on The Flake from their high point is beyond stunning.


I cruised around shooting many of my 632 photos from the weekend, including these of Jim, Valley Hardkid and mandolin maestro, onsight freesoloing on The Passionate Life (5.11c)....the left of the two prize offwidth cracks on the flake....without a shirt, just to make sure the poison oak wax from the hike in got rubbed in nice and good.
That kid ain't right.




I went back inside the flake and got this rad shot of Alexey high in the offwidth. How often do you get to be INSIDE a legendary route shooting out?!


I then found a cool pedestal to stand on in the sun and shoot the wall from below. These shots are from both days one and two and show the steepness of the route's first pitch. Remember, this brute is 240 feet tall over two pitches. Not your typical short grunt. Its in your face for a couple hours. at some point, Christina hollered up to Jaybro "I JUST WANT TO STOP GOING UP!!!!" she collected her wits, finished to the belay, then said "I think I'm gonna puke!" Atta girl.


Ok....enough climbing action. The real party was back at Kirch Flat later that night.

I bailed to go get the marinade ready and after a frigid bath in the Kings River we had a rager goin by the time the warriors found their way back home. John Elezarian prepared rice pilaf that woulda made you slap your momma and he sliced and diced a mountain of fresh veggies. He bathed these in olive oil salt and pepper and pure love while I grilled a pile of chicken and bratwurst impregnated with enough Pappy's Seasoning to give a man liver failure. This was to be a barbeque of biblical proportions.


Vitaliy's grandma made some sort of sweet, lemony, flaky, magic Ukranian cake from heaven that will have our children's children talking about it around campfires for generations to come. Seriously, my parotid glands are swelling just thinking about it as I type.

Vitaliy...call me. Right now. I need your grandma's phone number. Is that weird?


We sat down and as Macronut got the big kids fire ready, we enjoyed laughter and stories from the day's adventure around a wonderful meal with new friends. Does the climbing life get any better?


So we revel into the wee hours, talking about everything from splitters to chimneys, from Josh to the Bugaboos and everything in between. From astro physics to child raising, and from wives tales about poison oak cures to the golden age of Yosemite. Its just like the Supertopo forum....but people are nice to eachother. There is no slander (ok, a little) or malice or anger or ego. Funny how meeting face to face does that. As the flame dies down, Macronut and Crotch and I stay up late while Jim plucks away on the mandolin.


We played hard this weekend, but the real meat and potatoes of this trip are right here, in the warmth and dying embers of the fire that has brought us together in this wild, scrappy place, off the beaten path, where the adventure is measured in hours of groveling and crawling rather than letter and number grades.

We have done the place proud. Patterson Bluff is now more than just a place we've all heard about, and Balch Camp Flake is more than a mystery. The flake is silent now....way above us, in the hills beyond the roughneck PG&E village of Balch Camp she sleeps, waiting for her next suitors. As we amble off to our tents, the first hints of a scratchy rash begin under my armpit where a chink in my armour has revealed itself. And I know I'll be remembering this weekend for a long long time.

Well done Supertopo.

Micronut,
Out.


POSTSCRIPT. I just want to give a special shout out to Jaybro. I had never met him prior to this weekend and I just want to say thank you for the vision you had for that route so many years ago, the energy you put into the trail this week and for being the glue that made this whole thing worth while. It was a blast. See you next year?

(Please note that I kinda combined two days of climbing action into one for photo and writing time sake. Kinda confusing, I know. I'll keep my day job)