October 7, 2021
I had the good luck to climb mid-week, just splitting two storms, in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison with my friend Micah. I headed down there Wednesday evening and we got on Midsummer’s Night Dream (5.11a)–Sex Comedy (5.10) and then Maiden Voyage (5.9)–King Me (5.10-). We ended up with 12 pitches mostly in the 5.9 zone with a few 5.10 and one or two 5.7ish ones. I haven’t done this many pitches at those grades in quite a while and it was nice to be able to not get totally worked after it, though I am sore today. The crux on MSND was pretty good. I thought that the crack just before the “crux” was actually less secure than the face moves around the fridge block, maybe because I’ve been climbing more sport lately. My favorite pitch of that route was the Sex Comedy crack and the 5.9 roofs pitch, which had awesome movement.
Micah lead in the morning on MSND, after a quick stop at the cars we went back down the Cruise Gully for the second half of the day on Maiden Voyage and King Me. I lead Maiden Voyage and Micah did the first two of King Me. It was good to do some moderately challenging moves on gear. While I know the Black does have some super long, scary routes, these routes were pretty solid rock and good protection. I think this could be a great place to explore a bit more.
