Pine Creek Canyon: A Dirtbag's Dream

It turns out that hiking 200 miles through the wilderness is not good training for a month long climbing trip through the Eastern Sierra. Every climb I tried in Whitney Portal resulted in frustration-fest of flailing. I needed to re-group and get my strength and mental game back. Where is the best place to mentally recuperate after an old school Eastern Sierra shutdown, you may ask? Why, Pine Creek Canyon, of course.

The Pine Creek Canyon area has caught the interest of climbers for decades. In 1968 Chuck Pratt sent the line that intimidates all of the sport (and even trad) climbers that wander into the canyon: the 165 foot long offwidth nightmare nestled in between the main wall and a detaching block of clean, vertical granite. Being a Yosemite big wall climber in the 1960's may have been the edge Chuck Pratt needed to send the line, especially since he climbed it before spring-loaded camming devices had even been invented (Side note: look up "Bold" in the dictionary and you'll see Chuck's chiseled, bearded face).

The climbing in Pine Creek Canyon follows the audacious climbing style that Chuck laid down in the late 1960's: tough but fun. Although the area is famous for a hellacious offwidth, the area caters more to sport climbers than traditional climbers. Routes have been going up for decades and hard working, devoted locals were actively bolting up new lines as we ascended old ones. Be warned, however, that you may be sandbagged if you walk up to a route without local beta. I found myself flailing on a 10.c, which I believed to be well within my climbing abilities. After descending and pondering the philosophical and existential reasoning for my not-so-graceful failure, a local walked by and informed me that holds had broken off of the route in the last few years. That's right: in Pine Creek Canyon, people don't sandbag people, rocks sandbag people.

After five days of climbing hard, petting dogs (ALL the dogs), and wonderfully short approaches, I felt stronger both physically and mentally. After finding our groove in the area, it seemed hard to imagine leaving. Our campsite bordered a raging mountain stream where we could gather and filter water for coffee in the mornings, which would be sipped while viewing the majestically intimidating dihedrals of Pratt's Crack area. It was a happy little existance. However, after mentally recovering from my Whitney Portal spaking, I (we) became interested in other iconic Eastern Sierra climbing. Upon Peter Croft's recommendation, we picked up camp and drove up to the end of Highway 168 for some truly epic multipitch crack climbing on pure, Sierra Nevadan granite: Cardinal Pinnacle.

#climbing #Bishop #rockclimbing #PineCreekCanyon #PrattsCrack #sportclimbing