The weekend started inauspiciously with my 5 person carpool group shrinking to just me during the week before the trip, and I couldn’t make other arrangements before the 10AM Friday traffic window, so I set out by myself. As usual, the torrential downpour in Tacoma yielded to sunny skies as I got closer to Central Oregon (70 degrees according to the thermometer at Government Camp). I was the only one to arrive during the day on Friday, so the original plan of getting a few lazy afternoon pitches in was bagged in favor of helping Mary bake up a storm (when I arrived there were 2 kinds of bread, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cake with frosting, all from scratch).

People started arriving later that afternoon and into the middle of the night, so by Saturday morning, we had a pretty good sized but not overwhelmingly large group: Mary, myself, Clare, Dawn, and Shannon. After a luxurious breakfast including freshly baked scones and muffins, (the campground at Smith Rock is nice, but it can’t compare to sleeping on a comfy pullout couch and having breakfast made by a retired professional chef and baker) it was finally time to hit the rock! Apparently a weather forecast of 40% chance of rain in Bend means at least 60% chance of ridiculously perfect weather — it was sunny, cool enough that you could actually climb in the sun without melting, AND warm enough to not freeze while belaying or standing around.

Nice Day!

Even better, the forecast seemed to have scared off the crowds. We spend the whole day in the usually packed Dihedrals, and only had to share with one group that spent the day repeatedly mock leading Bunny Face, a nice couple from Colorado that asked to use the stick clip and let us share their rope, and some guys grunting on some 5.12s that none of us would be able to touch anyway. On paper that looks like a crowd, but that’s actually really quiet for a Saturday at Smith. I’ve done most of these routes before, but the style of climbing at Smith is so different from the stuff I usually do closer to home, so it’s always a treat.

Dawn and Mary

• Dihedrals, Lycopodophyta, 5.7 trad (lead) pretty straightforward
• Dihedrals, Rabbit Stew, 5.7 trad (lead) almost the same as Lycopodophyta
• Dihedrals, Helium Woman, 5.9 sport (lead) slippery pebble crux at the 2nd bolt, then easier
• Dihedrals, Captain Xenolith, 5.10a sport (lead) almost identical to Helium Woman (see a theme here?)
• Dihedrals, Wedding Day, 5.10b sport (TR) best route of the day: pockets, arete, a bit of cracks. I wish I’d lead it
• Dihedrals, Bookworm P1, 5.7 trad (lead) The top half takes big gear. Fortunately you can substitute a single bogus small cam placement in an creaky flake if all the big cams are in the bottom half of the route. Since I am short the crux was reaching the anchors from the belay ledge.

If Saturday was for the familiar, Sunday was for the new. Genevieve and Brenna had showed up Saturday night, so we had a slightly different group configuration. We had another delicious breakfast so there was no chance of being first on the wall. Everyone else had apparently got the news about the weather; when we got there, we literally saw a rope on every route 5.10 or below on the front side. Mary suggested that we go back across the bridge to somewhere I’d never climbed before: Rope de Dope, the little cube that sits across the river from Morning Glory. It’s almost all sport routes, and it’s on big textured gas pockets, so it’s very different from the pebble-embedded stuff on the main wall. There’s also actual picnic tables in the belay area, and stairs to walk up to the anchors, very civilized.

• Rope De Dope, How Low Can You Go?, 5.6 sport (lead) just to get something easy up to start with
• Rope De Dope, Low Blow, 5.10b sport (lead) close bolts, plentiful jugs, kind of like an Exit 38 .10, except with sharp gas pockets instead of incuts. Genevieve’s first 10b
• Rope De Dope, Float Like A Butterfly, 5.10b sport (lead) I’m not sure why this one got 4 stars and Low Blow got one star in the gudebook, since they seemed pretty much the same to me. I’m actually not sure about the names of the routes since there are more bolted lines than there are routes listed in the book.

More pictures from Genevieve.