Goat Rock  2/3/07  SAC Intro trip

Trip leader:  Linnea
Instructors:  Björn, Clint, Kent
Participants:  Chase, Cara, Mindi, Christine, Nick, Greg, Adela, Dana, Keith

This trip was originally scheduled for the previous Saturday (Jan. 27),
but it was rained out on that Friday.  We used the standard rule of rain
in the previous 3 days cancelling trips to local sandstone, so that holds
are not broken off after being weakened by rainwater absorbed into the rock.
We had already picked out Feb. 3 as a rain date, given past experiences with
being rained out there in the winter.

Linnea handled the Friday night (6:30pm) gym session to rent out shoes,
harnesses, and helmets.  And also to teach belaying to about 6 people who had
not already learned at the climbing wall.  She got there an hour early and
managed to figure out which closet by the basketball courts had the gear,
and how to unlock the storage cabinet.  I (Clint) showed up at about 7:15pm
(just back from Pinnacles), and helped put away the extra gear.  I had also
dropped by on Wednesday night to grab six ropes and the bag of 1" slings for
setting up the topropes.

The turnout was definitely lower than we had expected given the original
email responses.  We had expected up to __ students, but we had nine.  (Eight
had shown up at the wall session, plus Keith called later after having
forgotten to attend).  The lower turnout may have been partly due to our
cancelling the original trip and moving it to one week later.  So the
instructor to student ratio was quite high.

We took the "2 waves" approach like we had done in October, with Björn and I
taking 6 students up at 8:30am, and Linnea and Kent following up at 11am
with 3 more students.  I was a little late to the Tresidder parking lot,
after I realized at the last moment that I should print a few more
waiver/medical forms (although it turned out that Björn had printed some as
well).  We tested the two driving routes, with Chase and Greg doing up
Page Mill to Skyline, while I went on 280/85 via Saratoga.  Both are about
the same (45 minutes), although this time I beat the others to the shoulder
parking area (outside the pay lot) by 2 minutes.

We divided up the ropes among everyone and hiked down the ravine trail
and out to Goat Rock.  Weather was cool in the shade but very nice in the
sun once near Goat Rock.  I hiked directly to the top of the crag via the
stairs on the right side.  2 other climbers had barely beaten us there, and
they set up topropes on the right side Nose and the Great Roof.  I set up
ropes on all the other usual routes (left side, right side roof, and Swiss
Cheese Face).  Later, as the 2 climbers finished with their routes, I moved
our ropes onto them, and they also used our rope on the left side route.
It would have been wise to leave a bit earlier (at 7:30 or 8am) to avoid
potential problems of another large group showing up and setting up most of
the routes on the rock for the day.  Back in October, a Boy Scout group had
arrived earlier than us and fortunately were not there all day.

I found a better anchor for the "right side roof", by tying off two tunnels
at the horizontal midway ledge, about 10' above the lip of the roof.
Previously we had anchored our rope from far above, with tunnels at the
summit cave.  But on the October trip, this had resulted in core shots on
the rope, because people kept having to swing the rope to the right to keep
it above them.  So this was a nice improvement.  I used a 10' and a 15' sling
to extend from the tunnels to biners just below the lip of the roof.  The
tunnels can be access by rappelling from above (most easily by using the
Swiss Cheese rope).  They can also be accessed by soloing across from the
right side, but this is only for people comfortable with soloing on low
class 5.  I will update my topo of the anchor setup to show this new location.
It can be seen in one of the photos from the trip.  Cleaning these anchors
at the end of the day is not very simple.  I did it this time by soloing
across the midway ledge.  It could also be done (more safely, but more slowly)
by rapping from above.

The second wave of folks showed up at around 1pm, and joined in the fun.
With pretty much ideal weather, an uncrowded rock, and nice climbs, everyone
was pretty pleased.  I think pretty much everyone got to do all the climbs
(although not everyone attempted the Great Roof), and some did them more
than once!  We also shared our ropes with a few people who came along,
since our ropes were often free.  I've always felt this is a good policy,
to avoid overly "monopolizing" the crag.

In the afternoon we set up the usual belayed rappel on the Swiss Cheese Face,
and all the students did it with no problems.

When things cooled off in the late afternoon, and everyone was done climbing,
we coiled up the ropes and cleaned off the anchors, then hiked out with
everything, before dark.  We tested both the upper and lower hiking trails,
with the lower trail appearing about 4 minutes faster this time.
I collected all the ropes and SAC gear (shoes, harnesses, helmets, ATCs).
The drive back to Stanford was uneventful.