On Sunday I climbed in the Pinnacles High Peaks with Andy Gardner.
Andy had very generously called me the night before and offered
to climb, saving me from another couch potato NFL session.

With a 7am start from Santa Clara, we were the second car in the
upper East Side parking lot.  We hiked up to just after the tunnel
below Salathe's Sliver to check out a couple of small pinnacles that
I had seen bolts on during a recent trip.  It turns out they were too
rotten to be worth climbing, but I did note them on my web page, in case
anyone is curious ( http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~clint/pin.htm ).

Next we toproped a promising dark waterstreak, just east of the
Scout Peak trail junction/outhouse.  On my way down the rap, we
discovered that there were some significant blank spots, after many
key knobs were easily removed.  We still managed to toprope most of it,
but with a pendulum about halfway to bypass a hideously loose section,
and we couldn't do the exit moves.  Oh, well, that's life in the
exploration game.

At the Flatiron, Andy led  Burton's Below 5.8+  , which was sketchy
with many small flakes/bits shedding off, and an exciting move over
the final bulge.  I then led a direct version of the regular route
(5.3 with a 5.10a move over the final bulge -- a good test for my
recovering finger).

I led Long's Folly 5.8 at the main High Peaks area.  We found that
the "runout" chimney was well protected by a #2 and #3 Camalot (I
paused below the chimney to yard up those pieces on a slack loop).
Perhaps more importantly, we found kneepads were not required (as
we had forgotten them).

Just before sunset, we raced to bag the South Finger.  We soloed up
the 5.3 approach, then I 4th classed up the 5.4 chimney and wide crack
(wide pro would have been useful, since we didn't even have a belay
anchor...).  Andy cruised up the final 5.5 arete past the bolts,
in the fading light.  As on Long's Folly, we used the bolts/chains
that Bruce Hildenbrand had just installed last week, although the
chains were just short of the edge, so we attached a sling!

It was a fun day of exploring routes that were new to both of us.

Clint