[TR] Umatilla Rock - 12/8/2007

[spotly]

Trip: Umatilla Rock -

 

Date: 12/8/2007

 

Trip Report:

We climbed up Umatilla Rock yesterday. I kinda figured the rock would be total crap but been wanting to get up it for awhile. We did a neat little single pitch 5.9ish line on the east side of the rock. There were 3 bands of rock. The lower band was like crumb cake and the top one was kind of a mix of good and bad with "ok" placements if you looked hard. The middle band was maybe 40 feet of clean rock with a couple of nice large flakes. The top was broken up as expected but we lucked onto a couple of large boulders to rap from. A fun way to spend a cold day.

 

Mainly we just wanted to get outta town, pitch the tents and build a huge fire for marshmallow roasting. The wind was bad and flattened the tent every now and then. Saw a huge tick crawling around in the campground restroom. The temp got up to about 30. Not sure what it got down to overnight but it did stress the zero degree bag to its limit. Looks like a fire scorched a huge tract on the east side of the rock - anyone know when that happened? I've got some more pics at Umatilla Rock if you're interested.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Few large hexes.

Cams .4 to 3.

Looong webbing for the rap anchor.

 

Approach Notes:

If ranger Dick is on duty, plan an extra few miles (RT) of walking the access road.

[sobo]

Shit, spotly, I've seen that shit over there a bazillion times on trips through the coulees, but I never thought anybody actually climbed that shite over there by the park (except when/if it froze up). Whew! Good on you fer giving it the ol' college go!

[WTD]

I'm glad to see your shoulder held up to such winter abuse. Great TR.

[spotly]

There were a few moves higher up that twisted it in a way it didn't want to go. Brian was good enough to carry both rope and rack - strengthening my status as the master of wuss lately