More Practice for El Cap

I head to Rubidoux fairly often so I don't post all my trips since they are all about the same. This time Nathalie was with me and took some pictures of me climbing so I figure I would post those since most of my pictures of the area are of other people or self-portraits from up on the rock. This was one of a few trips I made before my October 2008 attempt to climb El Cap.

Not sure what I'm looking at in this picture. I'm either trying to figure out how to rig up a traverse so I can practice cleaning it or I am eyeing a cam that was left in the crack. If I remember right I believe this was the trip where I spent 20-30 minutes working a welded cam out of the crack. It's an old Friend, a piece of history. It was rather beat up and didn't function properly so I have it on my desk at work. Almost looks like it was machined in someone's garage.

On Smooth Sole Slab I set an anchor at the top of the crack. There are some bolts on the face to the left that I use to rig up a traverse. I double up my line and rap down one end. I place a cam in the crack at the bottom of the dihedral face on the left and place the free end in it. Then I rap down a bit more and tension traverse to the bolt where I clip the freeline again. Then I just lower off. I switch to the free line and jug up it and I am now on the traverse. This is nice because it is a good size traverse and I can easily get back to clean any gear I leave so I can practice lowering out off the biner in the bolt and always get it later.

Here I am at a lower bolt on the traverse line. It is difficult to see the traverse line due to the shadow.