McGregor Mangan

Big day out the other day with @franhammond23 at cannon cliff. We climbed Moby Grape (~800ft, 5.8), consisting of splitter crack, awkward roofs, short squeeze chimneys, big dihedrals, runout slab and actually more quality rock than I was expecting.

This was our first big climb together and one of few trad leads for Fran. Turns out he got the lead on all the tricky pitches and nailed ‘em. About halfway up I ventured off on a supposed “bolted 5.9 slab” which was pretty hard (I ended up French-freeing through the crux (Fran stepped on the bolt to get through on the follow)) and led me to a ledge of bushwhacking to get back on route. Otherwise things went pretty smoothly but we spent many hours on the wall.

Due to a planning snafu we had to return to the base of the route on our descent to retrieve gear. We tried a couple shortcuts on some faint trails off the main descent trail and found ourselves in dense forest and mossy boulders. After backtracking, we got to the parking lot at 7pm. Then we turned around and made the half hour hike back up the steep approach trail and talus slope in dwindling daylight, grabbed our stuff, and headed on back down the talus and through the forest in the dark, returning yet again to the car at 8pm and we were cooked.

All in all, great day in the mountains.

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