Jello on a very springy spring

So Graeme and I head off to Old Baldy to climb some moderate routes, as G's not climbed regularly for a while (even though he's still as strong as a bull). I also need to work on my outdoor head, and I figure having some easy success under my belt will help. Rather than walking all the way to the far end of the face to take the easy descent, we take the more technical descent at the near end of the face. The humidity is extreme, and in the shade (did I mention that the descent is in the shade?) every rock surface is wet and unbelievably slick. But okay, Graeme is nonplussed so I pretend nonchalance as well, although the whimpering probably doesn't make for a convincing case. We make it to the bottom in two whole pieces, though, so all is good. As the trail at the bottom of the cliff-face ascends out of the shade, the temperature increases by something like 10° for every inch it climbs. The rock is no longer wet, except for some seepage on the face. No big deal at all.

G looks in the guide book while I slather on the first of many, ultimately ineffective, layers of deet, and chooses a 5.10a, Jello on a Spring, which should be an easy warm-up for both of us. I get up two clips and can't work out the move to the third clip. I just keep doing the same thing over and over again that is clearly not the right move, but I can't see anything else to do. I feel completely defeated, but I try to keep a positive outlook and not let negative self-talk defeat me. I decide I'm wasting our time and come down so that G can give it a shot. He finds an enormous undercling that I've totally missed and handily makes the third clip, but he's completely shut down trying to get to clip four. We switch up again in our little game of leap-frog that we're now playing, and I get shut down as well trying to get to the fourth clip.

While we're playing our sick little ego-crushing game of leap-frog, on a frickin' 10a fer chrissakes, an elderly couple come along and dance their way up the 11a to the right of us, Mahseeve Cool. We switch up yet again, and G doesn't even bother to pull the rope this time, but top ropes to the third clip so he can concentrate on the enemy, the elusive and evil fourth bolt. I'm really starting to get distracted, though, by my ego trying to reassert itself. This can NOT, my ego insists, possibly be a 10a. This is indeed, though, the second route from the left of this section of cliff face, which was the primary criterion G used to find the route. I look over again at the bolts I can see on the first route while G is resting again after another attempt to muscle up overhanging bulge and I notice how sparkly and new the bolts look. I think about how the bolt line veers way off to the left, and how really much easier than this 10a that 12-something route looked. Graeme tries once again to throw from the undercling to the bulge overhead. Rest time again.

I make my way over to the guide book, and took at the topo. The 5.12c/d, Air Jamaica, that is the leftmost route on this section of cliff listed in the nine-year-old guide book, doesn't seem to veer even slightly to the left. In fact, it has a bolt line that is pretty much as vertical as the route we're on. "Um, Graeme," I begin...

Graeme cleans as he downclimbs, and we move one route to the right, to warm up on a 5.10a, Jello on a Spring, which should be an easy warm-up for both of us...

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Cross-posted on climbhard.net