Sugarloaf climbing and Chili Bar kayaking

I managed to convince my friend, David, to go climbing at Sugarloaf late Friday night and we left Sac at about 10:45 Saturday morning. So up the hill we went to the town of Kyburz off Hwy. 50 about 3/4 of the way to South Lake Tahoe from Sacramento.

Sugarloaf is an impressive rock formation surrounded by what apparently are boulders that have broken off the main formation over the millennia. No matter what your climbing fancy, Sugarloaf has it. Bouldering, bolted single pitch, bolted multi pitch, traditional single and multi pitch. The thing Sugarloaf does not have, however, is an abundance of easy climbs. There is a very detailed guide book out there (Falcon guides I think?) but we just browsed www.mountainproject.com for our beta. I think I'll pick up the published guide book in the near future because I plan to return to Sugarloaf many more times.

The climb of choice for us is called "Sheister", a 5.7 crack which starts with a short chimney that spits you out onto a little protected face which represents the crux of the climb. The route runs about 350 feet, almost two full rope lengths. It's a great route for a solid 5.7 climber. I've been out of the climbing game for awhile, not to mention trad climbing, and was barely able to grind my way up the first pitch. After the crux you are rewarded with a large ledge to catch your breath, followed by a nice crack that leads into about 25 feet of 5.7 lie back before coming to a bolted belay anchor. You can belay from the ledge if you like but you won't have enough rope to finish the climb in two pitches if you do (assuming you use a 60m rope). The anchor bolts are nice, placed perfectly above a 3" deep by about 18" wide ledge on which to stand. Comfy and a great view all around. A daunting looking overhanging crack looms just to your left and the mountainscape leading to Tahoe is on your right.

The second pitch is much simpler with several fun moves and two more lie backs, one on your right and one for your left. The route leads to the left under a cool looking roof, up some class 4 boulders and back to the right (which is where the 2nd lie back is). Some 5.6 climbing leads you to the nice belay ledge where you can relax and enjoy the view in style. From here you crawl through a keyhole to the East side of the formation, make a sharp right (don't look down :-p) and can scramble down the back side with little difficulty and walk back to your backpacks that you left behind.

It is a great spot to climb, for sure. Thanks to Matthias for recommending "Scheister" to us because we were told that this is the easiest one out there. It was a struggle for me, David did great on lead. Thanks for pulling my butt up the mountain David. The view at the top of the formation is spectacular, making the trip up for just 1 route completely worthwhile. I need to work on my strength and conditioning because this 5.7 really took it out of me, but I'll be back to climb as many of those great cracks as I can.  4 starts and 2 thumbs up for this crag.

After a nice tiring day climbing on Saturday I decided to go kayaking on Sunday. I'm still working out some kinks after my experience on the North Fork almost 2 months ago and I was hesitant to go back to the North Fork which led to my kayaking the Chili Bar section for the 2nd trip in a row for me. I'm very glad I made this decision because my skills are far from class IV ability right now. My nerves have a little way to go too. So off we went, Brandon and I, to meet up with Joe and Steve to hit Chili Gnar at a beefy flow of 1600cfs. We were a fun looking group I'm sure: Joe in an R1 rig, Steve in an open whitewater canoe, and Brandon and I kayaking.

I had a great day despite my kayak struggles. I flipped on 1st Threat, just some bad technique was the cause, rolled on my 3rd attempt and managed to get flipped at the end of 2nd Threat by a mild eddy line. That flip took me 4 roll attempts. 4 roll attempts! Sheesh. I thought I might even swim. My head is a bit of a mess. I need to get in a pool and get my roll back down. Not sure what was happening there. The rest of the run went well, eddy hopping and trying to boof some little rocks and playing around. TroubleMaker obviously got my heart pumping a bit and I caught the river left eddy a little too high, nosing into a rock and nearly getting rejected backwards into the curler. Silly. But I held it in the eddy, watched Steve flip at the top of the rapid and swim the whole thing, then peeled out, punched Gunsight hole and flipped. 4 roll attempts later I limped into the eddy to catch my breath.

Brandon took a turn in the canoe and fell out once on the class 2 stretch before we took out at the bridge. It was a great day with great peeps and I finished my weekend completely exhausted. Good times. Enjoy the pictures if you wish.