Hand Crack and Singletrack: The dirty trinity

No this title post isn't in reference to the standard, but unfortunately wrong, christian view of the Godhead. Two separate events.

Friday I managed to send my LCC trad project, Trinity Right,12a, up in the Green A gully. It took 4 lead attempts and a couple TR handdog sessions to dial it in. Does that count as a project? Maybe not. Regardless, it was my first 12a trad redpoint, so I'm stoked despite the notion that it is a bit soft for LCC 12a. A brief description of the route is: starts out with a tricky undercling move out a small roof that leads to a strenuous lieback up an obtuse corner with flarey finger jams(crux) to a great flake rest, followed by a reachy karate chop hand jam throw right to a pumpy undercling traverse to the chains. Superb route. The crux lieback involves a very tricky tcu placement that is critical to get right as you must punch it to the flake jug a good 5-6 feet past that. I didn't do a good job at getting that placement dialed in as last Wednesday it fell out as Mark was attempting a pinkpoint with my preplaced gear. He was not happy. Then when I tried on my first go with Annie on Friday, I fell and it ripped, sending me down 8 feet off the deck. I decided not to fall on my next go. Then I got a .75 stuck in the roof and had to spend 10 minutes in the dark breaking a nubbin with a nut tool to free it from its potential final resting place. Sorry no pics. Still to send: Cross eyed and Painless 12d in BCC

I was heckled a bit by those running a greater distance than 5.5 miles on Saturday, but we had a great time running in the mud of the Dirty Dash. This is a non-timed event, which means just basically do whatever you want and have fun. There were muds fields, mud holes, mud lakes, mud ponds, mud walls, mud ropes, mud barrels, and a giant mud slip-n-slide. The slip-n-slide was stellar. I rocketed into a girl who had crashed at the bottom of the slide, then my dad barrelled into us. No one was seriously injured. The muddy water was freezing in most of the pools and it was not balmy warm outside, but it was definitely the dirtist I've ever been. Annie is still swabbing mud from my ears.