Hand Crack and Singletrack: Van Cott, Dragons, and Nibley Park

Did a nice linkup after work friday afternoon of Mt Wire and Mt Van Cott(first summit for me) in gorgeous sunny conditions, an 8 mile 4500' effort with minimal snow.

Saturday Annie and I enjoyed some time climbing at a new-to-us LCC crag, Dragon Arch. We did 3 fun climbs up there, Enter the Dragon(11a), Gimme Danger(10+), and the namesake wall route, Dragon Arch(9+). It was a bright, sunny, warm day and we were glad to be climbing rather than skiing in the likely slush. Avalanches were rampant across the canyon on the north facing slopes, and the ice climb Scruffy Band looked quite scruffy indeed with the upper and lower ice segments connected by a gushing waterfall. Is winter gone?

We were lucky enough to be in the presence of Shingo Ohkawa and Nik Berry, both who are intimidating factors in their own rights. I have met Shingo countless times at many places, from Jah Man in Moab, to the crackhouse garage, to IME, to White Pine drainage, but he still has no idea who I am, nor likely cares. Shingo put up both Enter the Dragon and Gimme Danger, so I was more than a little nervous to attempt an onsight lead of his routes while he watched. And of course BD grassroots athlete Nik Berry could have onsight soloed the thing in his tennies if he wanted to, but was kind enough to not embarrass me as I flailed on the crux 11a thin bulge lieback. They happily looked on in silence as they TR'd the crap out of some 9's. I took a pretty solid whipper at the crux on Enter the Dragon, but pulled through after one hang. Really fun route. Annie unfortunately dislocated her shoulder as she randomly does, and then got whipped in the eye by the pulled rope shortly thereafter. She had a tough 10 min stretch but was kind enough to belay me on the fun lieback bolted "crack" of Gimme Danger despite her day being done. Bolt spacing on this route was not reminiscent of the gym's in anyway, which I enjoyed oddly enough. And Dragon Arch itself was a fun finger crack with a stupifying last move involving a bolt protected dyno to a oval chickenhead while reaching across a gorge created by a massive flake. Pretty cool.