First Time at Smith Rocks!

I recently spent about 4 days climbing in Smith Rocks State Park in Oregon, near Bend. We bailed down here from the North Cascades after some particularly dubious looking weather (see previous post). We had bluebird days and warm weather. We met up with Lauren and Sapna and had a great time showing Sapna some basic climbing skills. Lauren is an ace climber. Nuff said.

Mmm. Coffee with the beautiful Ms. Jackson

This little route is called 5 Gallon Buckets. Nice and easy and a great route for beginners.

We watched the group in front of us totally fall apart on this little 2 pitch route. We waited for them to finish and cruised it. Fun climbing, great gear. Spiderman 5.7

This is the 5.7 roof. Way easier than it looks.

We are fully ready for dinner.

This is from a 5 pitch sport route called Wherever I May Roam 5.9. It's well bolted, lots of exposed face climbing and great belay stations. Definitely worth a climb if you're in the neighbor hood.

Smith was pretty hard for me to climb, as I tend to gravitate toward crack climbing and don't have a lot of face/sport experience. It took a couple days to learn how to move better over the rock but it was great overall.