Demon Dome; Needles, CA

We caught the wedding in Hollywood which was on the roof top of a hotel and awesome.  As Brian is Mexican and his bride is Asian the night was capped off with a Asian Mexican fusion taco truck.  It was very LA and Brain.  Good times. 

Sadly almost everyone we know in LA was out of town for the weekend so we didn’t catchup with anyone but headed to the Needles to climb.  We were joined by Skater Dave and in the morning headed up Summer Sojurn 5.7 on Voodoo Dome.  The first pitches went fine but when we got the the runout 5.5 pitch things went back.  I headed up on the lead got a few pieces in the crack above the belay and started a runout traverse which wasn’t bad but not easy.  Following that I moved up into a bowl and found a yellow alien placement from there I looked up at 50 ft of slab and couldn’t see a bolt.  I moved up about 15-20 ft on the to slab staying with in my retreat zone but still couldn’t see a bolt.  I wasn’t up for running it out on that to who knows where so I down climbed everything which was less than fun and we back lead the pitch below and then were able to rappel off the two bolted belays.  Drag…

The next day we headed up on to Demon Dome on Rosemary’s Baby 5.8 4 pitches.

Anja took the first pitch and cruised up to a nice belay.

Skater Dave following pitch 1.

I led the second pitch and got the kind of hanging belay which was kind of lousy.

We extended Anja on a 10 ft clove hitch on the rope to a super comfy ledge.  Too bad there wasn’t a nice pair of bolts on this ledge.

Nice views

Ken belaying.

Dave took the 3rd pitch and got the crux. Up high on the pitch was a big block with a very slabby poorly protected step out. Anja took the 4 pitch which was slabby and kind of hard also but overall went pretty ok. From there is was a 4th class scramble to the top. We topped out and then down climbed to the bolt anchor at the top of 4. Rappelled to the top of 3, then rappelled out on the face and did two more to the ground. Nice double rope ride back down. Was a perfect day for climbing as a party of three on double ropes.