Goode for girls.

Just a quick update. Jed is off guiding the Thunderbolt to Sill portion of the Palisade Traverse. The owners of our company, Howie and Neil have dubbed Jed the Palisades Expert. This is sort of a big deal and means that Jed is every bit the badass that I think he is!
Anyhow, in my quest to expand my climbing partner list from basically just Jed and Vic, I have been climbing with our good friend Beth recently. We started in Tuolumne on bolted run-out face climbs about a month ago. Our next outing was a new 6 pitch 10b route in Pine Creek. We did well on that and the day went really smoothly. So on Monday we set our alarms early and headed up towards Bishop Pass on our way to climb Mt. Goode. Goode has a reputation. It is reputed to be not only big, but loose, and hard. It is usually a climb that diehard sierra climbers sort of save for last, and this was the case to us. I was pretty sure that the whole thing would be made of slick black obsidian and would be the coldest spot on the eastside. Well, it isn't made of obsidian, it is made of beautiful golden Sierra granite (go figure) but it is loose, and it is sort of steep, and it did require our very best alpine skills. I had a great day, and Beth is a lot of fun to climb with in addition to being a totally solid climbing partner. I have never really climbed with a girl before and was stunned at how different the experience was compared to going out with the boys. Overall I can say that to climb with another girl has a similar feeling to have soloed a route. I felt like, damn, we did that all by ourselves. At the top when we got a little confused as to where to go, we figured it out. When clouds started coming in, we decided it was ok. When decisions were made, WE made them. It was a really great feeling overall.
The route however, was not very good. In fact, I can honestly say that it was my least favorite Sierra climb so far.
Also, we forgot the f-ing camera and it was probably the most asthetic day I've had in a while given the two smokin' hot babes climbing a sexy looking piece of granite. Oh well, this photo pulled from Summit Post will have to work.
Over and out.