Hey SoYos! You can blame mungeclimber for my redirection to this site
I love the smell of Baloon Dome in the morning!
Smells like off width!
And loooooong slabby runnouts.
The story behind the story.... I crushed my leg in a talus running accident. After 5 weeks of recovery I found myself at Marine Cracks area at Chipmunk Flat with my long time buddies Angus and Burl. Burl had recently taken up climbing with us and his very first multi-pitch and very first lead had been earlier that year, on Chiquito Dome of all places. Liberty, I seem to recall.
Anyway, at Marine Cracks I managed to climb a decently hard slab (one I tried to repeat with a guy named 'edge' from supertopo, this past summer, when he came thru SPH on a tour of the west, and could not do hehe). That afternoon, sitting at the base of a tree that I would revisit many times over the course of the intervening 20-some years since then, I asked what we were going to do the following weekend.
Angus replied,
"How about Balloon Dome?" My snarky reply,
"In a day?" Angus opened one eye and said,
"Is there any other way?"
"I'm in!" Chimed Burl.
The rest is as we say, history.
Always wanted to get back in there. Conversed with Mike Grabber about his first ascents with the Brothers Black, of the East Face and Boku Maru, a few years back. That was pretty cool. We had intentions of doing Boku Maru, but dayum that thing is run OUT and the bolts even then were 20-year old 1/4 inchers. We did the E Face instead thinking it would be better protected. Hehe. No. At least not with the rack we had.
Cheerio
DMT
