From left: Dhruv, Cara, Chris, Cat, Andres, Russel, and Jay after a solid day of climbing.
On Sunday 4/24, we had our first officer-led outdoor trip of the season!
We took advantage of the capricious Pittsburgh weather last weekend and headed out to Breakneck for some sport climbing in relatively hot and sunny weather under the leadership of Cat. Our group had a good mix of an all-things-outdoors-expert (Cat), kid crusher (Russell), people who had climbed outside before (Andres, Dhruv, and Jay), and people climbing outside for the first time (Chris and Cara).
Andres shrugs off the heat
We got to Breakneck nice and early and were welcomed by an empty parking lot (thank you SWPACC!), and hiked up to the Main Wall. In a sign of things to come the rest of the day, some of us tagged along with Cat as she set up a couple top rope anchors and talked us through the steps and safety precautions for doing so. This was followed by a quick discussion/refresher/tutorial about belay devices and belaying. Most of us started our day with a climb up ye olde Southwest PA classic Eclipse (5.6), while Jay and Russell worked either Nemosis (5.8) or Fool’s Gold (5.9) – still not sure which one we set up. We made some new friends at the crag, including a very friendly dog named Enzo.
Jay working Gas on the Fire (5.12a)
Cat led (ha!) some of us through a mock lead session on Eclipse, and Russell was very enthusiastic to Grab Your Balls (5.9). I mean he very enthusiastically led the climb to set up that top rope. Grab Your Balls was also a personal favourite of Cara (she climbed it twice!) and Dhruv. Russell went on to find new friends to climb 11s and 12s with not before he lead Mosquito (5.10b). Mosquito had a few initial goes on it by Chris, Jay and Andres, and then we moved on to Cannabis Rock for an on-ground tutorial on cleaning bolted anchors by Cat, easy leads by Andres and Dhruv, followed by quite a lot of climbing by everyone on Don’t PAT the Tree (5.6), Cannabis (5.5), and Touch of Green (5.5). We ended our day with Dhruv climbing and cleaning Mosquito and hiked back to the parking lot.
Cat belays Dhruv on Moqsuito (5.10b).
This time we were greeted by Cara’s CR-V with a dead battery because the lights were left on in the morning. Cat and Cara jumped the car, we took a group photo, and headed back to Pittsburgh via a quick Sheetz stop.
All in all, everyone had tons of fun on their first day climbing outside this season and we’re all sure to be back at this crag or the next!
- Dhruv Saxena, Andres Garcia, and Cat Pavlov