Climbing at the Leap -

Since moving to Reno I've adopted Lover's Leap as my new home crag. After years of climbing at places such as Grapefruit Rocks and Angel Rocks in Fairbanks, Alaska I'm relieved and excited to have such high quality trad climbing around me.

For those of you not familiar with Lover's Leap it is one of the great traditional climbing areas of California. It is virtually a miniature Yosemite, apart from the fact that there are numerous granitic dikes that add features to the rock and make hard routes much more reasonable.

Newton DeBardeleben and I have been coming back here for three weekends in a row. This past weekend we were back to climb Travelers Buttress, a 4 pitch 5.9 crack climb on the Main Wall. The offwidth 5.9 pitch shut us down so we opted for the much more moderate classic next door, Corrugation Corner. Corrugation Corner is perhaps the most amazing 5.7 climb I've ever done. Newton believes it to be the steepest 5.7 he has done. We still aim to come back and finish Travelers Buttress, but perhaps with a little bit of offwidth training first.

-Tom