Bye Bye, Baldy

We spent the night at the Quartz Mountain state park, which is a little oklahoma oasis in the middle of wheat fields. The campground was very nice and had showers (main requirement for being considered nice). We camped at a little spot on the lake, and had a few deer come almost our door.

We got an early start, and were at the crag, Baldy Point, around 7am. The approach was short, but a little tricky as we had to scramble over a boulder field just to start the climb. The kind of approach where a helmet is preferred.

The first climb we started up was the snake's head (the top of the wall above Pete in the photo above). Turned out to be a 230 foot climb, but we just have 200 feet of rope. So it required me to scramble up the first 30 feet of the climb so that i could keep belaying. Right when i got to the top of the part i was willing to do while belaying, pete got to the anchors. Apparently most people just do the route unroped. For you climbers, the route was 5.5RX.

To get to the rappel rings, we had to jump from the top of the snake head to another boulder (again, the gap you can see in the photo with Pete and the van. We jumped from the tip of the Snake's Head). It was not that far, but at 200 feet up, it was pretty intense.

The other routes were just as runout (e.g. dangerous), but quite a bit harder. 5.9+ runout slab is not our idea of fun, so we decided that was enough of Baldy Point and took off for NM a day early.

We are now into NM, which is not nearly as windy as OK, so a lot easier to drive through. It was cooler today and overcast, which has made the drive pleasant so far.